And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” Matthew 28:18, 19a.
Nothing is said about the difficulty of the job or about the disciples’ own resources or abilities to do it. Nothing is said about any of the insurmountable problems that awaited them or about the difficulties of transportation at that time (the lack of steamship lines and airlines!)—they were just told, “Go.” But that command was based upon an authority, all authority: “All authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth.”
In the spirit world the only thing that counts is authority. You never measure a devil or an angel by the size of his muscle—authority isn’t something physical. Satan, therefore, becomes the great usurper, and is interested in evil things because of what he can possess through demon power. But there is no authority except it be from God (Romans 13:1). Whether or not you understand how or where it came, everything that you see, even the world you don’t see (the spirit world), had its origin in God. Satan was one of God’s creations too. The enemy is concerned about trying to usurp a ministry or a place where God has planted some of that authority, to open up the secrets of these things to people. But enough of the devil world. We don’t seem to understand as well as the devils do that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe with all my heart that the things that come against me may be some perverted form of power, but all the authority belongs to the Lord whom I serve. And I find here a commission: “Go: make disciples of all nations.” That means the bringing down of devil power and prevailing over all darkness, for He is opening the door for people to walk with God.
I’ve seen people who knew nothing of the occult or the spirit world, but they did know one thing—that Jesus Christ was the Lord and that His was the authority. And they’d use that name of Jesus effectively. There’s an old saying that Satan fears the weakest saint on his knees. I believe it’s true. When the weakest saint is on his knees praying, Satan trembles.
I don’t care how many problems I have, how many weaknesses, how many circumstances stand against me, I know in my spirit that all authority resides in the Lord whom I serve. I can’t read the New Testament, especially the gospel of John, without having the witness that I’m commissioned to use His name. Whatever I ask in that name I’m going to receive (John 16:24). He has given me authority; He has given me the privilege, prerogative, commission, delegation, whichever word you want, to use His name. He has given me the proxy to act as His representative upon this earth; He has given me the power of attorney to execute the business of the Kingdom for Him. And if I know that I’ve been commissioned, and it has been confirmed to my heart, then I must set about with all diligence and faith to do it, because the authority is behind me; it’s thrusting me into it.
This is a factor that could well turn the course of this whole walk. We’ve been following the scriptural pattern, but we could move into such an understanding of it that the ministries will flow like an army that does not break ranks; they will just move in the power of God. We have to understand the authority that resides in the apostolic company and that rests on the elders of the local church. It is Christ’s authority. This is the authority we have to change the course of this age and to cause it to flow into God. We’re commissioned to do it, to prophesy it.
“All authority,” Jesus said, “is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore.” Now if He has the authority to commission and to delegate, He has the authority to enable and sustain me in the performance of it. Abraham believed that and he said, “What He has promised, He is able also to perform.” In the words of the Scriptures, he didn’t stagger at the promise of God through unbelief (Romans 4:20, 21): “What God promised me, He is able to perform.”
God has established persistence as a high-ranking principle, ranking even above relationship (Luke 11:8). The Bible says, concerning persistence, “Will not God avenge those who cry unto Him day and night, though He bear long with them?” (Luke 18:7). Even though He has to put up with some faults in them, He will avenge them; He said, “I tell you He will avenge them speedily.” A man who is persistent in seeking after God may have failed, be unworthy, and have many problems in his life, but God will answer him quicker than He will answer a man who seems to be worthy but who is not persistent. “But that’s not fair.” It’s just the pharisaic opinion in you that doesn’t think it’s fair.
I’m not saying that you have to be unworthy; I’m trying to emphasize the point of persistence. You will have to be persistent. You have to insist, “Lord, I come to call Your mind to the fact that this is what You promised me,” with that insistence upon an answer. Does that sound irreverent? If it were irreverent, God would not have established it as the highest principle of prayer: “Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking” (Luke 11:9).
We still think that faith is a mystical thing we must pump up before we can believe. “I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe, I’m going to believe.” It doesn’t quite work that way, does it? Sometimes the mind is like taking a dog for a walk at night. It runs here and there to think about this and that, and when it thinks about it, it’s not with any dignity! The carnal mind is wicked; it isn’t even subject to the law of God. You set yourself—“I’m going to think, I’m going to concentrate, I’m going to believe”—and off it goes. But God has another way: the heart that is set upon the Lord. The mind can wander and waver, but you must say, “Okay mind, run, go after every fireplug, I don’t care. I’m going to set my heart upon the Lord.”
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be make known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension (understanding) shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6, 7.
I am very concerned about seeing all the principles of this walk work for us. There is a horror that builds up in my heart from the study of people in the past who had glorious doctrines that were not practical inasmuch as they did not know how to make them work. I thank God for the Reformation. When it came, John Calvin, at the age of twelve, was making his defense for his Doctor of Theology degree at the University of Paris. He had to be able to converse in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek and be examined by the learned doctors. A frequent thesis then was trying to relate the spirit world to the natural world. One of the great themes at that time was, “How Many Angels Could Dance Upon the Head of a Pin?” Their doctrines were completely unrelated to reality, you see—no wonder the church was in the condition it was in! They were busy thinking about the assumption of Mary when they needed to assume a little bit for themselves of something from the Lord; they were completely refusing to relate anything to themselves.
Down through the years we’ve gained ground on that, but there has been a tendency still for us to get a little bit lofty with our doctrines instead of constantly making them work. If I’m going to believe anything, I’m going to have a gnosis aletheia. The New Testament often taught that. The Christian Gnostic grew out of the Greek Gnostic, who said, “I want to know.” An agnostic is one who says he doesn’t know; a Gnostic says, “I’ll believe it when I can know it.” And they did something to the early church which was a good thing. You see many references to this in John’s writings: “If any man says that he knows Him…” (I John 2:4). John was constantly dealing with the mind and thinking of Asia Minor and so he understood this business of saying, “I must know it. I cannot say ‘God is love’; that’s my doctrine. I have to know that love myself. I can’t say that I’m righteous and do evil—it must be that I know. If I say that I know Him, I must walk even as He walked. I must have that knowledge in my heart. If I know it experimentally, personally, then it’s real.”
I have that thing in my spirit yet that says, “We’re going to see reality.” We’ve preached some far-out things, but the struggle of this walk is not to make those things visionary and off in the heavens. We may be seated in heavenly places but we’re going to have our feet on the ground, walking in this in the name of the Lord. God is insisting that the theory and doctrines are not going to be way out of touch, but are going to be living expressions in our very lives of the faith and the authority of Jesus.
Sometimes this takes an almost violent rejection of your limitations. You have to break through barriers that people have accepted for centuries. You’ve got to believe “I can, I can, I can!” You’ve got to believe that this generation can see more prophets in the next decade than the Scriptures record in the whole course of God’s revelation to mankind. You’ve got to believe that that company can come forth, that army of the Lord, that mighty army, that Remnant that speaks the word of the Lord. You’ve got to believe that all these things can happen, but not theoretically!
The Latter Rain movement preached the manifestations of the sons of God, but the people were walking along in a carnal way and making no effort to change—they put it in the sweet by-and-by. “One day maybe something will happen,” they didn’t know what. Instead of the fundamentalists’ and Pentecostals’ teaching of an instant rapture that would change everything, they expected to be going down the road suddenly performing miracles, signs and wonders. We’ve learned better. We’ve learned that every time God gives us a word, He deals with our hearts to get at what prevents us from walking in that word. We’re going to get our feet on the ground to walk into something, and we’re not going to merely talk about it and feel sorry for ourselves—we’re going to break through in the name of the Lord! And every time we make a step we’ll say, “Thank You, Lord, but that’s not enough,” and we’re going to go for more and more and more. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a congregation to sit under glorious, lofty teaching and become self-satisfied, satisfied with only a measure of understanding of the teaching instead of believing God to appropriate it and walk in it. I want to stir you up until we’re walking in it. The Lord has set so many things before us, but until we’re walking in them we haven’t arrived!
Hypocrisy and this walk are so close that it’s frightening. What is hypocrisy? It is a man saying one thing and living another way. This walk is very much like that too. We’re saying, “Glorious things are set before us” and we’re not walking in them. What is the difference between us and the hypocrites? The hypocrite has no intention of walking in anything; he’s just mouthing big things. But we’re speaking big things while we’re running after them with faith in our hearts, with all of our mind and all of our strength, and we’re not creating any illusion that we’ve arrived. With all honesty of soul we say, “This is our goal and we’re going to have it” and we press on.
How do we differ from many other good religious people? Many of them have no goals—consequently, they’re not hypocrites however they walk, because they’re not professing anything either. You say, “Now wouldn’t God honor them more than He would honor someone who looks to great things, is pressing in, but hasn’t arrived? Here are some people who aren’t looking for great things, but thank God at least they’re walking along maybe in the best that they’re…” Ah, they’re not walking along in the best because they’ve shut off any vision, any dream. They’re the lukewarm ones that God will reject; they will miss everything.
When the Lord says, “All authority is given to Me in heaven and in earth, now go therefore”—that ‘therefore’ puts all of it behind you—“and make disciples of all nations,” He is speaking of one thing you need to get hold of that involves several factors. One of them is obedience, to obey God and do what He tells us. We’ve heard this preached to us a lot. But the second factor is faith—there are people who are obeying, but not with faith. Don’t just go through the motions of obedience, but everything you do, do with faith and expectation. When you take the Communion do you say, “Well, I’m doing this because He commanded it. ‘This do in remembrance of Me until I come.’ So I’m obeying Him”? That’s not enough. It should be done with faith too, obedience with faith. And then there’s a third, and that’s submission.
Let me point out the areas that I’m applying this “submission” to. First of all it means to submit to the authority of His commission. The Lord has commissioned us to make disciples of all nations. He has given us this walk. He has given us the gospel of the Kingdom. Now we have to submit to that commission: “Yes, Lord.” It’s like a general saying, “Who’s going to volunteer for this impossible task?” And we submit to it. He says, “I’d like to have you submit. You volunteer.” And you say, “Yes Sir, I volunteer. I submit to that commission.” It is a submission to the authority of His commission. And regarding that authority, listen: there has to be a faith in the delegation of that authority. You’ve got to believe it’s going to rest on your shoulders. He doesn’t tell you to do something and then leave you to work it out by your own devices. I believe that He has commissioned me in His authority and I believe that He has delegated His authority to me.
And there’s another aspect to this authority. If I believe in the authority of Jesus Christ, which is all authority in heaven and earth, and He commissions me, then I have to assume it. I have been thinking about it, dreaming about it, trying to use my imagination about it, because there isn’t anything as illusive as the concept of authority. Every time we try to think of authority we get confused and make it a physical thing on a natural plane; we think of some big man with muscles. But that is power, not authority.
What concept of authority can we have? Every time the human mind encounters a miracle it twists the authority around and starts thinking of power. “Did Jesus ever stop that fellow Gadara! ‘Legion,’ he said his name was.” (There were 2,000 men in a Roman legion, so the people had named the man “Legion.”) “They couldn’t chain him down or hold him. Think of that power!”
But Jesus spoke a word, and all the legion of demons went into a herd of swine. Those good believers in Moses were raising pork for the gentiles to eat, but into the pigs went the devils, over the precipice and into the sea. The people of Gadara said, “Please leave us. We can’t afford this revival! Oh, our pigs, our pigs! Please leave us!”
Do you picture in your mind Jesus with muscles chasing out all those demons? That wasn’t it at all. He was submissive to the Father: “My Father doeth the works, and I do only those things which please the Father (John 5:19; 8:29). I am under His direct commission.” Did it work? You bet it worked! He said just one word and they had to go.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7.
Here we have it again, that submission to His authority, bowing under His Lordship. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me… Matthew 11:29. You bow to it; you become submissive, and if some devil comes and starts jumping on you while you’re being submissive, you can say, “Oh, to the abyss with you,” and on you go. Where does he go? To the abyss. Why? Because authority rests in the believer who knows true submission to authority. This is a concept we don’t have in our minds, but we’re going to have it. We are going to learn what it is to be submissive to the Lord in all things, and have those simple prayers.
The evidence of struggle is the evidence that something is wrong, because we are to have perfect victory in the Lord Jesus Christ. Where the struggle issues forth it’s because something is not right. That may not be our fault, but if it is we’d better find out what’s wrong. As I look back to the prayers I’ve made and the situations I’ve rebelled against and chafed under, I’ve found myself doing one of two things. First, “I better repent before God and see what’s wrong with me,” so I’d repent and repent, not realizing it was only half the picture. I’d go along till I’d think, “Well, down with all this repenting; it’s not getting me anyplace. Let’s go the other route.” So I’d stand up and go at it tooth and nail. After about round eighteen: “Oh, this isn’t working either. I better go back and repent some more!” We fail to grasp that authority in our life is based upon two things: the simultaneous submission to His authority and to His commission. We submit to what He tells us to do and in that spirit we go forth boldly, with real faith, to bind the enemy, because we are so commissioned by divine authority and so submissive that we do it.
We ought to have learned that somewhere, in the nineteenth chapter of Acts, for instance, where the sons of Sceva tried to imitate Paul. “If that Jew can do it, we can too!” They found a devil-possessed person and said, “Watch this now. We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth that you come out!” The devils replied, “Jesus we know; Paul we know. Who are you?” They ran screaming out of the house, beaten, bleeding, and with their clothes torn. End of the sons of Sceva’s experiment! You ask, “Doesn’t the name of Jesus have all authority?” Ah, you must understand that it’s to disciples He is saying this. The name of Jesus on your lips, in authority, will mean no more than the submission in your heart to it. And the more you honor His name and bow down to it, to the name which is above every other name, the more you submit to Him, the more you’re in a position to resist the devil and see him flee from you. Do you want the name of Jesus to work until whatsoever you ask in that name, He is going to do it? Then submit to it, not with a crushing submission, but recognizing that His is all the authority, all of it, in heaven and in earth, and submitting to Him as the Lord over your life completely and absolutely. Put an end to rebellion; come right down into complete submission. Out of it comes the wielding of that authority, so that His is all the praise and all the glory. You’re but instruments in the hand of the Lord.
Oh, I want this to work! I want to walk with the Lord with all my heart—and we’re going to do it. There are too many things yet to be done God has prophesied. This will either be the period in which God brought forth a Remnant that were dreamers, or it will be the period that He brings forth that Remnant which will exalt His name to the ends of the earth. By the grace of God I want to be in that latter group. We just have to learn this idea of submission, of authority. It’s a combination of all our repentance, all our violent prayers, and all our glorifying of the Lord, all rolled into one concept: His authority!
Comment: “When Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, his first reaction after he realized the authority that Jesus had over his life was to say, ‘Lord, what would You have me to do?’ (Acts 22:10a). And I think that aggressive submission is a part of this whole thing. We’ve counseled wives concerning submission to their husbands that they go at it in an aggressive manner, not to passively sit around waiting for their husbands to tell them all these different little things to do, but to aggressively come before them. We, as the Bride of Christ, come before the Lord Himself and say, ‘Lord, what would You have me to do? I want to be submissive, but I want to be in an aggressive submission. I want it to be an active thing.’
“We are going to be doing the will of God. We have gone the route of weighing the claims that Jesus Christ has over our lives. We’re fully acquainted with all the reasons why we should do it, how He is the Lord and we are nothing and owe everything to Him. But now we’ve come down to the basics of, ‘Now we’re going to do.’ We’re going to do what the Lord wants us to do! And this must be in our hearts to assume the authority that Jesus Christ has over us and to be possessed, completely saturated, with the abandonment of doing anything other than the will of God.”
I almost feel as if we just got hold of a new truth, but actually, we’ve gotten hold of some concepts of truth that God has given us, and He has fitted them in place, into a bigger piece of the picture of what his authority really means. The day has passed that we can allow our hearts to judge things after the old order of judgment. We tend to look at the man who has an imposing manner and looks important and forget that the Lord didn’t talk about that at all. The man who would be the greatest has to be the servant of all (Matthew 23:11). And He kept trying to convey other concepts of the real picture that the human heart didn’t have. This picture of authority is one of the most difficult things ever to get hold of in the Scripture because we constantly confuse it with power, and it is not to be related to the natural concept of power in the world. If you consider the powers that exist, for instance, you should fear and tremble because there are demonic powers turned loose. Jesus said, “Behold, I give you authority over all of the power of the enemy.” That’s it, authority over the power. I don’t care how big a rumble those devils make, the authority of the name of Jesus and one submissive, commissioned saint can stop them all!
I still believe one man could change the course of this nation, and I’m going to see to it. When God gives a word about a man I’ll prophesy against him or for him or forget him, all according to whatever God says. We must stand without any personal prejudice, in complete objectivity, and prophesy whatever God tells us to prophesy; we must absolutely be agents in the hands of the Lord, completely honest and unprejudiced in any sense. Prejudice is always a thing we think is in the other fellow—we don’t see it in ourselves. But we’re not going to have that in ourselves either, only complete objectivity. All I’m concerned about is seeing this nation remain an open channel for the gospel of the Kingdom to go to the ends of the earth, to see it hang on for just a little while longer.
This authority concept is going to be conveyed. We don’t realize it, but we really have more authority than all our Congress put together. We’re still acting like second-rate citizens here in America, as if we somehow have to find an excuse to be on God’s earth. This apologetic Christian demeanor is absolutely wrong. We’re not to be arrogant, but the other extreme is wrong too, saying, “Oh, I’m so humble, so humble.” What people mean by that is that they’re afraid to stand up to anything. Paul was humble and yet he’d get right up and speak before governors. You see, it was not a presumptuous thing; it was a complete submission. He was doing that because the Lord gave him a word; “Paul, I have yet to send you before governors and kings.” “All right, thank You, Lord, I’ll go.” And he went, submissive to the Lord, submissive and ready to wield the authority the Lord commissioned him to wield. This is another concept entirely than what we have today!
I believe that if the Lord speaks to this Remnant in the last days to start prophesying against Russia, God could bring down that whole empire of slave nations and set those nations free. I don’t think there is anything beyond the power of prayer. Instead of applying it to a few little circumstances in your life, forget yourself and become lost in God. It’s Satan’s trick to distract people with little tedious details of their lives so that they miss the great commission God brings upon them and the purpose for which He raised them up. Oh, how we prostitute the commission of God and the authority of God to take care of little menial needs! Why think about these things? All these things the Gentiles seek after and your Father knows that you have need of these things, so seek first the Kingdom (Matthew 6:32, 33). Read the Sermon on the Mount again. We’re trusting in His authority, in His power, so we’re not to be distracted to apply all of it to our own needs. I have certain things in my life that I want God to do, but for only one basic reason—that the perfect will of the Lord come forth in the ministry He wants to flow through me.