Dynamis - The Power of the Holy Spirit
God is really the God of the Bible and His word is true, then let us try it and see if it works. Jesus said that He hadn't come to judge the world, but the word that He spoke would judge the world. We will try it and test ourselves accordingly. Also, let's not say, 'This is not valid nowadays. This was written for people who lived two thousand years ago.' Let's just accept things as they are written." They all agreed to my suggestion.
Chapter 3
Dynamis - The Power of the Holy Spirit
It was towards the end of the year 1966 that we began our Bible studies in Mapumulo. We had decided not to take a verse here or a verse there, like little children, picking out all the raisins in a cake. It's understandable when children behave that way, but when grown-ups conduct themselves in such a manner, it's just plain childish. There are people who are constantly quoting their favourite verses from the Bible. A certain spiritual school of thought, for example, establishes its teachings around the verse: "God is love". And because He is a God of love, there can be no hell. That is how false doctrines arise. So we said, "We don't want to do that. We will take one book of the Bible, beginning with the first verse, examine the text, through to the last verse. We will then have the whole picture and not just a part of it."
The Zulus have a legend which applied to our situation. Three blind men desired to know what an elephant looked like. Somebody agreed to drive them to a safari park in his car. Once there, they were led to a very large but tame elephant and each one of them was allowed to step forward and touch it. The first man walked up to the elephant, grabbed hold of its great big hind leg and exclaimed, "Is this what an elephant looks like?" The next blind man took a few steps forward and encountered the elephant's gigantic body. As his hands stroked along its belly, he cried, "My, is this really an elephant?" "Yes," he was told, "that's what an elephant looks like." The third blind man was standing near the elephant's head, so he grasped its trunk and examined it from top to bottom. All three of them were utterly thrilled to have finally "seen" an elephant, and they returned home very excited. There they were asked if they now knew what an elephant looked like. The first man described what he had observed, "I tell you, an elephant is like the trunk of a large tree." To which the second gentleman exclaimed, "Man, what are you saying? I really examined it. You can't fool me! An elephant is like a huge balloon." Finally, the third man intervened, "Where were you two anyway? I felt it with my own hands. An elephant is like a big hose pipe." And so they ended up getting into an argument. They had all "seen" the elephant, but the trouble was, each of them had only touched a part of it.
This story was a parable for us. We did not want to act like those three blind men, although Christians can be blind, of course, blind to many things regarding the Scriptures.
I can't recall today exactly how it happened, but we began with the Acts of the Apostles. Throughout the years I've always had a soft spot for the first Christians and I feel one can hardly read the account of the early church without being affected by it. So we began with the first chapter, at the first verse, and right from the outset the Lord took hold of our hearts.
The Acts of the Apostles commences with the words: "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach." Luke wrote about what Jesus had begun to do, and the Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of what Jesus did. When the Lord Jesus lived in this world, it was only the beginning. His work didn't end with His death. Jesus actually said to His disciples, "I came to send fire on the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:49-50). That was no baptism with water, that was the baptism of His agony and death on the cross. The Lord Jesus couldn't kindle the fire of the Holy Spirit before He had fought the battle in the garden of Gethsemane. There His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. After His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead and His ascension into heaven, He could at last accomplish what He had come for. Now He could continue His work in the fullness of His power, sitting at the right hand of the Father. At last the moment had come to kindle a fire. In Acts we can see the Lord working in His resurrection power, His omnipotence, through His disciples. The people of that time said: "These men are drunk." Others mocked them or were appalled, but Peter said in answer to them, "Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams."
When we had read those words we said, "But we are nearer to the last days today than the people two thousand years ago. If that promise was meant for them, how much more for us now." It doesn't take very much insight to realise that we are still living in the same period of time as the early church, and that this age will not come
to an end until the Lord Jesus returns to claim His bride. Spiritually speaking, we are still living in the same 'week'. God's word says, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." So two thousand years, that was just the day before yesterday. We haven't even reached the middle of the week yet. Undoubtedly, the same things that applied to the early church apply to us as well.
The further we got, the more our hearts were touched. We read that the Lord Jesus commanded His disciples not to depart from Jerusalem before they had received the baptism John the Baptist had spoken about. These days, there is much discussion about baptism. Some say it must be done like this, others say it must be done like that, while others say it must be done at a certain time. I remember a big open-air meeting in Pretoria in 1952 or 1953, in which Dr. Edwin Orr did something most extraordinary. He asked a Dutch Reformed minister and a Baptist minister to come forward. Then he asked them the following question: "When you baptise, which one of you uses more water?" I thought to myself, "Oh my, how can such a learned man ask a question like that? One shouldn't do such a thing." Then Dr. Orr explained, "Look, no matter how much or how little water you use, when you baptise someone, that person's tongue always remains dry." Do we understand that kind of language? Water baptism doesn't change our tongue. It might do whatever people say it does, but is it not so, that baptised children and baptised grown-ups utter things that should never be heard from the lips of a Christian? But the baptism with fire, of which the Acts of the Apostles speaks, means more.
The Lord Jesus says, regarding John the Baptist, that there is none greater born of women. There was Moses; there was Abraham; there was Elijah: all of them great men of God. But the Lord Jesus says that none of them is greater than John the Baptist. Wherein lay his greatness? We don't know of a single miracle attributed to his name, not one blind man whose eyes were opened, not one lame man who could walk again.
Maybe the Lord Jesus knew about our doubts. Therefore He says in this verse, "Verily I say unto you ..." In spite of the fact that Jesus calls John the Baptist the greatest born of women, John the Baptist could say, "One mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."
We know what fire is like. If you place black iron in a furnace, it doesn't take long before the colour changes; the iron becomes red-hot and finally turns white. The heat of the blaze penetrates to the iron's core. That's how it is when a person is baptised with the Holy Spirit; the fire of the Spirit penetrates to every part of his being, including his tongue.
As already mentioned, the Lord Jesus commanded His disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father, that they should be baptised with the Holy Spirit and thereby they would receive the power to become Jesus' witnesses. The Lord had to command His disciples to stay in Jerusalem. There was a special reason for that. Maybe His disciples would have fled. That's what we humans are like. When the going gets tough, we would like best to run away.
If a woman has a husband who doesn't understand her or doesn't do what she wants, she feels like fleeing. We have the same problem with children who believe their parents are being too strict with them. Often they will turn their backs on their homes for this very reason. There are even Christians who are constantly moving from one church to the other because they can't get along in the church they are in. To such people I usually say, "If you can't prove yourself where you are, you won't be able to prove yourself anywhere else, either." The Zulus say, "If you put a rotten potato in a bag full of good ones, the rotten potato won't get better, but the good ones will turn bad." If we don't succeed where God puts us, we won't be a blessing anywhere else. Therefore it is best to persevere until God reveals the next step.
Wasn't Jerusalem the most dangerous place for the disciples to stay? Jerusalem, where their Lord and Master had been nailed to the cross! They had fled behind locked doors, afraid of being killed as well. One can understand that, for them, this was the worst spot on earth. But Jesus told them to stay there until the Holy Spirit had come upon them. We read of the disciples' reaction to this command, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" But the Lord's reply was like a verbal slap in the face: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, but ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."
It is possible for people to be sitting at Jesus' feet, and while Jesus is speaking to them they are preoccupied with other problems. Of what use is it if we are busy with prophecies and we haven't received the power of the Holy Spirit to obey God's Word and do what the Lord Jesus expects of us?
I don't think there has ever been a time in history in which people have talked about the Holy Spirit more than today. All around the world people are talking about the Spirit of God. Unfortunately, people have also never been quite so ignorant with regard to the Holy Spirit as today. Some time ago I spoke about revival in a series of meetings in Holland. One preacher stood up and said, "Up to now I had a false picture of revival. I always
assumed that revival had something to do with noise." Some people mistakenly believe that a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit behaves as if he were full of wine. I testify to this fact - and I speak from experience - that when the Spirit of God moves, those are the most silent moments in the life of a person or a church.
Let me tell you about two Christians who got into an argument. One of them claimed, "Our church is more pentecostal than your church." To which the other man replied, "No, we are more pentecostal than you are." "But how can you prove that?" "We shout Hallelujah much louder than you do." I was told that this is a true story, not just a fairy tale. In Holland I met a man who was of the same opinion. We mustn't mistake emotionalism for the working of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord Jesus talks about a distinct characteristic which results when the Holy Spirit comes upon a person. He shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit! (Acts 1:8). If there must be a sign, let us accept the sign of which the Lord Jesus spoke. The Greek word for power in the New Testament is 'dynamis'. It makes me think of dynamite. Dynamite has power, and you don't use that kind of power on soft sand, you use it to blow the hardest rocks to pieces. The power of the Holy Spirit is for situations where the ground is as hard as granite. That's where the Holy Spirit is most effective.
Jesus said to His disciples, "Ye shall receive power!" When we speak about this power, the first thing that comes to many people's minds is physical healing. They completely forget that healing the spirit is of far greater importance than healing the body! It is a thousand times more valuable to be set free from one's sins than to be healed of one's sicknesses. Spiritual events must always take precedence.
Now we mustn't take this verse out of context, or we will falsify its meaning. Let's pay attention to Jesus' statement: "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me." What is a witness? We say a witness is a person who bears testimony of what he has seen and heard. In Greek the word for witness is 'martyr'. In English we also use this word. A martyr is a person who is prepared to suffer death rather than renounce his faith. So Jesus actually meant: When you have received the power of the Holy Spirit, you will have the power to become martyrs. How strange! We might say: "You will have the power to love. But the power to die? Well, we aren't martyrs, and we would have to live in countries in which Christians are persecuted and die for their faith to become martyrs." Nevertheless we can still become martyrs. In Hebrews 12:4 we read, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." What does that mean? Simply this, that a person is prepared to say, "I would rather suffer death than tell a lie! I would rather die than whore with another man's wife! I would rather die than steal! I would rather die than be a hypocrite or a coward! I would rather die than be unfaithful to the Lord Jesus! I would rather die than sin!" That is power to be a martyr for the Lord Jesus.
Peter denied his Lord. But after he had received the power of the Holy Spirit, he became a faithful witness for his Lord and was eventually crucified as a martyr. Before he was executed, he said, "I am not worthy to die in the same way as my Lord and Master. Rather nail me to the cross with my head down." By the power of the Holy Spirit he was able to die for Jesus. He died for the truth.
The Apostle Paul says, "I die daily" (1 Corinthians 15:31). What does he mean by that? How can we die daily? The Lord Jesus experienced death in Gethsemane, so to say, before He physically died on the cross. There His sweat became like great drops of blood and He was close to despair, until He was finally able to say to His Father, "Not my will, but thine, be done." He died to Himself. If we can pray in this way, then we no longer seek our own will; we humble ourselves under God's will and deny ourselves. To die to oneself is extremely difficult. It is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.
When we look at the apostles, we see how the power of the Holy Spirit became evident in their lives. Acts recounts how Peter and John went to the temple to pray. A man sat at the gate of the temple, who had been lame from birth. Peter said to him, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" And the lame man stood up! Observe Peter's exact words. He didn't say, "such as we have give we thee." He said, "such as I have give I thee." John didn't have the gift of healing. We don't hear of a single healing miracle that the apostle John worked, although he had the power of the Holy Spirit as Peter had. These two apostles had different gifts. If we inquire into the nature of John's particular gift, we find that it lies in the distinct manner of his preaching, his way of teaching the churches brotherly love, fellowship and unity amongst one another. John experienced the power of the Holy Spirit to such an extent that he could write (1 John 3:6,8): "Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: Whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him. He that commiteth sin is of the devil." That is how we recognise a born-again Christian! John goes so far as to say that it is not difficult to know whether a person is born again or not: If someone sins, he is of the devil. If he is really born again, he does not sin. That's pretty rough language, which makes the theologians scratch their heads and say, "Oh no, John couldn't have meant it that way."