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Scripture Reading: Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 1:3; 1 Cor. 15:45b
Prayer: Lord, we thank You that we have been caught by Your mercy and grace to be Your seekers pursuing You according to what the Scriptures reveal to us. Lord, save us, rescue us, and deliver us from our natural concept, from any kind of philosophical idea, and even the more from the blinding, the covering, the veil, that we have received from the teachings of today’s Christianity. This morning we are here looking unto You for Your mercy to take the veils, layer by layer, away from us. Lord, bring us into the intrinsic revelation of Your holy Word. We do not want to skate on the surface of the ice any longer. We want to get into the depths of Your revelation so that we may see all the intrinsic significances of Your heart unveiled in Your holy Word. O Lord, be merciful to us. Amen.
Before we come to the third and fourth outlines for this conference, I have a deep feeling that I need to fellowship with you intimately concerning the understanding of the Holy Scriptures.
According to my experience and observations, nearly all of us Christians today understand the Bible according to three things. The first thing is our natural concept. God has created us as very thoughtful people. We all have a wonderful mind. Out from this wonderful mind, we all have our natural concept. The first time you read the Bible, you understood it according to your natural concept. You imagined that was what the Bible meant, but actually it was not. That was what you understood according to your natural concept.
The second thing according to which people understand the Bible is their human philosophy. Human history has produced many philosophies. The Chinese, the Greeks, the Jews, the Arabs, the Indians from India, and the Japanese all have their particular philosophies. The Americans are the most modern people, and they have their kind of modern American philosophy. England, Germany, and France are close geographically, but the difference is great among their particular philosophies. It is very difficult for anyone to understand the Bible without unconsciously being under a philosophy.
The third thing that affects our understanding of the Bible is the teaching of today’s Christianity. I am not referring to the heretical teachings but to the fundamental, scriptural, right teachings. I was under that kind of teaching for years. Even today I still say there was nothing wrong with that teaching, but the understanding from that kind of fundamental teaching covered me, veiled me, from seeing the intrinsic significances of the Bible.
Through the years, by the Lord’s mercy, we have been rescued from these three layers of veils. When I come to the Word of God today, my realization is absolutely different from my realization sixty years ago. This is because sixty years ago I understood the holy Word according to the fundamental teachings I heard from the Brethren. But through many years the Lord has been merciful to me. Gradually, year by year, through over sixty years, the Lord has brought me to a state of understanding and interpreting His Word according to the leading of the Holy Spirit to see the intrinsic significances of all the verses concerning the items of God’s eternal economy.
Let us consider the truth of the resurrection of Christ as an illustration. This is very common among Christians. Every Christian can say that resurrection is to be raised up or to rise up from the dead. But we need to see that resurrection implies three big things.
First, in resurrection Christ was born to be the firstborn Son of God. How many have ever heard that resurrection was a birth to Christ? Who has ever thought that besides the incarnation, Christ had another birth in His resurrection?
Acts 13:33 says, “God has fully fulfilled this promise to us their children in raising up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.’” This day in this verse was the day of resurrection. Christ was begotten by God in resurrection to be God’s firstborn Son. How many Christians have heard this truth? But this truth is in the Bible. Christ was the only begotten Son of God even before His incarnation (John 1:18). His incarnation was the coming of the only begotten Son of God (3:16). This Son of God was incarnated to be a man. But Acts 13:33 unveils that in resurrection God begot Christ to be the firstborn Son of God among many brothers (Rom. 8:29).
Also, the Bible tells us that we, the God-chosen people, were regenerated in Christ’s resurrection. First Peter 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” God has regenerated us through the resurrection of Christ. In resurrection God begot a Son, Jesus Christ, and in resurrection God regenerated many sons. This shows us that the resurrection of Christ was a great delivery. In that same delivery the Firstborn was Christ, and this firstborn Brother had many “twins” to follow Him. In the unique resurrection Christ was born and we were regenerated, so we were His “twins” in the same delivery.
Although this is in the Bible, who has seen it or even heard it? I can never deny this truth. This is like saying that I can never deny America, because I am here in America. According to our natural idea, we were regenerated on a specific date in time after Christ’s resurrection. But the Bible tells us that we were regenerated when Christ was resurrected. What a difference there is between the natural understanding and the unveiled truth!
Now we come to the third great thing accomplished in Christ’s resurrection. We have seen that in the same resurrection Christ was born to be the firstborn Son of God, and we, the God-chosen people, were born to be the many sons of God, who are the “twins” of Christ. Also, in this same resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit. The Holy Scriptures say in 1 Corinthians 15:45b, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.”
If you ask someone what has been accomplished by God in Christ’s resurrection, he may simply say that God raised up Christ from the dead. Surely this is fundamental and according to the Scriptures. But in the same Bible there are three marvelous verses that show us the intrinsic significance of Christ’s resurrection. First, Acts 13:33 tells us that in resurrection God accomplished a birth. In resurrection God begot Christ to be His firstborn Son. Then 1 Peter 1:3 tells us that through resurrection God regenerated us, the millions of God-chosen people. There was such a great delivery, a great begetting, in resurrection. Third, 1 Corinthians 15:45b tells us that in resurrection the last Adam, the man Jesus, became a life-giving Spirit. These three great things took place and were accomplished in the resurrection of Christ.
The shallow teaching of Christianity tells us things mostly according to the black and white. But we have realized more by our further and deeper study. I have been studying the Bible further and further for over sixty-nine years. Gradually, my study of the Bible has been getting deeper and deeper and higher and higher. Today my study of the Bible concerning resurrection has become a crystallization. This crystallization is that Christ’s resurrection was not merely God’s raising Him from the dead. God’s raising up Jesus Christ from the dead was God’s act. In this one divine act, God accomplished three big things. He begot not His only Son but His firstborn Son; He begot His many sons in this one delivery; and He made this Jesus Christ, who had just been begotten of God, the life-giving Spirit. Three great accomplishments took place in one act.
Christianity teaches people mostly to behave according to the printed pages of the Bible. There is nothing wrong with this. It is absolutely right. But they have never seen that in the raising up of Christ, in this divine act, God accomplished three big things. He produced the firstborn Son, the many sons, and the life-giving Spirit. The entire economy of God is carried out by these three items. If you were to delete 1, Acts 13:33 Peter 1:3, and 1 Corinthians 15:45b from the Bible, the firstborn Son of God, the many sons of God, and the life-giving Spirit would be absent from the divine revelation. Even though these items concerning the resurrection of Christ are in the Bible, they are mostly absent from the fundamental teaching of today’s Christianity. Without these major items of the Lord’s resurrection, there would be no church, no Body of Christ. If there were nothing in the Bible revealing the firstborn Son of God, the many sons of God, and the life-giving Spirit, there would be no economy of God. These items are new to many Christians, but they are not new to the Bible.
Since I came to the United States in 1962, I have put out many messages teaching one thing. We have gone higher and higher to reach the peak of the divine revelation, to see that the ultimate goal of God’s economy is that He became a man that many of His chosen people might become God in the divine life and the divine nature but not in the Godhead. Only God, no one else, is the unique object of our worship. We are His many sons. If the Father is God, how can you say that the many sons are not God? The New Jerusalem is a flock of God-men. God is a man. If you say that God has never been a man and is still not a man, you do not know the Bible. God has been God from eternity to eternity, without beginning or ending, but God as a man is only about two thousand years old. Jesus Christ, who was God becoming a man, was born about two thousand years ago.
God put on humanity in His incarnation. Some think that after He resurrected and ascended, He put off humanity. They think that Jesus is no longer a man. This is wrong. The Lord Jesus is still a man. He did not put off His humanity when He resurrected and ascended. In Matthew 26 the Lord Jesus was judged by the high priest, who said to Him, “I charge You to swear by the living God to tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God” (v. 63). The Lord Jesus answered by saying, “You have said rightly. Nevertheless I say to you, From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (v. 64). The high priest asked the Lord if He was the Son of God, but He answered with “the Son of Man.” The Lord has been the Son of Man in the heavens at the right hand of God since His resurrection and will be the Son of Man even at His coming back on the clouds. When Stephen was being martyred, he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Stephen said this after the Lord had ascended to the heavens.
Hymns, #132, concerning the Lord’s exaltation in His ascension, shows us this intrinsic revelation:
After I came to the United States in 1962, I realized that we needed a hymnal. We selected about eight hundred hymns from other hymnals, and then we added over two hundred hymns of our own. One of these new hymns that we added is Hymns, #132.
Our God was merely God up to two thousand years ago. Then He became a man. Of course, He did not drop His divinity. He was still God. Thus, the man Jesus was a God-man. He went through human living, death, and resurrection and entered into ascension. After His ascension He is still the God-man, and through His death and resurrection many God-men were reproduced.
The New Jerusalem is the aggregate, the totality, of many God-men. Among these many God-men, the sons of God, is the Father. Christ is the firstborn Son, and we are His many “twins.” The New Jerusalem is God the Father with many “God the sons.” At certain times of the year, families have a reunion. Such a reunion makes the fathers of these families very happy. I believe that in the New Jerusalem, God the Father will look at “God the sons,” and He will be very happy. We will be there as the many God-men. In the New Jerusalem the Father will be the unique One, and all the others will be the sons.
I have tried my best in this chapter to help us understand and interpret God’s holy Word in an intrinsic way so that we can see the intrinsic significances of this holy book.
