February 26, 2002

YOURS IS THE KINGDOM, POWER AND GLORY!

"For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever" (Matthew 6:13, NKJV).

"The last like the first sentence of the Lord's Prayer, points to our Father as above all power and authority --. The Saviour beheld the years that stretched out before His disciples, not, as they had dreamed, lying in the sunshine of worldly prosperity and honor, but dark with the tempests of human hatred and satanic wrath. Amid national strife and ruin, the steps of the disciples would be beset with perils, and often their hearts would be oppressed by fear. They were to see Jerusalem a desolation, the temple swept away, its worship forever ended, and Israel scattered to all lands, like wrecks on a desert shore. Jesus said, 'You will hear of wars and rumors of wars.' 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows' (Matthew 24:6-8). Yet Christ's followers were not to fear that their hope was lost or that God had forsaken the earth. The power and the glory belong to Him whose great purposes would still move on unthwarted toward their consummation. In the prayer that breathes their daily wants, the disciples of Christ were directed to look above all the power and dominion of evil, to the Lord their God, whose kingdom rules over all and who is their Father and everlasting Friend.

"The ruin of Jerusalem was a symbol of the final ruin that shall overwhelm the world. The prophecies that received a partial fulfillment in the overthrow of Jerusalem have a more direct application to the last days. We are now standing on the threshold of great and solemn events. A crisis is before us, such as the world has never witnessed. And sweetly to us, as to the first disciples, comes the assurance that God's kingdom rules over all. The program of coming events is in the hands of our Maker. The Majesty of heaven has the destiny of nations, as well as the concerns of His church, in His own charge. The divine Instructor is saying to every agent in the accomplishment of His plans, as He said to Cyrus, 'I will gird you, though you have not known Me' (Isaiah 45:5)...

"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power and the glory, the victory and the majesty; for all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours... In Your hand is power and might; In Your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all" (1 Chronicles 29:11, 12).--Thoughts From The Mount Of Blessing, pp., 120, 121.