The Ministry Of The Word Vol 02 No 10

This issue of The Ministry contains the third and fourth messages given by Brother Lee to the co-workers in Southern California in September 1996. These messages comprise a timely, loving warning from our brother to beware of four destructive matters: ambition, pride, self-justification and exposing others’ failures and defects, and not conforming to the death of Christ. Trouble after trouble has come to the Lord’s recovery over the years simply because of these four matters. But if we will deal with these four matters, the Lord’s recovery will immediately have a revival. In addition to dealing with these four matters, we must also be right in following others. In actuality, our leading is not a person but the divine truth, the divine vision. Consequently, our following others must be according to the divine truth and the divine vision. The next three messages in this issue are the concluding messages of the Living Stream Ministry’s Summer Training of 1998 on the Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Message Ten emphasizes the crucial matter of the dividing of soul and spirit for the experience of the reality of the Sabbath rest. Message Eleven indicates strongly that in order for the believers to be brought on to maturity (Heb. 6:1), we must progress from the word of the beginning of Christ—the milk—to the word of righteousness—the solid food. Message Twelve, as a conclusion to the summer training, stresses the critical need of being transformed and of being matured. To be transformed is to be metabolically changed in our natural life, whereas to be matured is to be filled with the divine life that changes us. We need to go on, to be brought on, to maturity by forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, pursuing toward the fullest enjoyment and gaining of Christ for the uttermost enjoyment of Christ in the millennial kingdom. Ultimately, the Lord’s desire to bring us on to maturity must be matched by our willing cooperation with His gracious work. Lastly, we include a report concerning the International Elders’ Training in October 1998, held on the new campus for the ministry in Anaheim, California.

This issue of The Ministry contains the third and fourth messages given by Brother Lee to the co-workers in Southern California in September 1996. These messages comprise a timely, loving warning from our brother to beware of four destructive matters: ambition, pride, self-justification and exposing others’ failures and defects, and not conforming to the death of Christ. Trouble after trouble has come to the Lord’s recovery over the years simply because of these four matters. But if we will deal with these four matters, the Lord’s recovery will immediately have a revival. In addition to dealing with these four matters, we must also be right in following others. In actuality, our leading is not a person but the divine truth, the divine vision. Consequently, our following others must be according to the divine truth and the divine vision. The next three messages in this issue are the concluding messages of the Living Stream Ministry’s Summer Training of 1998 on the Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Message Ten emphasizes the crucial matter of the dividing of soul and spirit for the experience of the reality of the Sabbath rest. Message Eleven indicates strongly that in order for the believers to be brought on to maturity (Heb. 6:1), we must progress from the word of the beginning of Christ—the milk—to the word of righteousness—the solid food. Message Twelve, as a conclusion to the summer training, stresses the critical need of being transformed and of being matured. To be transformed is to be metabolically changed in our natural life, whereas to be matured is to be filled with the divine life that changes us. We need to go on, to be brought on, to maturity by forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, pursuing toward the fullest enjoyment and gaining of Christ for the uttermost enjoyment of Christ in the millennial kingdom. Ultimately, the Lord’s desire to bring us on to maturity must be matched by our willing cooperation with His gracious work. Lastly, we include a report concerning the International Elders’ Training in October 1998, held on the new campus for the ministry in Anaheim, California.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word includes the last nine messages of the 2007 spring term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Believers." In the final two messages of the previous issue, we covered ten symbols of the believers in the Bible--the wheat of life, the good seed, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the fishers of men, a lamp, a city situated upon a mountain, the sun, virgins, and plants. In this issue we will consider thirty-one more symbols of the believers in the Bible--living stones, sheep, vessels of mercy unto honor and glory, grains of wheat, branches of the vine, branches of the cultivated olive tree, a wise master builder, stewards, a spectacle, the offscouring of the world and the scum of all things, the temple of the Holy Spirit, threshing oxen, contenders in a game, runners in a race, workman in carpentry, nursing mother, father, captives of Christ in His triumphal procession, incense-bearers, ambassadors, letters of Christ, mirrors, earthen vessels, pillars, luminaries, a laboring husbandman, a good soldier, stars, the man-child, the firstfruits and the harvest, and jasper and other precious stones. These symbols of the believers help us to see who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. Seeing who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us will revolutionize our living and bring us into the life and living of the divine-human mystical incorporation of the Triune God. In this divine-human incorporation the Triune God abides in us, and we abide in the Triune God as the mutual abode of God and man, in which we are being built together and structured together with the Triune God to be the New Jerusalem. There are no reports or announcements in this issue.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final nine messages given during the spring 2018 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "Enjoying the Riches of Christ for the Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ." These messages continue to emphasize the enjoyment of the indescribably rich and all-inclusive Christ as everything to us as seen in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, we see that we need to have a pure heart to see God, which is to gain God so that we may become God in life and nature. The more we experience and enjoy such an all-inclusive Christ, the more we will become the building material for and even the builders of the church, fulfilling the greatest prophecy in the Bible to bring in the kingdom of God.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final nine messages given during the spring 2017 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Mending Ministry of John." The overall subject of John's writings, which include his Gospel, his Epistles, and Revelation, is that the Triune God wants to dispense Himself into His chosen people as their life and life supply to make them divine so that they may express Him in full and for eternity. In Revelation John presents the consummate vision in the Bible and the ultimate fulfillment of God's eternal economy--the New Jerusalem. The mending ministry of John, carried out in the divine and mystical realm of the consummated Spirit, is for the living out and the working out of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is lived out by the believers becoming the New Jerusalem, and the New Jerusalem is worked out by the believers building the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate answer to the Lord's prayer in John 17 for the glorification of the Triune God through the oneness of the believers built into the Triune God. This city is the City of Jehovah, the city of life, the holy city, and the city of glory. Even in the Old Testament the prophets describe this city as a person that is one with Jehovah. Isaiah says, "They will call you the City of Jehovah" (60:14), and Ezekiel concludes his prophecy by declaring that "the name of the city from that day shall be, Jehovah Is There" (48:35). The City of Jehovah means that Jehovah is in His redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified tripartite people and that they are in Him. Jehovah Is There refers to the presence of Jehovah Himself who will be united, mingled, and incorporated with His people to be one entity--the great, corporate God-man. The New Jerusalem is also the city of life. The Christ ministered by John is for the dispensing of the Triune God as life into man's tripartite being. Out of such a ministered Christ, the children of God are brought forth by receiving the eternal life. They then partake of the fellowship of the eternal life by abiding in the Lord and walking in the light. They are taught by the anointing to enjoy the virtues of the divine birth with the divine seed. As a result, they become the testimony of Jesus--the lampstands as the expression of the Triune God--to be the firstfruits and the harvest as the expression of life and the bride of the Lamb as His increase and satisfaction. Moreover, the New Jerusalem is the holy city. God's living word--His breathing out as the divine breath into the believers--works within them to separate them from the world and to saturate them with the divine nature to make them a holy city, the corporate and ultimate Holy of Holies as the reality of Zion. To live out and work out the New Jerusalem, the believers partake of the divine nature of the Father by exercising their spirit to enjoy God as Spirit (the nature of God's person) and by remaining in the divine fellowship to enjoy God as love (the nature of God's essence) and as light (the nature of God's expression). Furthermore, the New Jerusalem is the city of glory. The Lord wants to occupy every room in our being, and He desires that we would be filled with His riches unto the fullness of God so that there would be glory to God in the church. The Father will be glorified when His many sons are thus filled with the Triune God. To be filled with the Triune God of glory for His corporate expression, the believers must cooperate with the Spirit, who is daily operating in them, by their allowing the Spirit to infuse and transmit all the riches of the Triune God into them. All believers need to be open to this Spirit to allow the Triune God to fill them, to flow through them, and to overflow out of them so that there would be the full expression of the Triune God in the church as the reality of the Body of Christ. This Body will in turn consummate in the New Jerusalem as the ultimate expression of the consummated Triune God in and through man. The New Jerusalem is the church as the reality of the Body of Christ in its ultimate state and consummation. To live out the New Jerusalem is to grow up into Christ, the Head, by the mingling of God with man, and to work out the New Jerusalem is to function out from the Head for the building up of the Body of Christ. Only the Body of Christ will remain forever as the unique mutual abode of God and man so that God as the Spirit and man as the bride, becoming a married couple, are mingled and incorporated together to be one entity--a great, corporate God-man. Thus, the issue of John's mending ministry is the accomplishing of the goal of God's economy, which is to obtain the enlarged, universal, divine-human incorporation of the consummated Triune God with the regenerated believers--the New Jerusalem in eternity.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the nine messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry in Manila, Philippines, on October 5-7, 2023. The general subject of this series of messages is “Living and Serving according to God’s Economy concerning the Church”

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the eight messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry in Anaheim, California, on October 7-9, 2022. The general subject of this series of messages is “Loving the Lord and Loving One Another for the Organic Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ.”

In this issue we will continue four lines of ministry. The first line--The History of the Lord's Recovery--contains chapters 12 through 15 of The Vital Groups, which are in volume 5 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994–1997. The chapters in this section speak of nourishing people with the unsearchable riches of Christ in His full ministry in the three stages and of how to contact people. The second line--Words for New Believers--continues with chapters 3 through 6 of Basic Principles of the Experience of Life, which are in volume 3 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1963. The first two chapters in this section speak of the first experience of life and the way to experience life. The final two chapters then focus on the three lives and four laws within every Christian generally and on the law of life particularly. The third line--Maturing in Life--continues with chapters 21 through 23 of Knowing Life and the Church, which are in volume 1 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1953. This line then continues with chapter 1 of a new book, The Subjective Experience of the Indwelling Christ, which is in volume 1 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1983. The first three chapters in this section speak of the result of the work being based on the worker, of needing to be earnest and not loose in working for the Lord, and of the church and service. The last chapter in this section begins by speaking of the experience of Christ as life. The fourth line--The High Peak of the Divine Revelation--continues with chapters 3 through 6 of The Practical Way to Live a Life according to the High Peak of the Divine Revelation in the Holy Scriptures, which are in volume 2 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994–1997. The chapters in this section speak of seeing the unveiled truth of Christ's resurrection for the ultimate goal of God's economy, of living Christ for His magnification by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, of being conformed to the image of God's Son so that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers, and of building up the Body of Christ by growing into Him, the Head, in all things.