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I. The church
А. The mingling of the divine life and the human life
B. The lampstands — the embodiment of Christ and the reproduction of the Spirit
II. The New Jerusalem — the Spirit being one with the bride
А. The universal marriage
B. The mingling of the Trinity with His redeemed
1. The Father's nature, the Son's redemption, and the Spirit's transformation
2. The consummation of the divine dispensing
C. To express God fully for eternity
In the foregoing lessons [we pointed out that God's purpose is to obtain the church by dispensing Himself into man and making Himself one with man. In order to dispense Himself into man, God must be triune, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Furthermore, man must be in God's image and have a spirit to receive God and assimilate Him. One day, the Son of God, the embodiment of the Father, became a man. Passing through human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit. As the Spirit, He comes into us and mingles with our spirit. Through this process there is brought into being a hybrid life, an entity composed of the mingling of the divine life with the human life. This is the church.
God is no longer the unprocessed God, but the processed God. He has accomplished everything necessary to come into us as the life-giving Spirit. Now we must believe in Him and call on the name of the Lord Jesus. When we do this, the life-giving Spirit comes into our spirit, and the mingling of the divine life and human life takes place within us. This mingling produces the church.]
[Our experience testifies that the very Christ whom we enjoy each day is the life-giving Spirit. Do you not have the reality of the living One within you? This is the very Christ whom we are enjoying, experiencing, and partaking of in our spirit. This is the life-giving Spirit who is Christ Himself. Thus, God is embodied in Christ, and Christ is realized and experienced in us as the life-giving Spirit. This experience issues in the church. The more we experience Christ in this way, the more we long for the church.]
In Revelation 1 the churches are seen as the seven golden lampstands. (See also Lessons 7 and 12 of the Triune God lesson book.)
[Christ is realized as the Spirit, and the Spirit is expressed as the churches. The shining Spirit is the reality of the shining Christ, and the shining churches are the reproduction and the expression of the shining Spirit to accomplish God's eternal purpose that the New Jerusalem as the shining city may be consummated. Christ, the Spirit, and the churches are all of the same divine nature.]
[The churches are the lampstands, and the lamps are the sevenfold intensified Spirit of God as the expression of Christ. This light is shining brighter and brighter, and the vision is becoming clearer every day.
The local churches as the golden lampstands shine with such a Spirit in the dark age of today. In today's dark age, the church really needs the sevenfold intensified Spirit of God to shine forth the testimony of Jesus.
The church is the embodiment of Christ and the reproduction of the Spirit. The Spirit is the reality of Christ (John 14:17-20; 16:13-15), and the church is the reproduction of the Spirit (Rev. 22:17a). The church with the Spirit is the embodiment of Christ, the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 1:2, 9; 19:10). Therefore, the more Spirit, the more church and the more testimony of Jesus.]
[The church is the embodiment of the Triune God dispensed into us and blended within us. It is the Triune God dispensed into humanity and blended in humanity as one single entity (Rev. 22:17a). There is no separation. This is the Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God, reaching His redeemed, and this is the consummation of the divine dispensing in this age.]
[Eventually this consummation will come to the ultimate stage, the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is a single entity which is considered the wife of the Lamb, the bride (Rev. 22:17).]
[The consummation of the divine dispensing will be a universal marriage (Rev. 19:7-9; 21:2, 9). The Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God dispensed into His redeemed people will be there as the Bridegroom; and God's redeemed people as the consummation of the redeemed, regenerated, and transformed humanity will be there as the bride. We know this because Revelation 22:17 reads, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come!" In this verse the Spirit and the bride together as a couple say "come." The husband is the Spirit, and the wife is the bride.]
[The New Jerusalem is a composition of the divine Trinity with God's redeemed people. First of all it is composed of God the Father's nature, signified by the gold. The city and its street are made of pure gold (21:18, 21b), denoting God the Father in His nature. The twelve gates of the New Jerusalem, which are twelve pearls (21:21a), signify God the Son's overcoming death and His life-imparting resurrection. An oyster is a small animal which lives in the death waters. It has a life which overcomes the death waters, and by secreting a life element, it produces pearls. Christ's overcoming death plus His life-imparting resurrection secretes the "juice" of the divine life to form us into pearls. So in the pearl we can see the Son in His death and resurrection. The pearl signifies God's redeemed and regenerated people. According to John 3, regeneration is the entry into the kingdom. You cannot enter into the kingdom of God unless you are born of the Spirit (John 3:5). Regeneration is the entry, the gate, into the New Jerusalem.
The precious stones signify the transforming work of God the Spirit (Rev. 21:11, 18-20). After regeneration, the Spirit continues to transform the regenerated people of God to make every one of them a precious stone. By this you can see that the New Jerusalem is a composition of the Father as the substance, of the Son as the entry, and of the Spirit as the transformation. It is a building of the Trinity with redeemed, regenerated, and transformed humanity.]
[The entire New Jerusalem is saturated with God the Spirit as the river of living water which flows out of the throne of God the Father and of the Lamb, God the Son. In the river the tree of life grows (Rev. 22:1-2). The life water, God the Spirit, quenches thirst, and the life tree, God the Son, nourishes. The entire city, which is a composition of the Trinity with His redeemed people, is watered, nourished, and saturated with the divine life, which is nothing less than the Triune God (Rev. 22:1-2, 14, 17), dispensing Himself to saturate His redeemed people. What a picture this is! This is a blending of the Triune God with His redeemed people. The nature of the Father is the substance. The redemption of the Son, including His death and resurrection, is the entry. And the Spirit's transformation is the work to make us divine and precious. Such a composition is the New Jerusalem. It is saturated by the eternal life, which is the Triune God Himself. This is the consummation of the divine dispensing.
I look to the Lord that through these messages you may see a vision of God's economy, God's goal, and what God is doing to reach His goal. What God is doing is dispensing Himself as the Father, the source, as the Son, the expression, and as the Spirit, the very entering in, into you and me. Day and night He is working on this one thing. He is working toward this one goal, that we all would be a lampstand in this age to express the Triune God, and eventually that we would be that bride in eternity, a composition of redeemed and regenerated humanity saturated with the Triune God as life.]
[Such a composition of the Triune God with His redeemed people will express God fully for eternity (Rev. 21:11a). So at the end of the sixty-six books of the Bible, the Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the Triune God.
Now we can see why John says that the Son comes in the Father's name, and the Spirit comes in the Son's name. In his Gospel John prepares the way to show us that these three — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — are not separate. These three actually are one. The source, the expression, and the entering in become the consummation. The Spirit is not separated from the Son nor from the Father. The Spirit is the consummation of the entire Triune God. The Spirit as the Bridegroom is the totality and consummation of the Triune God. He is qualified to be such a husband to marry the wife, who is the consummation of all the redeemed and regenerated people of God. This is a universal couple with divinity marrying humanity.
Here are two consummations. Divinity has gone through a process — through incarnation, through crucifixion, through resurrection, and through ascension — to become the Spirit, the totality, the consummation, of the Triune God to be the Bridegroom. Humanity also has gone through a process — through redemption, through regeneration, and through transformation — to become the consummation of God's chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people. The consummation of the Triune God and the consummation of God's chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people become one in a universal marriage. The processed man will match the processed God forever for His full expression and satisfaction.]
The processed Triune God as the life-giving Spirit dispenses Himself into man and mingles with man to produce the church. Because the Spirit is the reality of Christ, the more we are mingled with the Spirit, the more we become the embodiment of Christ. We also become the lampstands shining with the sevenfold intensified Spirit in a dark age as the testimony of Jesus. The mingling eventually consummates in the New Jerusalem, where the Spirit as the Bridegroom and the church as the bride are joined in a universal marriage. The New Jerusalem as the consummate issue of the Triune God dispensed into man will express the Triune God for eternity.
