If you’re old enough you’ll remember Popeye cartoons. Popeye’s secret ingredient, which pumped up his biceps and powered his punch, was spinach. Now, unless you’ve been terribly disadvantaged you’ll also have heard of Jesus Christ, whose powerful deeds in Israel 2,000 years ago were a lot more historic than Popeye’s, and were not limited to the reach of a physical arm. Every Jew who knew Jesus personally then, called Him by His Hebrew name, Yeshua; and those who became convinced of His divinity by observing the display of His power, added to His name the title Ha Mashiach (The Messiah).

Yeshua, even while He lived in Galilee as a mortal, had the most powerful ‘punch’ recorded in history. Read the Gospels – the story of Yeshua’s incarnation told in the Bible by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and you’ll know about the power of Yeshua’s ‘punch’. It sent diseases packing, leaving their former victims healthy; it sent evil spirits (demons of all sorts) packing, leaving their former victims restored to soundness and self control. It threw curveballs at some secular and religious authorities that they could neither dodge nor hit; it punched down social barriers that no-one else thought to (or dared to) challenge. It left the devil himself speechless and defeated at his own game – death. It brought vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, liberation to captives, elevation to the downtrodden, affirmation to the undervalued, and raised the dead back to life.

Yeshua’s disciples tried to do as He did – to exercise that same ‘punch’ against the devil’s work in their environment, but at first they disappointed themselves and disappointed some others. We read of one such occasion in Matthew 17:14-21 and Mark 9:14-29, where they failed to help a child who was tormented by epilepsy, and whose father had appealed to them for healing ministry. That father aparently concluded that they lacked something, and that He should go directly to the Source of the power that could heal his son. After Yeshua responded to the father’s appeal and healed the child, the disciples also realized that something was missing from their ‘punch’ and asked their Master what it was.

Yeshua said (Matthew 17:21), “This kind does not go out (Mark 9:29 – ‘come out‘) except by prayer and fasting.” Although the inclusion of this fasting reference is under debate by some Christians based on its exclusion from some manuscripts, the fact that Yeshua underpinned His power-packed ministry with an inaugural 40-days-and-40-nights fast is undisputed (Matthew 4:2, Luke 4:2). Besides, the fact that His subsequent ministry was totally effective against the devil’s influence is also undisputed among believers. The only time that the devil may seem (in unenlighted eyes) to have gotten the better of Him was on the days of His betrayal, capture, trial and crucifixion.

Yeshua countered this predictable misperception in advance by promising His fellow Jews, at His most memorable Passover visit to Jerusalem (John 2:19, 21): “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up … He was speaking of the temple of His body.” He later explained, this time specifically to the Pharisees (John 10:17-18), “I lay down my life … no-one takes it from me. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again.” Later still, as His persecution approached its climax and Peter cut off an attacker’s ear in defence of his Master, Yeshua said to Peter (Matthew 26:52-53), “Put your sword back… do you suppose that I cannot call on My Father, and at once He will place at my side twelve legions of angels?” Then He assured the crowd of witnesses (Matthew 26:56), “All this (His capture, which He had allowed) was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Three days after His crucified body was consigned to a sealed and guarded tomb, Yeshua did just what He had said he would. He raised His own ‘dead’ body back to life to demonstrate His victory over the devil, death and the grave, and so that He could use the same body (now glorified) on earth for forty more days.

The source of this power that Yeshua had at His disposal to use as He saw fit, was divine. However, this unmatched power could only be exercised through a mortal body because Yeshua had totally submitted that mortal body to the Godhead through prayer and fasting.       [To be continued.]

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