Nature reveals only God's glory, but Christ reveals God Himself. God is in Christ. At the most the universe can reveal God's glory (Psa. 19:1; Rom. 1:20); only Christ can reveal God Himself, because God is in Christ.
Once I spoke with a college student about the existence of God. The student argued that there is no God, and I said to him, "Then you must be God. If you know that there is no God, you must be God yourself. If you know that there is no God, you must have travelled throughout the whole earth. If one cannot find God in Shanghai, He may be in Nanking. In order for you to say that there is no God, you must have been to Shanghai and Nanking. But if God is not in Nanking, He may be in Tientsin. Therefore, you must have been to Tientsin as well. If God is not found in China, He may be found in another country! This means that you have been to all the countries in the world. If God is not in one place, He may be in another place. In order for you to say that there is no God, you must have been to all these places! God may be hiding at the North Pole or the South Pole, or He may be hiding in the jungle or the wilderness. You must have been to the North Pole, the South Pole, and all the jungles and wildernesses in the world. In order for you to say that there is no God, you must have been to all these places! Perhaps God is not living on this earth, but is living on the moon. This would mean that you must have been to the moon also. God may also be living on other planets or hiding in outer space. This means that you also must have been to all the planets and to outer space as well. Hence, you must have been all over the universe and have searched everywhere. If you are qualified to say that there is no God, then you must be God.
"This is not all. You can say that there is no God today. But how can you be sure that there was no God in Shanghai yesterday. Perhaps God will come tomorrow. If you cannot find God this year, how do you know that there was no God last year? How can you be sure that you will not find God next year? Moreover, even if you are sure that there is no God today, how can you be sure that there was no God a thousand years ago? You must be a person who lives forever. You must be one who knows everything about the future, and one who is not bound by time and space. You must be one who can be simultaneously in Tientsin as well as in all the other countries of the world. You must be able to be in the east, the west, the North Pole, and the South Pole at the same time. You must be omnipresent. You must have searched through time and space in order to conclude that there is no God. If this is the case, I do not need to look anywhere else. You are God! If you are not God, you are not qualified to say that there is no God."
Brother Jiang's father-in-law received a wrong diagnosis from the doctor; therefore, his sickness never healed. This is analogous to the Modernists who claim that a man can be saved only if he performs good works. Saying this proves that one is ignorant of the true nature of man. Those who say this do not know man's true self. The Bible says that man is born in sin (Psa. 51:5). Man's nature is constituted of nothing but sin. Sin is something that originates from man's inward being.
The definition of the church: All that is of Christ in all the saints.
There was a opera star in England named Miss Christiana Fry. She was born of a rich family and endowed with beauty and wealth. Once she was in a beautiful dress and met a preacher on her way home. The preacher told her that she was going down the wrong path and that she should believe in the Lord. She rejected his word. After she returned home, she said to God, "God, I hate You. I despise what You love, and I love what You hate. Even if you want to give me grace, I will not want it." Later she added, "But God, give me what I do not want. Give me what I do not have." Eventually she became a Christian and wrote a book called Christ Our Example. This proves that even those who hate and reject God can be saved.
Today many people consider confession as a big thing. They even consider it to be something bigger than the Lord's blood, as if forgiveness of sins comes from confession. The work of Dr. John Sung gives people such an impression. Many people do not believe that forgiveness of sin is through the precious blood of the Lord. Even if a man has not confessed his sin, the Lord's blood is still efficacious as long as he believes in the blood.
How does the blood wash us of our sins? When a sinner sins, there is the sin-record before the Lord. When a man believes in the Lord, his name is written in the book of life, and his sin-records before the Lord are erased. After a man believes in the Lord, his sins are removed before God by the blood of the Lord. Read Revelation 20:12, 15 and Matthew 12:36-37. The Bible says that one's name can be "erased" from the book of life (Rev. 3:5; Exo. 32:32; Psa. 69:28), but this kind of "erasing" is not eternal perdition. Once a believer's name is recorded in the book of life, it can never be removed. When he sins, his name receives a mark against it.
In typology, when the priests slaughtered the animals on the altar, the blood was drained under the altar (signifying the washing of our conscience by the blood of the Lord) on the one hand, and the priests brought the blood into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat on the other hand. When God saw the blood, He was satisfied. In the Holy of Holies, the law within the ark was covered by the blood, showing that God's righteous requirements have been silenced by the blood. Because of this God can now forgive our sins.
There is a difference between representative sin and personal sin. Personal sin is what a person commits when he acts as an individual. Representative sin is what a person commits when he acts in a representative position. A person's position as a master or a servant or as a male or a female is more than a personal position; it is a matter of representation. Matthew mentions being compelled to go a mile, being slapped on the right cheek, or being sued for a tunic. As far as personal conduct is concerned, it is enough for a person to endure all these treatments. But as far as him being a representative is concerned, enduring all these is not enough. We are God's children; this is a matter of representation, and we must go an extra mile, turn the other cheek, and give others the cloak as well. Only then will we properly represent God. God's love is shed abroad like the sunshine and the rain; He does not withdraw them because of man's scorn. If our heavenly Father is this way, we must be the same because we represent Him. Those who have not reached this standard may not have committed any personal sin, but they have committed a representative sin.
God's love for the world has the nation as the basic unit. The church has the city as the basic unit, while humanity as a whole has the family as the basic unit. Noah, Abraham, Ahab, Korah, Lydia, etc., were all mentioned together with their family as a basic unit. The judgment on a family will come upon the head of the household, who is the male. The Lord will ask how the head has dealt with his family. With a female, the Lord will only ask her to be accountable for herself. A male carries a double role; he must act in accordance with Ephesians 6:4. There was a professor from Princeton who had several sons. None of them believed in the Lord. When a colleague of his reminded him that he should bring his sons to the Lord, he began to admonish his sons concerning the way of the Lord. Yet none of them believed by the time they graduated. Later the professor died, and his children were still unbelievers. By the time these children grew old, however, they remembered the words of their father and were all saved. I have seen dozens of cases like this.
In the Bible the male represents truth and stands for objective things, whereas the female represents experience and stands for subjective things. In a family the male must assume the responsibility of authority and supply.
When I was in England, I visited George Cutting. At that time he was quite old. I talked with him for about half an hour. The clearest word that came out of his mouth was, "Our Lord needs us and we need Him." Cutting's book, Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment, has sold more than 10 million copies. Next to the Bible, it is the most widely circulated book.
Mr. Sparks said that many people do not live in God's presence during ordinary times; they turn to God only when there is a crisis. If we practice living in His presence during ordinary times, we will save ourselves from many cumbersome procedures.
Once I went with an older brother to shop. When he was ready to leave, he paid his money quickly, turned to me, and said, "It is better to reckon everything now than to reckon it at the time of the resurrection of the righteous." I asked him what he meant, and he answered that a debt today will cost more on that day; a dollar today is worth only a dollar, but on that day, it will be compounded through interest.
(1)Once George Müller was going to Quebec. He was scheduled to arrive on Saturday afternoon, but the fog was too heavy and his ship was detained for twenty four hours. He tried to persuade the captain to set sail in spite of the fog, saying that he had to arrive in Quebec by Saturday afternoon. At first the captain would not give in, saying, "Do you not know how heavy the fog is?" Müller answered, "No, my eyes do not see the fog; they only see the living God." The captain thought that this man must have just come out of a mental asylum. Mr. Müller turned back into the cabin and prayed to the Lord, "I have promised others that I will be there for my speaking. If I miss the appointment, I will let them down. Let the captain of this ship know that you are God by blowing the fog away." After he prayed he went back to the deck and told the captain, "You can set sail now. The fog is retreating." Indeed, the fog began to move away. Later, the captain of the ship testified that he had thought that Mr. Müller was mentally sick. However, when he saw with his own eyes how God had heard Mr. Müller's prayer, he could not help but be convinced.
(2)Once there was a famine in the province of Shensi, and a few believers were praying. Suddenly a strong wind blew toward them and brought chestnuts which piled up three or four feet high. Later when they testified about this in a meeting, a few hundred believers from the province of Suiyuen remembered that at the time they prayed, a strong wind came and cleaned up the chestnuts from their threshing floor. The huge black cloud took all the chestnuts and moved in the direction of the Shensi province.
One of Mr. Evan Roberts's frequent prayers was, "Bend me low, Lord." Another frequent prayer was, "Bend the church low to save the world." These two prayers were his lifelong prayers and were recorded in The Overcomer magazine between 1913 and 1914.
Mr. Roberts was an uneducated coal miner. At first he prayed alone in open fields. Later, as more joined him, there were revival meetings everywhere, and meetings began in a few dozen places. During their meetings, one could hear children crying and carrying on, yet there was no disorder because God was presiding over the meetings. One man by the name of Williams was a newspaper reporter. He went to the meetings to look for Mr. Roberts but did not find him. Eventually, he found him in a school where many elementary school students were gathering together to pray. When the children saw Mr. Williams, they surrounded him and asked him to preach to them. Mr. Williams was taken by surprise. He had spoken on numerous occasions, but he did not know what a message was. The children next asked if he was saved and asked him to pray. When he knelt down to pray, the children surrounded him. Later, he found Mr. Roberts sitting on the fourth row in a meeting. Mr. Williams went over and sat by him. Mr. Roberts was silent for a long time and only opened his mouth to adjust one man who was calling a hymn. After Mr. Williams saw all these things, he resigned from his work at the newspaper company and followed Mr. Roberts to learn from him the way to pray.
Mr. Roberts preached between the age of nineteen and twenty-six. Then he became sick, and he is still too sick to work today. He is still alive today and in his fifties. A believer who talked with him for about two hours testified later that he had never met a person with as little self-consciousness as Mr. Roberts had.
In collaboration with Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis, he wrote War on the Saints, a book on spiritual warfare. Prior to him, no one knew anything about the spiritual warfare spoken of in Ephesians 6.
I was sick for one hundred sixty-five days. The last episode was the most trying of all. I could not sleep at night, and I was constantly sweating. During my sickness, many prayers seemed to have disappeared from me; I was not able to hold on to any promise from the Lord or trust in His healing.
Once when Brother Chang Kwang-rong saw my pain, he said, "I wish I could die for you." I would not allow others to give me any medicine. I said, "I will not take any medicine. If I die, God is responsible for my death. But if you give me medicine and I die, you will have to be responsible for my death."
On the last day of my sickness, the head nurse in the Health Department called my friends and relatives and asked them to make preparations for my funeral. Many people came and wept. On that day, I heard a soft voice coming from afar, saying, "Watchman Nee, I have healed you." Then I asked someone to fetch my clothing and shoes and to hire a car for me. I took the car and rode to Miss Dora Yu's house. She thought that I was a ghost. After I was healed, I was able to walk downstairs by myself. I was healed on Friday. By Saturday, I was able to mend my own shoes, and on the Lord's Day I preached for over an hour.
