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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 10:17; 12:24 Hymns: #501, #841
Prayer: Lord, we are grateful to You that You have gathered us again into Your name in the move of Your Spirit and under the cleansing of Your precious blood to come to touch You and pursue You according to Your Holy Scriptures. Lord, we tell You that we need You all the time. This morning, even the more, we ask You to come down to visit us, to touch every heart and every spirit and open up the minds of the entire congregation. Lord, anoint us; anoint our mouths to speak, and anoint our ears to hear. Give us the understanding. Open the heavens to us. Open Yourself, even open Your heart; and also open us toward You. We desire to hear Your word from Your heart. Lord, we do not like to have a doctrine or teaching in dead letters. We are not here for this. We are here for touching You deeply in the depths of Your word. We do not want to be skating on the surface; we desire to go down to the bottom to see You, to see Your heart, to see what You want today. Even today while we are in Your recovery, we want to know what Your move is. Lord, grant us the revelation. Grant us a vision. Grant us the seeing that we need. Lord, be one spirit with us in speaking and in hearing. Amen.
My burden in this chapter concerns the need of the blending. Even among us who are in the recovery, not many have the realization that we need the blending, and we need it desperately. The heavy burden in the ministry that is on my heart and in my spirit is the matter of blending. In the past three months I offered to the Lord many prayers, asking Him to do something in His recovery. At the present time there are more than sixteen hundred local churches established by the Lord in all the six major continents. I receive letters from abroad quite often telling me of the situation in different places around the globe. As I look at the whole situation of the recovery, seemingly it is quite encouraging. Apparently, the churches are going on well and are flourishing, increasing, and growing. But the more I know this and the more I feel encouraged, the deeper I am burdened. It seems that the Lord within me is saying, “Is this all that I want? Do you believe that My Body can be built up in the common situation that is among us today? Is the present situation satisfactory for Me to go on?” I feel deeply that it is not.
After I had remained in the United States and had spoken for the Lord for a little over thirteen years, we moved from Los Angeles to Anaheim, and we changed the way of practicing the Lord’s recovery somewhat. Some people say that beginning from that time, my speaking changed. They say that after the move to Anaheim, my speaking was not as powerful as in the previous thirteen years, from 1962 to 1974. However, the people who say this do not know the burden that I received from the Lord.
In the first period of my ministry in this country, I traveled to many places to hold meetings and to speak mainly on the experience and enjoyment of Christ. I agree that my ministry at that time was rich and powerful and full of impact. But when we were flourishing in Los Angeles, we felt that we needed to move to a new place, and we came to Anaheim. From that time I received a burden to change from always holding conferences to conducting semiannual trainings to get into the life-study of His Word. Although I had given message after message, still the Word, the Holy Scriptures, had not been opened up. For the long run there was the need for the opening up of the holy Word so that people could see the life in this book. Therefore, each year for the past twenty-one years I have conducted two annual trainings lasting ten days each. At the present time nearly the entire Bible has been finished; only a few books remain. If the Lord wills, perhaps by the end of 1995, we will finish the entire life-study of the Scriptures.
I have received many letters from people who appreciate all the truths that have been opened up to the church from the Life-study messages. They have reached many people on this earth. They are the riches kept in storage in the recovery. Whenever you desire to know a particular truth in Genesis, you can simply open the Life-study, and you will taste how sweet, how enlightening, how supplying, and how nourishing it is.
In approximately 1980 I began to see the truth of God’s economy. To open up the entire Bible from the first page to the last is needed, but what is the central matter in the Holy Bible? This central matter is the economy of God. The economy of God is for the Body of Christ. After seeing this, I checked with myself, “Where is the Body of Christ? You have opened the Bible book by book to the saints, and there are more than sixteen hundred local churches raised up on this earth, but where is the Body? You have the churches, but where can you see the Body?” Because of this, I became burdened. I said, “Lord, I must confess to You and admit that although I saw the Body of Christ and I preached and taught the Body of Christ for years, even I myself am not very much in the reality of the Body of Christ.” I was confessing my dullness and shortcomings to the Lord concerning this matter. Thus, the present burden has come to me. You should not pay so much attention to the spreading of the recovery, to the increase of the churches, and to the good meetings of the churches. You must realize that there is a great lack, a shortage, that is, the reality of the Body of Christ. It is for this reason that there is a need for the blending.
In today’s education the goal is not merely to finish elementary school and junior high school and then to graduate from high school. The goal is to study in a university and to earn not only a bachelor’s degree but even a master’s degree or a Ph.D. After many young people finish high school, they become tired of studying and terminate their education to get a job and make a living. This is just like our church life. To be in the church life may be likened to being in high school. Being satisfied to be merely in the church life, we may say, “Praise the Lord! Hallelujah for the church life! How good it is!” But will this reach the goal for the fulfillment of the Lord’s purpose? It will not, just as graduating from high school will not reach the goal of the purpose of today’s education. Today in the recovery, we need to go on and on to reach the high peak of God’s economy, that is, Mount Zion.
Jerusalem is built on the top of a mountain. Although Jerusalem is good, it is not the peak. In Jerusalem there is a peak, that is, Mount Zion, on which the temple was built. About one thousand years before the building of the temple, God asked Abraham to offer his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, which is another name for Mount Zion (Gen. 22:2; 2 Chron. 3:1). The good situation in the recovery today is just like Jerusalem. However, there is no Zion. In the New Testament the overcomers are likened to Zion. In Revelation 14:1 the one hundred forty-four thousand overcomers are not just in Jerusalem; they are on the peak of Zion. The overcomers, the vital groups, are today’s Zion. My burden today is to help you reach the peak of the vital groups, that is, the overcomers’ Zion. Although we may have a good church life, among us there is almost no realization, no practicality, no actuality, and no reality of the Body life. This is the need in the recovery today.
The regular procedures of the church work in the Lord’s recovery today consist of four steps: begetting, nourishing, teaching (perfecting), and building. Begetting is to have sinners saved and regenerated to become the members of Christ (1 Cor. 4:15b; Matt. 28:19); nourishing is to feed the new believers for their growth in the divine life (1 Thes. 2:7; John 21:15, 17); and teaching is to perfect the saints that they may mature to be built (Matt. 28:20a; Eph. 4:12-16). The steps of begetting, nourishing, and perfecting are all for another higher step, that is, for the building up of the Body of Christ (vv. 12b, 16) in the local churches (Rev. 1:4a, 11). However, we need to ask ourselves, “Where is such a building? Where is the Body of Christ today? Within and among the many local churches, where is the reality of the Body of Christ?” According to my observation, we cannot see the reality of the Body of Christ anywhere today.
You may argue that the church is the Body of Christ. Yes, it is; but to be in the reality of the Body of Christ is not just a matter of setting up local churches with the establishing of elders and the practice of the church life in a particular way. This is merely an arrangement, a work, a service. It is not the reality of the Body of Christ. Even though our preaching of the gospel may be very good, there may not be much reality of the Body of Christ.
In the churches today we may have many saints in “elementary school,” many in “junior high school,” and many in “high school,” but where is the “university” that can educate people up to the standard of a “master’s degree” and even to the highest standard, a “Ph.D.”? Where is the “university” for the Lord’s recovery? I do not mean that we should set up a seminary. But we should not pay so much attention to the mere establishing of the churches and the arranging of many outward things. These have nothing to do with the reality of the Body of Christ.
This does not mean that we should close the doors of all the local churches. That would make the situation worse. This would be like saying that, since there is no possibility for us to have universities, let us forget about high school, junior high, and elementary school. That would make us primitive and backward.
The highest peak of the Lord’s recovery that can really, practically, and actually carry out God’s economy is for God to produce not many local churches in a physical way but an organic Body to be His organism. We all have a physical body, but our body actually is not the reality of our being. My body is me, but it is not the reality of my being. Likewise, the churches set up around the globe are a physical frame, but among the churches there may be no reality of the Body of Christ. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that this is our situation today. Where is the reality of the Body of Christ?
The thought of blending is very strong in the Bible. In the Old Testament there is a type of the blending for the fulfillment of God’s economy. However, if we read the Old Testament only in letters, we will not be able to see it. This type of the blending is strongly referred to by the apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians 10:17 Paul says, “Seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one Body; for we all partake of the one bread.” Paul’s thought of the church being one bread was not his own invention; rather, it was taken from the Old Testament. The meal offering in Leviticus 2:4 consisted of cakes made of fine flour mingled with oil. Every part of the flour was mixed, or mingled, with the oil. That is blending. Paul tells us that the church is a bread, a cake, made of fine flour. This fine flour comes from wheat grains, and the wheat grains come from the one grain of wheat, which is Christ. John 12:24 says that Christ is the one grain of wheat who fell into the earth and died and grew up in resurrection to produce many grains, which are we, His believers. We are the many grains so that we may be ground into fine flour for making the cake, the bread, of the church. Here we can see the thought of blending in the Bible.
Later, in 1 Corinthians 12:24 Paul writes, “God has blended the body together, giving more abundant honor to the member that lacked.” This verse says clearly that God has blended all the believers together. But where is the blending in the recovery? We may think that the coordination in the church is the reality of the blending. However, I must tell you that even the coordination in the church is not the reality of the Body of Christ. At this point you may wonder what the reality of the Body of Christ is. This is why there is the need to set up a “university” or a “college” so that we can go on from “high school” to reach the highest peak, the reality of the Body of Christ.
A great part of the believers in the local churches are still in the natural man, but to be in the reality of the Body of Christ, we need to be absolutely in the resurrection life of Christ. We do have some good coordination in the local churches. However, I would ask, “Is this kind of coordination carried out by the natural life or in resurrection?” To be in resurrection means that our natural life is crucified, and then the God-created part of our being is uplifted in resurrection to be one with Christ in resurrection. In Philippians 3:10 Paul says that we all need to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection. We all need to ask ourselves whether the coordination among us is by the power of Christ’s resurrection or merely by our natural man.
I do not believe that everything I have done in the past thirty-two years in the United States has been in resurrection. I do not deny, and I cannot deny, that as I was carrying out the Lord’s ministry, especially the ministry of life to establish the churches, some part was in resurrection, but not every part. Anything that is carried out even scripturally but in the natural life is not the reality of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is absolutely something in the resurrection life of Christ.
It is common today that in the local churches what we can see is mostly the “church” in its meetings, activities, works, and services. But we cannot see much of the reality of the Body of Christ in resurrection, that is, in the Spirit, in the pneumatic Christ, and in the consummated God. So there is the need for us to endeavor to be absolutely in the resurrection life of Christ. We need to endeavor to reach in the church life the highest peak, today’s Zion, of the reality of the Body of Christ until we consummate in the New Jerusalem, including Zion. Dear saints, this is our need. To have the blending is to meet this need.
