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In the foregoing messages we saw the failures in the churches, the degradation of the church, and the overcomers in the church. In this message we shall begin to consider the vital matter of the recovery of the church.
The word “recover” means to obtain again something that has been lost, or to return something to a normal condition. “Recovery” means the restoration or return to a normal condition after a damage or a loss has been incurred. When we speak of the recovery of the church, we mean that something was there originally, that it became lost or damaged, and that now there is the need to bring that thing back to its original state. Because the church has become degraded through the many centuries of its history, it needs to be restored according to God’s original intention. Concerning the church, our vision should be governed not by the present situation nor by traditional practice but by God’s original intention and standard as revealed in the Scriptures.
We need to understand the recovery of the church in relation to God’s intention and accomplishment and Satan’s work of destruction. The New Testament reveals that regarding the church God has a definite intention, purpose, and goal. The New Testament also gives us a clear picture of God’s accomplishment according to His intention. First, God purposed and then He came in to accomplish His purpose. Furthermore, the New Testament also gives us a clear record of how God’s enemy came in to destroy what God had accomplished. The satanic way to destroy God’s accomplishment has two aspects: the inward and the outward. The inward aspect is to damage and corrupt God’s people. Then Satan seeks to destroy God’s accomplishment outwardly. Nevertheless, God is a God with an eternal purpose. He is a purposeful God, and once He has made up His mind to do something, nothing can change His mind or stop Him. Therefore, after Satan’s destruction, God comes in to redo the things that He had done before. This redoing is His recovery. This is to bring back whatever has been lost and destroyed by God’s enemy, Satan.
The recovery of the church is typified by the return of the children of Israel from their captivity (Ezra 1:3-11). In order to understand the recovery of the church, we need to consider the history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a book of types, and the greatest, all-inclusive type is the history of the people of Israel. Many Bible teachers apply the things which happened in the beginning of the history of the people of Israel to Christian experience today. For example, they apply the Passover to the experience of redemption and the crossing of the Red Sea to the experience of baptism. Furthermore, we may apply the enjoyment of the daily manna and of the water from the cleft rock to our experience of taking Christ as our life supply and as our living water. We may even know how to apply the temple built by Solomon to our experience. However, not many Christians know how to apply the last part of the history of the people of Israel — the captivity in Babylon and the return from captivity. As we shall see, the return of the children of Israel from their captivity typifies the recovery of the church.
In the Old Testament God first gained a people through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Eventually, that people became the nation of Israel, which was called a kingdom of priests (Exo. 19:6). That people, that nation, was a type of the church. In Acts 7:38 Stephen even refers to the people of Israel as “the assembly in the wilderness,” using the word ekklesia, the word for “church” in the New Testament. This is a further indication that the children of Israel are a type of the church.
The entire history of the nation of Israel is a full type, an all-inclusive type, of the church. The nation of Israel began with the exodus. The children of Israel were in slavery in Egypt, but through the lamb of the Passover they were redeemed out from Pharaoh’s usurpation. They made their exodus from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, entered the wilderness, and came to Mount Sinai, and there they built the tabernacle as God’s dwelling place on earth. Eventually, the people of Israel crossed the Jordan and entered into Canaan, the good land. After conquering the people and gaining the land, they built the temple. The time immediately after the building of the temple was a golden time. However, that golden time did not last very long. Mainly due to the failure of Solomon, the temple was destroyed, and the children of Israel were taken to Babylon as captives. The Babylonian army not only destroyed Jerusalem with its temple but also brought the utensils of the temple to Babylon and put them into idol temples. What a shame! The people of Israel remained in Babylon for seventy years.
Spiritually speaking, the church, due to its degradation, has been in captivity. God’s people have been divided, scattered, and carried away from the proper ground of unity to a wrong ground. In the Old Testament type, the children of Israel were centered around Jerusalem, but later they were scattered and carried away to many places, in particular, to Babylon. This portrays the situation among many of today’s Christians. In a very real sense, the believers today are more scattered than the children of Israel were. Therefore, we need to be recovered. We need not only revival but also recovery.
As typified by the latter part of the history of the children of Israel, the recovery is from Babylon — the capturing and divisive ground (Ezra 1:11). For the children of Israel to be recovered meant for them to be brought back to Jerusalem from Babylon. Negatively, to be recovered means to be brought out of Babylon; positively, it means to be brought up to Jerusalem. Although the Scriptures reveal that some of the people of Israel were taken captive to Syria and others to Egypt, the majority of them were taken captive to Babylon. Babylon was the main place of their captivity. Hence, in type the meaning of Jerusalem is the ground of unity, and the meaning of Babylon is division, scattering, and captivity. To be recovered out of Babylon is to be recovered out of division, and to be recovered to Jerusalem means to be recovered back to the original ground of unity.
In the Old Testament, the temple was destroyed, and all its vessels were carried away to Babylon and placed in the temple of Nebuchadnezzar’s idols. This signifies that at a certain time the entire church was destroyed by the “Babylonians,” who carried away the contents of the temple to Babylon and placed them in the temple of their idols. At a certain time in church history, Babylonianism came into the church, destroyed it, and carried away its contents. If you study church history, you will see that this was truly the situation. Therefore, in Revelation 17 the apostate church is called Babylon the Great, the great prostitute.
In its degradation the church was captured and held in the captivity of Babylon the Great. In Revelation 18 Babylon refers to the city of Rome. In a figure of speech, John, the writer of Revelation, called Rome “Babylon the Great.” Eventually, the organized church under the pope was called the Roman Church. This Roman Church in Revelation 17 is given by the Lord the title “Babylon the Great, The Mother of the Prostitutes and the Abominations of the Earth” (Rev. 17:5). This expression corresponds to the use of the word Babylon in Old Testament times. In those times God’s people were carried away to Babylon and kept in captivity there. In the New Testament, with the fulfillment of the type, the principle is the same: the church, God’s chosen people, eventually were held in the captivity of Babylon the Great. This means that both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament God’s people were held captive in Babylon.
If we see this, we shall have a clear view, an overall view, concerning the degradation of the church and the recovery of the church. The captivity of the children of Israel was due to their degradation. Because of their degradation, they were carried away to captivity in Babylon. The church also became degraded and eventually was brought into captivity by Babylon the great, Christendom, which is a prostitute in the eyes of the holy God. The recovery of the church, therefore, involves a return from the capturing and divisive ground signified by Babylon.
The recovery of the children of Israel was not only from Babylon but back to Jerusalem, the God-ordained unique ground. Jerusalem was the place the Lord had chosen (Deut. 12:5). Jerusalem, therefore, was the center for God’s people to worship Him, and this unique center preserved the unity of the people of God. Without such a center, after the children of Israel had entered the good land, they would have been divided. Foreseeing this problem, God repeated the commandment again and again concerning the place of His choosing (Deut. 12:5, 11,13-14). The people of Israel had no right to choose their own place to worship. That right was in God’s hands; He alone could make that choice, and the people were to take His choice, the divine choice. God’s choice became the center of the gathering of His people, and this is the unique ground of unity. For this reason, it was necessary for God’s people in the Old Testament to be brought back to Jerusalem, the unique ground ordained by God.
For God’s people in the Old Testament, Jerusalem was the unique place of worship, the uniting center. Babylon caused division, but Jerusalem maintained the oneness. Today’s Babylon is division, and today’s Jerusalem is oneness. When we come back to oneness we come back to Jerusalem.
Those who went back to Jerusalem from Babylon brought with them all the vessels of the temple of God which had been captured to Babylon (Ezra 1:5-11). These vessels, which were of silver and gold, signify the experiences of Christ and the riches of Christ. All the vessels in the temple are the experiences of the various aspects of Christ. The people of God were scattered, and all the spiritual experiences were carried away. That was a shame to them and to God. Even today, some dear Christians have real experiences of Christ, but they are in Babylon. This means that they have the experiences of Christ in the place of captivity, and in the place of idols. The experiences are right, but the place is wrong, for the vessels are right, but they are the vessels of the temple of God in the temple of idols. Therefore, all the vessels of silver and gold must be brought back to Jerusalem.
In typology, silver refers to Christ’s redemption, and gold refers to the divine nature, the nature of God. The children of Israel bringing vessels of silver and gold with them from Babylon to Jerusalem indicates that our experiences must be the experiences of Christ and His redemption and of God and His nature.
Today’s Babylon has not only captured God’s people but also robbed all the riches from God’s temple. The vessels, signifying the riches of Christ, have been carried away. This is the reason that in Roman Catholicism and in the Protestant denominations very little is said, if anything, concerning the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). The believers are not encouraged to eat Christ, to drink Christ, to feast with Christ, to enjoy Christ in full. The reason there is little or no enjoyment of the riches of Christ is that all the vessels in the temple have been carried away by Babylon the Great. Now the Lord wants to recover the experience of the riches of Christ. He wants not only to call His faithful people out of Babylon and back to the proper church life, but also to recover and bring back all the different aspects of Christ which have been lost.
The recovery of the church is also typified by the rebuilding of the temple of God, the house of God, in Jerusalem after the return of God’s people from Babylon. Ezra 1:3 says, “Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.” Verse 5 goes on to say, “Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem.” These verses indicate that the recovery is not only a matter of going back to Jerusalem with the vessels of the temple of God but also of rebuilding the temple of God, which had been destroyed.
Finally, the recovery of the church is typified in the Old Testament by the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem (Neh. 2:11, 17). After the recovery of the building of the temple, there was still the need to build up the city. Without the city, there would have been no protection for the temple. The temple, the place of the Lord’s presence, needed protection. The wall of the city was the defense to the temple.
This also is an aspect of the type that we must apply in the New Testament. Ephesians 2:19 and 1 Timothy 3:15 speak of the church as the house of God. But in the last two chapters of Revelation, there is a city, and in this city there is no temple (Rev. 21:22), because the city has become the enlargement of the temple.
In order to understand the relationship between the house and the city in the New Testament, we need to realize that the church is the enlargement of Christ and the increase of Christ. All the believers are parts of Christ and members of Christ. All these parts put together are the increase of Christ. The church, therefore, is the fullness of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23) because Christ has been increased and enlarged into so many members. The first step of the enlargement of Christ is the church as the house. The second step of this enlargement is also the church, not as the house but as the city. The church as the house must be enlarged to be the church as the city. Eventually, the whole church becomes the city. Because the temple has become the city, Revelation 21:22 tells us that there is no temple in the city of New Jerusalem. The city is the tabernacle, the dwelling place (Rev. 21:2-3). Hence, the city is the enlargement of the temple, the development of the house, to the uttermost.
The building of the house and the city is the center of God’s eternal purpose. This building is actually the mingling of God with man. The church, therefore, is the mingling of divinity with humanity. When this mingling is enlarged and consummated to the fullest extent, that is the city. The city, then, eventually becomes the mutual building, the mutual habitation, of God and man, for God dwells in us and we dwell in God. This is the universal, eternal mingling of God with man. On a small scale, this is the house, and on a large scale, it is the city.
Christ’s first coming had very much to do with the return of God’s people from Babylon to Jerusalem. Christ came a little over four hundred years after this return from captivity. Christ was born of Mary, a descendant of those who had returned to Jerusalem. If none of God’s people had returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, there would have been no one to carry out Christ’s first coming. However, according to the New Testament, there was a number of holy people, including Mary, Zechariah and Elizabeth (the parents of John the Baptist), Simeon, and Anna, all of whom were descendants of those who returned from captivity. All these were very much used for the first coming of Christ.
The principle is the same with Christ’s second coming. If there is no recovery of the church life, that is, no return of God’s people from Babylon the Great to the church life, there will be no way for Christ to carry out His second coming. This is the reason that the Lord, at the end time, is working to have a recovery. I believe that this recovery will be a preparation and a base for Christ’s coming again. There will be many Marys, Zechariahs, Elizabeths, Simeons, and Annas to prepare a base for Him to accomplish His second coming. Therefore, for Christ’s second coming there is the need of the recovery of the church.
