Edition 261. May 27^th 2015

The Power of the Resurrection:

The Power of the Resurrection:

Philippians 3:10 (Amp) “...For my determined purpose is that I may know Him more deeply and intimately and that I may in that same manner come to know the power flowing from His resurrection, and that I may share in His sufferings so as to be transformed into His likeness, even to His death.”

Introduction:

If you try to walk through this life in these last days in the energy of your own strength you are in great trouble. You will be led astray, you will be deceived, and you will not even see what great eternal danger you are in.

The power of the resurrection has been available since the resurrection, but in these days it is absolutely essential for your success in our Lord.

The power of the resurrection is synonymous with walking in the power of the Spirit of the living God, but there are some wonderful twists and additions to it.

The word “resurrection,” means to “stand up out of death”. This is something no one can do, so it is obviously an external power at work. Just think of what is involved. Every single atom of your being will be transformed in a flash! This same power also gives us so many other things like God’s own knowledge, understanding, wisdom and authority.

Defining the Power of the Resurrection:

We need to look more deeply into our title verse above in Philippians 3:10 for the key. Note that Paul says that he is seeking with a determined purpose this power which flows from the resurrection. So it is not universal and nor automatic. So what is it exactly?

It is the supernatural power of God that raised our Lord from the dead. Did you catch that? It is a power that raises people from the dead. My friends, we are commanded to “die daily” and “take up our cross daily”. But just as it was with our Lord, that’s not the end of the story. John the Baptist said that “he (John) must decrease, so that He (Yeshua) increases.”

What an amazing thing! This is the exact opposite of the way of the world. The world says, “Yes you can”. The world says, “You can do it.” The world says self-esteem and self-motivation is the way to go.

God’s way is the opposite. No you can’t do it. You can’t live the Christian life. If you could, Christianity would be a religion, which it is not.

Religions say to their followers, “Come and follow us, keep our rules and laws and you’ll be one of us.”

Yeshua says, “Now that you have been saved, come and follow Me”... die and suffer and I’ll empower you to be a disciple.

One of the key issues behind the “power of the resurrection” is that you can’t do it. You can’t manufacture it. True biblical Christianity is supernatural in its very essence.

The great secret to the Christian life is that you need to give up, take your hands off your life and die to self, under the weight of your cross.

As you do this, something miraculous and wonderful begins to happen and continues to play out. A supernatural power begins to empower you to live the Christian life successfully. Sin begins to drop off and a new dimension to life dawns, which is holy and pure.

What a humbling, absolute joy and pleasure to have Yeshua the Messiah, the King of the universe, delivering his life into your life to live it successfully!

What about the “suffering”?

In our key title verse, Paul says that he desires to “share in the suffering of our Lord so that he may be transformed into His likeness.”

Of course we can’t add to the sufferings or workings of the cross for our salvation. It was a complete and finished work. But there is a suffering that we need to endure and experience.

Our suffering and cross-bearing is in essence our active, wilful denial of self, and removal of ourselves from the domination and power of the world system.

I know I’ve said it a thousand times; here come one thousand and one! Satan gains access to the believer through the flesh, the world and the demonic. These three areas need to be denied and have the cross applied to them. Then that supernatural power begins to deliver us from them and we begin to see with new eyes.

Trying to obey the Bible and “hate your life in the world” is impossible in the power and energy of the flesh and the world. But when you see with God’s eyes, victory over the world is easy. You die to the world and it just dies to you.

When the power of the world sees that you are dead to it, it loosens its grip on you.

Galatians 1:4 “Grace and peace to you from our Lord who gave Himself for our sins on the cross, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of God our Father.”

Through the cross we’ve been delivered from this present evil age. Are you detached and separated from the world by the power of the resurrection as revealed in His word?

It is this incredible power that will translate all true believers in a twinkling of an eye into new creations that will be able to transcend the physical and spiritual dimensions at will. It is this power that will be at work in the rapture.

It is this beautiful power that will transform every atom of your being into a new form of atom, today unknown and unachievable. We will still be body, soul and spirit, but with new ageless and perfect dimensions and characteristics.

We can and must make use of this power now to work in our souls. Our Lord will complete the work at the salvation of our bodies.

It is this power that is essentially the reason the world hates us.

If you are not different and separated from the world – you do not have the power of the resurrection at work in you.

The workings of the power of the resurrection now:

●The power of the resurrection is chiefly to change you radically.

●The power of the resurrection is a power to make you odd. It is a power to make you other-worldly. We can, must and in fact have been commanded to live now, in resurrection life, preparing for the new world to come.

●Another central purpose of the power of the resurrection is to destroy occult powers in those who been involved in it. Many believers have been involved in direct occult activity in their past, and they have all found that it is almost impossible to escape these occult powers and influences.

Almost all Christians who have been involved go back into it somewhere down the line. I know a few pastors who will never appoint anyone who has been directly involved in the occult in the past into any form of ministry. Their reason is because these people always get drawn back into the occult at some time in the future.

There are a few (very few) that do get set free and stay free. For them it is a supernatural battle. It’s a battle of the power of the resurrection set against the power of Satan.

If you take away one thing from this, let it be this: Don’t mess with the occult – ever!

By the way, I’m referring here to direct occult activity and not some lesser form like fortune telling etc.

But here is something very interesting to think about: Yoga is a system of exercises developed by Hindus to make one more susceptible to demon possession!

The Hindu Bhagavad Gita says that the purpose of yoga is to bring you into union or yoking with the spirits of the universe. Yoga teaches that “self is divine”. In fact the word “yoga” means “to unite.”

In these days sin is a powerful force. Have you ever wondered why? It’s simply because the world and its god has made it attractive, acceptable and popular. Sin has a strange attractiveness to it and the world and the media have befriended sin.

Be careful, the Bible says that there is pleasure in sin for a season only. Then it bites and devours! If sin is your friend, how do you expect to overcome it? You must make it your deadly enemy.

Today there are few outward consequences for sin. The media has watered it all down and the world has bought it all.

There is no shame in sin anymore, mainly because the world has washed away all absolutes.

But God has not watered it down or changed. He will bring punishment on sinners. Isn’t that an unusual concept in these days?

Isaiah 13:11“I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.”

Psalm 145:20 “The Lord preserves all who love Him, but the wicked He will destroy.”

Imagine the shock of all the intellects, politicians, news media managers, entertainers and VIP’s that the world looks up to, when they are put to shame by the King of the universe!

Imagine the shock and horror of all the Christian pastors, ministers and leaders when their pro-homosexuality and pro-abortion rights position is put to shame by my Lord and His word!

Mark 8:38 “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

In these end times, the power of deception is great. In fact it is enormous and has great supernatural spiritual forces of evil behind it.

●The power of the resurrection is to deliver your from the whore of Babylon. She, of course, is the great final manifestation of Satan’s work in the church. His end-time pride and joy is and will be a powerful inter-faith, inter-doctrine, inter-values religious institution which the Bible calls the Whore! (Revelation 17:5). This whore is headed by the Catholic church.

The whore of Babylon will also have a special power, but not the power of resurrection or life in any form. Her power will be to produce lying signs and wonders. It will be the power of great deception and the power of evil.

The counterfeit power of the resurrection:

Satan is a counterfeiter and a deceiver. He tries to interfere with and replicate everything designed by God for the believer’s victory.

The counterfeit power of the resurrection has nothing to do with the cross or denying self or any such thing. It is the satanic power of the world system to open your eyes and keep your eyes open to the ways of the world. It is to entrap you.

This counterfeit power strengthens you and empowers you for service to the world. It is to make you a carbon-copy of all that the world is, believes, says and does.

The power of the resurrection is to make you useless to the world (Galatians 6:14). It comes through the application of the cross while in contrast the counterfeit power operates without any cross. It works on words and concepts. The fruits of one are other worldly and prepare you for Gods new world. The fruits of the other are to make you worldly and unprepared for God’s new world.

The counterfeit power makes you “normal”, just like everyone else in the crowd. It makes you a blind sheep following blind guides. It whispers in your ear that you’re okay and everything is fine and tomorrow will roll on as always.

The counterfeit power blinds you excellently to all the things and ways of God.

The counterfeit power is at home behind the pulpit of a great many churches. It teaches that you can have it all; you just need to believe it and confess it. You don’t need to die to self, you don’t need to forsake the world, just be happy and blessed, they say.

The tragedy is that many, who find success under this counterfeit power, can’t see the counterfeit god at work!

The truth is alive with the Spirit of the Living God. Counterfeit truth is alive with spirits of devils and demons and will always have negative effects even if they manifest further down the line.

The power of the resurrection is not a collection of words and phrases. It is no power at all when you are outside of the Spirit and in the power of the flesh, reason and dead letter.

The power of the resurrection to hell:

Remove the Bible and its values, virtues and influences from society. Remove it especially form Hollywood and the entertainment world. Remove it from the schools, universities and workplace. You are NOT left with a vacuum. The power of the Satan then floods in.

Ireland puts homosexual marriage to public vote. In effect what Ireland did was vote to hate God and His word. Joe Biden blames Christians for giving the LGBT agenda a tough time. The Muslim in the White House repeatedly supports the LGBT agenda and homosexual rights.

All these things fly in the face of God and His word, but the world has made them acceptable. So, are they acceptable?

My friends, the world is kicking out its own supports. It is about to crash down. It is already shaking. But the real big issue is that the eternal destination of so many is in the balance right now.  Very soon so many will regret with everything in them, that they hated and came against the living God.

Do you know that Joe Biden, Barak Obama, and every homosexual on this earth will bow their knee to our Messiah – tragically, too late!

The greatest tragedy ever will be to hear the words from our Lord “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

The futility of coming against the living God is just so totally insane.

I’ve said many times and say again, if homosexuality was okay, God’s word is wrong and He would have to apologise to Sodom and Gomorrah.

I see some Christian ministers justifying homosexual marriage because it has not changed or done any harm to heterosexual marriage. It’s just added another dimension to the definition of marriage. Whichever way you look at it that is justifying homosexuality and it is God who defines what marriage is.

There are far too many portions of scripture in both testaments condemning it, to justify it. You can come up with whatever argument you like, but you won’t get around God’s Spirit and His word. You must reject God and His word to do that.

Lying powers:

2 Thessalonians 2:9 “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs and lying wonders...because they did not receive the love of the truth.”

The Bible talks a great deal about deception and lies in these last days. It also talks about this illegitimate power in the church.

The power of the resurrection is not the well-known and well -seen power of frauds performing all sorts of circus-like acts in the church.  It is not the lying miracles. It is not the power of positive confession and the power to get rich quick.

It is not the fraudulent power of self-motivation and the power of self-esteem as presented by so many churches.

Of course there is limited truth in some of these things, but the whole overall package is rotten.

The power of the resurrection is directly associated and linked to suffering and the cross of Messiah. We are transformed more and more into His likeness as we conform to His death more and more.

There are two very great powers operating right now. You may only have one at work. You may have both at work making you really schizophrenic! It is impossible to live for one second without one of the two at work.

The power of the flesh, linked to the world, and the power of the resurrection are the two in view.

Masses and masses:

So often I hear “but what about the masses who have never heard the gospel”? How can God judge them? I tell you God will be just, and everything He does will be without fault – because He is God!

So, what about the masses of people especially in rural fields, and out there in the sticks? Do you know that they all believe in something or someone? Most believe in illegitimate gods and illegitimate ways to get to their gods.

Many of these tribes or ethnic groups are under the sway and power of illegitimate forces and gods and the fruits manifest collectively as well as individually.

Years ago I worked in the mission fields of Southern Africa, and saw firsthand how true this is. I’ve seen masses under the power of false gods including ancestor worship. I’ve seen masses lost, suffering and in abject poverty because of their evil gods.

They never get free because they are empowered by their gods, demon forces, lies and deception. In fact they pass on their witchcraft from generation to generation.

But often I’ve encountered situations where someone wants to be free. He realises that there must be a real God and he wants to know Him. It’s like his eyes are opened just because he wants to be set free. Suddenly he’s open to the truth and the power of evil is smashed in his life. Others then want the same and pretty soon we have a revival on the go – right out there in the middle of nowhere.

On one trip a 110 year-old bushman woman was saved and set free from the power of the devil. A year later she heard we were coming back to the area and she walked three miles through wildlife country to share with us the good news of her continuing salvation.

The Bible speaks of the masses of the wilderness of the world, searching for the truth in these last days.

Joel 3:14 “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”

What a wonderful privilege we have to know our Lord now, while so many are under the power of the devil.

In these last days “multitudes” will find salvation and be set free. That’s good news. Multitudes won’t either!

Final thoughts:

In summary, the power of the resurrection for daily life is available only to those who want it and are prepared to pay the price. Of course that same power will raise all from the dead, but it is exclusive for living a successful Christian life now.

If ever there is a time when this power is needed it is now. We desperately need to walk now in the holiness, purity and glory of God’s coming kingdom of perfection.

Yes there will be multitudes in the valley of decision, but there will be many who will be left behind. The power of the resurrection will miss them out! They will be left to the power of their own flesh, Satan, devils, demons, deceptions and lies. Pick your choice!

I took this picture on a bird-watching trip. Sometimes an unexpected surprise spices things up!

Shalom and grow in grace!