Rockets to space, wireless global communications, artificial intelligence, to name a few things. Mankind has accomplished seemingly godlike achievements! Magical, spiritual, and powerful, because we are Godlike!
In Gen. 1:27-28, we read that man was made in the image of God and was empowered and commissioned to subdue, cultivate, and have dominion over all the earth and every living thing in the earth.
When man rebelled against God, he essentially ran away with the capacities and power God had granted him, giving Satan access to it. He took the God-given power and abused it by animating and empowering a different structure in the world than what God had intended. The scripture calls it the course of the world, or the orderly arrangement or system.
In Genesis 11, God beheld mankind in a unified effort building a tower in rebellion against Him. “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Unless He divided them, they would be able to achieve anything they imagined to do. Imagine that! What power!
What has this runaway power accomplished? Great things! But it has been tainted and can be a curse. For every forward step in the development and modernization of civilization, it takes us two steps forward in the sophistication and refinement of evil.
The problem is not that power is evil. The problem is when power is rogue power. Disconnected from its original source, it becomes corrupted and perverted, and unimaginably destructive.
This society has been shaped by the individualistic and self-deterministic message of Protestantism, which is the same message of the serpent in the garden, “Ye shall be as gods,” without being in subjection to Almighty God.
You can use your God-like power to build your own kingdom. You can choose how your power is used. It is your power after all.
The “Christian” world has bought into this doctrine wholeheartedly. I can be a Christian and choose what I will do with my life, my talents, my business, my money, MY power.
The truth is that we have been given the power of choice. We can choose how we will use our power. But we do not have the choice of being a Christian and controlling our own power. It is impossible for our power to be independent from God without it being corrupted and, ultimately, wasted.
“Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” Psalm 110:3.
There are a number of prophecies that foretell of a great manifestation of the power and glory of God in the earth near the end of time, such as has never been before (Revelation 16:17-18). A great enlightenment! For this, the Christian world waits, while each individual retains control of his own power.
The truth is, that the day of the revelation of God’s power is not disconnected from His people. “Thy people shall be willing.” This willingness is not an offering of some resources such as time or money. It is a living sacrifice of one’s entire being and potential to God–mind, body and spirit; a full surrender of all of one’s will and capacities.
God’s glory will be revealed simultaneously with the surrender of our collective power as Christians to God: with the unifying of the power of all believers into one effort. If God saw that the unification of rogue power in building the tower of Babel was limitless, how much greater is the full surrender and unification of the power of them that truly love God!
Herein lies the difficulty. How can our power truly be given to God and unified with the power of all His children? God has built a framework, a government, and dwelling place for His power: a location where we can bring our power to surrender it to God.
“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.” Acts 4:32.
It is no accident that the church in Acts saw a great outpouring of the power of God. They were a people willing to surrender to God all of their ransomed powers, and all they owned, even their very lives. Christian, can we do less?
