Mar 10, 2020
Fluctuation or Frequency of the Power of the Spirit
Fluctuation of the power of the Spirit of God is a biblical reality, even if it is not a well-known biblical concept. Here’s why.
The fluctuation of the power of the Spirit of God. Whatever is that?!! It is a down-to-earth, biblical explanation of how the Spirit of God functions. Yes, we can understand aspects of how God’s power operates. In fact, this comprehension opens up an insight into the Universe.
Now for an additional contour in the shape of the ruach puzzle piece. The fluctuation of the spirit. Fluctuation in the sense of its power. You can turn it up and down as we’d say with a dimmer switch on a light. Yes, this sounds strange, but let’s take a look.
We’ve discussed how God’s Spirit moved on the face of the waters. There’s an interface between the spiritual world of God (His Spirit) and the physical world (the waters) of humankind on Earth. There are two different but related phenomena. According to the Bible, the spirit is real. According to the Bible and the Universe, the physical is real.
I could stop right here and debate both the reality of the spirit and the physical There is science that denies the spirit, and there is philosophy that rejects the physical. Then there is quantum theory with its waves and points that are now energy fields. We shall not get into such a debate. Why? Because The Explanation departs from and maintains a particular pathway which it considers logical, indeed theo-logical. We are basing our theory, if you want to use that expression, on God’s Logos (Theo-Logic) or God’s Word.
If you don’t agree with or dispute that basis, that’s fine. It’s your call, and your choice and I respect that. But Theo-Logic, God’s Word is the choice of The Explanation, and we depart from that foundation. There’s God’s Spirit and physical water along with the rest of the physical universe, including you and me.
Biblical Hebrew elaborates both of these opposing aspects of the word ruach. As a reminder, Stong gathers the KJV translations and we see spirit (spiritual) and breath (physical). In the entry H7307 below, we see this dichotomy. It is vital to understand that from the very first words in the Bible, these two environments are givens in theology.
Here’s another aspect of the spiritual and the physical. Genesis 1:1 starts: God (spirit) created Earth (physical). It shows the relationship (created) between the spirit and the physical. Let me be very clear. By rejecting God (spirit) and the created (the relationship between the spirit and the physical) literally, two-thirds of this equation is discarded. Put another way, in a puzzle made of three pieces; two are rejected. How can you ever expect to get complete coherence with just one out of three pieces? You can’t. Genesis 1:1–2 is the starting point of true theology. Straightforwardly, they set the stage for the whole story of the Spiritual working with the physical.
H7307
רוּחַ rûwach roo’-akh; from H7306 (רוּחַ); wind; by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible (or even violent) exhalation; figuratively, life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extension, a region of the sky; by resemblance spirit, but only of a rational being (including its expression and functions):
KJV — air, anger, blast, breath, ⨯ cool, courage, mind, ⨯ quarter, ⨯ side, spirit(-ual), tempest, ⨯ vain, (whirl-) wind(-y).
Today I’d like you to notice another aspect of the ruach. It’s fluctuating nature. God can alter its strength. God can modulate its power. The translations used for ruach indicate this: air, breath, wind, windy, blast, tempest, whirlwind. That list of modulations goes crescendo. Once again, this is not Sam Kneller’s idea. All I’ve done is take the KJV translations we find for Strong’s H7307 and placed them in ascending rather than alphabetic order, which is what Strong does.
From air to whirlwind with increasing speed and directional movement. From the stillness of air to the tourbillon of a tornado or hurricane. from the silence and tranquility of the eye of a cyclone to the din and uproar of its outer towering thunderstorms. Notice also that wind and breath (unless in icy cold conditions) are invisible while a whirlwind is visible to the naked eye. Now that you’re aware of this Bible fact of fluctuation of the Spirit of God, you will see it in your study. Here are a few verses that refer to the Spirit even if they don’t all directly use that word.
Judges 14:6, 19
The Spirit of the LORD came upon him [Samson] mightily, so that he tore him [a lion] as one tears a young goat though he had nothing in his hand…
A normal man can’t rip up a lion. With the additional power of a certain amount of the Spirit, this becomes possible.
Zechariah 4:6
Then he [God] said to me [the prophet Zechariah], “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.Here’s a striking contrast. On the one hand, human physical strength. On the other, the Power of God’s Spirit. You can imagine which of these has the upper hand. It is the two rejected pieces of the three-piece puzzle I referred to above.
Micah 3:8
But truly I [the prophet Micah] am full of power by the spirit of the LORD, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.Mark 5:30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue (G1410 dunamis — power, see Further Study below) had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?
Meditate this example. Here is the context (verses 28–29), And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but instead grew worse. If I may touch but his [Jesus] clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.
It harks back to Gen. 1:1 Firstly, God created Earth, here God healed physical sickness. The Spirit over the material. Secondly, the fluctuation of the Spirit. Jesus felt a portion of Spirit had left him. I want to be careful in my analogies and certainly not disrespectful. But it’s like a voltmeter with a sudden variation. A blip in the continuity if you could watch the voltage on a graph. You can see the blip in any change; Christ could feel this variation in the amount of Spirit He possessed. This variation of the Power of the Spirit of God is a reality.
I don’t want to get into all the ramifications of this fluctuation of the Power of the Spirit, but for those of you who know your Bible think about Mark 9:28–29. The disciples could not cast out a powerful demon (even demons have fluctuation of powers). “And when he [Jeses] was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him [the powerful demon] out? And he said to them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting. The implication is the disciples did not have enough spiritual power. The only way to receive more of God’s Spirit power is by proper prayer and fasting.
Here is another example of fluctuation with the added solution of how to maintain, stabilize, and increase the power of God’s Spirit.
Christ was brimful with the Power of the Spirit as John 3:34 tells us: For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God: for God gives not the Spirit by measure to him; this is the fullness of the Holy Spirit also referred to in Acts 10:38. You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with Him.
This power is the means whereby the spiritual acts on the physical. It is what makes miracles miraculous. Human beings can receive this same Power of the Spirit. They receive it in proportion to the role God calls them to accomplish. Some receive more, some less, this is the fluctuation.
Acts 1:8
But you [Apostles] shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come on you: and you shall be witnesses to me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth.Romans 15:13
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Apostles received enough power to witness to Christ worldwide. The disciples in Rome received the joy, peace, believing, and hope that comes from the power of God’s Spirit. The Apostles had these qualities too. And obviously, the disciples in Rome witnessed very locally. But the take away is that the Apostles and disciples had different functions and different amounts of the Holy Spirit to accomplish their given tasks.
1 Thessalonians 1:5
For our gospel came not to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.
The Apostle Paul spoke words in Thessalonica. And, through the power of the Spirit, he did much more than that. He had the assurance to speak boldly despite persecution (1 Thes. 2:2). Paul referred to the possibility of quenching (diminishing or lowered fluctuation) of the Spirit (2 Thes. 5:19). He noted that there is also the wrong use of this spiritual power (2 Thes. 2:9 — G1411), talking about a false prophet with all power and signs and lying wonders. Someone filled with much more negative power (this power is not from God but rather from the Devil) than others in their entourage.
The Biblical Hebrew word ruach represents both the spiritual and the physical. It represents power or energy that fluctuates, flutters, and shakes. Question. On the physical level, how can we express this? I’d suggest:
Fluctuating Waves or Frequencies
The planets, our Sun, Sound, light, movement, sea waves, heartbeats, breathing, a pneumatic drill, a mixer, all have cycles or frequencies and waves. They have regular motion. We can feel the recurring pulse of a heartbeat, see the wave pattern at the seaside. Other systematic movements, like our orbiting moon, take much longer to visualize. And the oscillations of light are so rapid and short-lived that it is impossible to see the individual waves, we see it as a beam or stream.
I don’t want to get into too much physics here, but let’s realize that all this oscillating movement (vibrations) is because there’s more or less energy involved. It takes more energy to keep your TV functioning than a light bulb. There are more varieties and quantities of fluctuating vibrations going on in your TV than your light bulb, expressed another way. We could talk in terms of vibrations and frequencies as well. That’s where it begins to get intricate. To keep it simple, it takes more power and different circuits to run a TV compared to a light bulb.
The fluctuations of the ruach are characterized by breath, wind, windy, blast, tempest, whirlwind. The fluttering or, dare I say, the vibrations of the ruach, God’s Spirit as well as the spirit He’s given humans is characterized by the flapping wings of an eagle and bones shaking. The ruach refers to the spiritual and the physical.
The characteristic of power fluctuations and frequencies — vibrations — applies to both the spiritual and physical. The spiritual vibrates. The physical vibrates. Fluctuation, vibration, oscillation is the heart and core of the spiritual and the physical environments.
They are two different environments, but the key is to see there’s a continuity between the two. God (spiritual) created. Earth (physical). God’s Spirit moved on the waters. That Spirit flutters and fluctuates from the transformation of Earth to the healing of a woman with an issue of blood to distributing joy and hope, just as waters can be still rippled or tumultuous with waves depending on the energy deployed. So, Earth is transformed, or a healing is accomplished depending on the amount of Spirit deployed.
This video will give you some idea of the intricacies of frequencies and fluctuations, the vibrations behind the energy of our physical world.
The spirit realm consists of an unbelievable variety of power that goes far, far beyond our imagination and descriptive possibilities. Similarly, the physical realm is also an incredible variety of energy that goes far, far beyond what we imagined. As I write this, the first image of a black hole has been published. An incredible feat. Due, in part, to the energy of gravitational waves that bend light. Another testimony to the immense power of the physical universe.
Vibrations and fluctuation of energy and power are the reality of the spiritual and physical realms. The Spirit of God moved (fluttered, vibrated) on the waters. Light and heat vibrate to illuminate Earth. Quantum fluctuations make possible the material universe. The Explanation is bringing the spiritual and the physical into coherent completeness. This fascinating subject will continue.
This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 4.6 of the book Origin of Humankind
Further Study
In Mark 3:8 we saw virtue which is Strong’s G1410
G1411.
δύναμις dunamis doo’-nam-is; From G1410; force(literally or figuratively); specifically miraculous power(usually by implication a miracle itself):
KJV — ability abundance meaning might (-ily -y -y deed) (worker of) miracle (-s) power strength violence mighty (wonderful) work.
Do you see the modulation of God’s power? The different levels of power or energy needed for the following results? Ability, strength, mighty work, violence.
You can read all of the book Origin of Humankind online. Sam blogs weekly at TheExplanation.com The Explanation masters Biblical Hebrew to help you unlock more in-depth Bible meaning. Free tools to read and study the Bible online.
