Okay, the other word is the word power. Now the word power is the word dunamis; you shall receive power from on high. That's a different word altogether. That is the anointing. That is the presence of God to enable you to get this to happen, so Jesus received authority as part of His commission, but it's intimacy and obedience that maintains the flow of anointing. So what we were doing today was getting you to arise inside in your spirit, and as you arose and built your spirit life and developed the flow from within, you can feel the anointing flowing. So to describe the difference between authority and power we use an illustration. If a person trains to become a policeman, he eventually comes to a point after his training where he makes an oath of allegiance to the Government. That means I will act on behalf of the Government to fulfil its mandate, okay? Then they give him a uniform and they give him a gun - if you're in some of the countries they give him a gun, even in our country they give him a gun.
Now the authority is seen in the uniform, because when you meet that person, you're not meeting the man, you're meeting the authority of the Government. If you saw him on the road and he put his hand up you probably wouldn't say a thing, but you see him in his uniform and suddenly, if you're speeding, fear grips your heart [laughter] because you become aware of authority, and the call to account for your life. There's nothing like an exposure with authority to suddenly show what's in your heart. If you're speeding down the road, and you see a policeman step out in a black uniform, hold his hand up, suddenly you'll have all kinds of emotional things go on inside you. Now if you try to push past him, you are now up against the whole of the Government. He's not acting on his own behalf. When he's fulfilling his assignment, he's acting as a representative of Government; you take him on, you're taking the Government on.
The second thing is they have a gun, so if you don't stop, they can force you to stop - start shooting. They don't have so much of that here, but it's common overseas, and so we need authority, and to know what our authority is, and we also need power, the flow of the spirit that accomplishes what we want. These are two separate and quite distinct things. Got the idea? Okay then, now so what I want to do is, I want to look at the authority that we've been given, and to just briefly look at what Jesus accomplished on the cross. In Colossians 2, Verses 12 through to 15, is a very important verse. Demons hate this verse, because it describes something very important that Jesus did. Now you being dead in your trespasses and sins and uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with Him. So when Jesus died, we died with Him. When He was buried, we were buried with Him, and when He rose, we rose with Him, see? So we are risen, and he says notice, having forgiven you, some of your trespasses. Hmm? All. All. This is a crucial thing - all of your trespasses, having absolutely wiped away the handwriting of requirements that was against us, that was contrary to us, He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross; having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
Now in Jesus' walk on the earth, He was obedient in every aspect of His life, but when He went to the cross and died on the cross, He acted as our representative, and accomplished something for us at the cross. The Bible says He disarmed spirit powers, stripped off their clothes and weapons, totally took away from them the weapon, or the power of the weapons they had, and He triumphed. He completely won a great and mighty victory over them. Now what happened is this. The original Adam was given authority in the earth. He was created to have dominion. The Bible tells us that when Adam disobeyed and sinned, there was a transference. He lost his right to rule. It was taken over by the devil, so realms of the spirit that Adam and his descendants were supposed to occupy, then became occupied by demonic spirits, as far as I can understand.
So the devil, when he came to Jesus, said: all of this power has been delivered or surrendered to me, so he said: I've got a legal right to rule the earth. I conquered your ruler. Got the idea? That's how it works. We understand that, you know, you go in and conquer someone, you rule their territory. It's as simple as that. The old rules of war - so the devil conquered Adam, and as a result of conquering Adam, then he now had authority and rights, legal rights. So when Jesus came, He came as a representative, totally obedient to the Father all His life, obedient right to the point of death on the cross. But when He died on the cross, what He did was He legally broke the power of the devil to hold people in bondage. He broke the power of death, and so this is a legal thing that has happened. Now what does the devil use primarily against you? He uses sin, iniquity, trespasses. He uses the breaking of the laws of God.