power

92:1.4Mys­tery and power have al­ways stim­u­lated re­li­gious feel­ings and fears, while emo­tion has ever func­tioned as a pow­er­ful con­di­tion­ing fac­tor in their de­vel­op­ment. Fear has al­ways been the ba­sic re­li­gious stim­u­lus. Fear fash­ions the gods of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion and mo­ti­vates the re­li­gious rit­ual of the prim­i­tive be­liev­ers. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vances, fear be­comes mod­i­fied by rev­er­ence, ad­mi­ra­tion, re­spect, and sym­pa­thy and is then fur­ther con­di­tioned by re­morse and re­pen­tance.

81:6.9Knowl­edge is power. In­ven­tion al­ways pre­cedes the ac­cel­er­a­tion of cul­tural de­vel­op­ment on a world-wide scale. Sci­ence and in­ven­tion ben­e­fited most of all from the print­ing press, and the in­ter­ac­tion of all these cul­tural and in­ven­tive ac­tiv­i­ties has enor­mously ac­cel­er­ated the rate of cul­tural ad­vance­ment.

34:6.5The di­vine Spirit is the source of con­tin­ual min­istry and en­cour­age­ment to the chil­dren of men. Your power and achieve­ment is “ac­cord­ing to his mercy, through the re­new­ing of the Spirit.” Spir­i­tual life, like phys­i­cal en­ergy, is con­sumed. Spir­i­tual ef­fort re­sults in rel­a­tive spir­i­tual ex­haus­tion. The whole as­cen­dant ex­pe­ri­ence is real as well as spir­i­tual; there­fore, it is truly writ­ten, “It is the Spirit that quick­ens.” “The Spirit gives life.”

• designates electronic level of linear-gravity responsive matter

0:6.2EN­ERGY we use as an all-in­clu­sive term ap­plied to spir­i­tual, mindal, and ma­te­rial realms. Force is also thus broadly used. Power is or­di­nar­ily lim­ited to the des­ig­na­tion of the elec­tronic level of ma­te­rial or lin­ear-grav­ity-re­spon­sive mat­ter in the grand uni­verse. Power is also em­ployed to des­ig­nate sov­er­eignty. We can­not fol­low your gen­er­ally ac­cepted def­i­ni­tions of force, en­ergy, and power. There is such paucity of lan­guage that we must as­sign mul­ti­ple mean­ings to these terms.

• term denotes postgravity stages of energy

29:2.15The elec­tronic or­ga­ni­za­tion of uni­verse power func­tions in seven phases and dis­closes vary­ing re­sponse to lo­cal or lin­ear grav­ity. This sev­en­fold cir­cuit pro­ceeds from the super­uni­verse power cen­ters and per­vades each super­cre­ation. Such spe­cial­ized cur­rents of time and space are def­i­nite and lo­cal­ized en­ergy move­ments ini­ti­ated and di­rected for spe­cific pur­poses, much as the Gulf Stream func­tions as a cir­cum­scribed phe­nom­e­non in the midst of the At­lantic Ocean.

• term denotes postgravity stages of energy

42:2.1It is in­deed dif­fi­cult to find suit­able words in the En­glish lan­guage whereby to des­ig­nate and where­with to de­scribe the var­i­ous lev­els of force and en­ergy—phys­i­cal, mindal, or spir­i­tual. These nar­ra­tives can­not al­to­gether fol­low your ac­cepted def­i­ni­tions of force, en­ergy, and power. There is such paucity of lan­guage that we must use these terms in mul­ti­ple mean­ings. In this pa­per, for ex­am­ple, the word en­ergy is used to de­note all phases and forms of phe­nom­e­nal mo­tion, ac­tion, and po­ten­tial, while force is ap­plied to the pre­grav­ity, and power to the post­grav­ity, stages of en­ergy.

• refuse to use p. for self-aggrandizement

48:7.86. To en­joy priv­i­lege with­out abuse, to have lib­erty with­out li­cense, to pos­sess power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for self-ag­gran­dize­ment—these are the marks of high civ­i­liza­tion.

• might was right for primitives

70:11.13The first courts were reg­u­lated fistic en­coun­ters; the judges were merely um­pires or ref­er­ees. They saw to it that the fight was car­ried on ac­cord­ing to ap­proved rules. On en­ter­ing a court com­bat, each party made a de­posit with the judge to pay the costs and fine af­ter one had been de­feated by the other. “Might was still right.” Later on, ver­bal ar­gu­ments were sub­sti­tuted for phys­i­cal blows.

• primitives took for granted p. would be used selfishly

70:11.14The whole idea of prim­i­tive jus­tice was not so much to be fair as to dis­pose of the con­test and thus pre­vent pub­lic dis­or­der and pri­vate vi­o­lence. But prim­i­tive man did not so much re­sent what would now be re­garded as an in­jus­tice; it was taken for granted that those who had power would use it self­ishly. Nev­er­the­less, the sta­tus of any civ­i­liza­tion may be very ac­cu­rately de­ter­mined by the thor­ough­ness and eq­uity of its courts and by the in­tegrity of its judges.

• might was right for primitives

70:12.2While prim­i­tive au­thor­ity was based on strength, phys­i­cal power, the ideal gov­ern­ment is the rep­re­sen­ta­tive sys­tem wherein lead­er­ship is based on abil­ity, but in the days of bar­barism there was en­tirely too much war to per­mit rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment to func­tion ef­fec­tively. In the long strug­gle be­tween di­vi­sion of au­thor­ity and unity of com­mand, the dic­ta­tor won. The early and dif­fuse pow­ers of the prim­i­tive coun­cil of el­ders were grad­u­ally con­cen­trated in the per­son of the ab­so­lute monarch. Af­ter the ar­rival of real kings the groups of el­ders per­sisted as quasi-leg­isla­tive-ju­di­cial ad­vi­sory bod­ies; later on, leg­is­la­tures of co-or­di­nate sta­tus made their ap­pear­ance, and even­tu­ally su­preme courts of ad­ju­di­ca­tion were es­tab­lished sep­a­rate from the leg­is­la­tures.

• experiential p. is earned p., eternity p. is not

106:2.3Spirit, in the last anal­y­sis, comes from Par­a­dise through Ha­vona. En­ergy-mat­ter seem­ingly evolves in the depths of space and is or­ga­nized as power by the chil­dren of the In­fi­nite Spirit in con­junc­tion with the Cre­ator Sons of God. And all of this is ex­pe­ri­en­tial; it is a trans­ac­tion in time and space in­volv­ing a wide range of liv­ing be­ings in­clud­ing even Cre­ator di­vini­ties and evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures. The power mas­tery of the Cre­ator di­vini­ties in the grand uni­verse slowly ex­pands to en­com­pass the evo­lu­tion­ary set­tling and sta­bi­liz­ing of the time-space cre­ations, and this is the flow­er­ing of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial power of God the Sev­en­fold. It en­com­passes the whole gamut of di­vin­ity at­tain­ment in time and space from the Ad­juster be­stowals of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther to the life be­stowals of the Par­a­dise Sons. This is earned power, demon­strated power, ex­pe­ri­en­tial power; it stands in con­trast to the eter­nity power, the un­fath­omable power, the ex­is­ten­tial power of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• refuse to use p. for self-aggrandizement

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

• Jesus avoided all display of p.

138:6.5Je­sus had a per­fect grasp of the sit­u­a­tion; he pos­sessed un­lim­ited power, which might have been uti­lized in the fur­ther­ance of his mis­sion, but he was wholly con­tent with means and per­son­al­i­ties which most peo­ple would have re­garded as in­ad­e­quate and would have looked upon as in­signif­i­cant. He was en­gaged in a mis­sion of enor­mous dra­matic pos­si­bil­i­ties, but he in­sisted on go­ing about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness in the most quiet and un­dra­matic man­ner; he stu­diously avoided all dis­play of power. And he now planned to work qui­etly, at least for sev­eral months, with his twelve apos­tles around about the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

• all p. given to Jesus

138:7.1Je­sus had planned for a quiet mis­sion­ary cam­paign of five months’ per­sonal work. He did not tell the apos­tles how long this was to last; they worked from week to week. And early on this first day of the week, just as he was about to an­nounce this to his twelve apos­tles, Si­mon Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee, and Ju­das Is­car­iot came to have pri­vate con­verse with him. Tak­ing Je­sus aside, Pe­ter made bold to say: “Mas­ter, we come at the be­hest of our as­so­ciates to in­quire whether the time is not now ripe to en­ter into the king­dom. And will you pro­claim the king­dom at Ca­per­naum, or are we to move on to Je­ru­sa­lem? And when shall we learn, each of us, the po­si­tions we are to oc­cupy with you in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom—” and Pe­ter would have gone on ask­ing fur­ther ques­tions, but Je­sus raised an ad­mon­i­tory hand and stopped him. And beck­on­ing the other apos­tles stand­ing near by to join them, Je­sus said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, how long shall I bear with you! Have I not made it plain to you that my king­dom is not of this world? I have told you many times that I have not come to sit on David’s throne, and now how is it that you are in­quir­ing which place each of you will oc­cupy in the Fa­ther’s king­dom? Can you not per­ceive that I have called you as am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom? Do you not un­der­stand that soon, very soon, you are to rep­re­sent me in the world and in the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, even as I now rep­re­sent my Fa­ther who is in heaven? Can it be that I have cho­sen you and in­structed you as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, and yet you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture and sig­nif­i­cance of this com­ing king­dom of di­vine pre-em­i­nence in the hearts of men? My friends, hear me once more. Ban­ish from your minds this idea that my king­dom is a rule of power or a reign of glory. In­deed, all power in heaven and on earth will pres­ently be given into my hands, but it is not the Fa­ther’s will that we use this di­vine en­dow­ment to glo­rify our­selves dur­ing this age. In an­other age you shall in­deed sit with me in power and glory, but it be­hooves us now to sub­mit to the will of the Fa­ther and to go forth in hum­ble obe­di­ence to ex­e­cute his bid­ding on earth.”

89:4.1Sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious de­vo­tions, like many other wor­ship­ful rit­u­als, did not have a sim­ple and sin­gle ori­gin. The ten­dency to bow down be­fore power and to pros­trate one­self in wor­ship­ful ado­ra­tion in the pres­ence of mys­tery is fore­shad­owed in the fawn­ing of the dog be­fore its mas­ter. It is but one step from the im­pulse of wor­ship to the act of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man gauged the value of his sac­ri­fice by the pain which he suf­fered. When the idea of sac­ri­fice first at­tached it­self to re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, no of­fer­ing was con­tem­plated which was not pro­duc­tive of pain. The first sac­ri­fices were such acts as pluck­ing hair, cut­ting the flesh, mu­ti­la­tions, knock­ing out teeth, and cut­ting off fin­gers. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, these crude con­cepts of sac­ri­fice were el­e­vated to the level of the rit­u­als of self-ab­ne­ga­tion, as­ceti­cism, fast­ing, de­pri­va­tion, and the later Chris­tian doc­trine of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion through sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh.

3:2.1All the uni­verses know that “the Lord God om­nipo­tent reigns.” The af­fairs of this world and other worlds are di­vinely super­vised. “He does ac­cord­ing to his will in the army of heaven and among the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” It is eter­nally true, “there is no power but of God.”

97:7.8Lis­ten again to the gospel of this new rev­e­la­tion of the God of Salem: “He shall feed his flock like a shep­herd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bo­som. He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might he in­creases strength. Those who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings as ea­gles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

131:2.6“God has made man a lit­tle less than di­vine and has crowned him with love and mercy. The Lord knows the way of the righ­teous, but the way of the un­godly shall per­ish. The fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom; the knowl­edge of the Su­preme is un­der­stand­ing. Says the Al­mighty God: ‘Walk be­fore me and be per­fect.’ For­get not that pride goes be­fore de­struc­tion and a haughty spirit be­fore a fall. He who rules his own spirit is might­ier than he who takes a city. Says the Lord God, the Holy One: ‘In re­turn­ing to your spir­i­tual rest shall you be saved; in quiet­ness and con­fi­dence shall be your strength.’ They who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings like ea­gles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint. The Lord shall give you rest from your fear. Says the Lord: ‘Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness.’