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Scripture Reading: Rev. 21:12a, 14a, 18a, 19-20; 4:3a
I. Its wall and its foundations are precious stones — Rev. 21:18a, 19-20:
А. We, the believers in Christ, were created by God with dust (Gen. 2:7).
B. Through our regeneration by the Spirit we became stones (John 1:42).
C. By our growth in the divine life in Christ as the living stone (1 Pet. 2:4), we are transformed into precious stones (1 Cor. 3:12a):
1. By the transformation of the Spirit — 2 Cor. 3:18.
2. Through the renewing of our mind, the main part of our soul — Rom. 12:2.
3. Into the image of the glory of the firstborn Son of God — 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29.
4. All the stones of its wall and the first layer of its foundations are jasper (Rev. 21:18a, 19a), and the jasper stone signifies the appearance of God (4:3a), indicating that the entire city is in the appearance of God in His glory (21:11).
D. While the transformation work of the Spirit is going on in the divine life, we, the transformed precious stones, are being built up together to be one complete wall with its foundations.
E. The functions of its wall and its foundations — vv. 12a, 14:
1. To separate, to sanctify, the city unto God from all things other than God, thus making the city the holy city — vv. 2a, 10b.
2. To protect the interest of the riches of God’s divinity on the earth and the attainments of His consummation.
II. The colors of the twelve layers of its foundations — vv. 19-20:
А. The colors of its foundations are like the colors of the rainbow:
1. The rainbow is God’s guarantee in His unfailing faithfulness that the earth will never again be destroyed by the flood of water (Gen. 9:8-17).
2. But the fire as a destructive element (19:24-25) will be used by God to punish all His enemies for eternity (Rev. 14:10-11; 21:8).
B. This indicates that of the two destructive elements, water and fire, used by God to destroy all His opposers, one of them, that is, fire, will be used by God for this purpose for eternity, and the other, that is, water, will be prohibited from its destructive function by the guarantee of God’s unfailing faithfulness signified by the colors of its foundations. Water in eternity will be used by God only as an element of life supply (22:1-2).
Prayer: Lord, what a blessing that so many of us could be gathered by You and around You to study Your Word so that we may see the revelation and have the way to apply what we have been seeing. Lord, be with us, even making us one spirit with You. Lord, we hate to do anything by ourselves, without You. Lord, make our speaking Yours, making our speaking Your speaking. Vindicate Your recovery by the high truths, by Your speaking, by Your Spirit being one with us as one spirit. Lord, have mercy and give us grace that we can finish this message. Thank You for the past. Amen.
In the previous chapter we saw the subjective application of the Lord’s death and resurrection to us in our daily experience. This is not an easy thing to grasp. In Philippians 3:10 we are charged by the apostle Paul to be conformed to the death of Christ. Paul also says in Romans 8:13 that by the Spirit we put all the practices of our flesh to death so that we may live. He speaks further in Galatians 5:24-25 concerning the application of the death of Christ. In verse 24 he says that those who are of Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. Then verse 25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” To walk by the Spirit is to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of the Spirit. To apply the death and resurrection of Christ to our daily walk subjectively to make us divine, to make us golden, is by the Spirit. Christ, the One who accomplished crucifixion and who has consummated the resurrection, became the life-giving Spirit in His resurrection. He Himself is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17).
In the previous chapter concerning the pearl gates of the holy city, we used the word secretion with the picture of an oyster secreting its life-juice around a grain of sand to make it a pearl. Christ today is secreting His life-juice around us, and this secreting is carried out by Him as the Spirit. When we apply His death in our daily walk, no doubt, that is by the Spirit’s dispensing. The Spirit dispenses the life-juice of Christ as a kind of secretion, which issues in precious pearl. Also, we apply Christ’s resurrection in our daily experience, in our daily walk, by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. By this bountiful supply Paul could live and magnify the resurrected One, Christ (Phil. 1:19-21).
By all these verses we can see that to apply both the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, we have to touch the Spirit and be touched by the Spirit. It is only by the Spirit that we can apply Christ’s death and resurrection subjectively to our daily life in our daily experience. Now we want to go on to see the wall of the city and its foundations.
Revelation 21 shows that the wall of the city and its foundations are precious stones (vv. 18a, 19-20).
We, the believers in Christ, were created by God with dust (Gen. 2:7).
Through our regeneration by the Spirit we became stones (John 1:42). When Peter came to the Lord, the Lord told him that he was a stone. He was no longer dust.
By our growth in the divine life in Christ as the living stone (1 Pet. 2:4), we are transformed into precious stones (1 Cor. 3:12a).
This transformation takes place by the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). With Christ there is His death and resurrection. With the Spirit there is transformation. God is triune, and His intention is to work Himself into us as the gold to be the base. In other words, He works Himself into us to make us divine, golden. But how can God work Himself into us? He does this by Christ’s redemption and resurrection and also by the Spirit’s transformation. The Father’s golden nature is the base. The Son’s redemption and resurrection are the steps to work the Triune God into us. Christ died on the cross with the intention of working the Father into His believers as the golden base. Then in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit to carry out the work of transformation.
We may have the base, redemption, and resurrection, but if we do not have transformation, we are still not golden. We are dusty because we were made by God in the old creation. But God works Himself into us as the gold through Christ’s redemption and resurrection by the transformation of the Spirit. This is the working of the Triune God to bring Himself into our being and transform us altogether into His image. His image, ultimately, is the gold.
Romans 12:2 says that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. The mind is the main part of our soul. The second part is the emotion, and the third part is the will. To transform us is to metabolically change our soul. Stanza 2 and the chorus of Hymns, #750 say,
First, God regenerated us, and now He is transforming us by the renewing of our mind, emotion, and will.
Eventually, we will be fully transformed into the image of the glory of the firstborn Son of God (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29). This requires much explanation, but the explanation has already been released in the Life-study messages. For this reason I would encourage all of us to obtain a set of these messages and get into them.
All the stones of the holy city’s wall and the first layer of its foundations are jasper (Rev. 21:18a, 19a), and the jasper stone signifies the appearance of God (4:3a), indicating that the entire city is in the appearance of God in His glory (21:11). The entire city expresses God.
While the transformation work of the Spirit is going on in the divine life, we, the transformed precious stones, are being built up together to be one complete wall with its foundations. We are built up together through the work of transformation. Transformation is the proper way to build up the Body of Christ. If we do not see this, how can we build up the Body of Christ? Many speak of the Body of Christ, but where is the practicality of the Body? How can the Body of Christ be built up? It can be built up only by our being transformed into precious stones. While the transformation work is going on, we, the precious stones, are being built up together.
Now we want to see the functions of the holy city’s wall and its foundations (21:12a, 14).
The first function is to separate, to sanctify, the city unto God from all things other than God, thus making the city the holy city (vv. 2a, 10b).
The second function of the wall of the holy city with its foundations is to protect the interest of the riches of God’s divinity on the earth and the attainments of His consummation. What are the riches of God’s divinity, which need to be protected? Today God’s divinity has been mocked. Some say that it is a heresy to believe that we are born of God to be His children and that we are God’s family and have become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. To oppose this great truth is to mock the interest of the riches of God’s divinity on the earth.
Those who do not see the riches of the Father’s divinity do not know how to protect them. When we came to this country, we put out messages to define the divine Father and to thus protect the riches of the divinity of the Father. Isaiah 9:6 says clearly concerning Christ that as the child born, He is called the mighty God, and as the Son given, He is called the eternal Father. Some said that the Father in this verse does not refer to the Father in the Godhead but to the Father of eternity. This twisting of Isaiah 9:6 implies that these ones believe in two divine Fathers — the Father in the Godhead and the Father of eternity. This is really heretical. Actually, the Father of eternity is the Father in the Godhead. Apart from the Father in the Godhead, there is not another divine Father called “the Father of eternity.” We must put out the pure truth from the Word to protect the interest of the riches of God’s divinity.
Another example of the need to protect the interest of the riches of God’s divinity is the opposition to the truth that Christ today is the life-giving Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45b emphatically says that the last Adam, Christ in the flesh, became a life-giving Spirit in resurrection. Some twist this verse, saying that it speaks of “a life-giving Spirit,” not “the life-giving Spirit.” But besides the Holy Spirit who gives life, is there another Spirit who gives life? To say that there are two Spirits giving life is to teach a great heresy. After and through His resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit. Undoubtedly, the Spirit who gives life is the Holy Spirit.
The wall of the city also functions to protect the attainments of Christ’s consummation. God in Christ consummated so many things. He consummated incarnation, death, and resurrection. Today some theology mocks the reality of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. There is the need of the wall of the New Jerusalem to protect the attainments of His consummation. His attainments, which He consummated in His ascension, are for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy through His heavenly ministry. In His ascension He became the Head of the Body, the church (Col. 1:18), the Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36), and the Leader and Savior (5:31). He became our High Priest (Heb. 4:14), the Mediator of the new covenant (9:15), the surety of the better covenant (7:22), and the Minister in the heavenly Holy of Holies (8:2). Today in ascension He is also the Paraclete (Advocate) of the New Testament believers (1 John 2:1; John 15:26), and our Intercessor at the right hand of God (26, Rom. 8:34).
Now we want to see the application of the colors of the twelve layers of the foundation of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:19-20).
The colors of its foundations are like the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow is God’s guarantee in His unfailing faithfulness that the earth will never again be destroyed by the flood of water (Gen. 9:8-17). But the fire as a destructive element (19:24-25) will be used by God to punish all His enemies for eternity (Rev. 14:10-11; 21:8). In Genesis God used two kinds of elements to destroy the human-occupied earth. First, God used water to make a flood to destroy the corrupted generation during Noah’s age. Later, the people in Sodom and Gomorrah became even more evil, so God destroyed them by another element, fire. Ultimately, the lake of fire will be used for God’s destruction of all His opposers.
Eventually, in the new heaven and new earth, there will be a new city with the colors of a rainbow. The rainbow is a sign of God’s guarantee that He will never destroy the city. But outside of the city there will be a lake of fire, where Satan and all of God’s opposers will suffer the second kind of destructive element forever. Fire as a destructive element will be used by God to punish all His enemies for eternity.
This indicates that of the two destructive elements, water and fire, used by God to destroy all His opposers, one of them, that is, fire, will be used by God for this purpose for eternity, and the other, that is, water, will be prohibited from its destructive function by the guarantee of God’s unfailing faithfulness signified by the colors of the city’s foundations. Water in eternity will be used by God only as an element of life supply (22:1-2). Water will never again be used by God as a destructive element for His judgment. Instead, in the New Jerusalem the living water will be man’s divine beverage.
After this fellowship we can see that the New Jerusalem’s transformed and built up wall functions in four main ways. First, it sanctifies all the things belonging to God. God would not let any of His things be mixed up with the things that are not of Him, so there is the need of separation. The New Jerusalem’s wall functions to separate the New Jerusalem unto God as something holy. This is why it is called the holy city.
Second, the wall protects. In ancient times the cities had walls around them for protection. The wall of the holy city protects the interest of the riches of God’s divinity and the attainments of Christ’s consummation.
The third function of the wall is to express God. God’s appearance is like jasper, and the light of the New Jerusalem is like jasper, so the whole city will express God. God the Father is the gold as the base, God the Son is the gates to bring people in, and God the Spirit transforms people to express God. The base of gold is something within, but the wall can be seen. This wall is in the color of the stone that signifies God, that is, jasper. Revelation 21:11 reveals that the city’s glory is like the glory of jasper. That is God’s appearance. Today the function of the Body of Christ, which consummates in the New Jerusalem, is to express Christ.
The fourth function of the wall with its foundations is to guarantee God’s unfailing faithfulness for eternal security. The New Jerusalem standing upon the twelve layers of its foundations in the colors of the rainbow guarantees God’s faithfulness.
Now we need to consider how to apply this fellowship. In our created state we were dust, but God wants to transform us into something that is wonderful in His eyes. By His Spirit He transforms us through the renewing of our mind, emotion, and will, the components of our soul. We are souls. Exodus 1:5 says that seventy souls of Jacob’s family went down to Egypt. Acts 2:41 says, “There were added on that day about three thousand souls.” The soul is the natural man, the natural man is the fallen man, and the fallen man is the man abandoned by God. If we want to change our status, we need transformation. In order to be transformed, our mind, emotion, and will must be renewed.
Once, a sister told me that our church needs a hospital. I responded by telling her that this was a natural thought from her natural mind. The mind has to be renewed. We need to cut off our unrenewed thoughts. The Body of Christ is not here for a school or a hospital. After we are saved, we still have many peculiar thoughts because of our unrenewed mind. Our mind should be broken and transformed by being renewed.
In order to experience the transformation of God by the Spirit, we have to apply all the Bible teachings to our mind. We have to let our mind be renewed so that it can eventually be occupied by the Spirit. Ephesians 4:23 says that we need to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Through the spirit spreading into our mind, we are renewed for our transformation.
Also, our mind should continually be set upon the Spirit (Rom. 8:6), and the Spirit today is Jesus Christ. Our mind should be set on Him. Then our mind will be life and peace. If our mind remains in its oldness, always set upon the flesh, that is death. Our natural person, composed of the mind, emotion, and will, needs to be renewed. Day by day, we should live a life not according to our natural concept but according to our renewed mind. Our mind is renewed by the word of God. Only the word of God can renew our mind.
Transformation is a lifelong matter. It cannot be consummated within a short time. I have been under this renewing work for over sixty-three years. While I was teaching others, my mind, emotion, and will were renewed. Now I have a subdued will. In the past my will was like a wild horse without a bridle. I did whatever I liked or decided to do. But through the Bible’s teachings, my mind, emotion, and will have been renewed. Our stubborn will must be subdued to be a renewed will, which is so willing to submit itself to the will of God.
To daily submit ourselves to God’s will according to our renewed will is to practice a daily transformation. A wife may say to her husband, “Don’t you know, I decided this three years ago? Who are you to change my will?” But this sister should be asked, “Who are you to make such a will? Are you God? Are you the One on the throne? Are you the One who carries out His administration through the golden street?” We are not the One on the throne. We are all His subjects. We have to submit ourselves to Him. We must have a flexible and subdued will through the transformation of the Spirit. This is the fourth application of this New Jerusalem.
The fourth application is to have our entire old being renewed. Then we accept the sufferings that are assigned to us as our outer man is daily consumed. We need to be consumed more. The outer man is consumed, but the inner man is renewed every day (2 Cor. 4:16). This is the application of the New Jerusalem in dealing with our old man, the outer man, our soul with our body. We need our outer man to be consumed so that our inner man may be renewed day by day.
