Whenever we do things without the Head and without the Body as the reality, we are in a movement. We may get some people to follow us and do something good for the Lord – but if we initiate things and do things without the Head and without the fellowship of the Body (Col. 2:19), we may be in a movement of man outside of the divine stream. If there’s no prayer, no fellowship, no Body of Christ, then there’s no flow, no divine stream
seeing the reigning Christ as unveiled in Psalm 72 and choosing to take the way of the ministry
We may be touched by the Lord to be vital with the saints in our home meeting, or we may be involved in serving with the students and the young ones – but do we take the way of the ministry? As the Lord reveals it to us in His Word, do we take the way of being produced as ministers? We all need to pray, Lord, give me the experiences I need that will produce this ministry! There is a great price to pay even to produce a small measure of the Lord’s ministry. The Lord wants to have a group of brothers and sisters who have been broken, dealt with, consumed, crossed out, terminated, reconstituted, resurrected, and blended together – to produce the ministry!
the victorious Christ will return to recover the earth when He gains Zion, those fully open to Him!
Before the Lord Jesus can come as the King, He needs to have in all the local churches the reality of Zion – He needs to have His overcomers as His bride ready! In Psalm 51 we see how the goal of our repentance and confession marrying God’s forgiveness is that it amazingly produces a burden for the building up of Zion. The Lord needs to gain Zion, the aspect of the church that is fully open to Him, the overcomers who will hasten His return!
God prepared a body for Christ to come to do God’s will to be God’s unique sacrifice on the cross
Christ was obedient to God even unto death, and that the death of the cross (Phil. 2:8). Christ did the will of God as prophesied in the Old Testament and as God Himself wanted – He became a man, lived a perfect human life, died an all-inclusive and all-terminating death on the cross, and He resurrected to be the life-giving Spirit. In His death especially Christ terminated the old testament economy of God and established God’s New Testament economy where Christ is everything: He is the sacrifices, He is the offerings, He is the unique way for us to contact and enjoy God!
as the factor to enact God’s New Testament economy, Christ replaced all the sacrifices with Himself
Praise the Lord – everything of the old is gone, now everything is new! God is new, Christ is new, and we are the new creation! In His incarnation and His death Christ replaced everything of the old – including the old creation – with Himself, the new and living One! In Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 16, Psalm 22-24 we can see what kind of Christ we have in His incarnation – He came to carry out God’s will and His commission to terminate the old and bring in the new creation. We were included in the old creation terminated and germinated by Him! In Christ we are no longer old – we are a new creation
The Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery: Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel (ITERO 2011)
Praise the Lord for the recent ITERO in Holland! The main topic of the fall International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones, held in Baarloo, Holland, is, The Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery. These four great pillars are Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel. There is a book with the same name published by Living Stream Ministry (The Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel, Four Great Pillars in The Lord’s Recovery). This portion here is just a short enjoyment from this message, and is an attempt to bring more saints in the fellowship and collective enjoyment of the Lord’s up-to-date speaking.
We are called to enjoy grace and express God, and Christ is our model – we are His reproduction!
For us to become Christ’s “Xerox copy” we need spiritual light and the riches of the divine life – we become not an imitation of Christ but a reproduction of Christ! A monkey can imitate the things and actions a man does, but because the monkey does not have the human life, after the “imitation time” is over, he returns back to his monkey life. But to us Christ is the original copy, the model and the pattern, and we are the Xerox-copy of Christ by our enjoyment of Him and following in His steps!