Scripture Reading: Joel 1:4; 3:11; Eph. 1:3-6; 2:15; 4:22-24; Micah 5:2; Rev. 19:7-9

DAY 1 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 2 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 3 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 4 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 5 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 6 Outline　MorningRevival

«　WEEK 6　DAY 1　»

　　Joel 1:4 What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust has left, the licking locust has eaten; and what the licking locust has left, the consuming locust has eaten.

　　3:11 Hurry and come, all you surrounding nations, and be gathered. There cause Your mighty ones to descend, O Jehovah!

　　The Bible is a record of two histories: the history of man, the human history, and the history of God, the divine history. The former is like an outward shell, and the latter, like the kernel within the shell. In the Minor Prophets the human history is clearly defined and is signified by the four kinds of locusts mentioned in Joel 1:4. The divine history within the human history is also revealed in considerable detail. The divine history, as the divine mystery of the Triune God in humanity, began in eternity past with the eternal God and His eternal economy (Micah 5:2c; 1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:4-5, 9-11). It continues with Christ’s incarnation (Micah 5:2a); His death, burial, and resurrection for the spreading of God’s redemption and salvation to all the nations on earth (Jonah 1:17; 2:10); His pouring out of the consummated Spirit to produce the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God (Joel 2:28-32); His second coming as the Desire of nations (Hag. 2:7a) and as the Sun of righteousness (Mal. 4:2a); His coming with His overcomers as His army to defeat Antichrist and his army (Joel 3:1-15); and His reigning in Zion in the thousand-year kingdom (3:16-21; Micah 4:7). Eventually, the kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth for eternity. The New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God’s history. (Joel 1:4, footnote 1)

　　[The Bible] took approximately fifteen hundred years to complete through more than forty writers. The first writer was Moses, and the last writer was John…. We may say the Bible is the autobiography of God, because it is a book about God written by God Himself through a number of writers moved by the Holy Spirit…. The entire Bible is a history of the Triune God.

　　God’s history has become our history because He is in union with us. We can illustrate this with the union between a husband and wife…. The Bible is God’s history in union with us. He is our Husband, and we as His chosen and redeemed people are His wife.

　　The Christian life is a life in union with God. The New Testament says that Christ as the embodiment of God is the Husband and that the church is the wife (Eph. 5:25-32; 2 Cor. 11:2)…. Revelation 19 speaks of the marriage of Christ and His marriage dinner (vv. 7-9). Revelation 21 and 22 show us the marriage life in eternity between God embodied in Christ and His chosen, redeemed people…. Thus, when we touch God’s history, we touch our Christian life…. The Christian life is the life of a wife who is married to the Triune God.

　　Our God has a history, and the most wonderful part of His history is His history in His union with man. Even in the Old Testament, God referred to Himself as the Husband and to His people as His wife (Isa. 54:5; 62:5; Jer. 2:2; 3:1, 14; 31:32; Ezek. 16:8; 23:5; Hosea 2:7, 19). The marriage life God desired with His people in the Old Testament is realized in the New Testament. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union with Man, ” pp. 17-18)

　　The Triune God is eternal…. With Him there is no beginning. Within Himself, this eternal One made an economy. According to His economy, God wants to work Himself into man to be one with man, to be man’s life, life supply, and everything, and to have man as His expression. God’s intention in His economy is thus to have a corporate entity, composed of God and man, to be His expression for eternity. This divine history began with the eternal God and His economy. (Life-study of Joel, p. 34)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Joel, msgs. 5-6

«　WEEK 6　DAY 2　»

　　Acts 2:23 This man, delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you, through the hand of lawless men, nailed to a cross and killed.

　　Micah 5:2 (But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, so little to be among the thousands of Judah, from you there will come forth to Me He who is to be Ruler in Israel; and His goings forth are from ancient times, from the days of eternity.)

　　God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity (Acts 2:23 and footnote 1)…. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit held a council, a conference, in eternity to make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ for the carrying out of God’s eternal economy. God made an economy, but God had to make a decision regarding how to carry out His economy. For the carrying out of God’s economy, Christ had to die an all-inclusive death. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union with Man, ” pp. 24-25)

　　The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man. Micah 5:2 tells us that Christ was going to be born in Bethlehem, and that was a part of His “goings forth.”… Before God as the second of the Divine Trinity came to be born in Bethlehem in time, He was preparing to come in eternity past. God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:3-6)…. Before we were created, He blessed us in two things. In eternity past God chose us to be holy, to be sanctified unto Himself with His holy nature (v. 4), … indicating that He would be one with us, that is, that His nature would become our nature. With this nature we are being sanctified, separated unto God. He is holy in nature, and we are being made the same as He is in nature (Heb. 2:11; 2 Pet. 1:4).

　　In eternity past God [also] predestinated us, marking us out, unto sonship, making us sons to Himself with His divine life (Eph. 1:5a). Thus, God blessed us in eternity past with two things—with His nature and with His divine life. God’s blessing us in eternity past with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies was according to the good pleasure of His will (v. 5b) to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in Christ, His Beloved (v. 6).

　　In eternity past God made an economy to produce the church for His manifestation and to head up all things, including us, in Christ. He also held a council to determine that the second of the Divine Trinity should come to die for us to carry out His economy. Then in eternity past He chose us to have His nature and to have His divine life so that we could be holy as He is and be His sons as His children to express Him. This is God’s history in eternity past, and this history is our history. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union with Man, ” pp. 25-26)

　　Before His incarnation God moved only with men and among men in the Old Testament…. But that was not God’s direct move to carry out His eternal economy for Christ and the church. This is why the church is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The church was a hidden mystery…. God’s economy in the New Testament is absolutely unique. In the Old Testament you cannot see God’s move for His eternal economy directly. God did a lot indirectly to prepare for the day when He could come to do the direct work…. The Old Testament was a preparation for the direct move of God in man in the New Testament. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man, ” pp. 399-401)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union with Man, ” ch. 1; CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man, ” ch. 1; Life-study of Micah, msgs. 2-3

«　WEEK 6　DAY 3　»

　　Hosea 11:4 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love…

　　Matt. 4:19-20 And He said to them, Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. And immediately leaving the nets, they followed Him.

　　The Bible may be considered the history of God…. God’s history is of two portions—the history of God with man, found in the Old Testament, and the history of God in man, found in the New Testament. In the Old Testament God’s history was a history with man. In the New Testament God’s history is a history in man, for this history involves God’s being one with man. Therefore, the history of God in the New Testament is a divine history in humanity. (Life-study of Joel, pp. 37-38)

　　[In Hosea 11:4] the phrase with cords of a man, with bands of love indicates that God loves us with His divine love not on the level of divinity but on the level of humanity…. The cords through which God draws us include Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. It is by all these steps of Christ in His humanity that God’s love in His salvation reaches us (Rom. 5:8; 1 John 4:9-10). (Hosea 11:4, footnote 1)

　　In His full ministry in the first stage, the stage of His incarnation, Christ brought the infinite God into the finite man…. This is our new language today. God is infinite, and we human beings are finite.

　　In His full ministry in the first stage of His incarnation, Christ also united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man. The Triune God is mysterious, and the tripartite man is difficult to understand. If we simply say that Christ united and mingled God with man, this is easy. However, according to the new language of the new culture in the divine and mystical realm, we need to say that Christ united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man. Concerning the Triune God, the Father is the source, the Son is the expression, and the Spirit is the entering in. Concerning the tripartite man, the spirit is the innermost part, the soul is in the middle, and the body is on the outside.

　　In His full ministry in the first stage of His incarnation, Christ also expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues. No one can deny that the human virtues of Christ were aromatic; even when non-Christians read the four Gospels, they sense that the Jesus recorded in these books was a sweet and fragrant One, whose virtues were aromatic. This is because He expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes.

　　Our attributes are the characteristics of what we are…. Our God has His attributes, and His attributes are rich because He is great and bountiful. He is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. These rich attributes were expressed by the Lord Jesus in His humanity to become the aromatic virtues in His humanity.

　　Furthermore, Christ in His humanity expressed God through His aromatic virtues by which He attracted and captivated people…. [In Matthew 4:18-22] the disciples forsook everything to follow Him. I truly believe that at that time the Lord Jesus must have displayed an aromatic power in His countenance and His voice that could really attract and captivate people.

　　Christ expressed His aromatic virtues by which He attracted and captivated people, not by living His human life in the flesh but by living His divine life in resurrection. He was in the flesh, but He did not live by His human life in His flesh; rather, He lived by His divine life in His resurrection. Today, as God-men…we can get out of the realm of the flesh and enter into resurrection to live by the divine life in resurrection, that is, in the divine and mystical realm. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, ” pp. 223-227)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Joel, msg. 7

«　WEEK 6　DAY 4　»

　　John 1:29 The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

　　Eph. 2:15 Abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, so making peace.

　　The all-inclusive judicial redemption of Christ is of five aspects. First, He terminated all things of the old creation. Second, He redeemed all the things created by God and fallen in sin (Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20)…. Third, He created (conceived) the new man with His divine element. Ephesians 2:15 says that on the cross He created the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers in Himself into one new man. That creation was a conception…. Christ created (conceived) the new man in Himself, indicating that He was the very element for the conceiving of the new man. He conceived in Himself as the element the two peoples into one new man. While the Lord Jesus was dying on the cross, He was creating the new man.

　　Fourth, when Christ accomplished His all-inclusive judicial redemption, He released His divine life from the shell of His humanity. John 12:24 says that the Lord Jesus was a grain of wheat…. Christ had the divine life, but it was concealed in the shell of His humanity. Hence, He needed to suffer death on the cross so that the shell of His humanity might be broken to release His divine life from His human shell.

　　Fifth, in accomplishing His all-inclusive judicial death, Christ also laid a foundation for His organic salvation and set up the procedure to attain His ministry in the stage of His inclusion. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, ” p. 228)

　　At the end of His life and ministry on earth, the Lord Jesus went willingly to the cross. His crucifixion was a vicarious death, an all-inclusive death which terminated the old creation and solved all problems. His death ushered Him into resurrection. On the one hand, in His resurrection He was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4; 8:29). On the other hand, in and through His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b).

　　Furthermore, through Christ’s resurrection millions were begotten, regenerated, by God (1 Pet. 1:3) to be sons of God and to be members of the Body of Christ, the church. The Christ who was incarnated, crucified, and resurrected, the Christ who ascended to the heavens and then descended as the Spirit, has produced the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God. The church today is the enlargement of the manifestation of Christ. Thus, the church also is part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history.

　　At the end of this part of the divine history, Christ will come back, descending with His overcomers as His army (Joel 3:11) to defeat Antichrist and his army. There will be the meeting of two figures—Antichrist, a figure in the outward, human history, and Christ with His overcomers, the Figure in the intrinsic, divine history. The Figure in the divine history will defeat the figure in the human history and then cast him into the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20). Following this, the thousand-year kingdom will come. Eventually, this kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth. The New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God’s history.

　　The history of man, the history of the world, is outward. The divine history, the history of God in and with humanity, is inward. This history is a matter of the divine mystery of the Triune God in humanity. (Life-study of Joel, pp. 34-36)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “How to Be a Coworker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, ” ch. 1

«　WEEK 6　DAY 5　»

　　Acts 10:45 And the believers who were of the circumcision…were amazed, because on the Gentiles also the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out.

　　1 Cor. 12:13 …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.

　　Rev. 5:9 And they sing a new song, saying: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain and have purchased for God by Your blood men out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

　　According to the New Testament record, there were three prominent and leading apostles: Peter, Paul, and John. With all these apostles, we can see the Lord’s heart’s desire to have the one new man.

　　According to the record of the New Testament, Peter caught the fish, gathered the materials, for the building up of the church. Paul was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3). His trade was a building trade, and his ministry was a building ministry. When John was called by the Lord, he and James were mending their nets in the boat (Matt. 4:21). Eventually, John became a real mender, mending the breakages in the church by his ministry of life…. Thus, in the New Testament we see the fishing ministry, the building ministry, and the mending ministry. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “The One New Man, ” pp. 522-523)

　　God used Peter to bring in many Jewish believers on the day of Pentecost. Under the Lord’s sovereignty, many of them were from different cultures and spoke different languages (Acts 2:8-11). This implied something of God’s desire to gather together different peoples with different languages into one…. In Acts 10 while Peter was keeping his hour of prayer, he received a vision concerning God’s plan and move. When Peter was praying, he was, no doubt, in the spirit. When he was in the spirit, he saw a vision. Acts tells us that “a trance came upon him” (v. 10)…. In this trance Peter saw a vessel like a great sheet descending onto the earth, in which were all manner of unclean animals [symbolizing Gentiles].

　　Paul was much deeper and stronger in Judaism than Peter was. Peter was a fisherman from Galilee, but Paul was a scholar in the Jewish religion…. Despite Paul’s strong Jewish background, he was able to tell us in 1 Corinthians 12:13 that we were all baptized into one Body, “whether Jews or Greeks.” In Galatians 3:27-28 Paul tells us that those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ and “there cannot be Jew nor Greek.” In Colossians 3:10-11 Paul tells us that the Jew and the Greek have no place in the new man…. For Paul to speak in such a way with his deep and strong Jewish education shows the marvelous renewing in his mentality.

　　In the book of Revelation John told us that the Lord purchased by His blood “men out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (5:9). We should not forget that John was also Jewish, but this word indicates that his mind was greatly renewed. He confirmed that Christ died on the cross to redeem men from different tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations. Through John we also see that the churches are the golden lampstands (Rev. 1:11-12), and consummately these lampstands become the New Jerusalem. In the lampstands and in the New Jerusalem we can see no differences in peoples.

　　We can see how much renewal we need in all the matters of our daily life …. This is not a matter of adjusting our behavior but a matter of being transformed by being renewed in the spirit of our mind to make us another person. Daily we need to put off the old man and put on the new man. For this we need to drink of the one Spirit so that we may be renewed in the spirit of our mind in every area of our practical, daily life. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “The One New Man, ” pp. 523-526, 530)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “The One New Man, ” chs. 2, 5-7; CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The God-men, ” ch. 1; Life-study of 1 & 2 Chronicles, msgs. 2, 4

«　WEEK 6　DAY 6　»

　　Ezek. 36:26 I will also give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you…

　　Matt. 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole inhabited earth for a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

　　Eph. 2:17 And coming, He announced peace as the gospel…

　　We all were born in the human history, but we have been reborn, regenerated, in the divine history. Now we need to ask ourselves this question: Are we living in the divine history, or are we living merely in the human history? If our living is in the world, we are living in the human history. But if we are living in the church, we are living in the divine history. In the church life God’s history is our history. Now two parties—God and we—have one history, the divine history.

　　With the divine history there is the new creation—the new man with a new heart, a new spirit, a new life, a new nature, a new history, and a new consummation. We praise the Lord that we are in the divine history, experiencing and enjoying the mysterious, divine things. (Life-study of Joel, p. 36)

　　According to Ephesians 2, Christ… came to preach the gospel of peace. This indicates the coming of the ascended Christ. When Saul of Tarsus was persecuting the churches, he did not realize that what he was persecuting was related to the heavens, that the church on earth was related to the ascended Christ. The Lord Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus, and spontaneously, even in his ignorance, Saul called upon His name, saying, “Who are You, Lord?” [Acts 9:5]. Because Saul opened himself to the Lord and called on Him, the Lord with the divine fullness could enter into him and then proceed to constitute him into a gift to the Body. In this way the one who persecuted the churches became one who could perfect the saints. Paul became such a gift not through education, but by being saturated with the divine fullness. Therefore, Saul of Tarsus eventually became the apostle Paul who could feed the saints, preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and minister Christ to his fellow believers so that they would be nourished, grow, be perfected, and come into their function.

　　If we would be perfected, …we need to be constituted with Christ…. We need to take Him into us more and more until we are saturated with Him. In this way we shall become functioning members of the Body, gifts constituted by the Christ who has been crucified and resurrected and who has ascended and descended.

　　By His death Christ conquered all the enemies and solved all the problems…. Through His resurrection He released all the divine riches, and…through His ascension He received God’s chosen people with the divine fullness. From the time of His ascension, Christ has been working to constitute the vanquished foes into gifts for His Body. First, He comes to these vanquished foes and gets into them. Then He gradually fills them and saturates them with Himself. Eventually, those who once were His enemies are transformed and constituted into useful gifts that can be presented to the Body. These gifts will not merely teach others, but will transfuse Christ into them. In this way the members of the Body receive nourishment and are cherished. Then they will be sanctified, purified, and transformed to become functioning members. As a result, the whole Body will be fitly framed together and compacted by every joint of supply and through the operation in the measure of every part. This will make growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.

　　The more we grow by being nourished and cherished, the more we shall function properly in the church life. If the saints are absolute with the Lord, in a relatively short time many will come into function. (Life-study of Ephesians, pp. 771-773)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Ephesians, msgs. 25, 92