The Ministry Of The Word Vol 03 No 04

In this issue of The Ministry, we continue Brother Lee’s fellowship with the elders and co-workers in Taipei concerning the present practice for the carrying out of God’s economy. In this message Brother Lee points out that as soon as we contact someone, we should bring the meetings to his home. In the Lord’s recovery, this practice should be the fundamental factor in building up the church. We must also use the Lord’s word to teach one another in the home meetings. To this end, the serving ones in the meetings must carefully select the proper material for the home meetings. This is an absolute necessity and is in the principle of giving the household food at the proper time (Matt. 24:45). Then the serving ones should make it their job not to expound the reading materials but to direct everyone to focus on the main points. The key to the success of the new way is the spiritual material we use in the home meetings and the way we teach the Truth Lessons. The following three messages are the conclusion of the Thanksgiving Conference held in Anaheim in November 1998 concerning the principles of the Body. Message Four presents four more principles of the Body, including knowing the authority of Christ the Head, genuine spirituality being a matter of the Body, caring for the feeling and peace of the Body, and having the consciousness of the Body. Message Five stresses the crucial fact that the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is poured out upon the Body. Hence, to experience and enjoy such a reality today, we must be in the Body and for the Body. Message Six gives a number of practical applications concerning the principles of the Body presented in the foregoing messages in this series. Last of all, we include one report concerning the 1999 Chinese-speaking New Year’s Conference.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight messages given during the fall 2016 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Failures in the Churches, the Degradation of the Church, the Overcomers in the Church, the Recovery of the Church, and the Stages of the Church." This issue comprises the first three components of this fivefold subject. This general subject unveils the decline of the church and illuminates our need to return to the orthodoxy of the church. The term orthodoxy refers to God's way for the church as ordained by Him and revealed in His Word. The practice of the church that is according to God's original intention was present in the early years of the church before degradation set in. We may say that orthodoxy is the equivalent of the word normal. Thus, the orthodoxy of the church is the normal Christian church life. The overcomers are normal Christians in a time of abnormality. Moreover, the principle of returning to the orthodoxy is the same as that of recovery. In order to be faithful to the Lord and to His word, we must forsake mere tradition and return to what God originally intended for the church. Concerning the actual practice of the church life, three particular matters must become clear to us and real within us. First, we need to have a genuine vision of the church and see the church as the Lord Himself sees the church. From the Scriptures that have been opened and rightly expounded to us through the ministry, may we have the veil lifted from our heart, receive the shining of the divine life, and have the sight under the anointing. Then we will begin to realize what the church is to Christ and how He views the church in its actual condition. In Revelation 2 and 3 the Lord Himself addressed many matters in the church, but before doing so, He presented to John a vision of the church as golden lampstands. In the eyes of the Lord all seven churches--including Thyatira, Sardis, and Laodicea, as actual local churches--were seven golden lampstands. This indicates that intrinsically, these seven churches were the embodiment and expression of the Triune God. Second, we need Christ's view and understanding concerning the degradation of the church. The Lord Jesus is absolutely clear about the degradation in the churches; nevertheless, it is He who regards the churches intrinsically as golden lampstands. Although the churches, in their history and actual practice, may be degraded in various ways, we need to see everything not from our natural perspective but as the Lord sees. Third, we need to know and carry out His way to care for the church in its condition. We are able to do so because we are governed by the vision of the church and have the Lord's view and understanding of the degradation in the church. We need to know how to minister life, how to conquer the satanic chaos, and how to present the truth. The co-workers in particular need to learn of the Lord how to represent Him and how to carry out His administration to establish and maintain the order in the churches. We need to be one with the Lord to minister Him according to the various situations. Message 1 identifies that the weaknesses and failures in the churches are due to the principle of Babylon, which is hypocrisy. To overcome this principle we must take Christ as our burnt offering. As the burnt offering, Christ is the One who is absolute for God and for His satisfaction. When we take Christ as our burnt offering and consecrate ourselves to, in, with, by, and through Him as our burnt offering, we become ashes. The ashes of the burnt offering were handled by the priests in a very stately and dignified way by placing them on the east side of the altar. The east side is the side toward the sunrise and is an allusion to resurrection. By being brought into resurrection, we are brought into the transformation of the Triune God to become gold, pearl, and precious stones, which are the building materials of the New Jerusalem. Hence, the ashes eventually become the New Jerusalem. This should be our daily experience. Messages 2 through 4 show that we need to consider the degradation of the church so that we may be inoculated against the decline. This divine and mystical vaccine will prevent us from repeating the failures in the churches and from falling into degradation. This inoculation will bring us back to the straight way of God's economy concerning the church. We need to take the straight way to be one with the persecuted Jesus by going outside the camp and bearing His reproach. The straight way is for the believers to be brought into the church in the way of life and built up in this life into the Body of Christ to bear the testimony of Jesus. The Lord's recovery is for the preparation of the bride, and in order for the bride to be prepared, the local churches must become in reality both the Body of Christ and the one new man. The Body is an organism through which the Lord can move to carry out His administration, and the one new man is a corporate person who will fulfill Genesis 1:26, expressing God with His image and representing Him with His dominion. In God's wise organic salvation, the Body and the one new man become the bride. Messages 5 through 8 consider the overcomers in the church. Instead of expressing a hope that everyone in the church will suddenly become absolutely faithful to the Lord, the Lord calls for overcomers. The Lord Jesus Himself is the first Overcomer (Rev. 3:21; 5:5), and He will reproduce Himself in those who have the heart to be produced as overcomers. The Reports and Announcements section of this issue contains reports from the January and February 2017 gospel trips to South Africa and Europe. There is also a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

In this issue of The Ministry, we continue Brother Lee’s desperate fellowship concerning the God-ordained way as the present practice for the carrying out of God’s economy. This message emphasizes the principles of the home meetings, which are that everyone speaks, no one assumes the headship, and every home has a meeting. The Lord’s leading among all the churches in His recovery today is that we rid ourselves of the way of organization, control, arrangement, and fund-raising. We must care only for three precious things—the Lord’s life, His Spirit, and His word—in the home meetings. The home meetings are the foundation of the church. The co-workers, elders, and serving saints must see this burden and respond with a change of concept and with much and adequate prayer. In addition, they must be apt to teach the truth in a living and fresh way and bring the saints into the truth. The three messages that follow are from the Thanksgiving Conference held in Anaheim in November 1998 concerning the principles of the Body. The first message stresses the vision of the Body of Christ. To see the Body of Christ is to enter into the reality of the Body of Christ. We need revelation to know the reality of the Body of Christ and to usher us into the realm of the Body, and only then will the Body of Christ become our experience. The second message presents the following three principles of the Body: the Body is one, the Body is altogether a matter of life, and the Body is Christ. The third message gives another five principles concerning the Body of Christ: the function of the Body is to express Christ, the reality of the Body is a group of God’s redeemed who have been made God in life and nature but not in the Godhead, the Body is in the resurrection life of Christ, the Body is a new creation, and the Body is the consummation of the work of the cross. Lastly, we include two reports. The first is a report from the former Soviet Union concerning the elders’ and co-workers’ training and the semi-annual two-week training; the second is an update concerning the use of the facilities on the campus for the ministry in Anaheim, California.

In this issue we will continue four lines of ministry. The first line--The History of the Lord's Recovery--contains chapters 14 through 17 of Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, which are in volume 3 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991–1992. These chapters cover vital points concerning the vital group practice, an earnest talk concerning the practice of the vital groups, being burdened with God's loving concern for sinners and with converting sinners into members of Christ for the carrying out of God's economy, and fellowship concerning the living contents of the vital groups. The second line--Words for New Believers--contains chapters 9 through 12 of Crucial Truths in the Holy Scriptures, Volume 1, which are in volume 3 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1932–1949. These chapters cover topics related to justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and eternal life. The third line--Maturing in Life--continues with chapters 3 through 6 of Reward and Punishment, which are in volume 3 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1955. These chapters cover various aspects of the gospel revealed in the Gospels and Acts, God setting aside a portion of His salvation as a reward, reward and punishment in the New Testament, and the time, duration, and intention of reward and punishment. The fourth line--The High Peak of the Divine Revelation--continues with chapters 2 through 5 of God's New Testament Economy, which are in volume 3 of The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1984. These chapters cover the Word's incarnation and the Son's living on the earth, the Son's death in His humanity with His divinity through the Spirit, and the Son's resurrection in His divinity with His humanity.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight messages given during the fall 2017 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Crucial Revelation of Life in the Scriptures." The central thought of God in this universe and in eternity is to have Christ as His expression through the church with the shining in life. God's expression is based on life and light, and the light is the shining in life. In order for God to have an expression of Himself in Christ through the church, the divine life that expresses Him must be embodied and expressed in Christ and then dispensed into, worked into, and expressed through the church. Only the life of God can express God. Based on this principle, we will see the crucial revelation of life throughout the Scriptures. Genesis 1 and 2 are not merely a record of creation; actually, nearly every item recorded in these two chapters is a revelation of Christ who is life to God's people for the producing and building up of the church. According to Genesis 1, God created many forms of life, beginning with the lowest form and progressing to the highest form of created life, that is, man, whom God created in His image. The purpose of the creation of man with God's image is that this man would express God. However, the created man had only a human life. Any form of created life can only express itself; it cannot express another kind of life. This means that man is unable to express God if he has only his created human life. In order for man to express God and fulfill His purpose, man must obtain and receive the life of God as his life. God has to enter into man to be life to man. Genesis 2 reveals that the bride of Christ--typified by the woman built from the rib taken from the man--is produced and comes into being by life. The real Eve, the church, the counterpart of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem, is built with the resurrection life that was released by the Lord through His death and imparted through His resurrection. This counterpart of the Lord is a building of life. For God to gain His corporate expression through the church, He must dispense and work Himself into us, His people, His believers. This is accomplished through our eating and drinking Him. We need to pass through three stages of the enjoyment of Christ by eating Him. The first stage is the eating of Christ as the Passover lamb in Egypt, the second stage is the eating of Christ as the manna in the wilderness, and the third stage is the eating of Christ as the rich produce of the good land. By our eating in the first two stages, we are energized to leave the world and are constituted with Christ as the heavenly element. Only in the third stage of the enjoyment of Christ as our food can we fulfill God's purpose. It was not until the children of Israel entered into the good land and enjoyed the produce of the land that they were able to defeat all the enemies, build up God's dwelling place on the earth, and bring in the kingdom of God. Likewise, for us to reach the goal of God's economy, we need to progress until we enter into the highest stage of eating Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit, as typified by the rich produce of the good land. In this stage we overcome the spiritual enemies, we are built up to be God's dwelling place, and we establish God's kingdom on earth. The history of God's people is not only one of eating but also one of drinking. In the Old Testament, before coming into the good land and building the house of God, the children of Israel journeyed through the wilderness. During that journey they came to Marah, a place of bitter waters. Moses followed God's command to cast a tree into the bitter waters; the waters then became sweet. This tree signifies the tree of life, the crucified and resurrected Christ, who today is the Spirit mingled with our spirit. In our spirit we have the crucified and resurrected Christ as our Healer. He is the One who transforms our bitter circumstances and makes them sweet, and He also heals all our diseases. Before the building of the house of God, the Bible speaks of the springs of water (Exo. 15:22-27), the water out of the cleft rock (17:6), and the water from the well (Num. 21:16-17). Christ as the living, spiritual rock was smitten by the authority of God's law so that the water of life in resurrection could flow out of Him and into His redeemed people for them to drink. After God's people built the house of God in the good land, the Bible speaks of the river of God's pleasures (Psa. 36:8b), the river whose streams gladden the city of God (46:4), a fountain going forth from the house of Jehovah (Joel 3:18), and living waters going forth from Jerusalem (Zech. 14:8). We need to experience the flowing of the living water out of the house of God (Ezek. 47:1-5). In order to be in the flow, we have to be in the building; that is, we need to be in the church. In the New Testament we can see the crucial revelation of life in the book of Matthew. In the decree of the kingdom's constitution given by the Lord in chapters 5--7, He displayed the two possible ways people may live and work before God (7:13-14, 21-27). The broad way that leads to destruction is according to the worldly systems satisfying the natural tastes, to get the crowd, to maintain a career of man, and to achieve man's enterprise. The constricted way is according to the divine regulations. This way, which leads to life, fulfills the spiritual requests, brings in God's elect, bears the testimony of Jesus Christ, and carries out God's economy for the building up of the Body of Christ. We take this way by walking in the spirit; this will restrict us and cause us to live a normal Christian life. We will thereby become vital, healthy believers who take the way of life for God's building. There are three basic elements in Matthew. First, Christ is the King as the kingdom bringing in the reality of the kingdom. Second, He is the King in His all-inclusiveness. Third, He is the kingly bread. When we partake of this kingly bread, we eat, digest, and assimilate the King and the kingdom with its reality, and we eat and digest the King in His all-inclusiveness. The ruling element is in the food. When we take in this food, we gradually become the reality of the kingdom of the heavens. The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains a complete record of the twelve messages in our crystallization-study of the books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth that comprised the July 2021 Semiannual Training, which was released via webcast from Anaheim, California. The Key Statements on the following page embody and summarize the crucial truths and main burdens covered in these twelve messages.The Reports and Announcements section contains "An Update concerning Europe," a "Summer 2021 Mass Distribution Update," and important information concerning upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry plus a website link to information on similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final seven messages given during the Fall 2019 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is “The Christian Life.” In these seven messages we continue to consider other aspects of the Christian life. In order to live the Christian life, we need to know the resurrected Christ and to know and experience the power of His resurrection. The first aspect in which we need to know Him is as the Son of God desig­nated in power with His human nature. Christ as the Son of God will make us the same as He is. He is the prototype, and He is in us as the law of the Spirit of life to shape, to conform, us to the image of the firstborn Son. The second aspect in which we need to know Him is as the firstborn Son of God born in resurrection. The first aspect emphasizes His person to be reproduced, and the second aspect is for His propagation. To live the Christian life is to live out the anointing. The anointing is the moving and working of the indwelling compound Spirit to apply all the ingredients of the processed Triune God and His activities into our inner being so that we may be fully mingled with Him for His corporate expression. Life moves, and when Christ as the Spirit entered into us, He came into us as the anointing. In order to experience the anointing, we need to know Christ as the anointed One, as the anointing One, and as the anointing. The Christian life is a life of abiding in Christ as the vine. The true vine with its branches—Christ the Son with the believers in the Son—is the organism of the Triune God in the divine economy to grow with His riches and express His life. As the branches of the true vine, we are the multiplication of Christ, the duplication of Christ, the spreading of Christ, and the enlargement of Christ. To abide in Christ as the vine is to dwell in Him, to remain in fellowship with Him, that we may experience and enjoy His abiding in us. The Christian life is a life of living in the mingled spirit. The essence of the New Testament is the two spirits—the divine Spirit and the human spirit—mingled together as one spirit. We can experience Christ, enjoy Christ, live Christ, and take Christ as everything because we have become one spirit with Him. Ultimately, the Bible requires only one thing of us—that we walk according to the mingled spirit. The key to everything is found in the wonderful Spirit who is in our regenerated spirit and who has be­come one spirit with our spirit. To live in the mingled spirit is to have the highest spirituality. The Christian life is a grafted life. God desires that the divine life and the human life be joined together to become one life. This oneness is an organic union, a union in life—a grafted life. Because our human life was made in the image of God and according to the likeness of God, it can be joined to the divine life. Our human life resembles the divine life; therefore, the divine life and the human life can be grafted together and grow together organically. As regenerated ones, we should live a grafted life—a life in which two parties are joined to grow organically. The Christian life is not an exchanged life but a grafted life—the mingling of the human life with the divine life. The most wonderful reality in the Christian experience is that the believers in Christ are united with Christ in the way of life. In the grafted life the human life is not eliminated but is strengthened, uplifted, and enriched by the divine life. As a result of our being grafted into Christ, there is a three-stage devel­opment of our relationship with the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit—​a union in life, a mingling of natures, and a coinherence, the mutual indwelling, of persons. As Christians, we live a life of coinherence in the Father’s house, which is the church as the house of God and the Body of Christ. To live in the Triune God and to have the Triune God live in us is the greatest blessing in the universe. The Christian life is a life fully according to and for the central work of God. God’s unique work in the universe and throughout all the ages and generations is to work Himself in Christ into His chosen people, making Himself one with them. We need God to build Himself in Christ into our humanity, working Himself in Christ into us as our life, nature, and per­son. God is working Himself into us through everything that happens to us so that He may become our constitution. As Christians, we experience the divine dispensing for God’s central work. The will of God concerning our Christian life is that we would know the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, experience Him, be constituted with Him, and express Him. The Reports and Announcements section contains “2020 FTTA Gospel Trips.” Also included is a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first seven messages given during the fall 2018 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Central Vision." The central vision of the completing ministry of the apostle Paul is composed of three major items--God as our contents, Christ as the mystery of God, and the church as the mystery of Christ. The completing ministry of Paul revealed in his fourteen Epistles is an expansion of what he saw concerning what the Lord spoke to him at his conversion. The heavenly vision of Paul's completing ministry must be seen by us, and this vision must be renewed in us day by day.