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I am grateful to the Lord that when I was young and seeking after biblical knowledge, He sovereignly brought me into touch with the Brethren teachings. That surely laid a good foundation for me. In 1932 I began to give three or four messages a week. In the first two or three years my ministry of the Word was largely based on their teachings. Before too long, however, my messages began to improve. From the base of the Brethren teachings, I improved to the inner life. There was not too much difference, but at least I had a beginning of a change. Then I was helped by Brother Nee to see Christ and the church. That was a real turn in my life. From 1934, at the latest, my ministry of the Word was focused on Christ and the church. That ministry lasted eight or nine years and was much blessed by the Lord. One result was the revival that came in 1943.
Due to that revival I was persecuted. Christianity joined with the invading army of Japan to persecute me. The Japanese military police put me into prison for a month. Then I became sick. During the two and a half years that followed, I was ill and suffered much. At that time I began to see the tree of life. That was a fresh beginning in my ministry of the Word. As soon as I was well enough, I began to speak on the tree of life, on the two trees. The light came. The ministry in those years (1946 to 1948) served the Lord’s purpose. Then in the spring of 1949 I was sent out from the mainland of China to the island of Taiwan, and I brought this light on the tree of life with me.
After I got to Taiwan, I began to see another crucial point, that is, the Spirit. Of course, I knew the Spirit long before, but I did not realize that the Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. Although I had stressed the importance of the experience of the Spirit, before 1950 I did not see that the Spirit is the consummation, not just the third, of the Trinity.
At first, however, I did not have the expression the consummation of the Triune God. This particular term came to me not too long ago. But in 1950 I realized this without having the full expression. From that time in my ministry I had a great turn to the Spirit. If you check my writings in both Chinese and English, you will see that their focus in the past thirty-four years is actually the Spirit. By 1960 and 1961 my emphasis was altogether the Spirit. During that time I wrote over eighty hymns, most of which have been translated and are in our present hymnal. A good number of them are on the Spirit.
At the end of 1961 I came to the United States. The ministry of the Word in this country began with this focus on the Spirit. In the early years, in nearly every conference and training I stressed two things: the ground of the church and the Spirit. I pointed out the Spirit from all the New Testament books. Then in 1969 at the conference in Erie, Pennsylvania, the light came concerning the seven Spirits. After that conference I went back to Los Angeles, and we had a conference there, mainly on the seven Spirits.
The light has kept coming concerning the Spirit. If you trace from 1969 until now, within these fourteen years, you will see that the light has mostly been on the Spirit. Quite a number of new terms have come in during this time: the Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God, the all-inclusive Spirit, the compound Spirit, the processed Spirit, and the Spirit of the processed Triune God.
In 1953 and 1954 I began to see that the Spirit includes both divinity and Christ’s humanity, including His living on earth, the effectiveness of His death, and the power of His resurrection. I saw the compound ointment in Exodus 30. My messages were a shock to the co-workers. How could I say that there were elements in the Spirit? It was an altogether new thought to them.
Probably from 1950 the light began to come about mingling. In the inner-life teachings of past centuries, the main word used to describe our relationship with God is the word union. However, through the experience of the divine revelation in the Bible concerning the Triune God being our life, I came to realize that our relationship with God is not just a union; it is a mingling.
Then I began to see that the thought was there in typology. In Leviticus 2:4 we are told that the meal offering was made of fine flour mingled with oil. When I first began to minister on the matter of mingling, I did not realize that the word was mentioned in typology; I thought it was a new term used in my message. It was later that I saw that mingling is found in typology.
When I was opposed for saying that we are mingled with God, I tried to find out why some opposed. In the early centuries there were some teachers who saw from the Bible, and I believe from their experience also, that there is such a thing as mingling. Because their teaching stirred up so much debate, however, the term was dropped and the word union was used all the time. I believe some of those who oppose us do so based upon this history.
The more I ministered on the matter of mingling, the more I got strengthened. The Lord being food and drink to us implies strongly the thought of mingling. Whatever you eat and drink mingles with your physical being. The eating of the tree of life and the drinking of the water of life from the throne of God illustrate God’s mingling with His redeemed people to the uttermost for eternity. So, I fully believe that the thought of mingling is scriptural; there is the need for such ministry.
The issue of these more than twenty years of ministering the Word with the focus on the Spirit is the matter of the divine dispensing.
Mingling is based upon dispensing. If God does not dispense Himself into us, there is no mingling. This dispensing is by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In this dispensing, the Spirit as the very consummation of the Triune God is crucial. The Father is embodied in the Son; the Son is realized as the Spirit. All three, therefore, are consummated in the Spirit.
For what purpose is the Spirit the consummation of the Triune God? It is that He may dispense Himself into us. This dispensing is in accordance with His dispensation (Gk. oikonomia, arrangement or plan); it is not an accident. He does it according to His arrangement, His system, His household administration. God, according to such a dispensation, dispenses Himself all the time to us.
To do this, God uses two means, two instruments. The first is outward: the Bible, that is, the Word. The second is inward: the Spirit, which is just God Himself. These are the two great gifts that God has given us.
There are two sister portions by Paul in the New Testament. Ephesians 5:18 says that we should be filled in spirit. Colossians 3:16 says that we should be filled with the word (“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly”). These are sister portions, telling us we should be filled with the Spirit and with the word.
To bring the saints under God’s dispensing, we must stress two things: the inward gift, that is, the Spirit, and the outward gift, that is, the Word, the Bible. Especially we who are leading ones in the churches must have adequate experience of the inward Spirit. Actually, the inward Spirit is simply the practical God within us. God could not be present and practical if He were not such a processed, all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling, compound Spirit. If God has not become such a Spirit to us, then He is just objective, an external object; He is not practical, and we cannot experience Him.
The clearest writing in the New Testament regarding this, especially in John’s writings, is John 14 through 17. Even after all the messages I have given in Stuttgart and New York concerning the divine dispensing as revealed in these chapters, I still feel the burden has not gone. Probably we need more messages.
In chapter 14 the Lord began by saying, “I go to prepare a place for you...that where I am you also may be” (vv. 2-3). Then He went on to say that He is the only way to the Father (v. 6); in fact, He continued, He is in the Father and the Father is in Him (v. 10). We can express this relationship by saying that He and the Father coexist and coinhere.
Now the question is, for what purpose? The single purpose is that God may dispense Himself into His chosen people. To do this, He must be the Father. He must also be the Son. Eventually, He must also be the Spirit. These are not three gods. God must be the Father as the source, the Son as the course (the means), and the Spirit as the reaching (the application, the entering in).
Thus, the Lord first told His disciples that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him; when He speaks, the Father does His works (v. 10). After this He said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter...the Spirit of reality...He abides with you and shall be in you” (vv. 16-17). The background to the Lord’s word here is that the disciples were concerned about His leaving them, because He had said that He was going to the Father (v. 12). The Lord was telling them that they did not need to be concerned about His absence. He would ask the Father to send them another Comforter, who would be with them and also in them.
Then He continued, “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you” (v. 18). His going was His coming. “Yet a little while and...you behold Me; because I live, you also shall live” (v. 19). What He meant was that because He would resurrect, the disciples also would resurrect with Him and in Him. “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (v. 20).
When we put all these verses together, we can see the Father in the Son and the Son coming with the Father as the Spirit to be in us. For what purpose? For dispensing. This is a great thing. It is the real center of the Bible.
The dispensing comes about by the Spirit within and also through the Word without. Because the dispensing is invisible, intangible, and mysterious, we cannot apprehend it without the Word. Along with the Spirit, we need the Word. If we cannot apprehend, then we cannot experience. For our experience we need the apprehension. This apprehension is through the Bible, the Word.
Yes, the Spirit is within us. But if we do not have the revelation from the Word so that we apprehend this, we cannot experience His indwelling. We, the leading ones, must experience the inner Spirit, the indwelling Spirit, to the uttermost. We are too loose, too indifferent. Every day I find I must confess to the Lord that I have not applied the Spirit enough, that I have not walked in the Spirit sufficiently. God as the Spirit is here within us right now, but we do not experience Him. Then when we minister, we do not have the riches; the riches are simply the experience of the bountiful Spirit.
We must also get into the Word to the uttermost. Because of our Christian background, we have understood the Bible in an altogether superficial way. We may love the Bible and study it, but we do not have the habit, the desire, the aspiration, to dig into its depths. We must overcome the shallowness in studying the Word. Spend some time to study how the Lord expounded the Bible in the four Gospels. Consider His way: it is always deep. Paul the apostle was the same: his way of expounding Exodus and Leviticus in Hebrews is profound.
Experience the Spirit to the uttermost, and get into the depths of the Word to the uttermost. Then you will surely have the riches to minister to the saints, and you will have, using Paul’s term, the full knowledge of the truth.
We may know the truth, yet when we present it, we lack skill. When a question is raised by either an opposer or a seeking one, we should present the truth to him as it is indicated in the Bible. We are short of the skill to do this properly. With so much truth in the recovery, it should have a significant influence on America. We have seven thousand saints in the recovery. Consider how much cargo a big corporation could dispense if it had seven thousand salesmen. It seems, however, that we have a lot of cargo sitting in the warehouse. We know that this cargo is there, but we do not know how to make use of it.
We should practice, then, these two things: the inner experience of the Spirit and the outer study of the Word. We should exercise to pick up the skill to present the truth to others and to help the saints in our meetings and in our fellowship. We want to emphasize these two matters. Both of them are for the divine dispensation.
Without the divine dispensing, there will be no church. Christianity is not the church; it is only an empty shell. We will be the same if we do not have the divine dispensing within us daily. In the Lord’s recovery this dispensing must be the central thing so that we are being continually filled with Him.
