Week 6
Day 3
Listen: 
The Lord’s Prayer
Thine is the power
Matthew 26:64. Jesus says to him, Thou hast said; nevertheless I say to you, From henceforth you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.
AC 10019:3. The Divine power of the Lord... is the Divine power of saving the human race; and the power of saving the human race is power over the heavens and over the hells. For man is saved by this power of the Lord, and not by any other, because all the good which is of love, and all the truth which is of faith, flow in through the heavens from the Lord; and they cannot flow in unless the hells are removed, for all evil, and from this all falsity, are from the hells. Man is saved by the removal of the evils and the derivative falsities that are from the hells, and by the influx then of the good of love and of the truth of faith through heaven from the Lord. When the Lord was in the world He subjugated the hells and reduced the heavens into order, and acquired for Himself Divine power over them.
AC 5758. The angels in heaven plainly perceive that all good and truth are from the Lord, and moreover, that by the Lord they are withheld from evil and kept in good and so in truth, and this by a mighty force.
TCR 652:3. There is actually a sphere proceeding continually from the Lord and filling the entire spiritual and natural worlds which raises all towards heaven. It is like a strong current in the ocean which unobservedly draws a vessel. All who believe in the Lord and live according to His precepts enter that sphere or current and are elevated; while those who do not believe, are unwilling to enter, but withdraw themselves to the sides, and are there carried away by a current that sets toward hell.
Life 31. Every man is such that he can shun evils, as of himself, from the Lord’s power, if he implores it; and what he does after this is good from the Lord.
AC 10182:2. That all the power of truth is from the good of love cannot be apprehended by those who have only a material idea of power, and therefore how the case is must be told. In the heavens all power is from the Divine truth that proceeds from the Lord’s Divine good. From this the angels have power, for the angels are receptions of the Divine truth from the Lord.... By the power which they have from this [Divine truth] they protect man by removing the hells from him; for one angel prevails against a thousand spirits from the hells.
AC 10182:6. That truths from good have such power cannot be apprehended by those who have the idea that truth and its faith are mere thought; when yet man’s thought from his will produces all the strength of his body, and if it were inspired by the Lord through His Divine truth, man would have the strength of Samson. But it is the Lord’s good pleasure that in respect to the things of his spirit, and that conduce to eternal salvation, man should have strength through faith from love.
AC 1807. When a man who is looking at internal things from external ones sees the skies, he does not think at all of the starry heaven, but of the angelic heaven; and when he sees the sun, he does not think of the sun, but of the Lord, as being the Sun of heaven. So too when he sees the moon, and the stars also; and when he sees the immensity of the heavens, he does not think of their immensity, but of the immeasurable and infinite power of the Lord.
Questions and Comments
- Which of these passages—AC 10019, 5728, or TCR 652—most appeals to you as a description of the Lord’s power?
- How does the Doctrine resolve the paradox that although the Lord has all power and we have none, still we choose between heaven and hell?
- How do these teachings about power relate to Mao Zedong’s saying, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun?”
- Why doesn’t the Lord give us the strength of Samson?
- Is there a special place, or a photograph, of something in the natural universe that especially reminds you of “the immeasurable and infinite power of the Lord”?
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