- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
POWER TO WITNESS.
By Mrs Jessie Penn-Lewis.
In Acts 1 v8 we read the Lord’s words, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses”. This places the emphasis upon the Holy Spirit Himself, not on the power, and “My witnesses” emphasises the personal, living Lord and His work, as the purpose of the Pentecostal power. The Lord had foreshadowed this when He said, “When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about ME. And you also must testify, for you have been with Me from the beginning" (John 15 v26-27). They had been eyewitnesses of His life, His works, His death and His resurrection, but to make this personal knowledge of His walk on earth known they would need the co-witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ power and glory, as the ascended Lord in heaven.
The purpose and the power of Pentecost may therefore be compressed into the words “Power to witness”. There is a distinction in the Greek between the two words rendered power in English, one meaning authority and the other meaning ability - “dunamis”. Power to witness has the latter meaning. Not authority to witness but ability to witness. It is the same word used of the resurrection of Christ, “He lives by the power - the ability, the energy - of God”, “The power of His resurrection”, “Declared to be the Son of God with power”. Power to witness therefore means a Divine equipment to witness, a Divine energy, nothing less than God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit coming into believers to make them witness effectively to an unseen yet living Christ. Thus the hearers are made to know the facts of His death, resurrection and ascension as clearly as if they had also been eyewitnesses to these stupendous events.
A Divine witness is given to the believer which is infinitely more convincing than a mental conviction based upon reasoning or than conclusions based upon evidence, however sound and true. For the Divine witness makes the unseen Lord a living, present reality to the believer, a Person known, obeyed and loved, as truly as the disciples knew and loved Him when He walked the earth as Man. Christian evidence based upon historical facts is of great value but may be said to be mainly in the sense of rolling away the stone intellectually, so as to open the door for the Spirit-given revelation to the heart.
The Divine power to witness is the great need of the Christian Church, for even in churches where the Gospel is truly preached, how few there are to whom the unseen Lord is a living reality. The result is that there is little personal devotion to Him, and still less knowledge of His voice and His personal control over the believer’s life. There can be so much knowledge about the Lord Jesus with so little direct and personal communication with Him in the everyday details of life, so little close walking and talking with Him. The Church needs power to witness so that the exalted Christ is revealed as a living Person, acting and working in the world as He did when He walked on earth.
ABILITY TO WITNESS.
We need to ponder a few points which will help us to see the characteristics of the equipping of the Spirit which came upon the early Church to give them the power to witness. The reception of the Spirit, breathed on the company in the upper room on Resurrection Day, bears an important place. Here the risen Lord showed them His sacred hands and side as the marks of His Cross and Passion. They knew Him as the crucified and risen One, and here received from Him the Holy Spirit, communicating to them the new life of the resurrection. Here they had the path of the new life unfolded to them. They were to be representatives of the risen Lord, as He had represented the Father. Walking in newness of life, sharing the life of the risen Lord, they were to be a holy priesthood.
But Peter still went fishing, and still found himself grieved by the apparent lack of confidence in him by the Lord, and still manifested natural curiosity in the doings of others (John 21 v3, 17, 22). In brief, although he had received the Holy Spirit in the on-breathing of the risen Lord, the equipment to witness was still needed. It was therefore, to these very disciples that the Lord said, “Wait . . . until you receive power from on high”. On the Resurrection Day He had said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”, and now He says, “ Wait until . . . ”. The one stage is preparation for the other. In the one the believer must receive, in the other the Divine Spirit will come in energising power at the moment when needed in service, which He alone can bring about.
THE HOLY SPIRIT USES THE WRITTEN WORD.
A most important condition of preparation for the filling with power is often overlooked. An experience is sought for, rather than the principles upon which the Divine Spirit will work being carefully studied - the obedience of faith. The Spirit of God works along the lines of the written Word of God. If power to witness is to be given, He must have those who know the Scriptures, so as to equip them to bear witness along the lines of the written Word. The disciples were prepared for Pentecost, not only by the experiences of the Resurrection Day, by the in-breathing of the Resurrection Life, but by being carefully taught by the risen Lord Himself in the Scriptures. To the two on the road to Emmaus, “beginning from Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself”, and to the assembled company later on He said, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures . . . ” (Luke 24 v27, 44 - 45). This shows how carefully He had taught them, as far as they could understand His teaching, in the written Word.
The result was that the knowledge for the Holy Spirit’s use in co-witnessing at Pentecost was already laid. There were three lines of witnessing converging for the convicting of souls, (1) The witness of the Scriptures, (2) the testimony of the eyewitnesses of the death and resurrection of the God-Man, and (3) the supreme living co-witness of God the Holy Spirit, the author of the Scriptures, and the possessor of those bearing witness under His energising power.
This preparation of knowledge of the Scriptures has often been overlooked. Some think that if they are given power to witness, no preparation to speak is needed, and that miraculously they will somehow be given Divine messages. It is true that Peter preached his sermon on the Day of Pentecost on the spur of the moment, as we would say, but his mind and heart had already been filled with the written Word, for the Lord Himself had opened his mind to understand the Scriptures, so that the Spirit of God was using what was already prepared in Peter by the teaching of Christ Himself.
This is of importance for all who are seeking power for service. The Spirit of Pentecost has not changed. The pattern of His co-witness with a believer, giving power to witness, is clearly seen in the Acts of the Apostles. Every witness they gave, however brief, was along the line of the Scriptures, in simplicity of language and calm, coherent sequence of thought. It was plain language which could be verified from the written Word by every believer. Every witness embodied in the Gospel, as foreshadowed in the Old Testament Scriptures, was fulfilled before their eyes. “You killed the author of life, but God raised Him . . . we are witnesses . . . Repent“ (Acts 3 v15-19). “You crucified . . . God raised from the dead” (Acts 4 v10). “The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead - whom you killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him” (Acts 5 v30-31), and “we are witnesses”.
It was so manifestly the Word of the living God that it was said, “And the Word of God increased.” It bore fruit. The power to witness was given in power to wield the Scriptures and to speak the Word of God with boldness. When they prayed, it was that the exalted Lord would grant to His “servants to speak Your Word with boldness”. When the angel of the Lord opened prison doors the command was, “Go, stand in the temple courts . . . and tell the people the full message . . . ”. What troubled the chief priests was that they “filled Jerusalem” with their teaching, the teaching that the Man of Calvary, slain upon the accursed tree, was more than a prince, He was a Saviour exalted at God’s right hand. And again, when the work grew, the apostles quickly saw they must not be diverted from the “ministry of the Word”.
WHAT THE APOSTLES TESTIFIED T0.
The Acts of the Apostles is full of passages from the Old Testament Scriptures showing how the Spirit of God gave His power to those He called to witness on the simple lines of Scripture alone. Taught though they had been by Christ Himself, they were not left to witness as they thought best, but were kept to the safe lines of the written Word. Peter did not use any of the striking incidents he had seen in the Lord’s life to emphasise this. He did not testify to his own experience, except in the briefest way, and he did not give an account of his spiritual emotions on that wonderful Day of Pentecost. He only said to the Apostolic Council, in the most matter-of-fact way, about those in the house of Cornelius, “The Holy Spirit came on them as He had come on us at the beginning” (Acts 11 v15). They simply preached the death, resurrection and exaltation of the Lord Jesus, and used the Word of God in so doing. They left all details, however beautiful, and gave the centre of the Gospel, Calvary, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the call to repent and the coming again of the Lord.
This is just what is needed to-day. Believers empowered by the Holy Spirit revealing their resurrection union with the risen, ascended Lord and so filled with the written Word that the eternal Spirit of the Father can come on them and energise them to witness with boldness. They will be enabled to wield the sword of the Spirit with such effect that those who hear will be pricked to the heart by the two-edged Word. They must not preach their own ideas, or even their experiences as a testimony, but the Word of God in the message of Calvary, the Resurrection and Ascension, and the coming Lord with such power of God that these stupendous facts become so to all who hear.
All this happened to the disciples at Pentecost but the same principles hold good now. Many are living in the age of the Holy Spirit without knowing the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The Spirit has been given, for Jesus has been glorified, but it is the work of that same Spirit to make real and true to each individual believer all that Calvary means, and all that union with the risen Lord means, and, yes, all that Pentecost means in power to witness to a living personal Christ in such manner that He becomes a living Person to others. If we seek the fulness of the Spirit to empower us to witness effectively to the risen Lord, then we must be prepared. Power to witness is stamped upon every page of the apostolic record. Power to speak the Word of God with boldness. The risen Lord had prepared them for Pentecost by opening the Word to them, and the risen Lord can do this again in those whom He indwells. A great preparation for the giving of power for service is being filled with the Word of God so that the Holy Spirit may use the inwrought Word in power to witness to all who need the Saviour.
From: “Power for Service”.