THE CONFLICT OF POWER AT THE END OF THIS AGE

          Introduction---The Omnipotence of God and the Powers Arraigned against Him.

            The Bible teaches throughout that God, the only true and living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is omnipotent; that is, He is all-powerful, one of His great titles being the Almighty. The late Professor W. Lindsay Alexander of Edinburgh makes this statement regarding the almightiness of God: “In ascribing to God perfect liberty, two things are implied: the one, that no extraneous power can hinder Him from accomplishing His own determinations; and the other, that no limitation or affection can constrain Him to will or to do aught else than what He knows to be good. Nothing can hinder Him from doing what He wills. He ever can and does accomplish all that He wills. ‘Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places’ (Ps. 135:6).”

            There are many different kinds of power, but two of them primarily arise in the revelation of God in the Scriptures. There is that kind of power which we may call physical power, which God has in perfect completeness, by which He is able to create, to destroy, to heal, to raise the dead, to sustain this vast universe, to bring all men before Him for judgment, an idea which, generally, in the New Testament is expressed by the word dunamis. Then there is that kind of power that a man has because of his position---the power, for example, of the President of the United States, not in any way, as far as he himself is concerned, related to physical power, but the power of office, the power vested in him because of his position. This is the power which Congress has, to make laws for the land. This is the power which a man has when he has mastered a subject. We speak of this kind of power generally as authority. It is translated in the New Testament generally by the word exousia. It is to this that Jesus referred when He said, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18).

            From the time of Satan’s revolt against God, there have always been powers aligned against Him, powers struggling to obtain victory over God, to thwart God’s purposes, and, if possible, to destroy His plans. Particularly in the prophecies of the last days do we find vast accumulated power, of many kinds, set against God and against His Christ, and to this subject we must now turn.

I. THE APPEARANCE OF GREAT POWERS AT THE END OF THIS AGE OPPOSED TO GOD AND CHRIST

            In that great prophetic Psalm at the very beginning of the Psalter, the Psalm which predicts the ultimate rule of the anointed Son of God, it was foretold that the day would come when a vast rebellion would occur, spreading over all the earth, led by the kings of the earth: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, Against Jehovah, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds asunder, And cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:2, 3).

            In this Psalm we are told that these very nations have been given of God to His Son for His inheritance and His possession. Even here we find the power of God’s Christ entering in: “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (v. 9).

            It is, however, in the Book of Revelation that there is unfolded before us those last great acts in the Divine drama of our redemption, in which the power of God and His Christ finally are confronted by all the accumulated evil powers and forces of the world, for one final decision. Before considering the conflict, let us think of how the omnipotence of God and His Christ are set forth for us in this final Apocalypse. At the very beginning of the Book of Revelation occurs the Divine title, “the Almighty” (1:8; 4:8). Christ is here called “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (1:5; 12:5) and the Second Psalm here centers into its fulfillment when it is declared that this Christ will “rule them with a rod of iron” (2:27). In chapter 4 the twenty-four elders, casting their crowns before the throne, acknowledge this omnipotence: “Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power: for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created” (4:11; cf. the songs of the multitude of angels, 5:12; 7:12). In the first eight chapters of the Book of Revelation, no actual opposing power or authority is so referred to; nor is any specific conflict of Divine authority and satanic power depicted, the single exception being the phrase in the message to Pergamos regarding “Satan’s throne” (2: 13), a phrase that warrants very careful study, which we cannot give here.

            With chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation, great and awful forces of evil, creatures of power, burst upon the earthly scene; and, a terrible fact, with the exception of the brief episode of the two witnesses in the city of Jerusalem who are slain, these evil powers seem to hold absolute sway upon the earth for eleven successive chapters---9 through 19.

            Revelation 9 is emphatically the most war-filled chapter in the New Testament, corresponding in many details to Ezekiel 38 and Daniel 11. Here we read that the opening of “the pit of the abyss” is followed by an outpouring of locusts; “and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. . . .[they] were like unto horses prepared for war. . . .and in their tails is their power to hurt men five months” (vv. 3, 7, 10). Toward the end of the chapter we read of armies of horsemen numbering two hundred million. So destructive is this force that one-third of the men of this earth will be slain; “for the power of the horses is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails are like unto serpents, and have heads; and with them they hurt” (v. 19). Thus far we simply have a description of creatures who have an enormous capacity for the destruction of mankind; there is not necessarily here the alignment of their power against the omnipotence of God.

            In chapter 12 is the strange passage regarding war in heaven. It seems to me that here is the preliminary episode of the last great struggle for absolute sovereignty. The war in heaven is referred to after we are told that the woman, whom the dragon would destroy, was to give girth to a man child “who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (v. 5), a theme we have noticed before. The war in heaven is between Michael and his angels and the dragon and his angels, with the result that “the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him” (v. 9). Even here we have only the secondary powers of heaven involved. Michael and his angels; the great struggle with Christ is yet to come. At last---and for this we thank God---the conflict ends in a definite defeat of Satan and his hosts.

            With Satan and his hosts cast down upon the earth, we may expect some dark and terrible days in human history; and such the Book of Revelation predicts. In chapter 13---the darkest chapter in the Bible, the midnight of human history---the words for power begin to multiply. Of the beast out of the sea, we read, “The dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority” (v. 2). Here is a dictator ruling on this earth with the power and authority of a supernatural being---God’s greatest enemy, the Devil. Now, because of Satan’s possession of supernatural power, the earth begins to worship both the dragon and the beast; and they worship the latter because he has apparently absolute power in the realm of military prowess, so that the earth says, “Who is able to war with him?” (v. 4). It is then stated that to this same beast “it was given. . . .to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and there was given in him authority, over every tribe and people and tongue and nation” (v. 7). If anywhere in the Word of God absolute power in the hands of an enemy of God is predicted, it is certainly here---a world dictator, a hater of God. One may be sure this is coming.

            In chapter 17 of Revelation, the theme of a world dictator is resumed; and here the words for power are even more frequent. “The ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, who have received no kingdom as yet; but they receive authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour. These have one mind, and they give their power and authority unto the beast” (vv. 12, 13). This individual called the beast will be given power, a throne, and great authority by Satan! He will have authority over all the peoples of the earth, and the ten rulers, presumably of the Mediterranean area, together assign their power and authority unto the beast. These creatures, unitedly it is said, “shall war against the Lamb” (v. 14). In other words, these powers in united action will be found at the end of this age in deliberate, designed conflict with the One who is called Almighty---power against power. The outcome of this we shall discuss later in this chapter.

            Summary: If my examination of the text in Revelation is accurate, I find that the word power occurs 29 times; the word authority, 20 times; the word reign and rule, 11 times; the word war, 8 times; the word sword, 7 times; the word throne, 43 times; and the word king, 21 times. The last book of the Bible, speaking of the last days, is a book of the inevitable conflict between the forces of evil, energized by Satan, and the power of God, ultimately manifested in Jesus Christ. We must now consider how the earth today is preparing for this convulsive clash of power.

II. THE WORSHIP OF POWER IN MODERN TIMES AND SOME INFLUENCE LEADING TO THIS

            I. Thomas Hobbes

            While it is true that there have been wars from patriarchal days down to the present, requiring the accumulation and use of force in one form or another; and while the mighty rulers of this earth---Xerxes, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon---have all had great armies, I think one may say with accuracy that the actual worship of power, the pursuit of power for power’s sake, the setting forth as a deep principle of life and preeminence of power, was not developed until the seventeenth century. Perhaps this development was initiated with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who has been described as “the first Englishman to present a system of political philosophy that can stand among the great systems of history. His work placed him at once in the front rank of political thinkers; and his theory became, from the moment of its appearance, the center of animated controversy and enormous influence throughout Western Europe.” Hobbes published his De Cive (The State) in 1647; and his far more famous Leviathan, in  1651. The central theme of Hobbes’s whole concept of political economy is that the will of the state is the source and criterion of all right. Human actions, he says, have for their basis “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.” His theory worked out into the famous phrase, Bellum omnium contra omnes, that is, “a war of all against all.” It is a theory, which, everyone admits, “is founded on the notion that man is purely egotistic in his emotions, and there exists no distinction of right and wrong, and that the impulses which move men are the passions which are born in them, and that there is no standard by which any of these passions may be judged morally different from any other.” Hobbes’s whole concept of the state makes a perfect preparation for the coming of Antichrist, for Hobbes insisted on an absolute obedience to the sovereign, no matter what the sovereign commanded, setting politics above religion and morals.

            2. Charles Darwin

            The second strong influence in European thought, exalting the idea of power, was, of course, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), with his Origin of Species, published in 1858. The late Professor Benjamin Kidd calls the publication of this book “by far the most important event in the history of the modern West.” In his once much discussed word, The Science of Power, Professor Kidd says: “Within half a century the Origin of Species had become the bible of the doctrine of the omnipotence of force. The hold which the theories of the Origin of Species obtained on the popular mind in the West is one of the most remarkable incidents in the history of human thought. The first effect of this presentation of the existing world as a result of selection through struggle and merciless war was immediate. Everywhere throughout civilization an almost inconceivable influence was given to the doctrine of force as the basis of legal authority. . . .the doctrine of the efficient Darwinian animal become embodied in the world policy of modern Germany.” This was written in 1918. How little did Kidd know what the philosophy of Germany, based on evolution, would bring about!

            3. F. W. Nietzsche

            The third powerful force in European thought in relation to this lust for power was a blasphemous yet original thinker of the nineteenth century, F. W. Nietzsche (1844-1900). He affirmed that Christianity is “the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct for revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground, and too petty. . . .the one immoral blemish of mankind.” He declared that the real worth of any one life is measured by the amount of power this life can exercise.

            Nietzsche divides the forces of power into five groups---physical force, vital energy, mental or spiritual energy, social or political mastery and authority, and supernatural agencies, the reality of the last of which he denied. “I value man,” said Nietzsche, “by the amount of power and fullness of his will. . . .I value the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and can turn to its advantage.” Niezsche went so far as to say that “exploitation belongs to the essence of the living. . . .to a consequence of the inherent will to power.”

            Nietzsche’s famous book, The Will to Power, probably had more influence over the political thinking of Germany in the later nineteenth century than any work written since the time of Hegel. For this reason let us dwell on it a moment longer. At the close of this evil work he says: “This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity of energy. . . .Do ye want a light, ye most concealed, strongest, and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight? This world is the will to power and nothing else! And even ye yourselves are this will to power---and, nothing besides.” He closely identified this doctrine with the evolutionary hypothesis. Early in the same work he declared, “‘The preservation of the species’ is only a result of the growth of the species---that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind” (italics his).

            This philosopher, so insistent that no one for “thousands of years before” had been so inspired as he, was the one who kept pounding into the ears of millions who had not received Christ the lie of lies, “God is dead! God is dead!” This is the one who insisted on the absolute abolition of all morality. This is the one who glorified and called for ward. Germany followed this false prophet, and she got the wars her deceiver promised.

            It should be remembered that it was Nietzsche who wrote the famous, diabolical work, The Antichrist; for all of his thinking would lead him straight to the worship of that kind of being. “The ego subjugates and kills; it works like an organic: it robs and does violence. It wants to regenerate itself:---pregnancy. It wants to give birth to its god, and to see all mankind at his feet.”

            It was Nietzsche who really gave to the Western World its concept of superman, which “at bottom is a denial of rights to the mass of men.” The society he pictured was recruited upon blood and training, and stood for barbarism. In the first World War, some German writers published essays in which they affirmed that Nietzsche’s superman had become incarnate in Hindenburg. Nietzsche’s own ideal of a superman was, not Alexander or Napoleon, but---Cesare Borgia!

            This exaltation of and lust for power in Germany at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries---certainly at the root of these two awful World Wars, and now manifesting itself with such terrible reality in Russia---probably found its most terrible expression in the words of Heinrich von Treitschke, for a generation the brilliant, amazing influential Professor of History at the University of Berlin. He said, “The sin of weakness in politics is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

            Here in dreadful concentration, in the philosophy of one man, master of the minds of so many millions in his generation---and in the two generations that have followed---do we find so many of the New Testament conceptions of the last days: (1) a hatred of God; (2) a bitter antagonism to Christ: (3) a call for supermen, especially Anti-christ: (4) a lust for war; (5) the abandonment of moral standards; (6) the exaltation of selfish power; and (7) the praise and practice of cruelty, accompanied by pride. Let great power be placed with men whose philosophy is Nietzsche’s----and they are increasing by millions---and you have a stage set for the last days.