«　WEEK 2　DAY 1　»

　　Acts 26:19 Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.

　　Eph. 1:17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him.

　　During the past nineteen hundred years, countless numbers of Christians have been serving God…. Some… are serving according to the vision revealed in the New Testament Gospels, which has to do only with the earthly ministry of Jesus. Some serve without any vision at all. In order to serve God according to the up-to-date vision, we need to come up to the level of Paul’s very last Epistles. In fact, we need to come up to the level of the epistles to the seven churches in Revelation as well as the revelation that covers all the ages, including the kingdom, the new heaven and new earth, and the ultimate consummation of the church—the New Jerusalem. Simply put, in order for us to serve God today, our vision must extend all the way from the first vision of Adam in Genesis to the ultimate vision of the manifestation of the church, the New Jerusalem.

　　Today we can be in one accord because we have only one vision and one view. We are all in this up-to-date, all-inheriting vision. (The Vision of the Age, pp. 48, 54)

　　I truly believe that the vision Saul saw on the way to Damascus was more advanced than the one Peter saw. In the New Testament records concerning Peter and in his own Epistles, we do not see any mention of the Triune God working Himself into us to make us His duplication. We do not see anything about the believers being built up into the Body of Christ to be one with the Triune God as His organism. But on the way to Damascus, Paul saw a vision. The Lord said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). The “Me” here is a corporate Me; it includes the Lord Jesus and all His believers. Although the word Me is a small word, it speaks of a great vision.

　　Paul’s vision was indeed profound. At the beginning of Galatians, he refers to the Son of God (1:16). When we speak of the Son of God, we have to realize that this involves the Triune God. The Triune God was revealed to Paul, and Paul became one of His members. All the members together with Paul were constituted to become His Body and were joined to Him to become an enlarged “Me.” Although the vision Paul saw at the beginning was so high and profound, he did not take up his ministry immediately. In Acts 13 a few prophets and teachers were serving the Lord and fasting together in Antioch. It was then that the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me now Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (v. 2). It was not until then that Paul became clear concerning the vision he had received earlier and was sent to fulfill the ministry that he had received.

　　Both Barnabas and Saul were Jews, yet they were sent to preach the gospel throughout the Gentile lands. This was not a small vision. In his own time Peter was sent only to make a brief contact with a Gentile and to visit his home. Here Paul received a serious commission: “Go, for I will send you forth far away to the Gentiles” (22:21). This means he was to go to the Gentile lands, nation by nation and city by city. This is a great vision: “That in Christ Jesus the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the Body and fellow partakers of the promise through the gospel” (Eph. 3:6).

　　The Lord’s recovery was brought to us through our dear Brother Nee. Because of this he became a target of attack. In 1934… I told Brother Nee, “Even if one day you do not take this way, I will still take this way. I am not taking this way because of you, and I will not leave this way because of you. I have seen that this is the Lord’s way. I have seen the vision.” (The Vision of the Age, pp. 42-43, 49-50)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1986, vol. 2, “Crucial Words of Leading in the Lord’s Recovery, Book 1: The Vision and Definite Steps for the Practice of the New Way,” chs. 1-3