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Scripture Reading: Rev. 1:10-18, 20; 4:5b; 5:6b; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10; John 4:24; 6:63; 3:6b; 2 Cor. 3:17; 2 Tim. 4:22a; 1 Cor. 6:17; 12:12-13; Zech. 3:8b-9; 4:2, 6; 12:1
The Bible is not only the holy Word but also the divine Word. In this divine Word we have divine revelation. But we must realize that this divine revelation was not given all at once. It took God thousands of years to pass it on in a progressive way. In one year God gave a little part of His divine revelation. Then after a certain time He came in to give another part. To us, this seems long, but to Him, a thousand years are like one day. God gave His divine revelation progressively, yet it is wholly consistent.
Many Christians are troubled by the book of Revelation because of all the symbols. How could a face have seven eyes? And these seven eyes are on the face of a lamb (5:6). Moreover, we are told that the seven eyes are seven lamps of burning fire (4:5). Seven eyes are mysterious enough, but in addition we see that these seven eyes are on fire and burning. However, we must realize that nearly all the symbols in the book of Revelation are already mentioned in the Old Testament. We should not attempt to exercise our mind unduly, but come back to the pure Word. There is a rich mine in the Old Testament. If we dig this mine in the right way, we will obtain the proper interpretation.
Zechariah 3:9 also mentions seven eyes: “Here is the stone that I have set before Joshua—upon one stone are seven eyes. I will engrave its engraving, declares Jehovah of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.” Here the seven eyes are not on the Lamb but on a stone. On the cross God engraved this stone for the forgiveness of sins. Thus, He said that He would remove the iniquity of the land in one day. This is redemption. We know that a stone is material for God’s building. But before the Lord can build us up, He must get rid of our iniquity. Therefore, the stone becomes a lamb. This is why the seven eyes on the stone are the seven eyes of the Lamb. On the cross God engraved Christ to remove the iniquity of God’s people. This is not only for redemption but for the building of God. When the Lord Jesus was surrounded by His opposers, He indicated that He Himself is a stone. He said that the stone which the builders rejected had become the head of the corner (Matt. 21:42). This is the “Lamb-stone.” He is both the Lamb and the stone: the Lamb is for our redemption, and the stone is for God’s building. Redemption is for building. So eventually, He is the Lamb-stone—the Lamb-stone with seven eyes.
In the book of Zechariah we also see the lampstand with seven lamps: “He said to me, What do you see? And I said, I see that there is a lampstand all of gold, with its bowl on top of it and its seven lamps upon it, with seven pipes for each of the lamps on top of it...And he answered and spoke to me, saying, This is the word of Jehovah to Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says Jehovah of hosts” (4:2, 6). It is clear from these verses that the seven lamps are the Spirit of the Lord. Now we see that for God’s building and God’s administrative government, His Spirit is the seven lamps burning with fire.
Before the stone with seven eyes is mentioned in Zechariah, we read of the Branch: “Behold, I will bring forth my servant the Branch. For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua: upon one stone shall be seven eyes” (3:8b-9a, KJV). The branch is the stone with seven eyes, which are the seven lamps. A branch is for growing, and a stone is for building. Christ is not only the branch of the Lord (Isa. 4:2) but also the branch of humanity (11:1; Jer. 23:5; Zech. 6:12). He is the branching out of God, and He is also the branching out of the proper humanity. His name is the Branch. He is continually branching out God into humanity, and this branching out produces stones for God’s building.
I realize that we simply do not have this concept when we read the Bible. We have a natural concept; therefore, these verses are confusing. Our natural concept only takes the verses that we like. If you are a wife, you get nothing from Zechariah; but when you read, “Husbands, love your wives” (Eph. 5:25), you are encouraged and consider the Bible a wonderful book. This is the only verse that some wives can see. The husbands see another verse in this chapter: “Wives, be subject to your own husbands” (v. 22). This is the favorite verse of some husbands, because the natural concept of the husband is that his wife should be subject to him. But when they come to the Branch and a stone with seven eyes, they are not interested. In our natural concept we do not have this kind of thing.
We must relinquish our natural concept and pray-read the Word. It was while I was praying over these verses in Zechariah that the Spirit within said that Christ is the branching out of God. He branched out God from eternity into time! Christ branched out God from the third heaven to the earth. He is the real branch! Today we are His branches, and we are branching out Him. One day when I was praying, “O the Branch of the Lord, the Branch of the Lord,” I realized that this was the branching out of God. And this branching out is for God’s building, so He is also a stone. He is both a branch and a stone. When we come to the divine Word, we must forget our mentality and pray-read the Word. Then the Spirit will speak to us. There are many things in the Bible that are new to us, and we must learn how to get into all the parts of this consistent revelation.
We also need a bird’s-eye view of the whole Bible. If we detach a part from the whole, it is difficult to understand. To understand even one phrase of the divine revelation, we need the whole Bible. The Bible begins with “In the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1), and the Bible ends with the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21—22), which is the holy city, the bride, the tabernacle of God. The Jews only hold on to the God of Genesis 1:1. They say they have God, but they only have God alone. However, God desires a counterpart. This is why we need to see the revelation of the whole Bible.
Matthew 1 tells us that a virgin will conceive and bring forth a son, who is to be called Jesus, which means “Jehovah the Savior.” His name is also Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.” He is not only God but God with us. There is a plus. When I was speaking concerning this in a certain place, a young seminary student was offended. He said, “Brother Lee, do you mean that God is not complete? Do you think that God is short of something? Why should God need a plus?” I simply did not have the heart to answer this young man. But within I said, “Young man, you go on to have your complete God, but I have God-plus!” The religious concept today is terrible. They say that God is complete and does not need anything, but the Bible says that God desires a bride. It is certain that before Jesus came, God was only God; He was never mingled with man, and He never came to be with man. Emmanuel really means “God-plus,” but the natural religious concept would not accept this.
The first time I gave a message on eating Jesus was in 1958 in Taipei. Immediately after the meeting, a well-educated brother came to speak with me in a very polite and political way. He said, “Brother Lee, your message tonight was really good, but you used some terms that are not so refined. In fact, they are rather wild.” When I asked to which terms he was referring, he said that to speak about eating Jesus was not good. I replied that I was not the first to say this. The Lord Jesus said in John 6:57, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.” Later, I discovered that the word eats in Greek does not only mean to eat but to masticate, to chew finely. But this is not the religious concept of all Christians.
Likewise, Christians have never heard that God desires to have a counterpart. But this is the revelation in the divine Word. After man’s creation, man was alone. Man needed a counterpart. God did not create one for him; He builded him one: “Jehovah God built the rib, which He had taken from man, into a woman and brought her to the man” (Gen. 2:22). When anything is built, there is the need of material. The material with which God built man a counterpart was a piece out of man. Then God brought this counterpart back to the man, and the man said, “This time this is bone of my bones / And flesh of my flesh; / This one shall be called Woman / Because out of Man this one was taken” (v. 23).
The beginning of the Bible reveals how a bride came out of man and was brought back to man. The end of the Bible also is the revelation of a wedding, the wedding of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7). Eventually, this bride is a “city-lady,” the New Jerusalem (21:9-10).
In the beginning God was alone, but at the consummation, at the end, God has a big plus. In the beginning there was only God, but at the consummation God is surrounded by a big city with a high wall built up with precious stones (v. 19). God is in the Lamb, for Revelation 21:23 tells us clearly that God is the light and the Lamb is the lamp: “The glory of God illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Out of the throne of this Lamb-God flows the living water of life: “He showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (22:1). Along with the flow of the water of life, the tree of life grows (v. 2). This reveals that the Lamb-God is flowing out to water and supply every part of the city. Eventually, the whole city becomes His expression. It is not an individual expression but a corporate one. This is the Body-Christ as the ultimate consummation of the whole Bible.
Now I want to use another new term. This Body-Christ is God incorporated. God has become incorporated with man. Divinity has become incorporated with humanity. This is God incorporated. However, God could not accomplish this overnight. It will take Him at least six thousand years. One thing we do know is that this incorporation has not yet been finished.
To carry out such a great project, He appointed His Son Christ to be the anointed One. As the appointed and anointed One He has taken seven steps for this work. The first was incarnation, the second was crucifixion, the third was resurrection, the fourth was ascension, the fifth was baptism, and the seventh is His coming back. What then is the sixth step? It is His indwelling. In the past chapters we have seen all the definitions of these steps. Incarnation is the real mingling of divinity with humanity. Crucifixion not only means redemption but also termination. All negative things along with the old creation were terminated on the cross. Then resurrection is the germination of the new creation. Ascension is the inauguration of God’s anointed One. Christ ascended to the heavens to be inaugurated into His post. Then God declared to the whole universe that He has set His Son as Lord of all and Head over all to the church. After this He came down in the form of the Spirit. In His inauguration God the Father gave Him all the functions and abilities to build and finish God’s divine project, that is, to build God’s eternal habitation. To do this He needs the germinating life, the empowering Holy Spirit, and the gifted persons. On the day of ascension He received all these. Then after His inauguration He came back in the form of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost to collect all God’s chosen people on the Hebrew side as His members. He put them into Himself by baptizing them into the Spirit. Following this, in the house of Cornelius, He collected all His Gentile believers and baptized them into Himself. Only these two occasions are called the baptism in the Holy Spirit by the Bible. Therefore, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was accomplished once and for all. This is why 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and were all given to drink one Spirit.” We all were baptized into the one Spirit. We do not need to be baptized again. Incarnation was accomplished once and for all. Crucifixion was accomplished once and for all. Resurrection was accomplished once and for all. Ascension was accomplished once and for all. And the baptism in the Holy Spirit was also accomplished once and for all.
There is only one step among these seven that is not completed instantly, once and for all. That is the indwelling. Although the Lord does indwell us when we are born again, it takes a longer period of time for Him to fully indwell us. This is why we need the moment-by-moment drinking of Him. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is once and for all. The drinking of the Spirit is not. “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and were all given to drink one Spirit” (v. 13). Drinking is a continual, lifelong matter. The baptism in the Spirit was to position us to drink. Now we must all continually drink of the one Spirit, and the way to drink of the Spirit is to call on the Lord. There is a verse in the same chapter that makes this clear: “No one can say, Jesus is Lord! except in the Holy Spirit” (v. 3). Whenever we call “Lord Jesus,” that is to drink of the Spirit. It is really meaningful that among the more than thirteen Epistles written by the apostle Paul, only 1 Corinthians opens with the matter of calling on the name of the Lord: “To the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, the called saints, with all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, who is theirs and ours” (1:2). This is not simply to pray but to call. The word call in the Greek means to cry out, to invoke a person by name. Jesus is so living! He is so near to us. He is so present and available! When we call on Him, He comes to us as the living water for us to drink.
There have been many people who have argued with me about calling on the name of the Lord. Some have said that it is merely psychological. But I have challenged them to try calling on any other name. Try to call, “O Confucius,” or, “O Plato!” You will feel and get nothing. But we all know that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. 10:13). The Lord of all is rich to all who call upon Him (v. 12). It does not say that the Lord is rich to all who study the Bible. Neither does it say that He is rich to all who meditate. The Lord is rich to all who call upon His name! The fact is the fact. We may tell ourselves that we do not need to breathe, because it is too repetitious. But it is not vain repetition. While we are arguing that we do not need to breathe, we are breathing.
Praise the Lord that we have all been positioned to drink! We have already been baptized in the Spirit, and now we have been positioned to drink of the Spirit. We have not been positioned to work for the Lord; we have been positioned to drink! We have all been given to drink one Spirit. The Lord has been inaugurated into His post, and we have been inaugurated into ours. Our inauguration is to drink, not to work. And the way to drink is to call deeply on the name of the Lord. We have even been called to call. We are the calling ones as well as the called ones. All day long we must call on the name of the Lord.
To the Lord this is the indwelling, but to us it is the drinking. This drinking is for transformation. We have all been baptized in the Spirit, but we have not all been transformed. We have been put fully into Christ, but Christ has not been fully wrought into us. This takes a lifetime. The Lord Jesus was incarnated to be a man so that He may be our Redeemer. Then He went to the cross and accomplished redemption. Three days later, in His resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit in order that He may come into us, indwell us, and impart Himself into us as life day by day. Even now He is waiting for a chance to gain more within us. He is just like the air, waiting for a crack to open so that He may come in more. But so many times we will not open. We confine Him in a little box. May the Lord open our eyes to realize that He wants to take us over, possess us, fill us, and saturate us with Himself. He wants to fully indwell our mind, our emotion, our will, and our conscience so that He may make His full home in our heart.
In the book of Ephesians Paul never prayed that the Ephesian Christians might be baptized in the Spirit and speak in tongues. But he did pray that the Lord would possess their inner man. “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father...that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith” (3:14, 16-17a). Paul was concerned that Christ might spread from their regenerated spirit into their heart, in order that He might settle down and make His home there. This is what we also need to pray for. We have all been baptized once and for all, but our drinking is too occasional. I fear that some of us have gone for two weeks without drinking hardly at all. We need to drink daily, hourly, instantly, constantly, and unceasingly of the Lord Jesus. We need to drink of all the divine riches of the indwelling Christ. Then His spiritual ingredients will be assimilated into our being. This is how the Body-Christ is produced.
In the book of Revelation it is altogether a matter of the Spirit. There is nothing to do with forms, regulations, or any kind of religion. Whether you are quiet or noisy, whether you wear long hair or short hair, whether you are circumcised or uncircumcised is not the question. It is altogether a matter of a new creation in the Spirit. This is to have Christ wrought into a resurrected humanity. Poor Christianity just follows the Jews. The Jews used the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament to form their Jewish religion. Poor Christianity followed by using their thirty-nine books plus twenty-seven more in the New Testament to form a Christian religion.
Some time ago I was invited to a Jewish brother’s home. He told me that when he was an orthodox Jew, they did everything based upon the verses of the Bible. He even put his shoes in a certain order according to their teaching of the Bible. They were very scriptural. Whatever they did was based upon their Scripture. But they did not have Christ. They had the type, and they had all the verses, but they did not have Christ. When Christ came to the Jewish people, according to their point of view, He did things against their Scriptures. He was not scriptural. He did not keep the Sabbath. He did not worship properly in the temple. He did things against their Scriptures. Yet He was the very God. This shows that to reach God’s goal is altogether not a matter of religion. It is a matter of the Holy Spirit in our spirit.
When the Lord Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman, she spoke to Him about religion. But at that very time she had had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband. So the Lord told her that it was not a matter of religion but of worshipping God in her spirit. “An hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truthfulness, for the Father also seeks such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness” (John 4:23-24).
In the book of Revelation John said four times that he was “in spirit.” This is because this book is composed of four major visions. The vision of the church is in the first three chapters. The vision of the world under God’s administration is in chapters 4 through 16. The vision of the harlot, the false church, is in chapters 17 through 18. Following this, there is the vision of the New Jerusalem in chapters 21 and 22. Every time John saw one of these four visions, he was in spirit. “I was in spirit on the Lord’s Day and heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet...And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me; and when I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands One like the Son of Man” (1:10, 12-13a). Then in Revelation 4:2 John said, “Immediately I was in spirit; and behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne there was One sitting.” In this vision John saw the judgment of the world from God’s throne. In Revelation 17 John was “carried...away in spirit into a wilderness; and...saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (v. 3). This was the great harlot, Babylon. The final vision is in Revelation 21, where John says, “He carried me away in spirit onto a great and high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (v. 10).
John did not see these visions in his mentality. He saw them in spirit. The book of Revelation is a book of the harvest of these two spirits, the divine Spirit and the human spirit. The seed was sown in John 4:24: “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit.” Those who have fellowship and contact with God must be in their spirit. In Revelation this divine Spirit becomes the sevenfold intensified Spirit (1:4; 4:5; 5:6), and this Spirit is seven eyes to burn, enlighten, search, observe, and visit. What should we do with this burning Spirit? We should not use our mind. We must be in our spirit. It was in spirit that John saw the churches, the judgment of the world, the great Babylon, and the New Jerusalem. God is Spirit, and those who contact Him must use their spirit. John did not see any of these visions until he was in his spirit.
If we argue with our mentality, we miss the mark. This is not the organ we should use. For the church we must use our spirit. The church is a matter of the divine Spirit in the human spirit. You could never hear my voice with your eyes. That is the wrong organ. You must use your ears. The church is spiritual and mysterious. It can only be substantiated in our spirit. If there is an odor in the air and we exercise our eyes to see the odor, we will not see it. Neither can we listen to the odor with our ears. This does not mean that there is no odor. It simply means that we did not use our nose. We did not use the proper organ to substantiate this substance. Every kind of substance needs the proper substantiating organ. To substantiate a noise, we need our substantiating ears. To substantiate all colorful things, we need our substantiating eyes. If we lose our sight, we cannot substantiate any color.
We all must learn to turn to our inward “nose,” our spirit. We need our spirit for the church life. In Old Testament days no one with a disfigured nose could serve as a priest (Lev. 21:18). Everyone serving God must have a keen nose. This kind of spiritual nose is a beauty appraised by the Lord (S. S. 7:4, 8). Many people speak to me, but they cannot cheat me. I have an inward smelling nose. They may say “Yes” to me, but in the spirit I know that the tone is “No.” Where is our spiritual nose? We must learn to turn to our spirit. God is Spirit, and we must learn to worship Him in spirit (John 4:24). Even the words of the Lord Jesus while He was here on earth were spirit: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (6:63). We do have a spirit, and our spirit is where we have been born again: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (3:6b). We must learn to use our regenerated spirit. The church life needs our spirit!
The Lord Jesus was with His disciples for over three years, and they appreciated Him greatly. When He told them that He was going to die, they could not bear it. But He explained to them that His going was His real coming back. Before His death and resurrection He could only be among them. He could not enter into them. Therefore, He needed to take a further step so that He might come into them. His going to die was not His going away; it was His coming back. It was only in this way that He could come back as the Spirit of reality to dwell in them forever.
We must all realize that the Christian life is altogether a matter of the Spirit. It is not a matter of any doctrine or teaching, even from the Bible. I respect the Bible, but if the Bible is not taken in spirit and with spirit, it is just dead letters. I am not against the sisters covering their head. But whatever we do, we must do it in spirit and with spirit. Otherwise, it is just a dead form of godliness. When we touch the Bible in the church life, we must do it in spirit. If there is no spirit, it is deadening. We simply kill ourselves and others. In like manner, we should sing hymns in spirit and with spirit. Otherwise, we should not sing. Everything we do should be in spirit and with spirit.
Today we are in the age of Revelation. Whatever we do must be under the seven eyes of Christ. Then we are no longer in religion with doctrines but in Christ with the Spirit. After Jesus accomplished His incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) and came back to His members in a mysterious and hidden way. Now He dwells in us in such a hidden way (Gal. 2:20), but it is more than real. From within He is going to transform us, replacing all our fallen elements with Himself. This is His work and it takes time, but today He is doing it. This work is to build up the Body-Christ. By resurrection, in resurrection, and with resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit. He is not only God, the Redeemer, and the Savior, but also the life-giving Spirit.
Andrew Murray, John Darby, and M. R. Vincent, in their interpretation of the Bible, all admit that Christ is the Holy Spirit. How can you reconcile this? I do not know. But it is a fact in the Bible. First Corinthians 15:45 says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” Second Corinthians 3:17 says the same thing: “The Lord is the Spirit.” John Nelson Darby in his New Translation of the Bible puts verses 7 through 16 of 2 Corinthians 3 in parentheses. By this he is saying that verse 17 is a continuation of verse 6. The last part of 2 Corinthians 3:6 says, “The Spirit gives life.” This is then continued by 2 Corinthians 3:17: “And the Lord is the Spirit.” By these two verses it is clear that the Lord is the Spirit who gives life. Thus, Darby agrees that the Lord is the Spirit who gives life.
Today is a day of confusion. We have a strong base for the things we minister. I admit that so many items are very new. But we should not think that because they are new, they are not scriptural. The Lord is progressing in opening His Word to us. Even today we are seeing something more, that is, the matter of the Body-Christ. This is strongly based upon 1 Corinthians 12:12: “Even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” The many members are one body, and so also is the Christ. This is simply the Body-Christ.
We believe in the Bible, the divine Word, and we believe every word in the Bible. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnated to be a man and that He died on the cross for our sins and was literally resurrected from the dead. He is our Savior and life today, and we are looking forward to His coming back, when we will all be raptured. We believe in all these things. Who can say that we are heretical? Is it just because we are shouting? Does this mean that to be silent is scriptural? I do not believe so. There are many verses in the Bible about shouting. When all the captives returned to Jerusalem and saw the foundation of the temple laid, they all shouted for joy (Ezra 3:11-13). Psalm 5:11 says, “Let all who take refuge in You rejoice; / Let them shout for joy forever; / And may You spread a cover over them; / And those who love Your name / Will exult in You.” This verse says that we should shout for joy forever, not just once in a while. It also says that if we love the Lord’s name, we will exult in Him. If we exult, how could we be silent? Psalm 47:1 says, “Clap your hands, all you peoples; / Shout to God with the voice of a triumphant sound.” Some may argue that this is a kind of voice, not a noise. But Psalm 100:1 says, “Make a joyful noise to Jehovah, all the earth.” The Bible tells us to be noisy! Seven times the book of Psalms tells us to make a joyful noise.
Some will say that this is something of the Old Testament. Then we had better read Matthew 21:15-16: “When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that He did and the children who were crying out in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant. And they said to Him, Do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings You have perfected praise’?” The children were crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Certainly the chief priests and scribes thought this was out of place in the temple. They were greatly displeased. But Jesus declared that out of the mouth of infants and sucklings praise would come unto Him. They were so quiet scripturally, but they never saw such a verse in the Scriptures.
Preaching was only practiced in the sanctuary of the Church of England. But God raised up John Wesley, who cared nothing for this. He preached and taught the holy Word on the street corner. In his meetings there was much shouting. Even today, there are still the shouting Methodists. Church history shows us that many human concepts were brought in to confine the living Christ. He told the seven churches in Revelation, “I am...the living One; and I became dead, and behold, I am living forever and ever” (1:17-18). He is living! He can never be confined by any forms. Of course, if we were to have a form of shouting, Jesus would leave that too. This is why everything must be in the spirit.
I was born and raised in formal Christianity. I really know what Christianity is. After I was saved, I was brought into an assembly of Christians to learn the good teachings of the Bible. I received the teachings on prophecy and typology, but after seven and a half years I discovered that I had been killed by the teachings of dead letter. I repented and came into the matters of the inner life. After practicing the inner life for some time, I still felt weak, so I became involved with the Pentecostal things. I spoke in tongues for a considerable time and took the lead to help others to do this. Then I stopped this peculiar kind of speaking. By the Lord’s mercy He planted me in the church life. You can see that I passed through all these things. I was in formal Christianity, fundamental Christianity, the inner life, and the Pentecostal things. Through all this process, the Lord planted me in the church life. Now I have learned to enjoy the Lord as everything in my spirit by calling on the name of the Lord, the life-giving Spirit, and pray-reading the living word, which is spirit and life.
By all these lessons in the past, I have realized that it is altogether a matter of the divine Spirit mingling with our human spirit. This is why 2 Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit,” and 1 Corinthians 6:17 tells us, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Zechariah speaks not only of the wonderful divine Spirit in his book (4:6) but also of the human spirit: “Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him” (12:1). In the whole universe only three things are important: the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man. The book of Zechariah speaks of the recovery of God’s building. But without the divine Spirit and the human spirit, God’s building is impossible. This is why both of these spirits are mentioned in this book. God’s building is possible, and God is doing it. This building is a corporate entity, the Body-Christ. How the Lord must open our eyes to see this! The whole matter issues from the Triune God as the seven Spirits in our human spirit.
The book of Revelation is a harvest of the divine Spirit and the human spirit. John spoke of it first in his Gospel when he said that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in spirit (4:24). Now in the book of Revelation we see the sevenfold Spirit in our human spirit. This book was written to the seven churches from the seven Spirits: “John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is coming, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne” (1:4). To see all that the sevenfold intensified Spirit is speaking to the churches, John had to be in spirit. In spirit he saw the churches with the Son of Man walking in the midst. In spirit he saw the world under God’s judgment. In spirit he saw the great Babylon. In spirit he saw the holy city, New Jerusalem. Everything was so clear because he was in spirit. We will never understand what the Lord is speaking unless we also are in spirit. When we are in spirit, the vision is clear. This book is the speaking of the Spirit to the churches (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). Eventually, the Spirit and the bride speak together as one (22:17). It is altogether a matter of the divine Spirit with our human spirit. May we all see this.
