Week of 27 June 2021
HWMR
The Factor of Closely Following the Completed Vision of the Age through the Ministry of the Age
In every age there is the vision of that age, and since we have the completed vision of the age through the ministry of the age, we need to serve God according to this vision and closely follow it. Today we can be in one accord because we have only one vision, an up-to-date, all-inheriting vision, the vision of the eternal economy of God, which is God’s eternal intention with His heart’s desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity as the Father in the Son by the Spirit into His chosen people to be their life and nature that they may be the same as He is as His duplication, to become an organism, the Body of Christ as the new man for God’s fullness, God’s expression, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
The vision that the Lord has given to us in His present recovery is the all- inclusive vision of God’s eternal economy with its ultimate consummation— the vision of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is the total composition of the entire revelation of the Bible. Our living out the New Jerusalem is for us to become the New Jerusalem, and our working out the New Jerusalem is for us to build the New Jerusalem by the flowing Triune God. Every local church should be a miniature of the New Jerusalem, and every believer should be “a little New Jerusalem”; whatever is ascribed to the New Jerusalem should be both our corporate and personal experience. The New Jerusalem is the embodiment of God’s complete salvation with its judicial and organic aspects. As we experience each section of God’s organic salvation, we go up level by level, that is regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed, glorified, until we become beings in the New Jerusalem.
To live out and work out the New Jerusalem is to live out and work out God’s complete salvation according to the intrinsic essence and totality of the unique New Testament ministry, the ministry of the age, for the reality of the Body of Christ and a new revival. The ministry of the Spirit is the ministry of the new covenant to deify us by inscribing our hearts with the Spirit of the living God as the divine and mystical “ink,” making us the living letters of Christ—this is the highest peak of the divine revelation. The ministry of righteousness is the ministry of Christ as our objective righteousness for our justification and as our subjective righteousness “embroidered” into us by the transforming work of the Spirit for the living out and reconciliation is the ministry of reconciling the world to Christ through the forgiveness of sins for their judicial redemption and the reconciling of the believers to Christ that they might be persons who live in the spirit, in the Holy of Holies, for their organic salvation—this is shepherding people according to God.
The Lord’s recovery brings us back to the unique ministry of the New Testament; this ministry has the following characteristics: one, it ministers the healthy teaching of God’s economy and wars the good warfare against the different and strange teachings of the dissenters with the strange fire of man’s natural enthusiasm, natural affection, natural strength, and natural ability; two, it produces the local churches as the golden lampstands to be the testimony of Jesus with the same essence, appearance, and expression, and it builds up the one Body of Christ by the one Spirit, perfecting all of us into the oneness of the Triune God; three, it prepares the overcomers to be Christ’s bride, His “queen,” in Himself as the “royal abode” and in the local churches as the “palaces of ivory” to consummate in the New Jerusalem as the “King’s palace”; it betroths us to Christ, stirring up our love for Him in the simplicity and the purity toward Christ, to make us His queen; four, it strengthens us to follow Christ in the fellowship of His sufferings on the pathway to glory, the way of the cross, for the manifestation and multiplication of life; five, it dispenses Christ as grace, truth, life, and the Spirit into us for our revelation of Christ, our enjoyment of Christ, and our growth in life that we may be saved in life to reign in life; six, it sanctifies us through the word of the truth and the washing of the water in the word; it also shepherds us with the cherishing and nourishing presence of the pneumatic Christ; seven, it tears down hierarchy and blends us into one, making us all brothers of Christ, slaves of Christ, and members of Christ to be the one Body of Christ in reality; eight, it brings all of us into function to practice the God-ordained way and leads us to follow the Lamb wherever He may go for the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to the whole inhabited earth; nine, it brings us into a new revival of living out the New Jerusalem and working out the New Jerusalem to gain the reality of the Body of Christ as the highest peak in God’s economy.
(Source: https://www.churchintaipei.org/bible-truth/conference-training.html)
Experience of Christ as Life
Enjoying Christ by Taking the Word as Food
God's intention is to give Himself to us as our enjoyment in Christ through the Spirit. Therefore, we have to know how to enjoy Christ. Then we will have the proper Christian life. Both the Christian life and the church life depend on one thing: the enjoyment of Christ. To enjoy God in Christ is simply to deal with two things—the word and the Spirit. We have the Holy Bible in our hands, and we have the Holy Spirit in our spirit. Both the Holy Bible and the Holy Spirit are the means for us to enjoy Christ. Christ is the Word, and He is the Spirit. Therefore, in order to enjoy Christ we have to deal with the word and the Spirit.
There are two different ways to read the word. One way is to read the word but not contact Christ. Too many Christians read the word without ever contacting Christ. This is the wrong way. The right way to read the word is to realize that the word is not mainly for knowledge but for food. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God” . Jeremiah 15:16 says, “Your words were found and I ate them.” We need to eat the word, because the word is food.
Physical food is for our body, so we have to eat it with our body and take it into our body. In the same principle, the word is spiritual food, food for the spirit, so we have to eat it with our spirit and take it into our spirit. We all have to learn how to take the word by our spirit and into our spirit. There is no other way to do this but by praying. We must pray over, pray about, and pray with whatever we read and understand. This is something that is very much overlooked by Christians today. Many Christians read the Bible, but not many read the Bible in this way.
We need to buy physical food, prepare it by cooking, and set aside fifteen to twenty-five minutes to eat it. We should not eat too fast. We need the adequate time to eat properly. We can rush into a supermarket to buy something hastily, and we can throw something on the stove quickly, but we cannot throw something into our stomach too quickly. We need the time to chew and eat in a fine way. In the same way, we need some time day by day to take the word finely, not by exercising our mind to understand but by exercising our innermost part, our spirit. To take the word in this way, we need to pray over what we read and understand, that is, to pray-read. We must learn to pray, not in a formal way by composing a prayer but in an informal way, just as we talk with our loved ones.
Sometimes we may need to read the Bible to gain some knowledge of the Bible. We may also need to go to the dictionary to learn the meaning of new words that we find. However, this is not the main way to deal with the word. The main thing we need is to take twenty to thirty minutes, at least once a day, although three times is better, to deal with the word not merely to know it but to eat it, digest it, and transfer it into the Spirit. Do not say that you have no time to do this. If you do not have the time to spend in the word, it is better not to spend your time on a physical meal. Rather, spend one physical meal time for a spiritual meal. Do not be afraid that you will be short of one meal. I assure you that you will be more healthy. In order to be spiritually healthy, we need to take at least one spiritual meal day by day.
We cannot expect a brother to be normal and healthy in his Christian life if he does not know how to eat the Lord by dealing with the word. Regardless of how many messages we give people and of how good those messages are, if those who hear them do not know how to eat the Lord, drink the Lord, and feast on the Lord, the messages will not work for them. We may have messages on the cross and about many other things, but we still need to feed on the Lord, drink of Him, and feast on Him. This is of the greatest importance. I hope that we will all practice this day by day, especially in the morning. We need to spend at least ten minutes with the Lord to feast on Him by eating the word.
(Enjoying Christ as the Word and the Spirit through Prayer, chap. 5)
On the Gospel
Practicing the Priesthood of the Gospel
The New Testament revelation concerning the priesthood of the gospel is entirely different from the practice in Christianity. Because the priesthood of the gospel is according to the divine, biblical revelation and not according to human thought, we have to receive it. This divine revelation will revolutionize our entire concept and change our entire practice. We are believers chosen by God, redeemed by Christ, and regenerated by the Spirit. Now we are priests. A priest is one who is so close to God, who is one with God, and who can have God's oracle to speak to people. Such a one can also bring God to man and bring man back to God.
The Old Testament priests handled only the types of Christ that pointed to the coming Christ, but we New Testament priests have received Christ, and Christ has entered into us. Now we are in Christ, and Christ is in us. We are even one with Christ, so whatever He is and has is ours. We can go out in the condition of the Triune God being wholly one with us. We go out with the Triune God. We go to command the sinners to repent with the authority of Christ. The Lord Jesus said that all authority had been given to Him in heaven and on earth, and then He charged us to go and disciple all the nations . We go to disciple the nations with His authority, baptizing them into the Triune God. We do not just impart the Triune God into them. After they receive the Triune God, we have to baptize them into the Triune God to make them one with God. To preach the gospel is to go out with Christ and with His divine authority to visit our relatives, friends, classmates, colleagues, and neighbors. We have to preach the gospel as priests, making this a part of our daily walk, our daily life.
To go to visit sinners and get them saved that they may be made the sons of God and the members of Christ is the first step of the priestly service, the priesthood. The New Testament priests are linked with the gospel. In the past when we talked about the priests, we never thought about the gospel. We considered that the priests and the gospel were two absolutely separate items. This shows that we were short of spiritual sight, spiritual vision. We did not see that the preaching of the gospel is the priesthood. We need to see that the priesthood is linked with the preaching of the gospel. The preaching of the gospel is our daily life, our daily work, because the preaching of the gospel is the work and the duty of the New Testament priests.
If the offering of the sacrifices were taken away from the Old Testament priests, they would have nothing to do; they would have no daily living. Everything would be meaningless to them. The daily work and the daily living of the New Testament priests is also to offer the sacrifices in reality. While we are preaching the gospel, we are the energizing priests, fulfilling our daily duty to offer the saved sinners to God as acceptable sacrifices. From now on, whenever we preach the gospel to sinners, we must have the deep sensation that we are the energizing priests, struggling and endeavoring to do our daily duty to fulfill our priesthood. This realization will make a great difference in our daily life. If we do not understand that our preaching of the gospel is the fulfilling of our priestly duty, we will only preach the gospel when we feel like it. When we are happy, we will preach the gospel. When we are not happy, we will forget about preaching the gospel. If something is our duty, however, we do not do it according to how we feel.
To illustrate this, let us consider a sister who is a housewife. A good housewife is always on duty. She may have three children—one in kindergarten, one in elementary school, and another one in junior high school. Every morning she is busy preparing breakfast for each one. All three children are different with their particular characteristics, and they may want different things for breakfast. One may want a soft-boiled egg, and another may want scrambled eggs. The third child may want his eggs cooked the way that he saw them cooked in the school cafeteria. Thus, every morning the mother makes eggs for her children in three different, particular ways. After they eat breakfast, she has to drive them to different schools at different times. This is her duty as a mother and as a housewife. She cannot tell her children that she is tired and that they need to take care of themselves. She fulfills her daily duty regardless of how she feels.
Because she realizes that this is her duty as a housewife, she carries out her daily duty regardless of her feeling. Do we realize that we have to preach the gospel because it is our duty? Have we preached the gospel with the deep sensation that we are fulfilling our duty? Our preaching of the gospel is to carry out God's New Testament economy, and this is the New Testament priesthood assigned to God's children as priests.
To fulfill such a duty, we must be the energizing priests. To be a mother raising up children, in a certain respect, is a joyful thing, but in order for a mother, a housewife, to fulfill her daily duty, she must be energizing. Paul practiced the priesthood in the same way. In Romans 15:16 he says that he was a minister of Christ Jesus, an energizing priest of the gospel of God. He was an energizing priest to offer the Gentiles to God as acceptable sacrifices. Because Paul saw and realized this, he took this as his daily duty. One day our feelings may be very high, and we may want to preach the gospel everywhere. Two days later we may feel down, and we will not want to preach the gospel. This is why I do not like to see the saints so excited in a natural way. We may be excited one day and down the next day. What we need is a daily revival. We need to live a priest's life. We have been chosen, saved, regenerated, and ordained to be the New Testament priests of the gospel. Now we are not so free because we have a priestly duty to fulfill.
To fulfill our priestly duty, we have to learn to be energizing. The first thing we have to do is to get sinners saved. God has chosen thousands of people on this earth and has ordained them to be the sons of peace, but we have to go out to visit people to find these sons of peace . Whether or not someone is a son of peace cannot be determined by only one visit. We may have knocked on a man's door when he was fighting with his wife. When we tell him that we have come to preach the gospel to him, he will not have a heart for it. We should not think that he is not a son of peace. We visited him at the wrong time. We better try to go back to him again after three weeks. Three weeks later he may be happy when we visit him. Then he will receive us and also receive the Lord. In Luke 10 the Lord told the seventy that He sent them out as lambs in the midst of wolves . It is hard to say just by one visit whether a person is a son of peace or a wolf. We must go back to visit people again and again.
The Lord Jesus gained His disciples by His traveling. When He was traveling by the seashore of Galilee, He called Peter, Andrew, James, and John (Matt. 4:18-22). Later as He traveled, He saw Matthew the tax collector sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me” (9:9). Luke 8:1 tells us that the Lord Jesus traveled from city to city and from village to village to visit and gain the sinners. In the Lord's earthly ministry He did not formally arrange to have big meetings. Instead, He traveled to bring the gospel to sinners. Therefore, as the New Testament priests fulfilling our New Testament priesthood, the first thing that we have to do is to go to visit the sinners where they are. If they are not at home but working in the factory, we may need to go visit them in the factory during the time that they have a break. Our preaching of the gospel is not just the outward form of knocking on doors. We must visit people and gain them where they are.
When we go to visit people, we go as priests of God with God's authority. When we go in this way, our speaking will be with authority. Only the Spirit knows what we will speak. If we live a life of the priesthood, we will go out to preach the gospel with much prayer. Then our going will be our being sent out by the Lord. When we visit people, we will always say something instantly to meet the instant need. When someone answers the door, we may say, “We were sent by Jesus Christ to come here to pass on grace and peace to you.” When we speak in this way, the person to whom we speak will respond in a positive way. He may say that he wants grace and peace and that he would like to know who Jesus Christ is.
If we go out to visit people in a loose way without much prayer and only tell them that the church sent us here to preach the gospel, they will turn us away. We must go out to visit people with much prayer and with much realization that we are not ordinary persons but God's priests. When we visit someone with the gospel, we may tell him, “God sent me to see you to make you rich.” When we tell someone that we are coming to make him rich, he will be happy. We are telling him the truth. We came to make him rich in salvation, rich in Christ, rich in grace, rich in peace, and rich in many other things. He is a poor person, but we have come to make him rich. The point I am making is that the Spirit knows how to lead us to speak a particular word. Quite often we do not need to say too much to someone. After a little conversation he may be ready to pray to receive the Lord.
We need to take the preaching of the gospel as our duty and do it regularly, constantly, and continuously. It is best if we would make a budget of our time. Now that we have seen that the preaching of the gospel is our daily duty, we need to realize that this does not mean that we have to deliver a child every day. Even in the natural realm it normally takes a woman nine months to deliver a child. We should not go out and get too many people baptized in one day. That would be foolish because we could not take care of all of them. We need to exercise “birth control” in our preaching of the gospel. We should just go out one or two nights a week until we can get two or three people baptized. Sometimes in one night we may get three baptized in one home—a husband, his wife, and their son. After baptizing them, we should stay with them for a long time and then go back to them the next day. We should not go to knock on more doors because these three babies are enough for us to care for. We should go back to them frequently to feed them and to care for them. Mothers know that their feeding of their little ones must be regular, constant, and continuous. We should go back to visit these new ones again and again until we realize that they are settled in the Christian faith.
We can bring them to the group meetings so that they can become acquainted with other Christians and have fellowship with them. They need the mutual care and mutual shepherding in the group meetings. We can also bring them to the larger church meetings where they can participate with the saints to prophesy for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ. It is best if we can spend an entire year to take care of these new ones so that they will be kept as remaining fruit and be perfected to do the same thing that we are doing in our priestly service.
After we feel that these new ones have been raised up, we can go out to get some others saved, and we can do this kind of work year-round. If we can arrange our time properly, this will not be too difficult for us to carry out. To raise up children is not an easy task, but if we do it properly, regularly, constantly, and continuously, it will not be too difficult. Our labor to raise up the new ones is like the raising up of our children. If we labor in this way, we can gain one or two remaining fruit year-round. If many saints labor as priests of the gospel, there will be a good percentage of increase in all the local churches.
(The Advance of the Lord's Recovery Today, Chapter 10 )
