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Scripture Reading: Gal. 1:4, 13-14; Phil. 3:3-8, 10; 2 Cor. 3:6 Hymns: #541, #539, #976
Prayer: Lord, we trust in Your mighty name and we trust in Your prevailing blood against the enemy, against the evil one. Lord, cover us and protect us and bring us through this meeting in Your mighty name.
In this chapter we want to see the significance of the blending. We have seen that the truth of blending is in the holy Word. Hardly anyone speaks about blending because this is not only very high and deep but also very mysterious. It is not a physical matter.
When Brother Nee was raised up by the Lord, he saw the light that the local churches are needed for the Lord to take the procedure to go on to reach His goal in His economy. So he stressed the local churches very much. For seventy-two years we have all followed this revelation. We have stressed the local churches again and again.
Recently, among us there has been a kind of rebellion since 1987. One of the leading ones in this rebellion picked up the wrong teaching of G. H. Lang in his book The Churches of God. In this book Lang stressed the autonomy of each local church. This was an old wrong teaching by the Brethren. We knew this already. Yes, we do stress the local churches, but we do not stand for the autonomy of the local churches.
The one church is expressed in the local churches because of physical reasons. We believers are scattered on this earth, so we cannot be in one location. We have to be in many locations, so in a sense, we have to be separated by localities. But we cannot forget that the churches are the Body of Christ. Ephesians 4 says that there is one Body (v. 4). Paul says that though we are many, we are still one bread and one Body (1 Cor. 10:17).
The parts of our physical body cannot be autonomous. Is it possible that the shoulder is one autonomy, the nose is another autonomy, and the two feet are two other autonomies? If this is so, then our body becomes a divided carcass. In the same way, Christ’s Body is an organic unity, and no part of His Body can be autonomous.
The British Brethren stressed very much that the seven local churches in Asia, spoken of in Revelation 2 and 3, were different, independent, and autonomous. Some even said that there is not only the local church but also the local Body. That would mean that Christ has thousands of “Bodies.” Based upon the wrong teaching of the Brethren, some dissenting ones said that in Revelation 2 and 3 the seven churches are different, so seven different epistles were written to them respectively. This seems reasonable, but we need to see that in Revelation 2 and 3 the seven churches are different on the negative side. They are different in their failures, mistakes, sinful things, and wrongdoings.
In Revelation 1 the Lord showed us seven lampstands, which are the signs of seven churches. These seven lampstands are all identical in nature, in essence, in size, in type, in appearance, in color, and in function. No one could discern which lampstand is which unless you put a label on each one of them. How could you say that these seven local churches are different? The Lord rebuked them for all their differences. Yes, the Lord did write epistles to each of them respectively. But He bound these epistles together to make a total epistle, an aggregate epistle.
In the whole book of Revelation the Lord showed us that the overcomers are not of different groups. The overcomers always are one unique group. The dead overcomers are signified by the man-child in Revelation 12, and the living overcomers are signified by the firstfruits, the one hundred forty-four thousand standing on Mount Zion, in Revelation 14. These are not different groups of overcomers but one unique group.
Not only so, eventually, the book of Revelation does have a consummation. In this consummation all the seven lampstands disappear. In the first chapter we see the seven lampstands. But in the last two chapters we see only one city. Eventually, the local churches will be over. Only the Body will remain and remain forever, and this Body of Christ is the unique tabernacle as God’s dwelling place on this earth, the unique bride of the Lamb (21:2-3). We all have to see this.
Therefore, we must pay much more attention to the Body of Christ than to the local churches. This does not mean that I annul the teaching of the local churches. We still need it. As a person, we have a physical frame. That is our body. But a body by itself is a carcass. A physical body needs an inner life. Today the church is the same. On the one hand, it does have a frame, a body, but this frame is not the nature, the essence, or the element of the church. Ephesians 4 tells us the church is the Body, and within this church is the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father (vv. 4-6). The Father is the source, the Lord is the element, and the Spirit is the essence of the Body. These four entities are built together.
The Body of Christ is composed first of the redeemed ones, who were born by the Spirit to be the children of the Father. They are the God-men, and they are the very Body of Christ, the framework. Built within them are the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father. All three of the Divine Trinity have been built into the redeemed, regenerated believers. So there is such a building, such a structure, constituted with humanity and divinity in the Divine Trinity. Man, the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father are built together. This is not just three-in-one. This is four-in-one. God became a man so that we, His redeemed, might become God. With Him there is the Godhead. But regardless of how much divine life and divine nature we have to be the same as God, we do not have the Godhead.
We need to see that there is something on this earth structured as a kind of organic constitution, which is called the Body of Christ, and this Body of Christ is the organism of the unseen God. Dear saints, this is the consummation of everything. Many things are mentioned in the Bible, but eventually, at the end of the Bible, there is only one consummation, and this consummation is the New Jerusalem. In this consummation we can see God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit) and God’s redeemed humanity. We can see Israel because the New Jerusalem bears the names of the twelve tribes representing saved Israel (Rev. 21:12). We can see the believers because the holy city bears the names of the twelve apostles representing all the New Testament believers (v. 14). The New Jerusalem is the consummation of God and man. God has constituted Himself into our humanity, and our humanity also has been constructed into His divinity. Now divinity and humanity are joined, united, mingled, and blended together.
Do we need to wait until the New Jerusalem comes before we blend? There is not such a thing. The New Jerusalem comes into existence by the blending of God with His elect, His chosen people. Even the Old Testament people such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, and all the prophets were blended together. They were not just individual saints. They were considered by God as a nation, a corporate entity, on this earth. This corporate entity was not only incorporated with men but also incorporated with God.
Then in the New Testament we also see a marvelous blending. The Lord Jesus blended all the seven churches in Asia together by sending them one aggregate epistle. Paul blended the churches in Colossae and Laodicea by writing one epistle to each of the two churches respectively and asking them to read the two epistles reciprocally (Col. 4:16). This indicates that in the eyes of Paul those two churches were one. They both should know the same thing.
Eventually, the coming out of the divine revelation is a city, the New Jerusalem. That is the consummation of God, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, John, Paul, Darby, Watchman Nee, you, and me. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of God’s eternal economy.
The Lord has opened up to us the truth of God’s economy with God’s dispensing. First Timothy 1:4, Ephesians 1:10, and Ephesians 3:9 all use the word economy, a translation of the Greek word oikonomia. This economy with God’s dispensing will consummate in one city. When we composed our hymnal thirty years ago in 1964, I wrote a number of hymns on the New Jerusalem (Hymns, #971-972, 975-976, 978-980). Since 1984 I have given many messages on the New Jerusalem. The last nineteen chapters of the book entitled God’s New Testament Economy are concerning the New Jerusalem. After my study of the Bible for the past sixty-nine years, what have I seen? I would say that I have seen the New Jerusalem. This is my vision, this is my revelation, and this is my ministry. I have been in the United States for thirty-two years, and I have published approximately four thousand messages. I have stressed the Triune God, Christ, life, the Spirit, the church, the Body, and ultimately, the New Jerusalem.
What is the significance of our blending? It is not an organization of any nature. The first stanza of Hymns, #541 says, “Not the law of letters, / But the Christ of life.” Then stanza 4 says, “Not religion, even / Christianity, / Can fulfill God’s purpose / Or economy.” Our blending has nothing to do with the dead letter, any religion, or anything of Christianity. The significance of our blending is the reality of the Body of Christ. This reality is nothing but the group of God’s redeemed who have all been made God, the God-men, by God. They live a life not by themselves but by another life, which is within them. This other life is the Triune God processed and consummated to enter into them and to take them as His abode, His dwelling place.
Ephesians 3:17 tells us that Christ is now making His home in our hearts. In John 14:23 the Lord said, “If anyone loves Me...My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” This word make is not a small word. To make is to build. The only way to make a home is by building. This building is not by anything physical but by the spiritual element and spiritual essence of the Divine Trinity. This building actually is a kind of organic constitution. The reality of the Body of Christ is a living by all the God-men united, joined, and constituted together with God by mingling humanity with divinity and divinity with humanity.
Now that you realize this, what should you do? Every day remember that you are a God-man. You have God living in you, making His home in you. You and He, He and you, are mingled together as one. You should not live a life by your natural life, your natural man. You and I, the old man, the natural man, have been terminated on the cross, crucified by the Lord in His death (Gal. 2:20a). We must leave our natural man on the cross. This is what it means to bear the cross. By leaving your old man on the cross, you will be conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10).
The death of Christ means that when Christ lived on this earth, He was always rejecting Himself. He told us that He never did anything by Himself, but He did everything by the Father (John 6:57; 5:19, 5:30; 4:34; 17:4; 14:10, 24; 7:18). He had a very holy, pure human life, but He did not live that life. He put that life aside, put that life to death, and lived by the Father’s life. That was a model to us. We should be the mass production of that model, the God-men who have both the human life uplifted in Christ’s resurrection and the divine life. Even our human life has been uplifted in Christ’s resurrection, but we should not live by that, by ourselves.
Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a). This is not an exchange, because Paul goes on to say, “And the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God” (v. 20b). Paul was a person living not by himself but by the pneumatic Christ, and this pneumatic Christ is the all-inclusive Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God. All of this is in resurrection. When you do not live by your natural life but live by the divine life within you, you are in resurrection. The issue of this is the Body of Christ. The reality of the divine life within us is the resurrection, which is the pneumatic Christ, the all-inclusive Spirit, and the processed and consummated Triune God. I hope that this brief fellowship will help us to know the significance of the blending.
