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The three lines of life, building, and the kingdom are closely connected. God’s desire is to build His dwelling place, and the building is through His life. At the same time, in the building of life, there must also be God’s authority; otherwise, the possibility of life and building would be out of the question.
The Bible reveals that the New Jerusalem at the end of Revelation is God’s building. In the center of the New Jerusalem there is the throne of God and of the Lamb, out from which proceeds a river. This picture shows that if God is not reigning on the throne, He will not have an expression of life, as signified by the river of water of life, or be the supply of life, as signified by the tree of life. The God reigning on the throne is the source of life. It is the same in our experience. Whenever God is not reigning, the flow of the stream of life stops. In order for there to be a supply of life, God must be on the throne. This is the principle in all our living, in the church, and in the universe. Wherever God reigns, God’s life is expressed. The building of God is possible only when there is the reign of the throne and the expression of life.
Satan was originally an archangel created by God, yet one day he became the center of death, because he utterly overthrew God’s authority. Within him, he fully denied God’s authority. Consequently, all that was in him was death. Without God’s authority there cannot be anything of God’s life; wherever God’s authority is overthrown, death is manifested. Therefore, the kingdom, life, and building are connected. When there is a throne, there can be the flow of the water of life, and only then can the building work begin.
This is the picture in Genesis 2. When Adam was created and placed in the garden of Eden, he was not only in the image of God to represent God, but he also was the head over all things to reign for God. He reigned as the representative of the Creator, the sovereign Lord. Next, God wanted Adam to touch life, signified by the tree of life. This means that in order for there to be an expansion of God’s authority, we must first allow life to flow. When the river of water of life flows, we see gold, pearl, and precious stones. God’s authority issues in the flow of life for the building.
These three lines—life, building, and the kingdom—are like a threefold cord to become the most important line in the Bible. If we read the Bible in a thorough way, we will discover that these three matters are the greatest delights to God’s heart. He wants man to receive life, to be built up, and to submit to authority.
From the words in Matthew 6:9-10 spoken by the Lord Jesus to the disciples concerning how to pray, we can see that the kingdom is God’s goal. The Lord said, “Your kingdom come.” Preceding this word He said, “Your name be sanctified,” and following this word He said, “Your will be done...on earth.” Whether or not God’s name is sanctified and whether or not God’s will is done on earth depends on whether God’s kingdom has authority. At the end the Lord provided the reason for this kind of prayer, saying, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory” (v. 13). First, there must be the kingdom as a realm, and then there can be the exercise of authority and the expression of glory.
The kingdom is a sphere of reigning, and in this sphere authority can be exercised. When authority is exercised, glory is expressed. Only in such a sphere is there the kingdom. God desires to gain a universe in which He can reign so that through His reigning He can express His glory. God’s goal on the earth is to gain this kingdom. When God obtains such a kingdom, God’s name will be sanctified, His will will be done on earth as in heaven, His authority will be exercised, and His glory will be expressed. God’s goal is to gain such a kingdom.
After God created the universe, He put it under the authority of a created archangel, who was a cherub. According to Luke 4:6, God gave this ruling authority to the archangel so that he might be the representative of God’s authority in the universe.
However, due to pride this archangel uplifted himself and rebelled against God. This is clearly described in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. In Isaiah 14:13-14 he said that he would exalt his throne to make himself like God, indicating that he would overthrow God’s throne and destroy God’s kingdom. Brothers and sisters, we should remember that in those two verses Satan declared “I will” five times. He became God’s adversary in the universe because of his rebellion. The Hebrew word for Satan means “adversary.”
After Satan rebelled against God, ages went by before God came to restore His creation. The center of this restoration was man. God gave man authority to rule over the universe. Genesis 1:27 says that man was created in the image of God. Then verse 28 says that God gave man the authority to rule. Man was to represent God, express God, and reign for God. Although God wanted man to have dominion over heaven, over the earth, and over the sea, the emphasis was on dominion over the earth. Man was placed on the earth because Satan’s revolt against God took place on the earth. The serpent, a figure of Satan, was the head of the creeping things on the earth, as seen in Genesis 3. God’s desire for man to have dominion over the earth, especially over the creeping things, means that God wanted man to deal with the sphere of Satan’s activity.
God wanted man to represent Him, express Him, and reign for Him. However, man first needed to contact the life of God. Therefore, after God created man, He put man in front of the tree of life so that man might contact the tree of life. Regrettably, before man could contact the tree of life, Satan came and deceived man. After following Satan, man fell because he violated God’s commandment and thus was involved with God’s authority.
After man’s fall, God came and instituted the way of redemption to restore man. Genesis 3:21 says that God made coats of skins for man and clothed him. Through the slaughtering of an animal and the shedding of its blood, God redeemed man and put man back under His authority.
At the end of Genesis 4 Satan came in again to deceive man, causing man to establish his own righteousness instead of relying on God’s redemption. As a result, man left God and again fell into Satan’s hand. This was the way taken by Cain and his descendants. Since man lost God’s care and rejected God’s way of redemption, man began to make a living on his own and invent a culture for himself. Self-justification is a matter of morality, self-dependence is a matter of existence, and self-invention is a matter of living and culture. When human culture developed to this extent, the earth was filled with wickedness and violence. Eventually, this provoked God to destroy that generation by the flood.
The principle of Satan’s deceiving of Cain and his descendants can be applied to many people. Wherever there is self-justification, there is self-dependence, and where there is self-dependence, there is self-invention. The result of these three things is a profusion of evil and violence. This principle is true for an individual, and it holds true for a nation as well.
Mankind incurred God’s judgment in the first stage of their culture, yet God saved Noah’s family of eight through the ark and gave man the authority over others (9:6). Man was originally under divine government, but because man sinned and fell, man came under the government of the conscience, which was the age of self-government. Later, man fell again, and God put man under human government. The characteristic of the age of human government is man’s ruling over other men. However, the descendants of man were deceived by Satan again and utilized God’s authority to establish many nations on the earth. Among them was Nimrod, the first of the mighty ones (10:8). Nimrod was ferocious and warlike; he was the first among the people to establish a kingdom and set himself up as a king. Satan deceived man by instigating man to use his God-given authority to establish many nations on the earth. Satan is ruling behind every nation. So in the end the children of men rose up to rebel against God collectively, joining themselves together to build the city of Babel and the tower of Babel. There they joined hands with Satan to declare that the humans on earth would renounce the God who is in heaven and would not recognize the name of God. At this point mankind had fallen to the uttermost, and so God executed His judgment again, confounding their language and scattering them over the whole earth.
If the created man had not fallen, God’s creation would have been sufficient; God’s calling would not have been necessary. However, once man became fallen and the entire human race followed Satan, God had to come and set apart a group of people. The beginning of the setting apart is the calling.
At the time of Babel the descendants of Adam had fallen entirely, so God came to sound a call. Every calling in the Bible is a proof that man has fallen. Every time God calls, it is a setting apart by God, a new beginning initiated by God. Adam was the father of the created race, and Abraham was the father of the called race. The Adamic race fell, so God began anew and called Abraham to be the head, the father, of a new race.
Therefore, when Abraham was called, God wanted him to leave his land, his relatives, and his father’s house. This was necessary in order to be completely separated from the rebellion of the men on earth against God. God does not want our living to have any element of Babel. What is Babel? Babel is man’s denial of God’s authority. All of today’s degraded Christianity is Babylon in the eyes of God. God wants us to be completely rid of the things of Babel.
Furthermore, when God called Abraham, He said that He would make of Abraham a great nation, a great kingdom (Gen. 12:2). This kingdom would include the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, the church in the New Testament, the millennial kingdom in the next age, and the new heaven and new earth in eternity; it would be an eternal kingdom. It is Abraham’s nation, but more so, it is God’s kingdom. This shows us that God wants to reign on the earth in this kingdom.
After being called, Abraham stood in the heavenly position in Canaan as the outlet of heaven on the earth. He was a man on the earth under the rule of heaven, a man on the earth as the outlet of heaven, one who was connected to heaven. Therefore, after Abraham’s return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were in alliance with him, the king of Sodom offered his possessions to Abraham, but Abraham said that he would not accept them and that his possessions were not on the earth but in the heavens. Melchizedek prayed to God as the “Possessor of heaven and earth” when he was blessing Abraham because at this point God had found a man on the earth who would be ruled by Him and through whom the authority in heaven could be exercised on the earth.
Regrettably, before long the descendants of Abraham went down to Egypt due to the need for food. They were lost after going down to Egypt. The children of God should have submitted themselves to God’s authority, but instead they submitted themselves to Pharaoh’s authority to be under his rule. As a result, God lost the means by which He could reign on earth. God no longer had an outlet on the earth that was linked to heaven.
When the children of Israel were usurped by Egypt, they fell away completely from God’s authority to Pharaoh’s authority, being no longer under the rule of God. At this point, God sent Moses to deliver them with great power. They kept the Passover, came out of Egypt, and crossed the Red Sea. Through the blood of the lamb, God delivered them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and led them to the foot of Mount Sinai (Exo. 19).
When the children of Israel were delivered by God and led to the foot of Mount Sinai, God wanted them to become a kingdom of priests, who, on the one hand, would allow God to have authority among them, and on the other hand, would be a people serving God. When their condition was normal, God exercised His authority through the tabernacle. However, after entering into Canaan, they followed the customs of the Gentiles and wanted to have a man as their king (1 Sam. 8:4-7). Initially, God found Saul and appointed him to be the king, but Saul reigned according to man’s will, not according to God’s heart. Later, God found David, a man according to His heart (13:14). The nation of Israel was formed, God’s authority was exercised among them, and God’s glory was expressed among them as well. At this point the nation of Israel reached its golden age. It became the sphere of God’s reign, and through it God was able to express His glory.
The good times did not last long. Within a short period of time the nation of Israel was defeated and became desolate. The people lost their nation and were conquered by Babylon. Babel again captured the children of Israel. Babel was the place of man’s collective rebellion; it was also the place out of which Abraham had been called by God and set apart. Babel again captured Abraham’s descendants, bringing them back to the place from where they had come so that those who had served God would serve the devil in the temple of Babel. Even the vessels in the holy temple were carried away with them and placed in the temple of Babel. In the books written during this captivity, God is called the God of heaven. God did not have an outlet of heaven on the earth; He lost the means by which He could reign on earth. Therefore, God withdrew back to heaven.
Seventy years after the captivity of God’s people, men such as Ezra and Nehemiah were raised up; they returned from the land of captivity to recover God’s temple and His city, and once more the nation of Israel allowed God’s authority to be exercised on the earth. When the nation of Israel was defeated, the priests were defeated first and then the kings. The order was the same in the recovery; first the temple was recovered through Ezra the priest, and then the city was recovered through Nehemiah, a royal descendant. The recovery of the temple was the recovery of the testimony and fellowship; the recovery of the city was the recovery of the authority and the kingdom. At this point God’s reign was recovered, and the people of Israel were restored once more.
However, shortly after the restoration the nation of Israel was defeated again. We can see the condition after their defeat in the Gospels. When the Lord Jesus came to the earth, demons were everywhere among the people of Israel. The Israelites would not allow God to reign among them; instead, the devil was reigning in their midst. At that time the kingdom of the devil was among them, not the kingdom of God.
At this point the Lord Jesus came to the earth. When the Lord came out to preach, the first sentence He spoke was, “The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near” (Matt. 4:17). From this we can see that the Lord’s coming was to bring the kingdom of the heavens to the earth and to exercise God’s authority among men. Moreover, the Lord told Nicodemus that he must be born anew in order to participate in this kingdom (John 3:3). The Lord also plainly said that the casting out of demons was for the kingdom of God to come to the earth (Matt. 12:28). The word of the Lord Jesus in Luke 17:21 also shows that His presence in the midst of the children of Israel was the presence of the kingdom of God in their midst, because it was God’s authority coming to them. During the three and a half years when the Lord was among the children of Israel, He was the kingdom of God. Although the Lord displayed much power among them, the Israelites still rejected Him; therefore, in Matthew 21:43 the Lord said, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to a nation producing its fruit.” This nation is the church.
When the church was established on the earth during Pentecost, Peter took the keys of the kingdom of the heavens and opened the door for the Jews and the Gentiles to believe in the Lord. This brought God’s authority to the earth so that man could enter into the kingdom of the heavens. At this point the church replaced the Israelites and obtained the position for God to reign.
In John 3 the Lord said that one must be born anew to enter into the kingdom of God. This was the beginning. Colossians 1:13 also says that God delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. All who have turned to the Lord have been delivered out of Satan’s authority of darkness and have been transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love. Furthermore, 1 Peter 2:9 says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” People who are saved have become a kingdom of priests, a sphere in which God is able to reign. John 18:36 says that this kingdom is of the heavens, not of the earth. Romans 14:17 says, “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” This is the condition of God’s spiritual kingdom in the church. Today the church is God’s spiritual kingdom, God’s heavenly kingdom on the earth; a saved one keeps himself by righteousness, treats others with peace, and always rejoices in the Spirit.
However, the church gradually lost its firm stand. Even before the apostles passed away, the church was filled with the works of Satan. Through the flesh, the world, and sin, Satan gained authority once more and usurped God’s position. This is clearly seen in the seven epistles in Revelation.
When the descendants of Adam failed, God called Abraham. When the church failed, God called the overcomers. The Lord’s epistles to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 are His call for overcomers. He calls some of His lovers to stand in the proper position of the church to answer His call and to meet His need in this age, thus allowing Him to reign through them.
The man-child brought forth by the woman spoken of in Revelation 12:5 and 10 is a group of overcomers in the church who have allowed God to reign in them and who, as a result, bring God’s authority to the earth. The kingdom on the earth then becomes the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Revelation 20:4-6 says that because the overcomers bring in the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Lord will reign for a thousand years, and the overcomers will also reign with Christ for a thousand years.
First Corinthians 15:24 says that at the end of the millennial kingdom, the Lord will receive the kingdom from God and will deliver it up back to God; thus, eternity will begin, and the new heaven and the new earth with the New Jerusalem will appear. At this point heaven and earth will be fully joined, without any distinction between reigning in the heavens and reigning on the earth. Now the Lord and the church, including all who belong to God throughout the ages, will rule and reign together forever and ever. This is shown in Revelation 22. Through this kingdom, this reign, God’s life will flow and God’s building will be completed.
Brothers and sisters, after seeing these matters, we can arrive at one conclusion—both the growth in life and the building up of the church depend upon God’s reigning. Whenever the church lacks God’s reign, everything is in confusion, and the condition of Babel is manifested. When someone in the church overthrows God’s authority, the sound of confusion rises up. However, when someone in the church allows God to reign, immediately the scene on the day of Pentecost appears—everyone speaks the same thing. Thus, the scene of the New Jerusalem is manifested. The harmonious condition in the church comes out from the throne of God. In the New Jerusalem everyone will be standing in his own place according to the proper order with the proper authority. In this way everyone will be built up together. Therefore, I say again, both life and building depend upon the throne of God.
