The Sign of the Prophet Jonah # 5

God's Unique Miracle

Resurrection from among the dead is something peculiar to God. It is God's doing, and wholly of God. There are many things in which there might be an imitation or a counterfeit, as in the case of the Egyptian magicians, but the power of life and death is in the hands of God alone. That is, that to give life either by birth or from death is only in God's power. Thus, this sign stands in a place by itself, and that place is inseparable from God.

Thus, this resurrection is a standing where satan and death have been rendered impotent. The ground of their power and authority has been dealt with and removed. Life begins because or righteousness triumphant. It provides a basis upon which a superior authority and an indestructible life can be ministered and mediated. It secures the power and jurisdiction of witnesses which brings the spiritual impact of the Risen and Enthroned Christ upon spiritual forces opposed to Him, and makes for a recognition of the sovereignty of His name among "principalities and powers." It is a fellowship into which believers on the Lord Jesus are called; united with Him through death in resurrection by the Holy Spirit.

Thus, we come to recognize two further fundamental things. One is that the Lord Jesus is dead and always will be dead to unbelief - that is, so far as any personal saving experience or knowledge is concerned. it is not faith that makes Him live, but it is faith that brings Him as the living One into experience. The evidences which are the substance of the testimony are possessed alone by men of faith in Jesus Christ. The Lord did not show Himself alive after His resurrection to the world, but to chosen witnesses, and thus forever the knowledge of Him as alive is not by occular evidence but by faith in a testimony concerning Him. This then means that (a) the nature of relationship to Christ which alone means salvation is experience through faith; and (b) the only preaching which is according to the New Testament is that which is out of a living knowledge of Christ as alive, possessed through faith.

The words of the Master to the unbelieving generation were "There shall be no sign given except the sign of the Prophet Jonah." In other words, "There shall be given it the sign of the Prophet Jonah." But if He never appeared to it after His resurrection, how could the sign have been given to it? There is only one answer; through the living experience and testimony of witnesses, and that to be proved by the obedience of faith! Does this not then establish the truth that the Lord Jesus depends for His vindication upon nothing less nor other than the living experience of His resurrection, Person and power in the lives of such as are thereby constituted witnesses unto Him?

The adversary who would keep Christ dead to the world and the unbelief which is his means of so doing can only be met and overthrown by experiemental possession, knowledge and out-going of "the power of His resurrection." This is in and by the presence and fullness of the Holy Spirit. The other thing which is linked with this is the necessity for each servant of God to have come so much to the place of death as to himself or herself, and in all personal resources and confidence, as to be this sign in their very being. The Lord would have all His witnesses to be, not just givers of objective evidence, but themselves personifications of the truth; a "manifestation of the truth"; an embodiment of the principle of life triumphant over spiritual death. Resurrection is life for ascension and impartation. Ascendency and transmission are features of the witnesses. This is the test of all profession, representation, and claims. It is all too terribly true that there can be "a name to live, but dead." In the ship's company chiding Jonah there may be a type of the world rebuking the church for its slumber. We are called, constituted and privileged to bring the fact of the Lord Jesus as living in the power of absolute sovereignty home to all that challenges Him.

And unless the powers of darkness and death feel and recognize the reality of His mighty victory over them, the mission of the Church has broken down, and there is no substitute for that object and purpose of its existence. There must be a crucified and resurrected Church to evidence the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 6 - "The New Thing Which is Old")