The Impact of the Presence of the Lord Jesus
And do you notice how Peter describes this? "We were eyewitnesses of His ministry" - His MAJESTY. Is not the need for the impact of the MAJESTY of the Lord Jesus upon this earth? It should be. Again, he says: "We made known unto you the POWER and PRESENCE of our Lord Jesus Christ ..." I am sorry they have not translated that word thus: they have put "coming". Of course, the word is very frequently related to the coming again of the Lord Jesus, but the word itself cannot be isolated to that. The same word is used of the apostles, when they CAME into a situation. It is the same word, whether the "coming" or the "presence". And Peter describes this as the "power and presence" of His MAJESTY. Yes, that is the issue. The power, not as abstract and unrelated, but the power of His presence in His majesty - that is the holy mount; that is the high place; that is what the world needs.
Let me use the word again - "impact"! If it should be ours to see the King in His glory; if it should be ours to catch a fresh glimpse of the glorified Lord, that is going to answer the cry and the need for IMPACT. And conversely: there will never be an impact until we have seen Him as the glorified Lord. He is the answer to every need, and a vision of Him as exalted and attested by Heaven will bring new impact into our lives, into our ministries, into our churches, upon situations. Does not your heart cry, as mine does, Oh for a recovery of the Church's impact upon this world! And this is none other than the impact of the majesty of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, we know that that is how it will be when this word is actually fulfilled by His appearing at the end. When He comes, He will "smite the earth with the rod of His mouth: (Isaiah 11:4). The brightness of His presence will be devastating to evil. There is no doubt about it that when that presencing, that 'paraousia', takes place, there will be an impact. We cry for that; we pray for that. But the word is used not only of that, but in other connections, on different occasions. The same word, exactly the same word, as is used for the coming again of the Lord Jesus, is used of apostles coming into a situation, or being present there. It is used of the Lord Jesus too in this motional sense. He CAME, in that sense, on the mount of transfiguration; it was His PRESENCING in glory. Again and again He PRESENCED Himself, and every time there was impact - all pointing to His final great PRESENCING in glory. It is interesting, is it not, that Peter uses for the event on the mount of transfiguration exactly the same word as he uses for the coming again of the Lord at the end - the PRESENCE of the Lord.
The Present Need
All these are statements with which I imagine you will agree,both as to the significance and as to the issue. But we need an anticipation of the day of His coming, in the Church today - now. We need something of the meaning of that final impact NOW - His presence in majesty and in power. What about it? One of the writers who recorded this event tells us that Jesus went up into the mountain to pray; "and as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was changed" (Luke 9:29). And when He came down, the key which He used for that desperate situation was the key of prayer: "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (Mark 9:29). What are we to pray for? What is to be the burden of our prayer in relation to this matter of impact, recovered power? If you have any sense of this poor world's distracted condition, and desperate need, you will not control your praying; you will not regulate your praying; you will not make prayer a legal system of "you must", "thou shalt", and so on. If you are touched, as the Lord was touched, with this situation and this need, be it in an individual, or in a company, or in the world, or in the whole Church, the only thing that you will do - but you will do it - is PRAY.
And what will you pray for? What is it that will answer the need, the situation: what will touch it?
Now here is the point of departure. We feel the need, we are aware of the situation here and there, in this one and that, in this place and that; and of course, we do pray to the Lord and ask Him to do something about it; we do that. I trust I am not saying a wrong thing when I say that too often it is like the effort of the nine - nothing happens! The thing goes on,persists and defies you. You see, the need is not for that kind of prayer. What is needed is the kind of prayer that brings in the MAJESTY and the POWER of Jesus Christ; that is born out of a mighty apprehension of His glory, of Who He is, what He has done, where He is, and what He is doing now. That is what we need to recover!
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 43)
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