Search
Scripture Reading: Rev. 21:12b-13, 21a
I. Its gates are pearls — Rev. 21:21a:
А. Signifying the issue of the secretion of Christ’s redeeming and life-releasing death and His life-dispensing resurrection.
B. Both kinds of secretion (dispensing) require the seeking believers’ daily experience of the death of Christ subjectively by the power of Christ’s resurrection that they may be conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10), and their daily experience of the resurrection of Christ subjectively by the bountiful supply of the Spirit (the reality of resurrection) of Jesus Christ that they may be conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God (1:19; Rom. 8:29).
II. Its entry — Rev. 21:12b-13:
А. Such an entry into the New Jerusalem to partake of the tree of life has been established by Christ through His death and resurrection, fulfilling the righteous requirements of God according to the law of Israel in the Old Testament so that the closed way to the tree of life is reopened to the seeking believers.
B. This reopened way to partake of the tree of life by entering into the New Jerusalem is universally available to the four directions of the earth with three gates on each of the four sides of the holy city, signifying that the processed and consummated Triune God is willingly open to receive the repentant sinners into the ultimate consummation of His eternal economy.
Prayer: Lord, we thank You for this meeting. We ask You to do a particular thing — to show us the second application of the New Jerusalem. Thank You for the last message. You have shown us the first application. Amen.
In the previous chapter the Lord showed us the first application of the New Jerusalem. To apply the base of the New Jerusalem, we must have our being and do everything in our walk and work for the Lord to participate in His move based upon the golden nature of God. The building up of the New Jerusalem, which is a golden mountain, is to make us divine, golden. The sisters’ fellowship must be based upon the golden nature of God. We co-workers who are participating in the Lord’s move bear a heavy burden. We have to realize that our move in the Lord’s move should be based upon His golden nature. The first application of the New Jerusalem is for everything that belongs to us to be based upon God’s golden nature to make us golden, divine, day by day. When this is completed, that will be the consummation of the building up of the golden mountain, the golden city.
Now we come to the second application of the New Jerusalem, which is altogether related to the gates. Its gates are pearls (Rev. 21:21a). As we have seen, the entire New Jerusalem is a great sign. Its twelve gates are twelve big pearls. It is impossible for natural pearls to be so big that they can be the gates of the city. The pearl in the city is not a natural pearl but is used by God as a sign.
When an oyster is wounded by a grain of sand, it secretes its life-juice around the grain of sand and makes it into a precious pearl. Pearls signify the issue of Christ’s secretion in two aspects: His redeeming and life-releasing death and His life-dispensing resurrection. Without God’s revelation we can never realize that the death of Christ secretes, dispenses, to produce the gates of the city. The twelve gates are the issue of Christ’s secretion also in His life-dispensing resurrection. He resurrected to be the life-giving Spirit to dispense the divine life into the believers (1 Cor. 15:45b). This is a kind of secretion issuing in a big pearl to be the gates of the city. Both Christ’s death and resurrection have an issue, a secretion.
Both kinds of secretion (dispensing) require the seeking believers’ daily experience of the death of Christ subjectively by the power of Christ’s resurrection that they may be conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10). We have to put not just Christ’s death itself but the secretion of His death into our daily experience subjectively. We may know that we have been crucified with Christ, but we need to experience this. When a couple is quarreling, is that the talk of ones who are being crucified? When a brother talks to his wife, he has to consider that he is a crucified person.
Stanza 2 of Hymns, #938, a short song for baptism, says, “No longer I! No longer I! / Christ in me I’ll testify!” In our baptism we declared that we were finished. It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20). In our subjective experience we should be on the cross. We may know this teaching, but in our daily experience we are short. In our daily life we do not practice being crucified with Christ.
A number of times when I was irritated at my wife, I tried to argue with her. But when the word of my argument came to the tip of my tongue, I was reminded, “Is this being crucified on the cross?” Right away I stopped. I went to my study room and prayed, “Lord, forgive me. I know I have been crucified, but I don’t practice it. What a shame, Lord! I have been following You for over sixty years, yet I would still try to argue with my dear wife. Still I live and not Christ. I have been teaching others about this for more than sixty years, but I did not apply what I taught.”
Dear saints, the second application of the New Jerusalem is for us to experience subjectively the death of Christ in our daily life. We cannot do this in and by ourselves. None of us can practice such a thing. Everyone likes to argue. Arguments come from our natural life, from “I,” not Christ. But we should have this “I” all the time crucified on the cross. We have to put this application of the subjective death of Christ into our daily experience. We can experience His death only by the power of the resurrection of Christ.
The chorus of Hymns, #631 says, “If no death, no life.” This life comes to us not by our natural life but by the power of Christ’s resurrection. Yes, we have been crucified, but how can we keep ourselves on the cross all the time? No human beings can do it except those who know the power of the resurrection of Christ; they have the capacity, the ability, to practice this. By the power of the resurrection of Christ, we have the ability and the power to keep our pitiful self on the cross. How can a sister be a good wife? A good wife is a crucified wife, a wife on the cross.
We are required to remain on the cross under the crucifixion all the time. Sometimes I went to the Lord and said, “Lord, I cannot carry out this kind of Christian life. I thought that after I believed in You, You would do good things for me.” The Lord answered, “Yes, I will do everything good for you, but you have to remain on the cross. As long as you live by yourself, I can do nothing for you. I can do something for you only if you remain on the cross.” I said, “Lord, how can I do it? I have no power to do it.” The Lord said, “I am in you, I am the resurrection, and I have the power to enable you to remain on the cross.” Stanza 1 of Hymns, #631 says, “If I’d know Christ’s risen power, / I must ever love the Cross.” Life is Christ. If I am going to live Christ out, I have to remain on the cross to die there. This is the second application of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem has twelve gates, and they should be applied to our daily life by our keeping ourselves crucified all the time in our daily experience so that we could be conformed to Christ’s death.
The believers also should seek the daily experience of the resurrection of Christ subjectively by the bountiful supply of the Spirit (the reality of resurrection) of Jesus Christ that they may be conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God (Phil. 1:19; Rom. 8:29). We are required to do two things: to experience Christ’s death subjectively in our daily walk and also to experience the power of resurrection in our daily walk. How can we experience Christ’s death in our daily walk? By the power of resurrection. How can we experience Christ’s resurrection in our daily walk? By the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the reality of His resurrection. By His resurrection we can experience His death. Then how can His resurrection be applied to us? His resurrection can be applied to us only by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Now the Spirit is here. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is Christ Himself as the life-giving Spirit, who is the reality of the resurrection of Christ.
Christ’s death can be experienced by us only through Christ’s resurrection, and Christ’s resurrection can be real to us only by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has become the life-giving Spirit, and He is within us. When we turn to our spirit, we meet Christ as the life-giving Spirit, who is the very reality of Christ’s resurrection. It is by this Spirit that we experience Christ’s resurrection. To experience Christ’s resurrection is to contact the life-giving Spirit.
In order to apply this we have to remain in our spirit all the time to meet Christ as the Spirit, who is the reality of His resurrection. Then we have the power to remain on the cross. The application of the gates of the city is first to remain on the cross by the power of Christ’s resurrection. Second, we have to apply Christ as the life-giving Spirit living in our spirit. We have to touch Him all the time. This is why the Bible tells us to pray unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17). It is only through prayer that we can touch Christ in our spirit as the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit who is the reality of His resurrection.
When we practice the death of Christ, we will be conformed to His death, having the image of a dead person on the cross. When we touch the Spirit, we touch Christ in His resurrection, and this will conform us to the image of the glory of the firstborn Son of God. His death applied to us will conform us to the mold of His death, and His Spirit in us will conform us into the glory of His image, the image of the firstborn Son of God. The first application of the New Jerusalem is for us to do everything based upon the divine nature. That is simple. But now we have an application in two aspects: the application of Christ’s death and the application of Christ’s resurrection as the life-giving Spirit.
Now we want to consider the pearl gates as the entry into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12b-13). This is the entry of being crucified on the cross to be conformed to the mold of Christ’s death and the entry of His resurrection, which will conform us by the Spirit into the image of the glory of the firstborn Son of God.
Such an entry into the New Jerusalem to partake of the tree of life has been established by Christ through His death and resurrection, fulfilling the righteous requirements of God according to the law of Israel in the Old Testament so that the closed way to the tree of life is reopened to the seeking believers. Genesis 3 shows that after the fall of Adam, the way to the tree of life was closed by the righteous requirements of God according to His righteous law. Now there is an entry of Christ’s death and resurrection, which satisfies the requirements of God’s righteous law.
Revelation 21:12 says that the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel are inscribed on the twelve gates. Israel here represents the law of the Old Testament, indicating that the law is represented at the gates of the New Jerusalem. The law watches and observes as a gatekeeper to insure that the entrance into the holy city meets the law’s requirements. If we have been crucified and resurrected with Christ, we are qualified to satisfy the righteousness of the Old Testament law. Such an entry is justified by the righteous law of God. We can fulfill the righteous requirements of God’s law by being persons who have died and resurrected with Christ through His twofold secretion, making us a pearl before the eyes of God, which is fully satisfactory to God according to His righteousness of the law. To fulfill the righteousness of the law is not an easy thing. We need an entry of two kinds of secretion, two kinds of dispensing, that is, the secretion of Christ’s death and the secretion of Christ’s resurrection. By these two kinds of secretions, we have been made pearls, which are satisfactory before the law of God.
This entry reopens the way for the seekers to contact Christ as the tree of life. This reopened way to partake of the tree of life by entering into the New Jerusalem is universally available to the four directions of the earth with three gates on each of the four sides of the holy city, signifying that the processed and consummated Triune God is willingly open to receive the repentant sinners into the ultimate consummation of His eternal economy. We all have to learn to speak this kind of divine language. Such an entry today is available to all the people on this earth in four directions: east, north, south, and west. This is signified by the twelve gates. Three gates are on each of the four sides. The three gates signify the processed Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
In Luke 15 we see the operation of the Triune God to receive the repentant sinners so that they may enter into the New Jerusalem. In this chapter the Son is the seeking One to seek the sinners, the Spirit is the sanctifying One to sanctify them unto God, and the Father is the receiving One. Right after receiving the repentant son in Luke 15, the father gave him the best robe, which signifies the objective Christ to cover us as our God-satisfying righteousness. He also gave his returning son a ring and sandals. The ring signifies the sealing Spirit to show that the accepted believer now belongs to the Triune God in His ultimate consummation of His eternal economy. The sandals signify the power of God’s salvation to separate the believer from the dirty earth. Finally, the father killed the fattened calf for his son. This calf signifies the subjective Christ for our enjoyment of Him.
This is why we have to go out with God to the four directions of the earth to be the gates, bringing God with us to present Him to people. This is why we have to go to Russia to the north, to Africa to the south, to Malaysia to the east, and to South America to the west. The Lord is doing this among us to spread His economy. This Triune God today is willing to receive any repentant sinner so that he may come and enter into the New Jerusalem through such an entry, which was established by Christ through His death and resurrection.
