Who can resist the Saviour’s word

Verse 1
Who can resist the Saviour’s word,
The power of heaven’s Almighty Lord?
To stay its course, in vain are join’d
The rage and wisdom of mankind;
When God commands it must prevail
O’re all the strength of earth and hell.

Verse 2
See, from a single chamber spread
The gospel runs with rapid speed,
As lightning darted from the skies,
To temples, houses, streets it flies,
In markets, prisons, fields, and inns
In camps and courts the hearers wins.

Verse 3
Chariots it doth, and ships ascend,
To villages and cities tend,
To Islands wanders unconfin’d,
And challenges the ransom’d kind,
Asserts an universal claim,
And seizes all in Jesus Name.

Verse 4
Heathens it apprehends and Jews,
People and magistrates subdues,
O’re soldiers and o’re generals reigns,
Eunuchs, and slaves, and captives gains,
Women and babes its net receives,
And faith to stubborn sailors gives.

Verse 5
Swiftly it runs from east to west,
Its power throughout the earth confest.
From realm to realm, from sea to sea,
Spreads the Redeemer’s victory,
And glories finally t’ o’recome
Proud Athens, and imperial Rome.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘They went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter &c.’—[Acts 1,] v. 13.” This hymn appears in the 1764 manuscript “MS Acts.” This manuscript is part of the collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester (accession number MA 1977/555, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 138.
Publishing: Public Domain