Life Study Of 2 Corinthians

In the Lord’s recovery during the past five hundred years the church’s knowledge of the Lord and His truth has been continually progressing. This monumental and classical work by Brother Witness Lee builds upon and is a further development of all that the Lord has revealed to His church in the past centuries. It is filled with the revelation concerning the processed Triune God, the living Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the experience of life, and the definition and practice of the church. In this set Brother Lee has kept three basic principles that should rule and govern every believer in their interpretation, development, and expounding of the truths contained in the Scriptures. The first principle is that of the Triune God dispensing Himself into His chosen and redeemed people; the second principle is that we should interpret, develop, and expound the truths contained in the Bible with Christ for the church; and the third governing principle is Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. No other study or exposition of the New Testament conveys the life nourishment or ushers the reader into the divine revelation of God’s holy Word according to His New Testament economy as this one does.

In this series of messages we want to study the prophecy of the four 'sevens' in the Bible. If we are going to know the prophecy concerning the consummation of this present age, we need to know the truth concerning these four 'sevens.' In [the first] message we want to see the prophecy of the first 'seven,' which is the last seven years of this age spoken of as the last week of the seventy weeks in Daniel 9. The three other sets of 'sevens' are in the book of Revelation. They are the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. Revelation may be considered as a book of prophecy constituted with these three sets of 'sevens.' The first 'seven' in Daniel 9 is related to these three sets of 'sevens' in Revelation. The prophecy of these four 'sevens' is related to the Messiah (Christ), the nation of Israel, the New Testament believers, and the church.

In this life-study, Witness Lee opens up Paul’s second Epistle to the Corinthians, a book on the new covenant ministry and its ministers. The first Epistle to the Corinthians was the apostle’s argument, an argument that defeated and subdued the distracted and confused Corinthians. Now, the second Epistle brought them back into the experience of Christ, who was the subject of his argument in the first Epistle. Hence, the second Epistle is more experiential, more subjective, and deeper than the first. In the first, Christ, the Spirit with our spirit, the church, and the gifts are covered as the major subjects. In the second, Christ, the Spirit with our spirit, and the church are developed further, but the gifts are not even mentioned. The gifts are replaced in this book by the ministry, which is constituted with, and produced and formed by, the experiences of the riches of Christ gained through sufferings, consuming pressures, and the killing work of the cross. This Epistle gives us a pattern, an example, of how the killing of the cross works, how Christ is wrought into our being, and how we become the expression of Christ. These processes constitute the ministers of Christ and produce the ministry for God’s new covenant.