Power Comes from Somewhere

When you turn on your lights or your appliance and open your refrigerator and see it working, you know that power comes from somewhere.  It didn't just happen.  Your heart is beating, the power for that comes from somewhere.  You look up and see a burning sun.  The power for that sun comes from somewhere.  Nuclear, gravitational, and chemical energy all come from someplace.  They have their start somewhere.

We all need power.  Our body is burning energy, our brains are using it, our heart needs it, and every other creature does too.  It's there.  People are but dust.  Power holds this dust together in a complex and functioning form.

The Big Bang Theory supposedly explains the origin of matter, but the explosion could not have occurred without energy.  Senior writer and editor of Quanta Magazine, Natalie Wolchover, wrote on June 6, 2019:

The Big Bang theory . . . . pioneered 50 years before Hawking’s lecture by the Belgian physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître, who later served as president of the Vatican’s academy of sciences — rewinds the expansion of the universe back to a hot, dense bundle of energy. But where did the initial energy come from?

The Big Bang theory had other problems. Physicists understood that an expanding bundle of energy would grow into a crumpled mess rather than the huge, smooth cosmos that modern astronomers observe.

Men guess, but they don't have an answer to the origin of energy or power.

The English word "power" is found 272 times in the King James Version.  The first time the English word appears, it is koah, and it refers to God's strength, ability, might, and force.  That Hebrew word is used 126 times.  The first is used of God in Exodus 15:6, "Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious  in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy."  Another one is Exodus 32:11, "And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?"  A lot of the usages of koah are like that one.

Another Hebrew word translated power in 1 Chronicles 29:11 is gebera, the verse reading:  "Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all."  That word is used 61 times in the Old Testament with another example, Psalm 21:13, "Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power."

The New Testament uses mainly two Greek words, which are translated "power" in the King James Version.  Matthew 6:13 reads:

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

"Power" here comes from dunamis.  The English "dynamite" comes from dunamis, which BDAG, the foremost Greek New Testament lexicon, says means:

potential for functioning in some way, power, might, strength, force, capability

That Greek word is used 120 times in the New Testament.  The very next usage of "power" in the New Testament is in Matthew 9:6:

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

So this very next time "power" is used it's a different Greek word, which means something different than dunamis.  It's exousia, which speaks of "authority."  BDAG gives these first two meanings

1. a state of control over something, freedom of choice, right

2. potential or resource to command, control, or govern, capability, might, power 

Exousia is used 102 times in the New Testament.  One of the preeminent usages of exousia type of power is in each of the first three verses of Romans 13:

1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

I give you these numbers and examples because they say that "power" is a dominant theme in scripture.  

Even though there are different underlying words in the original language of the Bible and then also differences in meaning, every one of these words are related.  Authority requires might.  Someone can tell somebody what to do, but unless he has the ability to enforce it, he doesn't have authority.  He is both lawgiver and judge, the latter including the ability to punish.  With regard to this issue, consider the following two verses:

James 4:12, There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

Matthew 10:28, And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Everywhere we look we see might, strength, and capability, and the existence of those results in control and command of one entity or person over another.  All of that power comes from somewhere.  The existence, life, and order of things depends on power all of the time.  It doesn't just happen, neither does it look random.  It shows purpose and organization.

The Bible starts with God as the Cause of everything, including energy.  All power proceeds from God's power that He has always possessed.  The origin of energy in scripture starts with God moving in Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of God moved.  Speaking of Jesus, Colossians 1:17 says, "And he is before all things, and by him all things consist."  Hebrews 1:3 says He upholds "all things by the word of his power."

Maybe you've heard of the fine tuning of the universe.  It reads:

The Fine-Tuning Argument, to be abbreviated by FTA in what follows, claims that the present Universe (including the laws that govern it and the initial conditions from which it has evolved) permits life only because these laws and conditions take a very special form, small changes in which would make life impossible.

I always like to say that there are hundreds of things going right at every given moment for us even to survive.  One of these is that the power stays on.  Always.  Even as I wrote this and you are reading it, it should occur to you that you're breathing, you exist, and you're not sitting or standing there worrying about it.  And yet, it doesn't just happen.