Chapter 2

 

The Power of Christ’s Resurrection

Philippians 3:10

 

News 255

The Australian, January 13, 2003

 

Pursuing the Privilege, Relishing the Spectacle, Surveying the Scene

 

In our last Chapter, there was reference to this one, in which this aspect of Paul’s great zeal and zest of Philippians 3:10, is given more specialised treatment.

 

Was the resurrection one event ? Of course. Did Christ die often, or rise often ? Naturally not. In what way then is the apostle speaking meaningfully of the power of CHRIST’s resurrection as something which he seeks to know, as a bibulous connoisseur might want to know wines ? though assuredly, Paul is not bibulous but biblical!

 

It is this. Just as ONCE and once only did Christ die, and that so that NO MAN took His life,  for no man COULD take His life from Him, for He had the power to avoid it, but the heart to accomplish this redemption and so permitted it, so is there one power for each Christian once given, always operative, even in discipline, which also requires training power! (Romans 5:1-11, Ephesians 1:11-19). Just ONCE and only once did Christ rise from the dead, vacating the tomb, and challenging His disciples that He was not a spirit, saying, “Handle Me and  see!” (Luke 24:39). There is that deliciously heuristic side of Christianity. It works. It can be seen, felt, touched and found, is no visionary enterprise for foxes and silly goats, but a matter of empirical display from the loving heart of the divine Creator, of the equally divine redemption; for both the making and the remaking are His! If this simple fact could but penetrate into the wayward spirits of the millions of theologically versed lost ones, the world would at once be a very different place.

 

But not so is the spirit of man:  the cunning, the confused, the cultural, the popular prophet is a fool – witless in confusion. The spiritual man as Hosea 9:7 declares, is not of sound mind!

 

Disauthenticated, they yet articulate! (Micah 3:5). Renegades, they yet speak, like abandoned gramophones, still turning till their death is more apparent.

 

They have left their wits behind in this journey into spiritual space, which is empty, though there is plenty of diabolical magnetic field in it, to assist the vain journey from God to delusion, wrought in pretension, as if unaware that the take-off has not occurred. They airily profess this and that, all alike in but one thing, that like a flying machine in the old days, that would not work, it is only their minds that are aloft. The facts remain resolutely on the ground. Like air, they move only in the air, that of the imagination. Their confusion is intense, their logical headwinds are of typhoon variety, their record is zero and their pretension is infinite. So does it go, but in fact it never moves.

 

Such things on the negative side (SMR Ch. 3) and the positive when the heuristic and the rational is followed to God (SMR Ch. 5), and thence to His word, have been followed earlier, with those intellectual experiments which are so revealing (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7), and do not involve the billions of funding for finding no life on Mars, or no transitional evidence in the least and slightest degree, from major categories of life, one to the other.

 

Nor do the futile fantasies of pretend gods, systems nor the fires of idle, delinquent and anti-evidential desires provide for the even greater cost of finding no rest for man, as he pursues the long crashed follies of Darwin’s hideous extrapolations and fanciful inventions of inventive powers, as if to imagine them, was to have them. A god-like status is often accorded to one who is in fact perhaps the world’s most famous fallacy-portrayer in logic, in the history of science, who extrapolated from variation to creation, found no means and no generic confirmations whatever, and by a blind faith stirred the blind to follow him (cf. TMR Chs.  1,   8, SMR pp. 140ff.,  Ch. 2, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9 and Index).

 

But what would you expect for this world, when it pursues pure irrationality against all evidence, and applies it in its wars, its prides, its racial misconceptions, either for some race or other, or for the human race as is now the going thing (in theory, that is, not in practice! except in this, that ex-God, it is now well on the way out) ?

 

Expect ? You would expect PRECISELY what you get. Endless rebukes from reality in the form of failed endeavours, frustrated ideas, the high cost of fallen pseudo-ideals, the endless harangues as in divorce, in conscience, and from the divorced party. Alas, in this case, not only reality as it transpires, but reason is divorced (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms  6  -7, SMR Chs. 1-3, 10); and of course, judgment from God. You would expect that the humanistic power craze would end in bringing terror to its makers, that the mice would play when the cat is indisposed because of eating too much of the chocolate of chaos, and this, again, is what you have. Terrors within are rapidly, for many, now  become terrors without, and the long-standing terrorism against truth becomes, like a natural transition of seasons, a typhoon against mankind. Useless to complain about the meteorological system; what is designed to protect, in a figure, is thus the means of exposure. Truth is like that: a friend to its lovers, but a scourge to its haters.

 

What you will never have, because you CANNOT have it, is

 

v          unreason in the throne, and order in the globe;

v          unempirical pretence in the chair of philosophy, and peaceable hearts in its students;

v          devilry in conception and angelic beauty in performance.

 

You cannot have it; you do not have it and you never will have it; yet the world goes on in its misconceptions, its willful confusions and its arbitary axioms, its prized departure from its only Saviour, deeming such deliverance unseemly, unsating to the full spirit: it goes on to the death.

 

 

LIFE IS BETTER THAN DEATH;
ETERNAL LIFE IS BETTER THAN ETERNAL DEATH A FORTIORI

 

The students in Christ’s day were of two kinds, and it is not far different now. You had the murderers of life, who consented to save their (national, ecclesiastical, individual) skins by removing – or hoping to remove – that of Christ. It was a simple trade, and its rationale seemed for many to be rather like this:

 

We cannot both be happy and safe, and since you are one and we are many, you go. It is also nicer to have one’s own way, and we can, so we will.

 

So very reasonable, if once one grants self-interest, survival of the fittest, the continuance of the worst, the grace of hell and the gumption of madness as necessary ingredients in life.

 

How pleased it would seem, would Nietzsche be for such a trade-in! How elegant might Darwin, if once he should become consistent in his thought, deem all this to be! The world meanwhile progresses in its riotous regress, following banal principles, like an intoxicated cat delving into the mouth of a lion, in playful mood, or disdainful disregard.

 

What then arrives ? Now we learn of the possibility of torture as something that may be NEEDED by the USA, because you see, life is tough, and it is better that some suffer than more! Nor is the USA by any means alone in this, it appears. Such is news of the article seeking to review the development of American ideas in this area, in The Australian, January 13, 2003 (p. 14, West Edges Towards Legalised Torture). Taking terrorists prisoners to nations KNOWN to engage in revolting torture in interrogation, this is reportedly another ploy. 

 

Ah sweet necessity! But not Ah Sweet Mystery of Life! for there is no mystery about this sort of development, none at all… It is all part of survival, that inglorious ineptitude, in which CONTINUANCE becomes the substitute for WHAT CONTINUES. It is the very essence of abstraction. Life is for keeping it for oneself, one’s nation, one’s world. It is not for being good or bad, worthwhile or not, noble (did you say Victorian ? alas not our Victoria in its anti-freedom legislation!^*1). Not at all. What is the good if you and I do not survive! THIS is the baneful catch-cry, this the profound utterance which many share with rats.

 

You may argue, Why not rats ? What is so bad about a rat ? If you ‘rat’ on someone, why not, if it helps you to survive ? If you rat on God, why not, if it helps you to survive with a life you can HANDLE for yourself and SEE! If you die, you die, but at least for a while you MAY live, in some sense.

 

This is the purest distillate of the foul abomination of Darwin; but he merely illustrates it in his own anti-scientific crusade (misnamed by many  in opposite terms, as is frequent in politics, and often in commerce, for the better sales or popularity: but what’s in a name if it does not work, and if what it does is only evil ?). WHAT SURVIVES then in the round, its principle is this: self-interest at the individual, State, national and international level, in which by grubby deals what is … necessary may be sone (such as it is suggested the USA in the end may do with North Korea, which seems to want to rattle atomic sabres in order to get financial aid so that the oppressive and virtually inhuman dictatorship may continue to act as a blind god to the souls of men).

 

If this survives (and it will not of course, since the creator of the human spirit – cf.  Jesus Christ: the Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 7 – did not make it so versatile in order to bless its gloating gobbling up in maw-crammed oblivion, of whatever else He made), then what follows ? If this becomes the Spirit of the Age, then the age will not last for an age!

 

To be sure, there have been follies all but innumerable before, but this one is different. Children at play may play follies; but when the world has tasted Christ, and found the Bible, and has communication so that scarcely anyone need fail to know the Gospel (and where this is not yet so, it is becoming so at a great rate indeed! cf. Matthew 24:14, another of the fulfillments before our very eyes); and when it moreover has seen in two World Wars and a third Cold War in ONE century, an international glutting of man and his environment on unparalleled scale, then the guilt becomes higher than any gibbet. Is this a warning ? but of course, but it is also an alert, for it is time to open the eyes.

 

Further, the power to implement the guile of the guilt is now growing far greater, so that the ‘greens’ bellow that the environment should get more respect, whereas the real problem in the round,  is the anti-environmentalist, man and his spiritual allies, man who is not inclined to consider his own environment of spirit, God, his own resources, God, or his own moral platform which accompanies him like a dog following his master, the word of God: yes and often man is so moved that he disregards his own spirit (many do not seem to realise that they have one, like children being taught to think they have no hands! cf. It Bubbles … Ch. 9), his own world and his own fellows.

 

Now let these delightful little creations called man, secular or pseudo-spiritual,  push en bloc over the heads of their protesting fellows,  their degraded principles, let them who in multitudes despise God if not in word, then in deed, kill and lie and torture and defend themselves by what they abhor, and ruin the globe, if it were possible (a new world is coming, just as the first one did – same source, but it will not be in man’s rule again^*2 ) and so burn down the house and char themselves, first starting with brother Bill, then sister Jean and so on, each gloriously obliviously of anything but survival. What then ?

 

Then they will not, just as they should not, survive anyway. Christ made it quite clear, and now history is echoing with choruses and refrains, dancing songs and funereal orations and music prolifically, that THIS WORLD will come to the end of its tether, its time and its ability to continue because EVIL will abound, sin will be on the loose and man will foul his life to the point it will face collapse.

 

This being so, and known to be coming, He announced that He would Himself intervene by coming for those WITHIN the world who are not OF THE WORLD, but His children, and selectively remove them. This is not at all astonishing. What father would not do the same in some mad school where other people’s children might continue to choose such folly, but as to HIS CHILDREN, THEY are coming out and now!

 

You find this in Matthew 24:21-29:

 

v          “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.

 

v          “Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.

 

v          “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

 

(Usually on this site, scriptural quotation is in blue colour,
but this time, an exception is made because of the topic…

the blue however is retained for the symbol.)

 

A famous play of Sheridan, School for Scandal, might be adapted in title for this world as it comes to the close of its ‘term’: School for Unspirituality! Except that there would need to be a subtle adjunct, School for Pseudo-Spirituality.(cf. News 121, 122).

 

And where more aptly than in South Australia might this be done, in this State which has made a fine art form for SEVERAL governments of both kinds, of defining religion in irrational terms, presumptuous, arrogant and amiss, excluding creation from school instruction in science, and elsewhere in terms of anything factual, and talking with such woeful bureaucratic palaver in the doing of it, as must make angels tremble.

 

Small wonder it has lost some 3 billion dollars in the oversight of one government through a banking calamity, apparently of misplaced inter-State financial ambition, and perhaps now another 140 million in a virtually unbelievable fiasco in electricity disposal to foreign powers! If however it is losing its children, and of course it is, as it feeds them this didactic arsenic laced with irrational tonic, this is far the greater loss. It is as if a wealthy financier, having lost a few thousand million, then divorces his wife and alienates his children. In one sense, you are not surprised; but looking on him as a man, you are more inclined to weep for his obliquity to all wisdom, his defiance of all understanding and his recklessness.

 

If this State is to do better, who more delighted than this writer ? May it do so ? One continues to hope that it will awake, as from a deep sleep in such things, or many more within, rather than continuing in this laceration of children (cf. TMR Ch. 8). It is neither necessary nor right, good educational policy, conformable to scientific method nor less than obeisance to the god of this world. For such a State, who would not tremble!

 

Other people do it differently. Thus the news of multiplied schools in Pakistan, reportedly supported  from Oil Wealth from the Gulf not least, schools which train, in effect, not scholars but warriors, using a combination of Koran and jihad thrusts to impel them to whatever it takes for an Allah domination, is paralleled by another report (The Australian, Jan. 13, 2001, Worldwide p. 13). This time it is of a “school for terror” in the Causcasus, to which some conceive, al Qaeda moved for more training after … difficulties in Afghanistan. Its site may be or have been, in particular, the Pankisi Gorge, separating Georgia and Chechnya, both of them independently of this, scenes of slaughter, division, desire, assault, separation, unification and much of whatever else affects the passions of man. The area is described as “treacherous mountain country”, but as far as the human race is concerned, many would conceive the treachery not in the rocks of this world, but in the intentions for its destruction, or that of part of it while fouling more of the common terrain in the delusively unspiritual spree.

 

The ‘students’ this time are not poor Pakistanis, perhaps willing to be taught whatever, in return for Gulf- bought food, but rather older youth, on extended licence to poison, and trails to England and France are being followed. The London underground, it appears, may have been one of the blessed and bracing intents of the religious heart of these modern day hallowers of death. These proceed, without logical warrant, or evidential accord, and with no words other than those that dreams can concoct (cf. More Marvels … Ch. 4), in that false prophecy in which frank and rank basic contradictions occur, not in a little but basically, and so misled, surge to the doomsday brink, like those in love with suicide, and wanting others to join. It seems not only the American with his Jonesville, but others have the death wish, fascinated by its ‘power’ as life escapes them; and this, it is international, not merely intra-national as before! It apparently seeks to breed life from death in a fascinatingly convulsive misdeployment of mind.

 

As to that life which endures, however, and seeks to endue not with blood but by it, already shed, let us return to the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who

 

v          knowing all things, and

v          verifiably foretelling the scope and pattern of things to come,

 

v          the living word of God who endorsed that written which in turn foretold His own death date many centuries before He came (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4),

v          occupied Himself with doing good

 

v          not with sabres and the subduing of cities (such as Mecca, Moscow or Beijing), for religious purposes,

v          but with healings of body and mind and spirit, and subduing only in love by mercy and pardon with peace.

 

He did not suggest that killing was the way to paradise, but rather the dying to that gross sinful self (Matthew 16:24-27, 18:1-4,) or its subordinates or lieutenants or occupiers (cf. Matthew 12:43-45), that dynamo of unrighteousness, to the deceptive devil (John  14:30, Matthew 4), as to the glamour of this fallen world (cf. John 7:7, Galatians 6:14), and instead living in Him, and for Him who came to bring life in its fullness (John 10-10). Judgment will come surely enough; but in the hands of machinating man, it is as likely to turn into more of the spiritual squalor that DESERVES JUDGMENT. Small wonder Christ declaimed,

 

v          “Do not judge, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge,
you will be judged …!”

 

That ? It is found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:1). This HE judged however, that without salvation there is no way to God, and with works, it is a vain show that pleases the spirit of the mountain climbers who exalt themselves, but this is but vain, for their highest mountains do not even qualify as mole-hills (cf. Matthew 7:21ff., Romans 10). Such judgment is as natural as it is necessary, from God. It is HIS word, without demur or indifference, which will judge (John 5:42-47 cf. Jeremiah 23:23-29).

 

 

 

THE TENACITY OF THE POWER OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

 

CITING IT BEFORE SITING IT

 

The power of Christ’s resurrection is not merely that shown in His being raised; nor is it only an extreme illustration of His healing power, in which He raised the dead on several occasions, and could heal all comers. This He did, even though the dereliction of hopelessness, as in birth defect and chronic failure in health, were specialties in those seeking (cf. Matthew 4:24, 12:15, Luke 6:19, John 11), yes even when they came in great multitudes, as could be understood, when you consider those currently seeking this or that doctor, specialist or Centre for healing of the resolute diseases which course through very many of our race.

 

Neither numbers nor cases could weary Him, nor was He ever embarrassed by failing to meet faith with action, numbers with proportionate power or appeal with help. Had He been, just once, His ministry would have ended; for when you claim to be God on earth (John 8:58), failure is not an option. This is one of the self-authenticating features of such a crusade as His was!

 

It is the same power source as gave Him unanswerable retorts and counter-exposures to those who sought to overthrow Him with learning, knowledge and argumentation (Luke 11:53-54, Matthew 22:46), and as enabled Him to call fishermen to follow Him, so that they did, and stayed and went on to become foundation parts of the Christian Church, write Gospels and exhibit in their own lives and work, the same ability of God, not in their own name, but in His, not in any divine name, but in the NAME of Jesus Christ. It is to this aspect that we are specially drawn today, for it needs to be realised^*3.

 

We have briefly, above, traced some of the PRELIMINARIES to His own resurrection. It is interesting to consider this.  When you play tennis, you are new, and you learn, and some things may seem very hard; but when a player has long smashed this way and that,  been in net crises of this and that sort, experienced this and that strategic assault, often the thing is no more so amazing. A clever retort at the tennis net, though delightful, has the groove of preceding personal history before it…

 

When Christ healed many destined for early death with anguish, and gave them instead prolonged life without it, and when He healed the dead, and answered the living dead with the words of life, when every contingency was met with wisdom, then there was not only a monolithic majesty; there was an eternal fellowship in operation. Thus we read:

 

v          “And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I do always those things which please Him” – John 8:29;

 

v          “ Before Abraham was, I am” – John 8:58.

 

Out therefore of the eternal pre-creation Godhead, issuing like a stream of supernatural strength, He who is the Saviour for man comes; but eternal, He does not leave affinity for or affiliation with His source, merely issuing like a finger from it (cf. Luke 11:20, John 1:1). Many people seem to have some difficulty in realising this, that there is ONLY ONE GOD, and that of gods there are NONE except pretentious, spiritual mad-persons, whose end is destruction (Psalm 82), inheritors of the scorn and irony of God! (cf. Ezekiel 28:9). There  is NONE LIKE HIM in heaven! (Psalm 89:6), and it is because Christ Himself  before becoming man,  had no trouble in being equal with God, that He is shown equal in His completion at the consummation (Revelation 21-22), being Himself the Light and the Temple.

 

Thus the power is not merely over matter, though it is emphatically that; it is not only over mind, though this was continually attested; nor alone is it over physiological configurations in life, though this was a specialised field: it is the power of GOD, so that no barrier, no blight and no resistance can overcome what God decides to do, and hence what in the NAME of Christ Jesus the Lord, can be wrought.

 

What is NOT wrought is fellowship without suffering, for He suffered, and love must suffer when sin is concerned. Thus for His work,  He to attain redemption, and those who are His followers need to expose it and relay it, and live through it in the power of God. This is not a popular contemporary message, since as Christ and indeed, the apostles Paul and Peter predicted, there are to be MANY FALSE prophets; but when it comes to the ACTUALITY of God, there will be an enormous ennui, a lack of desire, a flurry of failure, and men will NOT BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF GOD, being merely formal. That is to be the statistical trend (cf. II Timothy 3, I Timothy 4, Matthew 24, II Peter 2-3).

 

It is now also the historical fact; and it is one of the signals of Christ’s near return, when seen in the array of signals made to be simultaneous in order to be readable: these attested two millennia ago, yes and more, from the earlier prophets who, though not the Son of God, yet spoke in the Spirit of Christ (I Peter 1:11-12, Psalm 2, 16, 22, 40, 72, 110, Isaiah 40-42, 49, 50-55, 61, Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 34 and so on).

 

That, this plethora of false christs and false prophets,  is just one of the many verifications; and the total assemblage like that of a vast armada of ships is not only a WITNESS that His coming is near (Luke 21), but of the accuracy of the word of God, which after all in MAKING these things in unison a signal, also PREDICTED that they would HAPPEN and happen TOGETHER.

 

They have done so, do so and continue to show incremental marvels of the design, in that book called history, which only seems to lack originality because the One who is called the First and the Last, who knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10, as an author may, before he writes a book), has already given it a profound overview these millennia in advance, with emphasis on the end syndrome.

 

 

SITING THAT POWER IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE

 

Now one would be glad if you could imagine you are one of the earliest disciples. Christ has raised the dead, which made you realise that you were in the presence of one of the very greatest of all the prophets; He has answered effectually all His traducers, tripped the trippers and exposed the jibers whose desire for Him was the gibbet, and disgrace, but who achieved only the former, as divinely planned and written in advance, but never the latter, as also indicated in advance would be the case (cf. Isaiah 11). 

 

These things you have seen. At Caesarea Philippi you have heard the exchange with Peter, and seen two more features: Christ is to die, says so, will rise in 3 days and is to be understood to be the Son of the Living God, in other words, that incarnation of the eternal God (Micah 5:1-3) which was predicted. These things amazed you. You awaited developments, breathless in hope, and perhaps having believed by now. Then He is raised, and you actually respond to His invitation to handle Him and see as in Luke 24, because you had a certain secret sympathy with Thomas and wanted just to put things on an empirical plane, as well as a spiritual, believing that if God could create the world, He could without too much difficulty RE-create the body of His Son and identify the Saviour to the uttermost.

 

After all, even Abraham believed God could, if He chose, do that with his son Isaac (Hebrews 11:17-19). It is indeed, when you KNOW GOD, not too amazing to find yourself able to believe in your own life that He can heal this or that disease (if it be needful for His plan in the matter, as it often is), or bring you liberty when chains seem sure, or energy and understanding when your own seem grossly inadequate for your task (as in Isaiah 40:26ff.).

 

How often has this present author found the inconceivable made easy, the impossible brought to rein and implemented, the wearisome made entrancing, weakness turned to strength and sallow pits become bowers of beauty! It is His WAY! That, it is what He is like (Isaiah 64:5).

 

Returning to our imaginary disciple, then reader, which you are endeavouring to be, you may find yourself now NOT finding it hard to believe in various works to be done, even if WITHOUT GOD’s presence and power, they would not even be considered. It is in this milieu, though naturally further amazement will occur, yet not in isolation from faith, but in augmentation of it, that we find the early chapters of Acts. Borne along by multitudes of verifications, entranced with the pure authenticity of power and suffering, truth and integrity, knowledge and claim, performance and peace, fearlessness infinitely divorced from fecklessness, you begin to see the land that is very far off, now at your front door, and only your eyes needed, that they be opened.

 

 

SIGHTING THE POWER IN THE EARLY CHAPTERS OF ACTS AND SEEING IT

AS THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION

 

 

FIRST PHASE: PENTECOST AFTER DUE PRELIMINARIES
(objectively, wholly diverse from Pentecostalism)

 

At once, much of a startling character arises, and this in direct harmony with the power of the Lord, the anointing of Pentecost, the fulfilment THEREBY of the prediction of the Lord Himself (Luke 24:46-49 as likewise of the prophet Joel, cited by Peter as in Acts 2), which in turn was made the easier to grasp, in that He who made it had just finished fulfilling masses of Old Testament predictions made by the prophets who went before, and had said so. Indeed, having acted in deed, Christ then proceeded in word, showing His disciples these things in some detail these things from the word of God (cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25).

 

Now He has returned home, but in His wake, the whole universe is opening up like a book; everything fits. The Holy Spirit does indeed come in a way not merely sensational (not sensationalistic), with both the noise and the wind, the flames and the individualisation of each of them, for the disciples, but a thrust, like the outhrusting on rock when the earth moves, surges in their hearts, and with this, miraculous attestation is yet more abundant (Acts 2). Those who were in Jerusalem at the time were from many nations, there being a feast, so that the NEED for people to be told in many languages was met by the miraculous gift, not so amazing in the light of all the rest, of courage and comprehension which allowed Peter to address all, and many disciples to address those in many language groups SO THAT THEY UNDERSTOOD the CONTENT, the objective content of the Gospel! Indeed, a translation, if you will, or the Greek version if you won’t, of the message is supplied. It is reasoned, accurate and developed to meet personal need. So God acted.

 

Not only so, but Peter is allowed to realise in time for his speech that this is the very thing of which Joel spoke, and he cites that prophets, and releases the plan of things to the astonished Jerusalemites, who had already seen enough that was astonishing in Christ! In His life, in His death, in His evacuation of His body; and now they see more in His disciples, obviously possessed by the power which raised Christ, and in which His miracles were performed. There was no stopping it.

 

It would help the imaginative idea suggested, that the reader is one of these disciples, if we hear Peter, and watch the environment in which he works, citing Acts 2.

 

 

§       “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

§       “And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, ‘Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?

o     Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—

§       we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.’

§        “So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘Whatever could this mean?’ Others mocking said, ‘They are full of new wine.’

§       “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them,

§      ‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.

“And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.

“I will show wonders in heaven above
And signs in the earth beneath:
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

“And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of the Lord
Shall be saved.’

§      “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.

 

§      “For David says concerning Him:

o     ‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face,

o     For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.

 

o     Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;

o     Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.

o     For You will not leave my soul in Hades,

o     Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.

o     You have made known to me the ways of life;

o     You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’

 

§      “Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David,  that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.

 

§      “For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself:

o     ‘The Lord said to my Lord,

o     “Sit at My right hand,

o     Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’

§      “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

 

§      “Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ Then Peter said to them,

 

§       ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’

 

 

§      “And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’ ”

 

§    This power is rational, reasonable, articulating, comprehensible, commanding, exhorting and the opposite entirely of the Corinthian tongues case (I Cor. 14). No two things could well be more different.

 

§    This brings understanding where it lacked by means of words; that removed understanding where it could have been presented, by means of the absence of intelligible words.

 

§    This meets a practical situation of need in the arena of knowledge, and uses a miracle WITH WORDS rendering them technically parallel to the work of a translator, to meet that internationally oriented opportunity at the birthday of the church as a New Testament functioning unity. That brought in what was originally predicted as a means of rebuke (cf.
A Question of Gifts Section I), by means of what in some ways resembled the idle talk of children, as far as words are concerned, though meaning it held, buried in the depths.

 

 

This then is the ending of the beginning: the miracle of the resurrection, of the body intact and able to eat and be handled, of the teaching from the One decreed dead, of the victim swallowing up death in victory (as in Isaiah 25:8), is thus followed after His departure, by the miracle of the explanation of these things, in the very heart of the city of His murderers, with such international facility of speech as made of it an occasion of memorable and amazing kind: JUST LIKE THOSE TRANSCENDENT PARALLELS IN WHICH CHRIST HEALED, HIMSELF PERSONALLY AT WORK! It reminds us at once of John 14:12!

 

Thousands are convicted, convinced and come.

 

There is thus, as we are seeing, a CONTINUITY of the power Christ was given^*4. In Jerusalem, it is not now in one man only, nor yet now in God as man, since HE had returned to His station until the Second Coming, when He is to return, the Gospel by then completely having immersed the earth. Rather, in the interim, it is now in a group of people, like a body under the direction of its Head (Romans 12, Ephesians 4, 2). The apostles are given power, the people accord, the movement intruding into the city of death, like a meteor into the darkness; yet it does not fade.

 

Thus the resurrection, while itself the crescendo of the healings and raisings from the dead, is in this, that when one is dead, one simply rises, quite a unique situation; for when without human intervention, directly or instrumentally, one is raised it is as startling as predicted, as demanding as determined; and in the milieu of fulfillments already, in a battery of beliefs always fulfilled in history, it is more than prototype. Rather, it is penetration, and that not INTO the celestial sphere, but from it.

 

This was that. No prophet raised Him. He rose Himself. He rose as He said repeatedly that He would, and WHEN He said He would, on the third day (cf. SMR Ch. 6). As His words were with power to restore the sick and rebut the crafty, so now they were able to fulfil His predictions and attest His authenticity, for His Father and He were unanswerable in performance as in purity, just as God is incapable of being brought into disrepair by man!

 

Death could not hold Him, said Peter (Acts 2:24); and obviously this would have to be the case, since death is GOD’s penalty on MAN’s sin, and when that sin is paid for, GOD HIMSELF is not in debt to anyone, and simply rises in the human form which He had adopted. It was moreover as it had to be as seen in Psalm 16, Isaiah 52-53, Psalm 40. In the great congregation He would indeed address His people, having been killed. Concerning the resurrection, as Peter put it, of the Christ (not some other, but the One in view who had died), “This Jesus God has raised up…” (Acts 2:32). It is not some substitute, not some invention, not some clone: it is THIS JESUS. If your mother dies, and is raised, it is futile to talk of her being so, unless it is indeed the very one who left, who departed, not someone else, of whom it would be said, Why now do I have instead, one like her!

 

We know what THIS JESUS, or this Mary or this John, means, so let us not twiddle with words, as some do. The Christian faith deals with ONE JESUS, ONE LORD, ONCE KILLED, ONCE RAISED, THIS JESUS. Any other is a subterfuge, a flight from history, as much as the word of God, a meaningless masquerade, a senseless charade, a gross plagiarism and pretence.

 

Pentecost does not deal with incomprehensible words, but eminently comprehensible ones; not with some other Jesus (condemned in principle in II Cor. 11), but THIS ONE; and the Gospel is not a matter of gabble or feelings, either one or the other or both, but of ONE objective Christ, who ONCE objectively was raised so that thousands, hearing and believing, formed the Christian Church days after it had happened, in Jerusalem.

 

The facts were not disputable. The miracles had amazed the nation, appalled the priests, astounded the savants, annoyed the Pharisees (when done on the Sabbath), and the death which was deemed necessary lest EVERYONE should follow Him (John 11:47-48), was the response, now exposed, and thus leading to the mass conversions. That “this man works many signs” was the trouble; the empirical was the difficulty, as with Darwin and many a repose of rebellion, in which is no rest, for the facts always war with it.

 

The long line of miraculous dealings was thus not a matter of atoms, but of molecules, and highly complex ones at that. It is all part of a fabric. If you buy velvet (should you happen to like it), you do not marvel at every inch and every touch: for once the fabric is in your possession, you KNOW what it is like and come to expect a certain continuity of its feel, and richness. If you had never seen it, this would be different. Having lived with it, it is no more an object of marveling or if it is, then not of surprised marveling. You have grown used to it; this is that way that thing is.

 

It can of course be torn…

 

 

SECOND PHASE: MORE DYNAMIC, then DISCIPLINE IN TWO FORMATS

 

Soon there was to be a famous healing in the temple grounds (Acts 3) in which the precise specification of Isaiah 35 were fulfilled, the healed man LEAPING! though formerly unable to walk.

 

The exuberance of this work is thus closely continuing, along the lines of the Lord’s dealings when on earth personally, in the flesh: nothing seems too hard, and what happens, does so in the aura of the divine, for through the Holy Spirit, this is present.

 

Peter in that honest way which all Christians should seek to emulate, addressed the people telling that it was CHRIST’s power which did the healing, that it was CHRIST who had been murdered, that this was as it had to be for the Messiah from the prophets, and that they should repent. He made it easier for them by saying the killing was done in ignorance, for probably many did not realise the enormity of what they did; but if it WAS in ignorance, then NOW was the time, the knowledge supplied, for the repentance to come.

 

Heaven would receive Christ as was the schema for so long, and it was He of whom Moses spoke in Deuteronomy 18, by prophecy, as the One who would come after him, whom all must heed. It is to YOU FIRST, he said, there is blessing God having raised up Jesus. Thus spoke Peter in his second recorded major public speech in Acts.

 

This second address was not at all well received by some whose murderous action was not apparently so ignorant! When the outraged leaders arrested the apostles, they showed of what they were made.

 

Since the apostles were PREACHING through the name of Jesus the resurrection of the body from the dead (Acts 4:1), this annoyed many of the paramount principals of this devious deed, in the temple, the Sadducees, and they had the apostles arrested, and tried, but were in a dilemma.

 

Let us see it graphically in the present. If they hurt them, then the people who are not without all thought, may consider:

 

So here we are. These men who preach, they have been with the Christ whose works have been the work of the century, of all time indeed; and they do what He did, freely raise the sick in a way unheard of before, and what happens ? Our so religious, so scheming, so corrupt priesthood, involved for years in their own profits and power play, corrupt, meddlesome in politics, spiritual managers, traditional experts, cultural plaques, are so far from the path of peace that they have to HURT those who HELP, just as they MURDERED the One in whose name this is done!

 

 This would be an impossible political situation for the craft of priesthood, and it was not done. Rather they asked, BY WHAT POWER and in WHAT NAME have you done these things ? (Acts 4:7). This was fully in parallel with asking Christ whether He was the Son of the blessed (Matthew 26:63ff., Mark 14:62).

 

This led to a careful exposure, exposition and denunciation by Peter, covering what Christ was, Who He was and What He did, together with this addition, what THESE VERY ONES, now arresting the apostles, had done to this same Christ.

 

The apostles were threatened and told (as by the doctrinal dogmatists, where heresy had run wild and occupied the seat of power) NOT to preach, through this name of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead. It was not a doctrine merely, but the presentation of a fact. It was like a scientific research nowadays. One major facet of its impact, where light shone like a laser, was this: that it had happened. The appalling horror of all murderers, that their victim arise, was fulfilled in their eyes. They would not have another chance to exhibit their animus, their intellectual antinomies to faith, their direct rejection of what the nation had, in the very nursery where they had charge, been expecting to be born for so long. Having rejected the Christ, they would now but see His power, His people and their testimony. Unless they would now believe they would be as shipwrecked as any who did likewise in any other century!

 

What could these guilty men then do ? They could do no more. If they did, then they would be exposed as hostile to goodness, contrary to healing, garrulous contra-reality religionists. Yet they went as far as intimidatory tactics could then take them: they urged the apostles NOT to preach in this name. They feared that the murder would be pinned upon themselves; but alas, it is a fact that it has been a pitfall for Israel ever since; for it is not the guilt at His death - “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!” Luke 23:34) - but the FAILURE to repent which is the point!

 

Thus, if you do not repent for a sin, how are you then not intertwined with it, concordant with it, and in spirit ready to do it again, married to it, congenial with it, as a father with a family! Excuses will not profit. If it was wrong, it must be repented of; if it is not repented of, then it is in the orbit of your travels, as aspect of your very life. How then are you not responsible, or is your guilt to be removed ?

 

Indeed, the case is far worse; for if the pardon is free, procured at great cost, expressive not only of moderation but of divine love, and it is STILL refused, this veritable intractability is like a voluntary cancer of the spirit, carrying its own death by an internal decree, not of flesh but of spirit.