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Scripture Reading: Gen. 2:8-17; Rev. 22:1-2
We have to see that all the things in the old creation created by God are not the real things but are figures and types of Christ. During the initial years of my Christian life, I did not have such a realization. However, the more I have been following the Lord, the more I have realized, on the one hand by experience and on the other hand by the revelation of the holy Word, that all the things of this universe in the old creation are nothing but figures and types of Christ. Figures and types are not the real things. The photo of a certain person is not the real person. Christ is the reality of all the positive things in creation.
There are two creations: the first creation, which is the old creation, and the second creation, which is the new creation. The old creation is a figure, a type, and the new creation is the reality. Within all the things of the old creation there is nothing of Christ, but with everything in the new creation, Christ is within as the essence, substance, and reality. For instance, we were made in the old creation according to the image of Christ, so we had the form and the image of Christ, but at that time we did not have the nature of Christ. We did not have anything real of Christ. But when we were regenerated, re-created in a new way, we received Christ into us. Now we have not only the form, the appearance, and the image of Christ but also the essence, substance, nature, life, and person of Christ within us. Furthermore, we are looking to the day when the whole universe will be full of Christ in the new heaven and new earth.
Man in the old creation was but a form, an empty vessel, to contain Christ. If man would take Christ, then even the animals would have taken Him. If man would reject Christ, then the animals would also reject Him. This is because man is the head of the old creation. Also, we Christians as regenerated persons are the firstfruits of the new creation (James 1:18). We were put into a position to take the lead to receive Christ as our life. The whole old creation is a form, an empty vessel, to contain Christ, with man as the center and as the leader.
Genesis 1 shows that God created the whole universe as an empty vessel in form, in image, in appearance, without anything as the content. We can use a glove as an illustration. A glove is an empty vessel to contain a hand. In every respect a glove has the form of the hand, yet it does not have the hand within as its content. In the first chapter of Genesis you have only the empty glove, the empty form, the empty universe.
In Genesis 2 we are told that man as the leader, the center, and the head of the old creation was made in a way to receive something else. After the creation of man, God told him only how to eat. This simply means that man has to receive something else, something that he does not have, and this very thing will become himself. Dietitians say that we are what we eat. What we eat is what we become. Man was created to receive the Triune God as his spiritual food so that God could become his constitution.
If we draw a picture of the universe, we can show thousands of items as the environment with man in the center, and this man has a mouth to receive the tree of life. After the creation of man as the center, this center with a mouth was put in front of the tree of life, which was edible. The tree of life is a symbol of the Triune God to be our life and life supply. Man is in the center to take the lead to receive the Triune God for the whole universe, just as our mouth takes the lead to receive food for our whole body. After our mouth receives the food, our whole body also receives it. God created the heavens and the earth, with the vegetable life, the animal life, and thousands of things as an environment. In the very center God prepared a garden. In the center of the garden there was the tree of life, and man was put there as the center of the old creation with a mouth to receive something that he did not have. Moreover, this very thing that he was to receive would become himself. Thus, man is an empty vessel, an empty container, with an opening to receive the Triune God, who is symbolized by the tree of life. After man receives the Triune God, the Triune God will be digested by him to become his very essence.
Opposite the tree of life, there was another tree — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — as a test to man. We have to be careful about what we are going to receive. If we receive the tree of life, we will have God as our life and life supply. If we receive the other tree, the tree of knowledge, we will have Satan, the enemy of God, and death. There are two possibilities for one mouth. There is the possibility to receive God or to receive Satan.
If you receive God, you will have the life of God. Then you will have a flow, a stream, a river, of living water within you. In Genesis 2:10-14 we see that by the side of the tree of life there is one river flowing with four heads toward the four directions of the whole earth. When you receive Christ as your life, there is something within you flowing all the time as a stream of living water.
Christians are living persons. They are very active and very positive because there is another life within them that is living, moving, acting, and energizing. There is only one way for you to check whether you are proper as a Christian. That way is to check if you have the living stream flowing within you all the time. Do you have the living flow, the living stream, within you at this very moment? By our experience we know that there is a flow, a current, of the life of God. When we are regenerated, we have something within us that is living, acting, moving, and energizing as an inner flow.
One day a servant of the Lord whom I knew well told me that in a certain place at a certain time he desperately felt that the stream within him stopped. A year later I met him again, and he told me, “Brother, even up to this day, the stream, the flow, within me has not been recovered.” Then he said, “Brother Lee, this morning I got up early, about five o’clock, to cry to the Lord, ‘Lord, why has the flow within stopped? For more than a year, even up to this day, it has not been recovered. O Lord, why?’”
As a Christian, a reborn one, you should have the divine life within you flowing all the time. If the flow is stopped, that means you are wrong. As a husband or a wife, you may quarrel about who is right and who is wrong. While you are quarreling, however, the current within you is stopped. You are right, but the current is stopped. You are right and everything is to your credit, but there is a debit within you. As far as the current is concerned, there is a debit. The heavenly bank would not credit you. The more you quarrel, the more you reason with others, the more your inner conscience tells you that the current within you is stopped.
Sometimes you have another kind of experience. While you are trying to quarrel, there is a frustration within you. That frustration is the inhibiting of the flow of the life stream. If you would go along with this inner sense and say, “Lord, I will stop everything,” you will sense how living the flow is within you. You may give up your reasoning, but you have the living flow, the current, the fellowship, the communion, the stream, of the life of God. What good is it to be right yet not have the flow? As long as you have the divine life, you should have the divine flow. If you are in the communion, the fellowship, with God, you have the flow. Otherwise, you are out of the fellowship.
The picture in Genesis 2 further shows us that out of the flow three precious items come into being. These three items are gold, bdellium (pearl), and onyx stone. There are one tree and one river but three items. The number three points to the Divine Trinity. If you have God as the tree of life, you will have the divine stream flowing within you all the time. Then the issue, the result, will be three items of precious things. Man was a piece of clay, formed out of the dust of the ground, but before him was the tree of life with a flow of living water issuing in three precious items. This picture shows that we can be transformed into precious materials for God’s building by partaking of the tree of life and enjoying the inner flow of the river of water of life.
At the beginning of the Scriptures, there was a man by the name of Adam. That man was of dust, a man of clay, an earthen man. But at the end of the whole Scriptures, that is, at the end of the book of Revelation, there is another man, a corporate man, a collective man, with the names of the twelve tribes and of the twelve apostles. With this collective man, this corporate man, everything is gold, pearl, and precious stones. That corporate man is the holy city, the New Jerusalem. The city itself is gold, the entrances of the city are pearls, and the wall with its foundations is precious stones.
The man in the first creation is a man of dust, but the man in the second creation is a man of gold, of pearls, and of precious stones. In the first two chapters of the Scriptures, that man was the old man in the old creation. In the last two chapters, this man is the new man in the new creation. Man as a piece of clay is transformed, transfigured, into precious materials by taking the Triune God as life.
By taking the tree of life and by having the flow of the divine river, we are first regenerated. Regeneration is a change, a transformation, a transfiguration, in our spirit. After regeneration, gradually we have to be transformed, and finally our vile body will be changed, transfigured, into a glorious body. We have three parts: spirit, soul, and body. In our spirit we have been regenerated. From that time onward we have to be transformed in the soul — in the mind, emotion, and will. Then eventually, when the Lord comes back, our body will be transfigured. First, we are regenerated in the spirit; second, we are being transformed in the soul; and lastly, we will be transfigured in our body. We were made persons of clay, but by taking God as life and by having the divine river flowing within us, we can be regenerated and transformed into gold, pearl, and precious stones.
All these precious materials are something of the Triune God. The first item is of the Father, the second item is of the Son, and the third item is of the Spirit. God the Father to us is the divine nature as the gold. After we have been regenerated, we have the life of God and the divine nature of God, which is signified by gold. In the types of the Scriptures, gold signifies the divine nature, whereas wood signifies the human nature. For instance, in the Old Testament there is acacia wood overlaid with gold to make many items within the tabernacle. Acacia wood signifies the human nature of Christ, and gold signifies the divine nature. Gold is God the Father’s divine nature. Gold is not an element that has been transformed.
However, pearl is different. Pearl is not something created by God. It comes out of a pearl-bearing oyster. The oyster is hurt, wounded, by a grain of sand. Then the secretion of the oyster gradually transforms the grain of sand into a pearl. The oyster signifies Christ. Christ lived in the death waters, in this world of death. He was wounded by us, a piece of sand, and He secretes His life over us to make us precious pearls for the building of God’s eternal expression. By Christ’s wound and life we as little grains of sand are regenerated to be pearls. Hence, this is the work of the second of the Godhead. The pearl signifies God the Son as regeneration to us. Our regeneration transpired in the Son, by the Son, and with the Son.
Now we need to consider the significance of the precious stones. Precious stones are not created by God. They have been transformed, transfigured, from some other material. A piece of coal becomes a diamond, a precious stone, through a tremendous amount of heat and pressure over a long period of time. Since we have been born again, the Holy Spirit has been trying His best to put us under a certain kind of pressure and into a certain kind of burning for our transformation. Do you consider yourself to be precious, good, and nice? Truthfully, I do not feel that I am so nice. Many times I look at myself as a piece of black, dark coal. I have been regenerated, and I have the nature of God. There is no doubt about this, but I am still a piece of coal or a piece of clay. I need pressure and burning. The Holy Spirit always tries His best, if we are available, to put us under a certain pressure and burning for our transformation. Then we become the precious material for His building.
