The Ministry of the Word, Vol. 26, No. 4: Chapters Five through Eight of Romans - the Kernel of the Bible (2) PDF Download

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains Messages 9 through 16 given during the fall 2021 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California, as the continuation of the general subject "Chapters Five through Eight of Romans--the Kernel of the Bible." The sixteen messages in this term focus on Romans 5 and 6, while future messages will focus on Romans 7 and 8. The eight messages of the April 2022 issue draw from Witness Lee's understanding of Romans 5 and 6 in his earlier ministry. The eight messages of this issue present a further understanding of Romans 5 and 6 based on the latter part of his ministry, in which Brother Lee emphasized the matters of being saved in life and reigning in life (5:10, 17). In life indicates that both being saved and reigning are related to the organic aspect of God's complete salvation, which is the fulfillment of God's salvation through the life of Christ for the believers to be transformed and to grow and mature in the life of God. Brother Lee thus began to speak about God's salvation in life in a brand new way, especially in view of the great diamond of God's eternal economy. In his earlier ministry Brother Lee spoke about our being saved in life from particular items, such as worldliness, Satan, sin, and death. In the latter part of his ministry, he saw that organic salvation is our deification, a process that includes regeneration, feeding, sanctification, renewing, transformation, building, conformation, and glorification and that results in our becoming God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. The goal of organic salvation is the building--the corporate expression of the Triune God in Christ through the church, the mingling of God with man, and the enlargement and expansion of God. The secret of all the experiences of God's organic salvation and the building of God is the Spirit with our spirit, that is, the consummated Spirit being and working together with the believers' created and regenerated spirit. Romans further reveals that the believers need to reign in life over all things for the Body life (cf. 8:17, 29; 12:5). By experiencing grace upon grace, the believers reign in life not only over sin, death, and Satan but even over all things. To reign in life is to conquer, subdue, and rule over Satan, the world, sin, the flesh, ourselves, and all the environmental circumstances and to subdue all kinds of insubordination. The issue of our reigning in life, living under the ruling of the divine life, is the real and practical Body life expressed in the church life (16:1, 4-5, 16). The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN: 1536004162
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains a complete record of the twelve messages given during the December 2023 semiannual training, held in Anaheim, California. The Key Statements on the following page embody and summarize the crucial truths and main burdens covered in these twelve messages.

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final seven messages given during the Fall 2019 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is “The Christian Life.” In these seven messages we continue to consider other aspects of the Christian life. In order to live the Christian life, we need to know the resurrected Christ and to know and experience the power of His resurrection. The first aspect in which we need to know Him is as the Son of God desig­nated in power with His human nature. Christ as the Son of God will make us the same as He is. He is the prototype, and He is in us as the law of the Spirit of life to shape, to conform, us to the image of the firstborn Son. The second aspect in which we need to know Him is as the firstborn Son of God born in resurrection. The first aspect emphasizes His person to be reproduced, and the second aspect is for His propagation. To live the Christian life is to live out the anointing. The anointing is the moving and working of the indwelling compound Spirit to apply all the ingredients of the processed Triune God and His activities into our inner being so that we may be fully mingled with Him for His corporate expression. Life moves, and when Christ as the Spirit entered into us, He came into us as the anointing. In order to experience the anointing, we need to know Christ as the anointed One, as the anointing One, and as the anointing. The Christian life is a life of abiding in Christ as the vine. The true vine with its branches—Christ the Son with the believers in the Son—is the organism of the Triune God in the divine economy to grow with His riches and express His life. As the branches of the true vine, we are the multiplication of Christ, the duplication of Christ, the spreading of Christ, and the enlargement of Christ. To abide in Christ as the vine is to dwell in Him, to remain in fellowship with Him, that we may experience and enjoy His abiding in us. The Christian life is a life of living in the mingled spirit. The essence of the New Testament is the two spirits—the divine Spirit and the human spirit—mingled together as one spirit. We can experience Christ, enjoy Christ, live Christ, and take Christ as everything because we have become one spirit with Him. Ultimately, the Bible requires only one thing of us—that we walk according to the mingled spirit. The key to everything is found in the wonderful Spirit who is in our regenerated spirit and who has be­come one spirit with our spirit. To live in the mingled spirit is to have the highest spirituality. The Christian life is a grafted life. God desires that the divine life and the human life be joined together to become one life. This oneness is an organic union, a union in life—a grafted life. Because our human life was made in the image of God and according to the likeness of God, it can be joined to the divine life. Our human life resembles the divine life; therefore, the divine life and the human life can be grafted together and grow together organically. As regenerated ones, we should live a grafted life—a life in which two parties are joined to grow organically. The Christian life is not an exchanged life but a grafted life—the mingling of the human life with the divine life. The most wonderful reality in the Christian experience is that the believers in Christ are united with Christ in the way of life. In the grafted life the human life is not eliminated but is strengthened, uplifted, and enriched by the divine life. As a result of our being grafted into Christ, there is a three-stage devel­opment of our relationship with the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit—​a union in life, a mingling of natures, and a coinherence, the mutual indwelling, of persons. As Christians, we live a life of coinherence in the Father’s house, which is the church as the house of God and the Body of Christ. To live in the Triune God and to have the Triune God live in us is the greatest blessing in the universe. The Christian life is a life fully according to and for the central work of God. God’s unique work in the universe and throughout all the ages and generations is to work Himself in Christ into His chosen people, making Himself one with them. We need God to build Himself in Christ into our humanity, working Himself in Christ into us as our life, nature, and per­son. God is working Himself into us through everything that happens to us so that He may become our constitution. As Christians, we experience the divine dispensing for God’s central work. The will of God concerning our Christian life is that we would know the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, experience Him, be constituted with Him, and express Him. The Reports and Announcements section contains “2020 FTTA Gospel Trips.” Also included is a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final nine messages given during the spring 2018 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "Enjoying the Riches of Christ for the Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ." These messages continue to emphasize the enjoyment of the indescribably rich and all-inclusive Christ as everything to us as seen in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, we see that we need to have a pure heart to see God, which is to gain God so that we may become God in life and nature. The more we experience and enjoy such an all-inclusive Christ, the more we will become the building material for and even the builders of the church, fulfilling the greatest prophecy in the Bible to bring in the kingdom of God.

Author: Witness Lee
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN: 1536039926
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the last eight of the sixteen messages given during the fall 2023 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is “The Crucial Points of the Truth in Paul's Epistles—First Corinthians.” The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe and Israel.

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight messages given during the fall 2017 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Crucial Revelation of Life in the Scriptures." The central thought of God in this universe and in eternity is to have Christ as His expression through the church with the shining in life. God's expression is based on life and light, and the light is the shining in life. In order for God to have an expression of Himself in Christ through the church, the divine life that expresses Him must be embodied and expressed in Christ and then dispensed into, worked into, and expressed through the church. Only the life of God can express God. Based on this principle, we will see the crucial revelation of life throughout the Scriptures. Genesis 1 and 2 are not merely a record of creation; actually, nearly every item recorded in these two chapters is a revelation of Christ who is life to God's people for the producing and building up of the church. According to Genesis 1, God created many forms of life, beginning with the lowest form and progressing to the highest form of created life, that is, man, whom God created in His image. The purpose of the creation of man with God's image is that this man would express God. However, the created man had only a human life. Any form of created life can only express itself; it cannot express another kind of life. This means that man is unable to express God if he has only his created human life. In order for man to express God and fulfill His purpose, man must obtain and receive the life of God as his life. God has to enter into man to be life to man. Genesis 2 reveals that the bride of Christ--typified by the woman built from the rib taken from the man--is produced and comes into being by life. The real Eve, the church, the counterpart of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem, is built with the resurrection life that was released by the Lord through His death and imparted through His resurrection. This counterpart of the Lord is a building of life. For God to gain His corporate expression through the church, He must dispense and work Himself into us, His people, His believers. This is accomplished through our eating and drinking Him. We need to pass through three stages of the enjoyment of Christ by eating Him. The first stage is the eating of Christ as the Passover lamb in Egypt, the second stage is the eating of Christ as the manna in the wilderness, and the third stage is the eating of Christ as the rich produce of the good land. By our eating in the first two stages, we are energized to leave the world and are constituted with Christ as the heavenly element. Only in the third stage of the enjoyment of Christ as our food can we fulfill God's purpose. It was not until the children of Israel entered into the good land and enjoyed the produce of the land that they were able to defeat all the enemies, build up God's dwelling place on the earth, and bring in the kingdom of God. Likewise, for us to reach the goal of God's economy, we need to progress until we enter into the highest stage of eating Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit, as typified by the rich produce of the good land. In this stage we overcome the spiritual enemies, we are built up to be God's dwelling place, and we establish God's kingdom on earth. The history of God's people is not only one of eating but also one of drinking. In the Old Testament, before coming into the good land and building the house of God, the children of Israel journeyed through the wilderness. During that journey they came to Marah, a place of bitter waters. Moses followed God's command to cast a tree into the bitter waters; the waters then became sweet. This tree signifies the tree of life, the crucified and resurrected Christ, who today is the Spirit mingled with our spirit. In our spirit we have the crucified and resurrected Christ as our Healer. He is the One who transforms our bitter circumstances and makes them sweet, and He also heals all our diseases. Before the building of the house of God, the Bible speaks of the springs of water (Exo. 15:22-27), the water out of the cleft rock (17:6), and the water from the well (Num. 21:16-17). Christ as the living, spiritual rock was smitten by the authority of God's law so that the water of life in resurrection could flow out of Him and into His redeemed people for them to drink. After God's people built the house of God in the good land, the Bible speaks of the river of God's pleasures (Psa. 36:8b), the river whose streams gladden the city of God (46:4), a fountain going forth from the house of Jehovah (Joel 3:18), and living waters going forth from Jerusalem (Zech. 14:8). We need to experience the flowing of the living water out of the house of God (Ezek. 47:1-5). In order to be in the flow, we have to be in the building; that is, we need to be in the church. In the New Testament we can see the crucial revelation of life in the book of Matthew. In the decree of the kingdom's constitution given by the Lord in chapters 5--7, He displayed the two possible ways people may live and work before God (7:13-14, 21-27). The broad way that leads to destruction is according to the worldly systems satisfying the natural tastes, to get the crowd, to maintain a career of man, and to achieve man's enterprise. The constricted way is according to the divine regulations. This way, which leads to life, fulfills the spiritual requests, brings in God's elect, bears the testimony of Jesus Christ, and carries out God's economy for the building up of the Body of Christ. We take this way by walking in the spirit; this will restrict us and cause us to live a normal Christian life. We will thereby become vital, healthy believers who take the way of life for God's building. There are three basic elements in Matthew. First, Christ is the King as the kingdom bringing in the reality of the kingdom. Second, He is the King in His all-inclusiveness. Third, He is the kingly bread. When we partake of this kingly bread, we eat, digest, and assimilate the King and the kingdom with its reality, and we eat and digest the King in His all-inclusiveness. The ruling element is in the food. When we take in this food, we gradually become the reality of the kingdom of the heavens. The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final eight messages given during the fall 2017 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Crucial Revelation of Life in the Scriptures." God's ultimate intention is to gain a corporate God-man for His corporate manifestation. The intrinsic element of God's eternal economy is that the Triune God in humanity, the wonderful Christ as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, is sown into God's chosen people as the seed of life, the seed of God, so that He might grow in them, live in them, develop in them, and be expressed from within them as the farm of God for the building up of the church as the house of God and the kingdom of God. The seed of life is actually God in Christ as the Spirit through His word sown into us. This seed contains everything related to God's economy, to the divine life, and to the growth, development, and function of that life. The seed of life is not only a substance, a reproductive element, or an essence but also a person--the all-inclusive Christ. The seed of life sown into us needs to grow to maturity so that we may be the kingdom of God. In resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit for imparting life. The life-giving Spirit is the extract, the essence, the concentrated form of the all-inclusive Christ. The totality of all that the all-inclusive Christ is as the life-giving Spirit is for our experience and enjoyment. Without the experience of Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the Lord cannot have His Body. If we never have any experience or enjoyment, we will never grow. There is always a spiritual war related to the growth in life. If the enemy cannot stop the sowing of the seed, then he will do everything he can with every believer to prevent the seed from growing to maturity. However, there is a fighting element in this seed. The only way to enter into the coming kingdom is to grow into the kingdom. Second Peter 1:5-11 reveals that our growth in life to maturity becomes an entrance into the kingdom richly supplied to us. The law of the Spirit of life is the subject of Romans 8. God's life is the highest life, and the law of this life is the highest law. The law of the Spirit of life is not a thing but a person--the processed and consummated Triune God embodied in Christ and realized as a living law in our spirit. This law of life is the spontaneous power, the natural characteristic, and the innate, automatic function of the divine life. While we remain in touch with the Lord, staying in contact with Him, the law of the Spirit of life works automatically, spontaneously, and effortlessly to dispense God as life into our being and to overcome the law of sin and of death (vv. 10, 6, 11). We activate the law of the Spirit of life by remaining in touch with the Lord. We need to cooperate with the indwelling, installed, automatic, and inner-operating God by prayer and by having a spirit of dependence, thus maintaining our fellowship with the Lord of life and the Lord of work. Romans 8 reveals that the processed Triune God as the law of the Spirit of life gives the divine life to the believers for their living. There are four laws in Romans 7 and 8. One law is outside of us, and the other three correspond to the three lives that are within us as regenerated persons. Outside of us is the law of God, the law of moral commandments, which is a portrait of God. Within us is the law of sin and of death in our flesh, the law of good in our soul, and the law of the Spirit of life in our spirit. The only way we can match and become the living portrait of God is by living according to the law of the Spirit of life in our spirit. God's desire and goal are that we live by the divine life and minister life to others for the building up of the church. The all-inclusive, indwelling Spirit is constantly transmitting this life into each one of us to build up the church, edify the saints, and minister the riches of Christ to everyone who contacts us. In Romans 8 we also see that the desire of God's heart is to have many sons for His corporate expression (v. 29). The Father sent His Son--who was born under the law and born through a woman--to redeem us out from under the law. Having redeemed us, He "sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father!'" (Gal. 4:6). Now our spirit has become a spirit of sonship. As the divine life grows within us and transforms us, it spontaneously shapes us into the form, the image, of the firstborn Son of God. We are to be conformed to the image of God's firstborn Son, Christ as the first God-man, that we may be a group of God-men who are exactly like Him. Paul's Epistle to the Romans reveals God's complete salvation in two aspects. God's judicial redemption is the procedure of God's complete salvation for the believers to participate in God's organic salvation as the purpose of the complete salvation of God. Redemption entails the forgiveness of all our sins, reconciliation, positional sanctification, and justification. God's organic salvation is the organic aspect of God's complete salvation through the life of God (Rom. 1:17b; Acts 11:18; Rom. 5:10b, 17b, 18b, 21b) as the purpose of God's salvation, accomplishing all that God wants to achieve in the believers in His economy through His divine life (Gen. 2:9; Rev. 22:14). Organic salvation entails regeneration with God's life, sanctification with God's holy nature, renewing with God's element, transformation with God's being, conformation into God's image, and glorification, which is our full sonship. Glorification sonizes our whole being, from spirit to soul to body. All the items of God's organic salvation are carried out by Christ as the life-giving Spirit in His heavenly ministry organically and subjectively. Being saved in His life is actually the process of resurrection, with the resurrection life of Christ as the element, increasingly taking place in our inner being so that we are sanctified, which is to be saturated with God's holy nature. It is in resurrection that we are renewed, we walk in newness of life, and we serve in newness of spirit (Rom. 6:4; 7:6). The experience of God's organic salvation equals reigning in Christ's life. The issue of our reigning in life, living under the ruling of the divine life, is the real and practical Body life expressed in the church life (12:1-4, 9-12, 15, 18). The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
This issue of The Ministry contains the third and fourth messages given by Brother Lee to the co-workers in Southern California in September 1996. These messages comprise a timely, loving warning from our brother to beware of four destructive matters: ambition, pride, self-justification and exposing others’ failures and defects, and not conforming to the death of Christ. Trouble after trouble has come to the Lord’s recovery over the years simply because of these four matters. But if we will deal with these four matters, the Lord’s recovery will immediately have a revival. In addition to dealing with these four matters, we must also be right in following others. In actuality, our leading is not a person but the divine truth, the divine vision. Consequently, our following others must be according to the divine truth and the divine vision. The next three messages in this issue are the concluding messages of the Living Stream Ministry’s Summer Training of 1998 on the Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Message Ten emphasizes the crucial matter of the dividing of soul and spirit for the experience of the reality of the Sabbath rest. Message Eleven indicates strongly that in order for the believers to be brought on to maturity (Heb. 6:1), we must progress from the word of the beginning of Christ—the milk—to the word of righteousness—the solid food. Message Twelve, as a conclusion to the summer training, stresses the critical need of being transformed and of being matured. To be transformed is to be metabolically changed in our natural life, whereas to be matured is to be filled with the divine life that changes us. We need to go on, to be brought on, to maturity by forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, pursuing toward the fullest enjoyment and gaining of Christ for the uttermost enjoyment of Christ in the millennial kingdom. Ultimately, the Lord’s desire to bring us on to maturity must be matched by our willing cooperation with His gracious work. Lastly, we include a report concerning the International Elders’ Training in October 1998, held on the new campus for the ministry in Anaheim, California.

Author: Witness Lee
Publisher: Living Stream Ministry
ISBN: 0736352295
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
In the book of Ephesians, the church is revealed as the assembly, the household, the Body of Christ, and the new man. The church as the Body of Christ needs Christ as its life, whereas the Church as the new man, the highest aspect of the church, needs Christ as its person. According to Colossians 3:10-11, Christ is all and in all in the new man; thus, in the new man, there is no room for natural persons, culture, status, or ethics. In the new man there is only one person—Christ.