Acts 1:8 But you shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come on you: and you shall be witnesses to me both in Jerusalem… All power is indescribable, but at the same time appreciable. What it is, where it is, how it came, where it goes, its measure, movement, nature, form, or essence, no human skill can discover. We may ask the sunbeam which has such power to fly and to illuminate, the lightning which has such power to scathe, the dew-drop that has power to refresh, the magnet, the fire, the steam, the eye that can see, the ear that can hear, the nerve that can convey the messages of will, we may ask all the agents we see exerting power to render us "an account each of its own power, and all will be dumb. Not the cannon ball on its flight, or the lion in his triumph, not the tempest or the sea, not even pestilence itself, can tell us what is power. If we ask Death who has put all things under his feet, even he has no re.ply; and after we have passed the question, "What is power?" round a mute universe, we mast say, "God has spoken once, yea, twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God." Yet power, in itself so hidden and indescribable, is ever manifest by its effects. An effect demonstrates the presence of a power. Where gunpowder explodes, there must have been fire; where water shoots up through the atmosphere in steam, there must have been heat; where iron moves without mechanical force, a magnet must be; and the absence of the effect is conclusive evidence of the absence of the power from which the effect would have followed. The intellect at once recognises the presence of intellectual power. The feelings, also, faithfully tell whenever an emotional power is brought to bear upon them; and no less surely does the conscience of a man feel when a moral power comes acting upon it. (W. Arthur, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. |
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