The Latent Power of the Soul,
CFP white cover, 15-24
Adam’s Authority and Physical Prowess
“And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male
and female created he them. And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over
every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1.27,28). Have dominion
over the earth, says God.
Friends, have you ever thought how immense the earth is? Suppose a master asks a
servant to manage two houses. He makes the appointment on the basis of the
latter’s ability to take care of them. No one servant is able to handle all the
houses located on a given lane, for he cannot do what is beyond his ability. A
hard master may demand his servant to do a little more than his duty requires,
but never will he demand his servant to undertake anything beyond his ability.
Would God, then, ask Adam to do what he was incapable of doing? We can therefore
conclude that if Adam was capable of managing the earth, his prowess was most
certainly superior to ours today. He had power, ability, and skill. He received
all of these abilities freshly from the Creator.
Although we may not rate Adam’s power as being a billion times over ours,
we can nonetheless safely reckon it to be a million times over ours. Else
he would not have been able to perform the duty commanded him of God. As for us
today, though, if we were required to merely sweep a lane three times daily, we
would not be able afterwards to straighten our back. How then could we possibly
rule the earth? Yet Adam not only ruled the earth but he also had dominion over
the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, and every living thing on the
earth. To rule is not just to sit by doing nothing. It requires management and
work. From a seeing of this we should recognize the superior power which Adam in
fact possessed. It far exceeds our present situation.
But do you think that this insight is something new? Actually this is the
teaching of the Bible. Before his fall Adam had such strength that he never felt
tired after work. It was only after his fall that God told him, “In the sweat of
thy face shalt thou eat bread.”
Adam’s Brain Power and Memory
“And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every
bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call
them; and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name
thereof” (Gen. 2.19). My friends, is this not marvelous? Suppose you were to
take a dictionary and to read all the names of the animals; would you not
confess that you could neither recognize nor memorize them all? Yet Adam gave
names to all the birds and animals. How intelligent he must have been! Those of
us who are not so brilliant would no doubt soon give up the study of zoology
once we saw our inability to memorize all the details. But Adam was not one who
memorized these zoological names; he was the denominator, for he gave
names to all. Hereby do we know how rich and perfect was Adam’s rational
power.
Adam’s Managerial Power
“And Jehovah God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it
and to keep it” (Gen. 2.15). From looking into how Adam governed the earth let
us now dwell somewhat on the things which God charged him to do. God commanded
him to dress the garden of Eden. This needed to be done systematically. How big
was the garden? Genesis 2.10-14 mentions four rivers; namely, Pishon, Gihon,
Hiddekel and Euphrates. They all flowed from Eden and divided into four river
regions. Can you imagine now how big the garden was? How strong must Adam be to
be charged with dressing a land which was surrounded by four rivers! He was not
only to dress it but also to keep it; to keep the garden from being invaded by
the enemy. Therefore the power which Adam had in that day must have been
tremendous. He must have been a man with astounding ability. All his powers were
inherent in his living soul. We may look upon Adam’s power as supernatural and
miraculous, but so far as Adam was concerned these abilities were not miraculous
but human, not supernatural but natural.
Did Adam use up all his powers on that day? From what can be seen in our study
of Genesis, he had not exhausted his power. For after he was newly created by
God, but before he could manifest all his abilities, he fell.
What was the bait which the enemy used in enticing Eve? What did the enemy
promise her? It was this: “In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be
opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3.5). “Be as God”
was the enemy’s promise. He told Eve that not withstanding the power which she
already possessed there was still a great chasm between her and God, but that if
she ate this fruit she would then have God’s authority, wisdom, and power. And
on that day Eve was tempted and fell.
The Power God Gave to Adam
We
are not, by our probing in this fashion, being inordinately curious; we only
desire to know what God actually gave to Adam. “And God said, Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1.26). The words “image” and “likeness” may
seem to be alike in meaning and may therefore appear repetitious. But in Hebrew
the word “image” does not point to physical likeness, rather it denotes moral or
spiritual similarity. Someone has put it as: “change into likeness”; that is,
“to be conformed to a likeness”. The purpose in God creating man is for man to
be transformed according to His image. God wanted Adam to be like Him. The devil
said, “Ye shall be as God.” But God’s original intention was that Adam should be
transformed to become like Him.
From this we conclude that before the fall Adam had in him the power to become
like God. He possessed a hidden ability which made it possible for him to become
like God. He was already like Him in outward appearance, but he was ordained by
God to become like Him morally (I use the word “morally” to indicate that which
is above the material, not what merely points to man’s good behavior). Thus are
we shown how much loss mankind has suffered through the fall. The magnitude of
the damage is probably beyond our imagination.
The
Fall of Man
Adam is a soul. His spirit and body are joined in his soul. That astonishing
power which we have just mentioned is present in Adam’s soul. In other words,
the living soul, which is the result of the coming together of the spirit and
the body, possesses unthinkable supernatural power. At the fall, though, the
power which distinguishes Adam from us is lost. Yet this does not mean there is
no longer such power; it only denotes that though this ability is still in man,
it is nonetheless “frozen” or immobilized. According to Genesis 6, after the
fall man becomes flesh. The flesh envelops the whole being and subjugates him.
Man was originally a living soul; now, having fallen, he becomes flesh. His soul
had been meant to submit to the spirit’s control; now it is subject to the
dominion of the flesh. Hence the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man
for ever, for that he also is flesh” (Gen. 6.3). When God here mentioned man, He
called him flesh, for in His eyes that was now what he was. Consequently it is
recorded in the Bible that “all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth”
(Gen. 6.12); and again, “upon the flesh of man shall it (the holy anointing oil,
representing in type the Holy Spirit) not be poured” (Ex. 30.32); and further,
“by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3.20).
Why do I dwell at some length on this? In Revelation 18 things are mentioned
which shall come to pass in the last days. I indicated at the very beginning how
man’s soul will become a commodity in Babylon—that which can be sold and bought.
But why is man’s soul treated as a commodity? Because Satan and his puppet the
Antichrist wish to use the human soul as an instrument for their activities at
the end of this age. When Adam fell in the garden of Eden his power was
immobilized. He had not lost this power altogether, only it was now buried
within him. He had become flesh, and his flesh now enclosed tightly this
marvelous power within it. Generation has succeeded generation with the result
that this primordial ability of Adam has become a “latent” force in his
descendants. It has turned to become a kind of “hidden” power. It is not lost to
man, it is simply bound up by the flesh.
Today in each and every person who lives on earth lies this Adamic power, though
it is confined in him and is not able to freely express itself. Yet such power
is in every man’s soul just as it was in Adam’s soul at the beginning. Since
today’s soul is under siege by the flesh, this power is likewise confined by the
flesh. The work of the devil nowadays is to stir up man’s soul and to release
this latent power within it as a deception for spiritual power. The reason for
my mentioning these things is to warn ourselves of the special relationship
between man’s soul and Satan in the last days.
We
have already seen how Adam possessed special supernatural ability, though in
actuality what he had was not at all special or supernatural, however much it
may appear that way to us today. Before his fall Adam could quite naturally
exercise this ability with ease, since it was embodied in his soul. But after
his fall, this power of his was interned by his body. Formerly the body was a
help to Adam’s powerful soul; now the soul had fallen, and his power was
circumscribed by the shell of the flesh. Satan, however, attempts to break open
this fleshly shell and to release the power dormant in man’s soul in order to
gain control over man. Many do not understand this strategy, being deceived into
accepting it as of God.
Viewing Religiously
Yet this does not happen in Christianity alone. The Babylonians, the Arabs, the
Buddhists, the Taoists, and the Hindus all try in their respective way to
release the power which Adam has left to our soul. In any religion, using
whatever means or ways of instruction, there stands a common principle behind
all their apparent differences. This common principle is to aim at overcoming
the outward flesh so as to deliver the soul power from all kinds of bondage for
freer expression. Some lessons of instruction given in these religions are
directed at destroying the obstruction of the body, some at uniting the body and
the soul, while some are aimed at strengthening the soul through training and
thus enabling it to overcome the body. Whatever the ways may be, the principle
behind them all is the same. It is important to know this or else we will be
deceived.
I
do not know how people are informed of the marvelous energy dormant in man’s
soul, the release of which, presently bound by the flesh, will result in the
display of miraculous power even to the attaining of the status of a “fairy” or
“buddha”. Probably they are all informed by the devil, the evil spirit. Their
elucidations may vary, nevertheless the underlying principle is the same, which
is, the use of special means to release the power of the soul. They may not
employ, as used by us, this terminology of soul power; yet the fact is
unmistakable. For example, in Buddhism and Taoism, and even in some sects of
Christianity, special supernatural power is available to all of them to perform
miracles in the healing of diseases and in predicting the future.
Take as an instance the ascetic practices and breathings of Taoism or even the
simplest form of abstract meditation: these are all done according to the one
principle of subjugating the body under the soul with the purpose of releasing
the latter’s power. No wonder many miraculous things do happen which we cannot
simply dismiss as superstition. Buddhism was originally atheistic. Gautama
Siddharta was an atheist. This is the consensus of many scholars and critics on
the teaching of Buddhism. He believed in the soul’s transmigration as well as in
nirvana.* Now I have no intention here of
lecturing on Buddhism; I only wish to explain why and how many a wonder has been
performed in this religion. In Buddhism there is the teaching on escaping the
world. Those who take the Buddhist vow must abstain from marriage and meat. They
must not kill any living thing. Through ascetic practices they may eventually
attain to the elimination of all food. Some monks of high degree can even pierce
the unknown past and predict the future. They perform many wonders by Buddhist
magic. When what they call their “heart blood” flushes, they are able to
foretell the things to come. The engaging in all these different kinds of
abstinences and ascetic practices flows from one single governing principle: the
Buddhist is attempting to break all physical and material bonds so as to get his
soul power released. I know some people, my seniors in age, who joined the Unity
Club. They and their fellow-Club members practice abstract meditation and so
forth. They tell me that each degree they enter into has its own magnitude of
light. The light they perceive follows the truth they penetrate. I believe in
what they say, for they are able to be liberated from the suppression of the
body and so release the power which Adam possessed before his fall. There is
really nothing extraordinary about it. The modern-day Church of Christ,
Scientist was founded by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. She denied the existence of
sickness, pain, sin, and death (though Mrs. Eddy has already died). Since
according to her teaching there is no such thing as sickness, whenever one is
sick he only needs to exercise his mind against any recognition of pain and he
will be healed. This means, then, that if one believes in no sickness he will
not be sick. So too, if he does not believe in sin he will not sin. By training
man’s will, mind, and emotion to the point of absolutely denying the existence
of these things—viewing them as false and deceptive—he will find them
nonexistent indeed.
When this teaching was first promulgated, it was opposed by many people.
Physicians especially opposed it, for if this were true, then there would be no
need for physicians. Yet following their examination of those people healed by
the Christian Scientist, these doctors were unable to repudiate it as false.
Consequently, more and more people believe; even many famous scientists and
physicians embrace this teaching. This is not at all surprising, though, since
there is a reservoir of tremendous power in the soul just waiting to be released
from the confines of the flesh.
*
That state, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, “of absolute blessedness, characterized by release from the cycle
of reincarnations and attained through the extinction of self.”—Translator