LNTW, Chapter 10: The Powers Of The Age To Come

In this next-to-the-last chapter of Love Not The World, Watchman Nee presents his ideas about what the Christian should be able to accomplish in his/her work against the world and the enemy who controls it.  Here are some of the points which Nee appears to make (this was a somewhat more difficult chapter to summarize):
1.  Nee starts with citing Hebrews 6:5, that those in Christ have "tasted . . . the powers of the age to come."  What are those?  Nee reminds Christians of the future of glory to come, when the Kingdom of God and Christ, here now only through the workings of the Holy Spirit, will become the only Kingdom, replacing the kingdom of the world.  What "powers" of that time have we been given a small experience in?
2.  Things of the future to look forward to include:  salvation; eternal life; removal of all stumbling blocks against those things; every person knowing the Lord; and the whole earth being filled with "the knowledge of the glory of the Lord."  In Christ we have experienced some of these things, but not in all their fullness.  Yet Jesus told His disciples they had authority over the power of the enemy, and that He had seen Satan fall from heaven (Luke 10:18-19).  In Revelation, that is in the future, but was also a present fact for Jesus.
3.  If we Christians know now that we have salvation and eternal life, then we should be able to experience the other factors above as part of the fruits of Jesus' Cross and Resurrection.
4.  Nee makes this very interesting statement, that redemption was not in God's plan for man, only man's dominion over all the earth.  Satan acquired man's dominion through Adam's sinful fall.  Since then natural human life on earth is Satan's foothold in his territory.  But now God has redeemed man by removing him from the world's influence through the Cross of Christ, and through the Resurrection, death was also defeated.  Satan "no longer has rights in us."

5.  Then the author uses Psalm 8, Hebrews 2 and Genesis 1 in sequence to make his points.  In Psalm 8, only the original intent of creation - man's dominion - is noted; men are being brought to "glory and honor" by God, and mighty men are not needed to reduce the enemy's strength; "the mouth of babes" will do.  Hebrews 2 extends this idea to include the idea that everything was meant to be subject to man, but man fell and then was redeemed in Jesus Christ, who was made like man in order to destroy the power of death in the devil.  God's original goal for man remained unchanged, but we don't yet see all things put under subjection to man.  But in the Cross and the Resurrection, Christ has accomplished what man failed to do:  dominion over the world system.
6.  The Church has the responsibility to "register the victory of Christ" in Satan's territory - the world.  Nee then makes this complex statement:  "If there is to be a testimony to the principalities and powers, if the impact of Christ's sovereignty through His Cross is to be registered in the spiritual realm, it can only be as the judicial foothold in our hearts of the 'pretender' in the race is met and, by the same Cross, removed and repudiated."  That is our work in the world.  Nee states that the Gospel is necessary, but that the Church's work is not just the Gospel, or winning souls, but the reclaiming of a moral dominion over the world.  Going back to correcting the fall of Genesis 3 is not enough; the Church must go all the way back to Genesis 1, and establish the dominion that God means for man to have.
7.  Man was created to meet God's need, so we must get back to that by dealing directly with Satan himself and his power.  That means working in the realm of principalities and powers, and means meeting a higher cost than does winning souls.  Work in that spiritual realm requires what Nee calls "an utterness of spirit Godward."  He points out that evil spirits know who is sincere and powerful for God, and who is insincere and may be defied and/or ignored by them.  So to overthrow those evil spirits, we must have "utter allegiance to God."  There is no room for self in that endeavor; self-interest interferes with God's power in us against Satan.  The witness of evil spirits about us is more important than the praise of men.
8.  Nee finishes this chapter with three key questions:  I)  Are you and I in our lives here "utterly committed, utterly given to God"?  ii)  If so, are we now "tasting . . . the powers of that future glorious age?"  and iii)  "Are we reclaiming territory from [Satan] for the One whose alone it rightly is?"