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Prayer: O Lord, only You know our need. We need to see You; we need to see Your economy, Your goal, and Your heart’s desire. O Lord, we worship You. Everything on our side depends on Your mercy. You will have mercy on whomever You will have mercy. O Lord! We pray that You will continue to have mercy on us and go on further to have mercy on us. O Lord, Your church has been on the earth for more than nineteen hundred years, yet her condition is still as it is today. O Lord, we pray that You will deliver us from this religious age that we may truly enter into the state that You are after in Your economy. O Lord, cleanse us and anoint us again tonight. We pray also that You will cover us with Your precious blood and remove for us all disturbance and confusion. Give us the words and purify our words. Lord, we worship You in that You have destroyed Your enemy. Amen.
I sense that I still need to fellowship with you brothers concerning the matter of the vision. Tonight we want to see the matter of “God became man that man may become God” in the economy of God. The words God becoming man and man becoming God sound very simple, but to be able to see how God could become man requires us to spend much time to study. He came to become man that man may become Him, but how can man become God? We also need to look into this point carefully. Strictly speaking, these words are the essence of the entire Bible. The entire Bible is an explanation of the eternal economy of God. Up to the present time it has been thirty-five hundred years since the Jews began to read the Old Testament; Christians have been reading the Old and New Testaments for nearly two thousand years. Millions of people have read the Bible. However, regrettably, not many have truly seen the proper significance and real meaning in the Bible. This does not mean that throughout the generations no one has seen the visions in the Bible, but what people saw is fragmented. One saw a little concerning one aspect, and another saw a little concerning another aspect. Hence, among all the departments of the human race in the whole world, Christianity has the greatest number of books. That no other department in the world has more books than Christianity is proof that many people have seen something from the Bible.
When the Lord raised us up in China, He showed us the entire vision in the Bible in a brief and concise way through Brother Nee, the main points of which I fellowshipped with you in the previous chapter: the salvation of God, the church, Christ as life, and the Body of Christ. These are the things that Brother Nee saw clearly and spoke to us in the thirty years of his ministry. I say again that, regrettably, of these four great points that he showed us, the average brother and sister understood only the first three points and disagreed with the last point, that is, the Body of Christ. At any rate, from 1922 to 1952, when he was put into prison, Brother Nee carried out his ministry for exactly thirty years. Then, in the twenty years after 1952 he was not able to write any book or do any work.
In 1950, before Brother Nee was put into prison, the Lord led him to make an arrangement among the co-workers, an arrangement that was unequaled before or after. He rarely made this kind of arrangement because at that time the political situation kept changing, and we did not know how to prepare ourselves for the change. In the two urgent co-workers’ meetings he repeatedly said, “We ask Brother Witness to go abroad.” Afterward, when the Communists gained the upper hand, I was in Shanghai hurrying to finish the building of the big meeting hall, and the only job left to be done was to install the flooring composed of small marble chips set in cement. At the end of April 1949, Brother Nee sent me a wire telling me to turn over everything of the church in Shanghai to the elders and leave immediately. Thus, I was sent out.
After I arrived in Taiwan, outside the house I heard the noise of wooden shoes on the gravel road, and inside the house I saw a room with Japanese tatami. At that time there were at most fifty people meeting in Taipei, and there was not much for me to do. I lay in bed in my home looking at the ceiling, saying, “What did I come to Taiwan for?” That was in April. Later, I took a trip to the central and southern parts of Taiwan. The Lord gave me a sense that something could be done in Taiwan and that it was a very good place in which it was easy to set up local churches, because in one day I could go to three or four places, and the transportation was very convenient. Therefore, on August 1, 1949, I officially began the work in Taiwan.
The next year Brother Nee went to Hong Kong. In the beginning of the year a revival was brought in, so he asked me to go to Hong Kong to help him lead the whole church in Hong Kong in three aspects of service: the service of the co-workers, the service of the elders, and the service of the deacons. For a period of one and a half months the two of us were there, and nearly every day we met with each group. From the end of 1949, for two years the church in Shanghai enjoyed complete freedom. Brother Nee had never before had such a great opportunity to release what he had received of the Lord, because at that time all the Western missionaries had left. At that time ninety percent of Chinese Christianity was in the hands of the Western missionaries, so after they left, the different denominations in Shanghai were like flocks without shepherds, and anyone who had a little desire to pursue the Lord turned to us. Brother Nee considered that a golden opportunity. In 1962 or 1963 Brother Nee’s brother-in-law Samuel Chang told me, “Brother Lee, in 1950, before Brother Nee left for Hong Kong to hold a conference there, the co-workers in Shanghai talked about transferring you out of Taiwan, since there was not much to be done in Taiwan. They wanted you to return to Shanghai, where there was too much work to be done. As far as Christianity was concerned, the entire Shanghai was in our hands.”
Brother Nee was very wise; he seldom did things or said things in a rush or in a headstrong way but always tried to see how God would lead and arrange in the environment. Therefore, when I arrived in Hong Kong, he did not mention this thing to me. As we sat down to talk, spontaneously I told him about the situation of the work in Taiwan in that half year or more. I told him that up to the end of the preceding year the number in the church in Taipei had increased thirty times. In my speaking I also showed that I was very burdened, saying that from there we could go to work in Southeast Asia and then go on to East Asia, and gradually we could go on to the West. After hearing me speak concerning the situation in Taiwan, he not only did not bring up the matter decided by the co-workers in mainland China about transferring me back to the mainland, but he also encouraged me to do a good job. We talked about going back to mainland China. I said, “This is too great a matter; I don’t dare to say that either going back or not going back is the Lord’s will.” He said, “What shall we do with the few hundred churches?” After a few days, without saying goodbye to anyone, he went back to mainland China. More than ten days later, after he left Hong Kong, I also returned to Taiwan.
When I went to Taiwan, I had a family of ten with two domestic helpers. A total of twelve went to Taiwan. When I got off the plane, I had three hundred U.S. dollars with me. Brother Nee fully realized the situation among us, and he knew that when I arrived in Taiwan it would be difficult for me to receive support. At that time there were only a handful of saints in Taiwan, and most of them went there to take refuge, so they did not have much to spare to support others. Brother Nee truly loved the co-workers; he said, “Brother Witness, here I have a bottle of medicine as a sample, and I also have the formula. Take these two things back to Taiwan. Gather some brothers who are engaging in business and ask them to make a small investment and do a little advertising. That would be enough.” So I went back to Taiwan and fellowshipped with the brothers, but everyone felt that it was not the proper time, so we did not do it.
At the end of 1950 I went to Manila. I worked there for five and a half months, and just before I left, a brother went to the elders and asked them to make an appointment for him to see me. This brother was a businessman and was quite wealthy but had donated little prior to that time. He came to see me and said, “Brother Lee, now you are going back to Taiwan. Please tell me the total amount of the annual expenses of your work in Taiwan, including the building of meeting halls and the support for the co-workers. I have the burden before the Lord to bear the whole responsibility.” This was truly something of the Lord’s doing. Then I said, “Brother Wang, you know the practice among us is that we do not tell people of our needs.” He said, “This is not you telling me, but it is I receiving the Lord’s commission. Therefore, if you don’t tell me, how can I know the amount?” So I told him. Thus, he supplied the work every year for eleven years, from 1950 to 1961; every year there was a sum of money as a supply. Thank the Lord, this was all His doing.
I went back from Manila to Taiwan. At that time I was the only full-time brother in Taiwan, and there was a Sister Hou, who was also serving full time. On the whole island of Taiwan we were the only two full-time serving ones. Even Brothers Chang Wu-chen and Sun Feng-lu were not yet full time. Everyone knew that unless they went to get a job, there would be no support, so everyone got a job. After I had this experience in Southeast Asia, I fellowshipped with the brothers. Then I began to hold trainings. In 1952 over eighty full-time serving ones were produced. I told the church clearly that it did not mean that the churches had no responsibility or that the brothers and sisters did not need to give in love. But my own experience told me that there was the possibility that the serving ones would have no food on their tables. From the Bible we see that this was also the experience of Paul. Therefore, I said that, because of my experience, the support that I received in the work of my ministry would be used to pay the expenses of providing adequate food for the co-workers and their families. This meant that even if the brothers and sisters would not give anything, the co-workers still would have food on their tables. This support continued through 1961. From 1961 the churches began to share according to their ability in order to reduce the burden on the side of my work. Because many churches were set up and the number of saints increased, they reduced the amount of my support of the co-workers to about sixty percent. Thus, gradually, in 1964 I unloaded this burden. All this was recorded in the accounts of the Gospel Book Room in those years. The number of co-workers with their families reached a peak of one hundred seventy. Every year the ministry supplied them for their daily needs. This was truly the Lord’s doing.
In 1950 I had my last contact with Brother Nee. At the time I was not clear, but now when I look back, I see that it was the Lord’s doing; that is, the Lord was making preparations to transfer to me the ministry of the word in the Lord’s recovery. When I was in mainland China, I did not publish books on my own. Rather, I helped Brother Nee manage the Gospel Book Room. I wrote only a few articles, which Brother Nee liked and published as a book, entitled Gleanings from Christ’s Genealogy. There were also a few other books concerning the kingdom of the heavens. In 1950, when the two of us were in Hong Kong, we spent much time talking together. Because I realized that later it might not be possible for me to contact Brother Nee, I brought up to him the need to publish in Taiwan. He said, “Brother Witness, you know that among us only I personally own the Gospel Book Room. It belongs neither to the church nor to the co-workers; it belongs to me personally.” Then he made arrangements, saying, “Now the three political regions — the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — all differ from one another. So we will have the Gospel Book Room divided into three: one in Shanghai, one in Taiwan, and one in Hong Kong. They are not three bookrooms; rather, they are one. Due to the political situation the three places will be on their own financially.” He was responsible for the one in Shanghai; he entrusted to me the responsibility for the one in Taiwan; and he asked Brother K. H. Weigh to take charge of the one in Hong Kong. He further charged me, saying, “Brother Weigh also needs your help in bearing the responsibility for the articles.” Therefore, in the initial period, the Taiwan Gospel Book Room published books mainly in coordination with the Hong Kong Gospel Book Room. The two published books together, not separately. The cost of the books published both in Hong Kong and Taiwan were calculated together. It was due to such an arrangement made by Brother Nee that we have today’s situation.
Thank the Lord, as soon as we began the work in Taipei, an overseas Chinese brother contributed ten thousand U.S. dollars, and that became the beginning of the Gospel Book Room. Concerning the bookroom, I have explained clearly to the co-workers that this bookroom does not belong to the church or to the co-workers or to the work. Just as it was in the past with Brother Nee, this is my bookroom to serve the publication of my ministry. Therefore, I began to publish books in Taiwan. I knew that there could no longer be the ministry that was with Brother Nee and we could no longer have it. So I began to carry out the literature work in Taiwan. That fellowship in Hong Kong truly was the Lord’s sovereign arrangement in that Brother Nee gave me instructions concerning the work. After another two years he was put into prison. In 1952 in Taiwan over eighty full-time serving ones were added at the same time. I can testify to you that none of these things was of my work, but everything was the Lord’s sovereign arrangement. From 1932, when I began to speak for the Lord, to the year 1952 was a total of twenty years. I began to speak ten years later than Brother Nee. Brother Nee began to speak for the Lord in 1922. From that time to the summer of 1952, when he was imprisoned, he spoke for a total of thirty years. From 1952 on, the Lord transferred the ministry of the word to me.
From the monthly publication The Ministry of the Word you can see that we were still shallow. From 1951 to 1961, ten years went by. Then I had a burden. I sensed that our hymnal was lacking and could not match the vision that we saw, so I compiled a supplemental hymnal containing eighty-five new hymns, which I wrote within two months’ time. In our hymnal, hymns such as #499, the first two lines of which read, “Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace! / The Christ who’s all within me lives,” and #501, “O glorious Christ, Savior mine, / Thou art truly radiance divine,” were written at that time. I am surprised that over thirty years ago I was able to write hymns such as #499 and #501. I am even more surprised that not too long afterward I was able to write #203, “In the bosom of the Father, / Ere the ages had begun, / Thou wast in the Father’s glory, / God’s unique begotten Son. / When to us the Father gave Thee, / Thou in person wast the same, / All the fulness of the Father / In the Spirit to proclaim.” Stanza 3 says that the Lord was the only grain, and then stanza 4 says that we are His reproduction, His Body and His bride. It is surprising that over thirty years ago I could write such a hymn. What I saw then of the Lord was based on what Brother Nee had seen. What I saw then was just that much. In those eighty-five hymns my emphases were Christ, the Body of Christ, the Spirit, and life. Since then, after another period of time, the Lord’s table meeting among us turned from the old hymns to the new hymns. Formerly, in the old hymns we remembered mainly the Lord’s love, the Lord’s death, the Lord’s redemption, etc. But now in nearly every Lord’s table meeting what we select are these new hymns. Our praise to the Lord is thus uplifted and enriched.
The year 1952 was a turning point for me in the ministry of the word, and 1962 was another turning point. After that I came to the United States. At that time — may the Lord cover me with His precious blood — I became quite mature in the ministry of the word. Two months ago the church here was getting into the life-study of Hebrews as The Holy Word for Morning Revival. The life-study of Hebrews was given by me in 1975, exactly nineteen years ago. I expounded the book of Hebrews in a high and profound way, and not one portion needs to be revised. This is to show you that in 1961 when I came to the United States, I was already quite mature in the ministry of the word. For almost fifteen to twenty years all that I ministered was Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. At that time I also saw the building of the Body of Christ. One of the new hymns I wrote, #840, is on the building of the Body of Christ. This hymn says, “Freed from self and Adam’s nature, / Lord, I would be built by Thee.” Today when I sing this hymn, I still sense that it is so fresh and so full of light.
After nearly twenty years the Lord began to lead me into seeing the dispensing of the Triune God and the eternal economy of God. In the recent ten years and more, what the Lord has been continually showing me is this matter. Then it was during this year (1994), in the new year’s Chinese-speaking conference, that I saw the peak. Based on what I saw, I wrote a new hymn representing the high peak of the vision that the Lord has shown us: “What miracle! What mystery! / That God and man should blended be! / God became man to make man God, / Untraceable economy! / From His good pleasure, heart’s desire, / His highest goal attained will be.” Formerly among us, we did not even have such words, but now these words have been written into a hymn.
“God becoming man and man becoming God” is the economy of God; it is beyond the comprehension of angels and men. This is the point that I want to cover tonight. The Scriptures tell us clearly that God became a man to be our Savior, and then He redeemed and regenerated us. Orthodox Christians and fundamental teachers all have seen these truths. However, they do not see that there is a line concerning the economy of God recorded in the Scriptures, showing us how God became man to make man God. The Bible shows us how man can become God to have a God-man living and thus become an organism of God, which is the Body of Christ. This is something that they do not see.
Tonight I would like to spend some time to speak on how God became man. For God to become man, first He had to create man. God created man according to His image and likeness; this is the shell. Although what God created was man, this man whom He created had the image of God. This is the first step. In the next step God personally came to be a man. How did He come to be a man? He did this by entering into humanity. Physically, this means that He entered into a human virgin to be conceived in her. Matthew 1 says that God was begotten in Mary. According to the law in God’s creation, He was conceived in Mary’s womb and remained there for nine months. Then after He stayed in humanity for nine months, He was born out of humanity with divinity. The man who was born was One who is God yet man and who is also man yet God. Christianity has Christmas, Christianity has the manger, and Christianity has the angels announcing the good news. But concerning what I have just presented to you in a simple way, Christianity does not have a clear seeing. As such a God-man, He passed through human living on the earth and lived a human life. How did He live such a life? He did it by depending on His divine life within and by rejecting His human life without and thus living the life of a God-man. The inner reality of such a God-man living was the divine attributes, and the outward living that was lived out of such a God-man living was the human virtues. By thus living the life of a God-man He became a typical example.
However, it is not enough for God to have just one man as a typical example, a model. God needs a mass manifestation. Therefore, eventually, He went to the cross. When He went to the cross, He brought with Him the man whom He had become; that is, He put on this man and thus crucified this man. This death of His was an all-inclusive death. This death of His was counted by God as the death of a fallen man, a sinful man. When He became a man, He did not become a God-created man or a holy man; rather, He became a God-created yet fallen man. His flesh was the flesh of sin, except there was no poison of sin, no substance of sin, within it. It was merely in the likeness of the flesh of sin. Therefore, Romans 8:3 says that He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin. He was such a man, a man in the likeness of the flesh of sin. Hence, what He brought to the cross to be crucified there was also such a man. Although Christ was a fallen man only in likeness, when He was on the cross, God counted that likeness as real. Through crucifixion Christ terminated the man of the old creation on the cross. The man of the old creation involves all created things. Therefore, His death also terminated everything of the old creation on the cross. The man of the old creation also had sin, so His death on the cross also took away sin. Furthermore, Satan was hidden in the flesh of this sinful man. Therefore, Christ’s death on the cross not only crucified the flesh but also destroyed Satan (Heb. 2:14). However, His crucifixion was not the end; rather, He was resurrected from death. How was He resurrected? He was resurrected through the power of His divine life with the humanity that He had put on, the part created by God. In His resurrection He brought humanity into divinity.
Through His incarnation God brought divinity into humanity, and through His resurrection He brought humanity into divinity. Incarnation is the crucial step He took to bring divinity into humanity. Then, later, in His resurrection He brought the humanity that He had put on into divinity. Thus, the God-created human nature was uplifted. Originally, God was not in the human nature that He created. But now He was resurrected, and all the God-chosen people were resurrected in Him. His resurrection was to bring the God-created humanity into divinity to be resurrected with Him. This is why we say that the human nature was uplifted. Andrew Murray said the same thing, except that the wording he used is different from ours and not as thorough as ours. In this resurrection He brought the humanity that He had put on into divinity and thus became God’s firstborn Son. His becoming the Firstborn was His birth in His resurrection. This is why, concerning Christ’s resurrection, Acts 13:33 says, “You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.” He was already the Son of God, except that He did not have the human nature in Him. When He became the firstborn Son, He not only had divinity as His life, but He also had the uplifted humanity added to His divinity. It is in the mingling of the two natures that He became God’s firstborn Son. Thus, He was begotten to be God’s firstborn Son, and at the same time He regenerated all the God-chosen people (1 Pet. 1:3). To use our ordinary language, we may say that we and the Lord as God’s firstborn Son were born in the same delivery. We all were born together in Christ’s resurrection. This birth of His was the first step as a foundation for man to become God. Now in His resurrection, we as God’s chosen ones have been brought into divinity. Thus, through regeneration we have received another life.
Not only so, He as the last Adam, who in His resurrection brought humanity into divinity, became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Who is this life-giving Spirit? He is the consummation of the processed Triune God. This is just like brewing a cup of tea. When you brew a cup of tea, first you need to have some water, then you put the tea in, and finally you add some lemon and maybe some sugar. At this point the tea has been consummated. Christ as God’s only begotten Son may be likened to plain water. At a certain time human nature was added to Him. Then, when He was put to death on the cross, the element of the effectiveness of His death was also added. Furthermore, He entered into resurrection, so the element of resurrection with its power was also added. Now, as God’s only begotten Son, He has become God’s firstborn Son, and the many sons of God were born together with Him.
Besides the element of His divinity, Christ had the elements of His humanity, His experience of human living, and His death and resurrection added into Him. Thus, He became a life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. This Spirit is also the pneumatic Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. Hence, this Spirit is the very Christ, the very Triune God. Eventually, our God has become such a One. From the day of His resurrection to eternity He will be like this eternally. When we believe in the Lord, the One whom we receive is such a One, not a shallow Christ as people commonly preach. The Christ whom we know is so profound and so high. This One is our Redeemer and our Savior. He is not only Jesus Christ but also the One who became the life-giving Spirit, the consummation of God. It is this One who went through all these processes to accomplish the step for Him to become man that He might make man God.
Then how does God make man God? After God regenerates us with Himself as life, He continues to carry out the work of sanctification, renewing, and transformation in us by His Spirit of life. God became man through incarnation; man becomes God through transformation. When the Lord Jesus lived as a man on this earth, once He went up on the mountain and was transfigured. That transfiguration was a sudden occurrence. Our transformation into God, however, is not something that happens unexpectedly. Rather, it is a lifetime transformation until we are conformed to His image. Eventually, we will enter with Him into glory; that is, we will be redeemed in our body. That will be the final step of the redemption of our whole being that brings us into glory. Therefore, it is through regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification that we may become God. When we reach this point, 1 John 3:2 says that when “He is manifested, we will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is.”
The issue of this process is an organism. This organism is God joining and mingling Himself with man to make God man and also to make man God. Among the Divine Trinity, as far as the Father is concerned, this organism is the house of the Father, the house of God; as far as the Son is concerned, it is the Body of Christ. The house is for God to have a dwelling place, whereas the Body is for God to have an expression. The ultimate issue is the New Jerusalem. This shows us how God became man and how afterward He makes man God that man may live a God-man life. The God-man life that we live today is the model life that Jesus Christ lived on earth by going through death and resurrection. In the Gospel of John the human life of Jesus Christ on earth was a life before death and resurrection. In the Epistles the Christian life, the life of a God-man, that we live is a life after death and resurrection. In resurrection we are being transformed daily.
Even among us, very few have entered deeply into these mysteries of the Divine Trinity as life. May the Lord have mercy on us. I hope that through this word of fellowship we all may be able to see this vision and pursue to enter into the reality of this vision.
