Search
Scripture Reading: Gen. 2:8-24; Rev. 22:1-2a; John 7:38-39; Rom. 5:14b; 1 Cor. 15:45; Eph. 5:25-32; 1:22-23; Rev. 19:7; 21:2, 9b-10, 18-21
Prayer: Lord, how we thank You that we are coming to Your Word with You again. We trust in Your presence. How we thank You that on this earth there is such a book as the Bible. Now, Lord, we want to see the secrets in this Word, and through this Word we would see Your heart, Your heart’s desire, Your good pleasure, even Your purpose, Your counsel, Your will. Eventually, we would come to Your economy. Lord, do show us all these secrets. We do not want to be blinded; we do not want to remain in darkness. Take away all the veils. Take away all that we already understand. O Lord Jesus, empty us. Make us poor in our spirit that we might receive something new. We do not know much; we know only a little. Lord, forgive us. Forgive us for our stubbornness. Lord, we do pray that You will give us the word. We have no trust in ourselves, in our speaking, in our ability. Lord, we need Your washing blood to cleanse us from everything that is against You. Do cover us from all the deceiving of the enemy, even from his attacks. Lord, we stand with You. So, Lord, stand with us, and even be one spirit with us. Amen.
Genesis 2 gives us a particular picture of God’s creation of man. God created man by forming his body of the dust of the ground and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life (v. 7). After being created, man was placed in the garden of Eden (v. 8) in front of two trees (v. 9) — the tree of life, symbolizing God to be taken by man as his life of dependence (v. 16), and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, symbolizing Satan as the knowledge (of good and evil) of independence, issuing in death (v. 17). In the garden there was also a river that issued in four heads, signifying the flow of God as life to bring forth three precious materials (vv. 10-14; Rev. 22:1-2a; John 7:38-39) — gold, signifying God the Father’s nature (Gen. 2:11b-12a), bdellium (formed from fragrant resin), signifying God the Son in His redemption (v. 12b), and onyx (a precious stone), signifying God the Spirit in His transformation (v. 12c).
After this, God caused all the living creatures that He had created to pass before Adam to see what he would call them. However, Adam could not find one that matched him (vv. 19-20). Therefore, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, took a rib from his side, and built this rib into a woman (vv. 21-22). Then God brought this woman to the man, and Adam said, “This time this is bone of my bones / And flesh of my flesh” (v. 23). The woman was a proper match for Adam, and the two of them became one flesh (v. 24). God made man in one way and the woman in another way. In making man, God formed a piece of clay to be man’s body, breathed the breath of life into it, and caused it to become a living soul. In making the woman, God caused the man to sleep, and from a rib out of his side He built a woman. The man was made of two materials, clay and the breath of life out of God’s mouth, but the woman was built of one material, the rib from the man’s side.
At the end of the Bible a wonderful city is revealed, a city of gold with twelve pearl gates and with a foundation of precious stones. In the early days of our gospel preaching we referred to this city as a heavenly mansion and encouraged people to believe in Jesus in order to flee from the lake of fire and go to this mansion. Eventually, however, we saw that this wonderful city is not a heavenly mansion. Revelation 21:10 says that John saw the holy city “coming down out of heaven from God.” In that day, if we go to heaven, we will find that the “mansion” has come down to the earth. This revelation caused us to begin to see the real significance of the New Jerusalem (see Hymns, #971-985). Eventually, we saw that the end of the Bible and the beginning of the Bible reflect each other. In Genesis 2 there is a garden with a tree and a flowing river, and there are the precious materials. Moreover, there is a man who marries a bride. In Revelation 21 and 22 there are the same items, but the garden has become a city. In the beginning there was a garden, not built but natural and created by God. At the end of the Bible, however, the garden is transformed into a city. In this city also there are the tree of life and the river (22:1-2). This city is built with gold, pearl, and precious stones, which are the same as the materials in Genesis 2. Moreover, the city itself is the bride, and the Triune God in the Lamb is the Husband (Rev. 21:9-10). They are a universal couple.
Among the great writers in church history, very few have written according to this revelation. Brother Nee helped us somewhat to see this revelation. Tersteegen, a German writer of several centuries ago, indicated that the New Jerusalem is a composition of the beloved believers, and Brother T. Austin-Sparks also indicated that the New Jerusalem is not a physical city and that whatever was there in Genesis 2, including the tree of life and the river, are symbols. He said that all these items refer to the divine things. Since the divine things are spiritual and mysterious, the human mind cannot understand them. Therefore, God used symbols to symbolize, to portray, them. It is the same with the New Jerusalem. Revelation 1:1b says, “He made it known by signs, sending it by His angel to His slave John.” The Lord Jesus spoke to John with signs, not with clear words. Therefore, the book of Revelation contains many signs. The first sign is the lampstands, signifying the local churches (v. 12). Another sign is the Lamb (5:6), signifying the Lord Jesus. The city in Revelation 21 and 22 is also a symbol, a sign. Therefore, there is the need to study its significance. We have studied the New Jerusalem for more than thirty years, and bit by bit we have received a revelation. We have seen that the New Jerusalem is God’s heart’s desire. God desires to have such a city, and we will all be in that holy city. Actually, we have been built into the city already, because the names of the twelve apostles, who are our representatives, are written on the twelve foundations (21:14). Moreover, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are written on the twelve gates of the city (v. 12). In our view the building of the New Jerusalem has not yet been completed, but in God’s view the building was finished even before the creation of the world. With God there is only eternity; there is no time. Thus, most of the verbs in the book of Revelation are in the past tense. In God’s eyes everything related to the building of the New Jerusalem has been completed already.
Genesis 2 speaks of the precious material of bdellium, whereas Revelation 21 mentions pearl in its place (v. 21). In Genesis 2 there was no sin, so there was no need of redemption. However, after Genesis 2 sin came in. Bdellium is a fragrant resin that comes from a tree. Pearl, on the other hand, is a substance formed from the secretion of the life-juice of a wounded oyster, an animal. If we did not need redemption, we would not need the animal life and its blood. We would need only the plant life to support us. Because of sin, however, we need redemption, and redemption requires the blood of the animal life.
Revelation 21:23 says of the New Jerusalem, “The city has no need of the sun or of the moon that they should shine in it, for the glory of God illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” The New Jerusalem will need no natural light because our Triune God is not only our light but also our lamp. If we have light without a lamp, the light is not properly formed. We may illustrate this by electricity. Electricity produces light, but the light is in a light bulb. Without a light bulb the electricity by itself might harm us. Christ is the lamp, and God within Him is the light. This means that the Triune God is our light, and He is properly formed in His embodiment, the Son. The principle is the same with the lampstand. The lampstand is the form, and within the lampstand there is the burning oil. Moreover, seven lamps are on one lampstand (Exo. 25:37; Zech. 4:2; Rev. 4:5) to express the light, and the lamps contain the light that the lampstand gives. Today our light is not only Christ but Christ as the lamp with God as the light.
Revelation 22:3 goes on to speak of “the throne of God and of the Lamb.” God and the Lamb sit on one throne. They do not sit side by side. Rather, one is sitting within the other. God sits in the Lamb, and the Lamb sits in God. God and the Lamb coinhere; They are one. They are one light, and They are One sitting on one throne.
In creating man, God used clay to form man’s body as his outward, physical organ with the physical consciousness to contact the physical world. Then God breathed His breath of life into that body, and this breath became man’s inward organ, his spirit. The combination of the body and the spirit produced man’s psychological person, his soul. The spirit as man’s inward, spiritual organ is higher than the body as man’s physical organ, since the spirit is composed of God’s breath. God’s breath is not God Himself, but it is very close to God. Proverbs 20:27 says, “The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah, / Searching all the innermost parts of the inner being.” The breath of life out of God’s mouth became the spirit of man, which is the lamp of God to shine within us for God. As men, we have two organs, the physical organ and the spiritual organ, and we ourselves are living souls, living persons.
God’s desire was not merely to have a man as a living soul with a body of clay and a human spirit formed of God’s breath. This cannot satisfy God, because the central thought of God is that He would be one with man (Hymns, #972). In the garden of Eden, God was still not one with Adam. God was God, and Adam was Adam. In order to carry out His desire, God put man in front of two trees — one tree, the tree of life, symbolizing God Himself, and the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, being the embodiment of Satan. Then God warned man to be careful about his eating. He said, “Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16b-17). God’s putting man in front of the two trees was a strong indication that God wanted man to take Him in by eating Him. If man would take God in, God would be life to man in his spirit. This was fulfilled in the New Testament. According to the New Testament, God came as the bread of life (John 6:35), good for us to eat. If we eat Him, we have the eternal life, the divine life, in our spirit. When we received the eternal life in our spirit, our spirit was regenerated, and we were born again. First, we were born of the flesh through our parents, but now we have been born of the Spirit in our spirit (3:6). Now we not only have God’s life within us, but we are one with God. God can rejoice because He has come into man and become one with man.
To be born of God is wonderful because this birth indicates that God and we are now one. We can rejoice and shout, “Hallelujah! I am one with God, and God is one with me.” God can also rejoice because He has obtained His heart’s desire — but not yet in full. After being regenerated, we, the God-created men, need to be transformed, renewed, and conformed to the image of God’s embodiment. All that God is, is altogether embodied in the Son (Col. 2:9). Moreover, the Son became a man, and this man went through death and resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Today our Savior, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is a life-giving Spirit, and He is now in our human spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). Not only so, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17). This is the consummation of God’s being one with us. God is in us to be our life, and we are regenerated and are being transformed and conformed to His image. We were created in God’s image, but that image was merely a photograph of God. Now, however, God has wrought Himself into our being to make our very being into the image of His being.
God’s inheritance is the New Jerusalem, and eventually, we as the precious stones will be built together to become His inheritance. On the one hand, we do not like to be built together. Instead of meeting together, we may prefer to stay at home and be by ourselves. On the other hand, however, there is something within us causing us to feel that we cannot live by ourselves. We need to come together. In the divine life there is togetherness. To come together in the divine life is to be built up. As we remain in the church in our locality, we are unconsciously being built together. God’s sovereignty has put us together. Eventually, in the New Jerusalem we will recall with the brothers and sisters how God put us together in many situations. It is hard for me to go for three days without seeing a saint. I like to see the saints. Togetherness is an attribute of the divine life, and by this attribute we have the building up.
Through the building up, God will have a bride to match Him. The bride in Genesis 2 was a physical bride, but eventually, in the consummation of the building up of the New Jerusalem, the bride will be not only physical and human but also spiritual and divine. She will be a wonderful and marvelous bride. The bride will make herself ready (Rev. 19:7) in a physical, spiritual, divine, and human situation. This bride is a corporate person, yet all the components of this person are one. The Triune God, after being processed, has blended Himself with the tripartite, transformed men, causing them to all become one. This corporate person is the bride, and this bride is a mutual dwelling place of God and man. God dwells in man, and man dwells in God. The New Jerusalem is the tabernacle of God (21:3), God’s abode, and God and the Lamb are the temple for us to dwell and serve in (v. 22). God is our dwelling, and we are His dwelling. This is God’s heart’s desire and God’s good pleasure. This is also God’s purpose according to the counsel of His will.
God’s counsel is His economy, and the economy of God is to dispense Himself into us. God’s breathing His breath into man was a dispensing, and our taking in God as the tree of life is also a dispensing. In this way God has dispensed Himself into our being. The elements of His being have been dispensed into our being step by step and day by day. God’s dispensing also includes transformation, conformation, and glorification. Eventually, God will be fully dispensed into us, not only as our life and nature but also as our glory. Then we will all be one with Him, and He will be one with us. In this way we will become His bride as His counterpart.
What we have presented in this chapter concerning God’s creation of man in the view of His divine dispensing according to His divine economy is what God desires. This is God’s good pleasure, and this is our ministry, burden, and commission. We do not have any other burden besides this ministry of God’s economy with His divine dispensing into humanity. We must learn to receive God’s dispensing every day. He is dispensing Himself to us every moment and in every situation, even in the small things, for our renewal, transformation, and conformation. Eventually, we will be glorified. Then we will enjoy the consummation of His divine dispensing according to His divine economy.
