Message 5
Scripture Reading: Ezra 7:6, 10; 1:7-11
The Bible is unique, and everything contained in it is significant. At the very beginning, the Bible tells us that God created Adam as a creature in His kind (Gen. 1:26). Adam was God’s kind only in likeness and appearance, not in life, nature, and constitution. God’s desire was that Adam would be His kind not only in likeness but also in life, nature, and constitution.
In Genesis 3:15 God promised that He would come to be the seed of woman. Later, He prophesied further He would come to be a seed of Abraham, which would be the blessing to all the nations (22:18). Eventually, God Himself was incarnated to be a man. However, God first, through His continuous labor, took more than one thousand years to produce and form the nation of Israel as a great type.
God selected Abraham, whose descendants fell into Egypt. God sent Moses to them to deliver them out of Egypt as a great nation, numbering about two million, and brought them to Mount Sinai, where they stayed for nearly a year to be educated by God. God’s intention was to have Israel as His testimony, but according to their Egyptian culture they were a testimony of Egypt. For this reason God kept them at Mount Sinai to give them the Ten Commandments, all the statutes for the Ten Commandments, all the ordinances for the statutes, the tabernacle with all the furniture and all the offerings, the priesthood, and all the feasts, in order to build them up with a heavenly, divine constitution instead of an Egyptian constitution.
As a result of this time of education and training, the nation of Israel became an army not only formed and organized but also constituted to be God with man and man with God. Hence, in typology the Israelites were God-men. They were God-men, and everything related to them, even their environment with the pillar of cloud in the day and the pillar of fire at night, was God’s expression. Their going forth became God’s going forth (Psa. 68).
After a short time, however, the children of Israel no longer expressed God, and He let them die in the wilderness. Then God raised up the second generation, and they crossed the river Jordan by a great miracle. As a heavenly constituted army they came to Jericho. When they shouted, the city of Jericho fell. This was God’s testimony. This was the move, the living, of God-men; it was God marching on. But when they came to the city of Ai, one among them caused them to fail. From that time onward, there was nothing among the Israelites but degradation. God sent the prophets to warn them and bring them back, but they refused to go along with God. Eventually, God brought in the Babylonians to possess the good land and carry the people of Israel away to Babylon to be disciplined and punished.
God could not forget the good land, the promised land, the land of Immanuel (Isa. 8:8). The good land should be the land of God-men for the testimony of God. First, there was a return under the leadership of Zerubbabel, a descendant of the royal family. It was fitting for him to take the lead in the first return from captivity, because he had the capacity to administrate and to govern. He was a strong governor and he led the people in rebuilding the temple with the altar.
However, the people were still unruly, for they had become Babylonian in their constitution. Therefore, there was the need for an Ezra, a priest who served God, and also a scribe, a scholar, who was skilled in the Word of God, skilled in the law of Moses (Ezra 7:6, 11). He bore the totality of the heavenly and divine constitution and culture. Ezra called the people together and confessed not only his own sin but also the sin of Israel, to bring them back to the Word of God.
In the church life today, the main responsibility of the elders is to teach the saints with the truths. The Bible says that one of the qualifications of an elder is being apt to teach (1 Tim. 3:2). Paul tells us that certain elders may not have a job but may “labor in word and teaching” and therefore should be supported by the church (5:17-18). However, I have observed that some elders are deficient in the knowledge of the truth and may not even be clear whether a particular matter is an item of the truth.
Let me check with you about calling on the name of the Lord. Is calling on the name of the Lord a truth? No, it is not a truth. Calling on the Lord is necessary, and we need to have such a practice in our daily life, but calling on the Lord’s name is not a truth. Likewise, baptism, presbytery, footwashing, and pray-reading are not truths. On the other hand, justification by faith is a truth. Regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, transfiguration, being made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead — all these are truths.
Some elders may speak about life-practices such as calling on the Lord, pray-reading, praying without ceasing, not quenching the Spirit, and not despising prophesying, but they do not know how to teach the truths to the saints. For example, if these ones are asked about sanctification, they may be able to say only that to be sanctified is to be separated unto God. If they are asked about the difference between sanctification and renewing, they may not be able to explain the difference. Therefore, I say once again that all the elders need to know the truths and be able to teach the truths to others.
All the elders need to spend much time to learn the truths. This is the duty, the responsibility, of an elder. Anyone who accepts an appointment to the eldership must fulfill this responsibility. Like Ezra, all the elders and co-workers must be skilled in the Word of God.
Throughout the whole earth there is a great famine of God’s Word. In Christianity today, both in Catholicism and in Protestantism, there is very little teaching of the truth. In many places, instead of the truth there are superstitions and pagan practices. For instance, in all of Latin America there is very little of the truth. I believe that this is the reason why our publications, which are full of the truth, are so well received there. In Latin America the people who love God also love our publications. These publications cover the entire Bible from the first page to the last.
Both Brother Nee and I spent a great deal of time in learning to be skillful in the Word. Much of what we have learned has been put into print. We have almost completed the life-study of the Scriptures, and we have begun what we call the crystallization study. Today there is the need not just for Zerubbabels but for more Ezras. It would be unseemly for an elder to make decisions and expect the saints to follow them but not visit the saints with the truths. The real eldership is not to exercise authority. The real eldership is to visit the saints and to shepherd them, feed them, and take care of them by speaking to them concerning the truths. Today we need Ezras to teach the people, to educate them, and to constitute them with the heavenly truths.
I thank the Lord that, even though we are still so short in many ways, He, for His own sake, has spread His recovery, with His riches, to more than two thousand cities throughout the earth. When the Israelites went back to Jerusalem, they were stirred up, they rose up, they went up, and they brought up 5,400 vessels of gold and silver (Ezra 1:7-11). These were the vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out from Jerusalem and had put in the house of his gods. During the first return from the captivity, all these vessels were brought back to Jerusalem. Those vessels are types of the riches of Christ. After I came to this country, I released messages on the riches of Christ, and I also wrote a hymn on the unsearchable riches of Christ (Hymns, #542). In Ephesians 3:8 Paul speaks not only of Christ’s riches but of Christ’s unsearchable riches. Today the enjoyment of the riches of Christ is by His word.
In His recovery the Lord is moving by His word, by the truth. His word is in the Bible, but the Bible needs the proper interpretation, which is found in the life-studies. If the co-workers and the elders study all our publications, there will be many Ezras in the Lord’s recovery to constitute people with the heavenly truths.
