The Need of Power by G. B. THOMPSON

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 23, 1913

The Need of Power

By G. B. THOMPSON

The Holy Spirit—No. 2

The Need of Power

G. B. THOMPSON

EMERSON says, “Life is a search after power.” That which men most long for is power, and the real measure of manhood is in its units of power. The things we eat, the things we wear, books, pictures, institutions, machinery, wealth, represent in some form or degree, power, either physical, intellectual, or moral. Educational institutions are valuable, not in proportion to the money expended in the buildings, but in proportion to the mental power which they can stimulate, and the great thinkers they can produce. Churches are valuable; not for the outlay in the buildings, but in proportion as they are centers of moral power for the regenerating of individuals, and their salvation from the forces of evil.

The great need of the church individually to-day is spiritual power. For this the heart of the believer yearns and fervently prays. Without this our code of moral ethics is of little value. The heathen have a religion, but it is a religion without power, and as a result the millions who blindly and ignorantly worship at the pagan shrines are as degraded and miserable as if they had no religion.

But Christianity is a power. It is God’s almighty power. It is the power that made worlds, and swings them in space. Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Rom. 1:16. Jesus, the great head of the church, and the “Captain of our salvation,” is declared to be the Son of God “with power.” Rom. 1:4. The chief thought of the religious leaders of his time was to maintain certain forms of worship and propagate certain systems of doctrine. No real power was seen in the life. There was nothing to create right desires and affections, or to influence other lives and transform the life. Their worship was dead; the temple, where the Shekinah of glory was once seen, was left unto them “desolate.” But Jesus did not teach as the scribes and Pharisees; he infused spiritual life and power into his doctrine. Truth was made dynamic and clothed with life. To his followers he imparted power against disease and over “all devils.”

This heavenly power is the church’s greatest need to-day. But too often, as another has said, “churches are like factories, splendidly built and furnished with the most perfect of modern machinery, but having neither steam-engine, water-wheel, nor dynamo.” The power of the church is not materialistic, but supernatural and invisible. And as the chilling clouds of doubt and unbelief gather about us, and a hellish power from beneath is seizing hold upon the world in preparation for its final overthrow, how much we need the potential agency of invisible, spiritual power!

A spiritual preacher, now dead, has said: “If we would draw the people to church that we may win them to Christ, the first question with scores of Christians nowadays is, What new turn can be given to the kaleidoscope of entertainment? What new stop can we insert in our organ, and what richer and more exquisite strain can we reach by our quartet? What fresh novelty in the way of social attraction can we introduce? or what new coruscation can be let off from the pulpit to dazzle and captivate the people? O for a faith to abandon utterly these devices of naturalism, and to throw the church without reserve upon the power of the supernatural! Is there not some higher degree in the Holy Spirit’s tuition into which we can graduate our young ministers, instead of sending them to a German university for their last touches of theological culture? Is there not some reserve power yet treasured up in the church, which is the body of Christ,—some unknown or neglected spiritual force which we can lay hold of, and so get courage to fling away forever these frivolous expedients on which we have so much relied for carrying on the Lord’s work?”—“The Two-fold Life,” pages 13, 14.

Without the power born of the Holy Spirit, forms and ceremonies will be valueless. The bodily organs may be ever so perfect, but if the Spirit of life has been grieved and withdrawn, the church is no longer a living body, but a corpse.

“In a word, so vital and indispensable is the ministry of the Spirit that without it nothing else will avail. Some trust in creeds, and some in ordinances; some suppose that the church’s security lies in a sound theology, and others locate it in a primitive simplicity of government and worship; but it lies in none of these, desirable as they are. The body may be as to its organs perfect and entire, wanting nothing; but simply because the Spirit has been withdrawn from it, it has passed from a church into a corpse. As one has powerfully stated: ‘When the Holy Spirit withdraws, . . . he sometimes allows the forms which he has created to remain. The oil is exhausted, but the lamp is still there; prayer is offered, and the Bible read; churchgoing is not given up, and to a certain degree the service is enjoyed. In a word, religious habits are preserved, and, like the corpses found at Pompeii, which were in a perfect state of preservation and in the very position in which death had surprised them, but which were reduced to ashes by contact with the air, so the blast of trial, of temptation, or of final judgment will destroy these spiritual corpses.’”—“The Ministry of the Spirit,” page 147.

The same writer says in another place: “Do we not know of churches once fervently evangelical which are now lying under the doom of desertion by the Spirit? The writer thinks, with all charity, that he has seen such; churches upon which the Lord’s sentence has gone forth, ‘Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.’ The body may still remain indeed, the creeds and confessions may continue intact, and the forms of worship may even be multiplied and vastly enriched’ as the years go on, but these outward forms are only memorials of a departed glory, like the death-masks which preserve the mold of features which have long since crumbled into dust.”

The foregoing analysis by this godly divine is given of the church as a whole, and in a large measure is a sad yet true diagnosis. And while we are profoundly grateful for the wonderful power of the Spirit of God in the carrying forward of this great message from the beginning, and thankful for its triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles, especially in other lands, where difficulties are such that only a church strengthened by the Spirit of God could advance, or even exist, yet we confess there is a dearth. Our churches need more of God’s Spirit. The death-mask is upon far too many. The form without power is seen. The following solemn instruction has come to us:—

“My heart is filled with anguish when I think of the tame messages borne by some of our ministers, when they have a message of life and death to bear. The ministers are asleep; the lay members are asleep; and a world is perishing in sin. May God help his people to arouse and walk and work as men and women on the borders of the eternal world. Soon an awful surprise is coming upon the inhabitants of the world. Suddenly, with power and great glory, Christ will come. Then there will be no time to prepare to meet him. Now is the time for us to give the warning message.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VIII, page 37.

The watchman asleep on the wall, the people asleep inside, and an “awful surprise” at hand! What a picture! Surely the energizing power of the Holy Spirit is needed. While recognizing God’s Spirit all the way along, the time has fully come for that greater abundance of the Holy Spirit which the Scriptures have encouraged us to look for in the closing struggle of the church militant.

We may consider the church as a temple, of which Christ is the chief cornerstone, the believers “lively stones.” In this temple, where Christ sits enthroned as head, the Shekinah of the Holy Spirit should glorify, regenerate, vitalize, and control the whole body. Here the Spirit must rule, otherwise spiritual death and decay will take place. Regeneration is the need of the hour, and this is a work which only God, through the Holy Spirit,

can do. As another has said: “If it were only a little mending, a little patching, a little turning over of a new leaf, then man might do this. But when it is a translation, a creation, a resurrection, God must do it.”