“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” – John 14:12
Here in the fourteenth chapter of John we read the Master’s word, the Master’s desire: “Greater things than these shall he do.” Why was His prospective so full? Because He had admiration before Him. Jesus had great admiration before Him when He saw the disciples. He knew He had the material that would bring out that which would prove to the world a real satisfaction—to heaven and to the world.
Those glorified, exercised, wonderfully modified, and then glorified positions of these fishermen were surely ideal places. What were they? Unlearned, in one place. (Not that I am going to build on an unlearned position.) Ignorant men in another place (not that I am going to build on that). But look—they were unlearned, but God taught them. It is far better to have the learning of the Spirit than anything else. They were ignorant. He enlarged them. They were beside themselves because they had been touched with the divine life. If the Most High God touches you, you will be beside yourself. As long as you hold your own, the natural and the spiritual will be mixed. But if ever you jump over the traces by the power of the new creation, you will find He has got hold of you.
Divine wisdom will never make you foolish. Divine wisdom will give you a sound mind. Divine wisdom will give you a touch of divine nature. Divine life is full of divine appointment and equipment, and you cannot be filled with the power of God without a manifestation. I would to God today that we understood to be filled with the Holy Ghost is to be filled with manifestation, the glory of the Lord being in the midst of us, manifesting His divine power.
Jesus knew that these people He had before Him were going to do greater things than He had done. How could they do it? None of us is able. None of us is capable. But our incapability has to be clothed with His divine ability, and our helplessness has to be filled with His power of helpfulness. This is why He knew.
He knew He was going away and that if He went away it was expedient, it was necessary, it was important that another came in His place and took up the same thing in them as He had been telling them: “I in you and you in Me.” There was a plan of divine order. So the Holy Ghost was to come.
