Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:10, 22-23; 3:9; Col. 2:9; 3:11; 1 Tim. 1:4; 1 Kings 2:11-12; 6:1-2

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 1　DAY 1　»

　　Eph. 3:9 ...To enlighten all that they may see what the economy of the mystery is, which throughout the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things.

　　5:32 This mystery is great, but I speak with regard to Christ and the church.

　　If we have not seen the significance of God’s economy, we will not be able to get into the real significance of the whole Bible. We may read it again and again without realizing its central thought. When the Lord opens our eyes to see God’s economy, the economy of God immediately becomes a key for us to open the entire Bible...To open everything in the Bible, we need this constant key. (CWWL, 1975-1976, vol. 2, “The Church—the Reprint of the Spirit,” p. 453)

　　We need to see the fulfillment in the New Testament of the typology in the Old Testament concerning God’s economy. What is in the Old Testament is a typology, a set of types. Then what is in the New Testament is a complete fulfillment of that typology concerning God’s economy. Thus, the entire Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is first a picture of God’s economy and then a full definition and fulfillment of God’s economy. On the one hand, if we want to know the Old Testament, we must come to the New Testament definition ...On the other hand, if we want to know the New Testament, we have to spend the time to look at all these pictures.

　　Saint Augustine said that the New Testament is concealed in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New Testament ...The pictures and the definitions form a strong basic principle for us to understand the Bible.

　　The great teachers among the Brethren said that the entire history of Israel was a type of the church ...The teaching of the Brethren strongly stressed that the captivity of Israel into Babylon typifies the church that was captured into Catholicism ... The Lord Jesus referred to the Roman Catholic Church as Jezebel (Rev. 2:20; Matt. 13:33) and also as the great Babylon, a mystery (Rev. 17:5)...The Brethren saw that Israel’s captivity typifies the church’s captivity and that the return of Israel typifies the recovery of the church starting from Luther.

　　Although the Brethren saw this, they did not see that the history of the kings in the Old Testament is a typology of God’s economy...They did not even use this term. They somewhat used another term to replace God’s economy, that is, God’s plan or God’s purpose. The English word economy is anglicized from the Greek word oikonomia...When most think of an economy, they think of it in terms of dollars and cents. We do not mean this when we speak of God’s economy. God’s economy is God’s plan, God’s divine arrangement, for the fulfillment of His good pleasure in His will to be His purpose. Israel’s history is not only a type of the entire church, as the Brethren teachers pointed out, but also a type of God’s economy. The fulfillment of this economy is in the New Testament. The New Testament presents the complete fulfillment of the typology of the kings in the Old Testament...One is the picture, and the other is the definition. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” pp. 173-175)

　　The Bible is not a book of history. The Bible is the record of the divine revelation concerning God’s eternal economy, of which Christ is the center and reality. Christ is the embodiment of the Triune God, and the church is the organic Body of Christ. These two items are the basic structure of the Bible. So, in understanding any book of the Bible, we should hold this point of view, especially in the life-study of the books of Kings. Apparently, these two books are the history of the kings of Israel. Actually, they are books written in the inspiration of the Spirit of God in the way of being related to God’s eternal economy. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Kings, pp. 2-3)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” chs. 1-2; Life-study of 1 & 2 Kings, msgs. 1-4, 6

«　WEEK 1　DAY 2　»

　　Matt. 16:16 And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

　　18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

　　Solomon typifies Christ (Matt. 12:42) in speaking God’s word of wisdom (13:35) and in building the church as the temple of God (16:18; 1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21-22), and the temple typifies Christ (Matt. 12:6) and the church as the unique building of God in the universe. These two—Christ and His Body, the church—are the center, the reality, and the goal of God’s eternal economy.

　　Since Solomon and the temple built by him play the strongest roles in the history of Israel and occupy a wide realm in such a history, they are the strong evidence that the history of Israel concerns very much the fulfillment of God’s eternal economy in the Old Testament in the way of typology...That Christ and the church are the centrality and universality of God’s economy is universal in both the New Testament and the Old Testament. We need to see clearly that the books of history were written from the point of view of God’s eternal economy concerning Christ and the church. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Kings, p. 41)

　　In reading the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, we need to see the link between the Old Testament books of history and the New Testament. This link is God’s economy for Christ and for Christ’s Body. This link is shown in the kings’ history, which includes the prophets as God’s overcomers. Again and again, the prophets came in either to help the kings or to deal with them. For example, Nathan helped David and also rebuked him. Elijah dealt with Ahab; Elisha performed miracles in life; and Isaiah helped Hezekiah.

　　In the book of Isaiah two short prophecies clearly show the link between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Isaiah 7:14 says that a virgin would bring forth a son whose name would be called Immanuel. Isaiah 9:6 says that a son would be given to us and that his name would be called the mighty God and the eternal Father. These prophecies reveal that God would become a man as a little child. The mighty God, the eternal Father, became a man in order to make man God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead). However, in order to be made God in this way, man first needed to be redeemed. Isaiah 53 is a strong chapter on the redemption of Christ. In His humanity the God who had become man was man’s Redeemer, slain for man’s sin. God redeemed man for the purpose of making the redeemed man God in life and in nature so that God can have a consummation of His economy in the Body of Christ as the enlargement of Christ. This Body of Christ will consummate in the New Jerusalem as God’s full expression and enlargement for eternity. In typology the history of the kings is linked to God’s becoming a man to redeem man back to Himself that He might make His redeemed people God in life and in nature so that He might have for eternity a universal, corporate expression of Himself. This, in brief, is God’s economy.

　　The goal of God’s economy is to work on His redeemed people in order to make them God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. This can be accomplished only through, by, with, and in the life-giving Spirit. It is crucial for us in the Lord’s recovery to see that our Christ today is in resurrection and that in resurrection He is the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God. We have Him as the all-inclusive, compound Spirit in our spirit. Now every day we must do everything in our spirit in order that this life-giving Spirit may transform us, conform us, and eventually glorify us that we might be made God in life and in nature. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Kings, pp. 122-123)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1964, vol. 3, “The Economy of God,” ch. 1; CWWL, 1988, vol. 4, “The Economy of God and the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” chs. 1-2

«　WEEK 1　DAY 3　»

　　Psa. 2:6 But I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.

　　12 Kiss the Son lest He be angry and you perish from the way; for His anger may suddenly be kindled. Blessed are all those who take refuge in Him.

　　The figurative portrait of God’s eternal economy presented in the Old Testament spans thirty-nine books, but it is only in four sections—in types, in history, in poetry, and in prophecy. The section of types is of five books, from Genesis to Deuteronomy. The section of history is of twelve books, from Joshua to Esther. The section of poetry is of five books, from Job to Song of Songs. The section of prophecy is of seventeen books, from Isaiah to Malachi ...The thirty-nine books of the Old Testament can be divided into three “fives” and two “twelves.” There are five books of types, twelve of history, five of poetry, five of the major prophets, and twelve of the minor prophets... We want to see the intrinsic significance of these four sections of the Old Testament. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Triune God’s Revelation and His Move,” p. 74)

　　The types from Genesis to Deuteronomy unveil the Triune God embodied in Christ as the center and circumference of His eternal economy. They also unveil this Christ as the blessing and everything to the Triune God’s chosen people. The twelve books of history from Joshua to Esther unveil the Triune God’s move in His chosen people to possess, inherit, and enjoy His promised all-inclusive Christ as the good land. They also unveil the failures of God’s chosen people... The record of this in the Bible is a warning to us, the church people today in the New Testament.

　　The poetry in the Old Testament is of only five books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. They unveil that the Triune God Himself, not ethics or morality, should be man’s pursuit as his perfection. This one sentence covers the central, intrinsic revelation of Job. The Psalms unveil that this God was incarnated to be a man in the flesh to be His Anointed, who is His delight, who has been exalted by Him, and who should be received, treasured, and exalted by His chosen people. Ecclesiastes unveils that all things in the human life under the sun are vanity of vanities, and Song of Songs shows that Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God is the unique satisfaction to God’s chosen people. Thus, we should pursue God as our perfection, and we should pursue Christ as our satisfaction.

　　The seventeen books of prophecy from Isaiah to Malachi unveil that the Triune God embodied in Christ will come to be the God-man (Isa. 7:14; 9:6) to accomplish redemption (ch. 53) for the fulfillment of God’s eternal economy according to the preceding three categories of the books in the Old Testament. They also unveil that the accomplishment of the processed and consummated Triune God in Christ will consummate in the new heaven and new earth (65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1).

　　All the above points present a vivid portrait of the all-inclusive Christ in and for God’s eternal economy in the Old Testament. In types we see that Christ is the centrality and universality of God’s eternal economy and the divine blessing to all of God’s chosen people. In history we see that the all-inclusive Christ is the God-promised good land, which all of God’s chosen people should take, possess, inherit, and enjoy to the uttermost, even to the level of kingship. In poetry we see that Christ is the unique perfection for God’s chosen people to pursue and the unique satisfaction for God’s chosen people to obtain and enjoy. Then in prophecy we see that the Triune God has become a God-man to accomplish His full redemption for the fulfillment of His eternal economy, which will consummate in the new heaven and new earth. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Triune God’s Revelation and His Move,” pp. 74-75)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Triune God’s Revelation and His Move,” chs. 2-3

«　WEEK 1　DAY 4　»

　　John 7:39 But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

　　Acts 1:8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be My witnesses...

　　Rom. 12:5 So we who are many are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

　　We have seen that the Old Testament is a figurative portrait. of God’s eternal economy. The New Testament is the practical fulfillment of God’s eternal economy... A portrait is a picture, a photo...The Old Testament is like a video. The New Testament is the real thing...The person in the fulfillment is exactly the same as his photo. There are twenty-seven books in the New Testament in three sections: the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles. The Gospels are of four books, Acts is one book, and the Epistles are of twenty-two books. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Triune God’s Revelation and His Move,” p. 78)

　　We want to... see the central, intrinsic revelation of the four Gospels. This revelation from Matthew to John is that the Triune God has been processed and consummated to be the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. The Triune God has been processed through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. He was also consummated to be a life-giving Spirit. At the end of the four Gospels, on the day of His resurrection, He came back to His disciples, breathed into them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). After His resurrection Christ is in us as the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 15:45 Paul says that the last Adam, the embodied God, God embodied in a man, became the life-giving Spirit.

　　The Triune God has been processed through His incarnation to become the God-man, through His human living to live the God-man’s life, through His all-inclusive death to redeem His lost creation and to release His divine life, and through His resurrection to dispense Himself into His redeemed chosen people as their life and everything. Thus, the processed, consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit is dispensed into His chosen, redeemed people to be their life and everything.

　　Acts unveils the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit spreading Himself as the reality of Christ, who is the embodiment of God, for the producing of the churches of God. When we believed in the Lord Jesus, we received Him into us as the Spirit. Actually, that Spirit is Christ, the reality of Christ.

　　In the four Gospels the church is mentioned only twice, in Matthew 16:18 and 18:17, but the Body of Christ is not mentioned. Acts speaks of the churches but also does not mention the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is mentioned only in the Epistles. Actually, the first twenty-one Epistles unveil the Body of Christ, whereas Revelation reveals the New Jerusalem as the consummation of the Body of Christ. Romans 12:5 is the first verse in the entire New Testament that mentions the Body of Christ. This indicates that all the Epistles are for the Body of Christ. Other Epistles that speak of the Body of Christ are 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. These four books—Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians—are the master books of the New Testament. If these books were taken away, the New Testament would become empty.

　　Romans to Revelation unveils the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit building up the churches into the organism of the consummated Triune God as the Body of Christ, by transforming them into the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the eternal enlargement and expression of the consummated Triune God. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Triune God’s Revelation and His Move,” pp. 78-80)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1990, vol. 3, “The Economy and Dispensing of God,” chs. 1-2

«　WEEK 1　DAY 5　»

　　1 Cor. 5:7 ...For our Passover, Christ, also has been sacrificed.

　　10:6 Now these things occurred as examples to us, that we should not be ones who lust after evil things, even as they also lusted.

　　Eph. 1:10 Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.

　　God’s intention is to have a corporate Body. The nation of Israel was a type of this Body. For this, God went on from Genesis to Exodus, working Himself into the corporate Israel so that they would become the house of God, which is God’s habitation on earth as typified by the tabernacle in the midst of the Israelites. This corporate Israel is a type of the church as the Body of Christ to be God’s dwelling place on earth among men. (CWWL, 1988, vol. 4, “The Economy of God and the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” p. 273)

　　Before the New Testament age, that is, before the Lord’s incarnation, God had chosen a people on this earth called Israel ... Their forefather was Abraham. Then by Moses’ time, at their exodus from Egypt, they became a race that had at least two million people. Since then, they have become a type of the church as God’s elect in the New Testament ...The Old Testament has Israel, and the New Testament has the church... These two peoples are a description of one thing that God has done, and this one thing is the accomplishment of God’s economy... In God’s economy the people of Israel are just a type, a figure, a shadow... Israel typifies the church.

　　After the descendants of Abraham became a people, they eventually fell into the hand of Egypt and its king, Pharaoh ... This means that God’s chosen people fell into the hand of Satan and Satan’s world, so there was the need of God’s salvation.

　　Redemption is to redeem God’s fallen people back to God, and salvation is God’s saving His people out of the hand of Satan, out of the world, and eventually, even out of themselves for God to come in to make them the same as He is. So in Exodus we see that first a lamb was slain and the shed blood was sprinkled on the houses of Israel. That was called the pass-over. This means that God, the just God, the righteous God, formed something judicial to redeem His people by fulfilling His righteous requirements. That was God’s redemption.

　　Following that redemption, God exercised His salvation to save Israel out of Pharaoh’s hand, out of Egypt, and bring them into the wilderness. In the wilderness God came to be a “tabernacle,” indicating how He would come to dwell with His people to save them further... so that they might become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. This is God’s salvation.

　　Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 that our Passover is Christ... God could pass over us, having our sin judged and dealt with by Christ on the cross ...Following the Passover, Israel had the Feast of Unleavened Bread (v. 8). After God’s redemption and in God’s salvation, God ordained that His people should have no sin, no leaven, a feast without leaven. This was the beginning of the history of Israel, and this beginning is fulfilled by the church’s experience of Christ. By this you can see that with Israel it is a type, and with the church it is a fulfillment.

　　At the end of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus called the degraded church, Jezebel (Rev. 2:20)...The fallen church became Jezebel and is called the great Babylon, the mystery (Rev. 17:5)... Israel’s outcome was to be captured to Babylon. Eventually, they became Babylon. In Revelation 17 the Lord called the degraded church the great harlot, the great Babylon, and the mother of harlots (vv. 1, 5). This shows that the church is a fulfillment of the type of Israel. So the entire history of Israel is a type of the church. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” pp. 179-181)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 1, “The Central Line of the Divine Revelation,” chs. 3-5

«　WEEK 1　DAY 6　»

　　Rom. 5:17 For if, by the offense of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

　　1 Pet. 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation...

　　The first two kings, David and Solomon, are important types of Christ in two aspects. The first aspect is that of His suffering on earth, before His resurrection. From the time of His birth. He suffered. His life began in a manger in the lowest estate and ended in His being crucified on the cross... David typifies this suffering Christ. David also suffered from his youth. Yet his suffering was for the conquering of the usurping enemies and the gaining of the good land, the ground for God’s building. Solomon typifies the Christ glorified in the kingdom of God and its splendor, ... [which] is a prefigure of Christ in the millennium. These two types are strong evidences that the history of the kings of Israel is related to God’s eternal economy, which concerns Christ as the embodiment of God and the church as the organic Body of Christ. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Kings, p. 3)

　　Israel was mainly enjoying the good land ...The top ones, who were enjoying the good land on the top level, were the kings. These kings are types of the New Testament believers because all the New Testament believers were saved by God to be kings. Every New Testament believer is to be a king and a priest (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 2 Tim. 2:12).

　　Both the kings and the priests are the deputy authority of God. The deputy authority of God is composed of God’s oracle to speak and God’s authority to rule. When the priests speak for God, they become God’s spokesmen, God’s mouthpiece, and these are the prophets. So in the New Testament we believers are kings, priests, and prophets. The kings of the Old Testament are a type, and this type is fulfilled by the New Testament believers being kings. These are the people who enjoy Christ to the uttermost.

　　Romans 5:17 says that “those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life.” John 1 says that when God came in His incarnation, grace came (vv. 14, 17). When God came to be a man, that was grace coming. Grace is the Triune God as our enjoyment. We all have received this grace in abundance. It is not just abundant grace but abounding grace, which is increasing all the time. We have received this grace, and we have received a gift from God, which is also abounding. This gift is God’s righteousness for our redemption judicially. Thus, we have received these two things: grace and righteousness. These are for us to reign in life, to be kings in life.

　　If we have not reached the level of a king in our Christian life, we are still below the proper standard ...Our enjoyment of Christ may be only “one inch high,” but Christ is unlimited. Our enjoyment of Christ should come up to the kingship level. As the God-ordained prophets and priests, we are also kings to rule over all the enemies of God. God rules, but He does not rule directly. God rules through us, through the believers, as kings. The believers in the New Testament should be the fulfillment of the typology of the kings in God’s economy.

　　We can be such kings only by being men regenerated with God and transformed with God as the element so that we live not by our own life, by ourselves, by our natural man, or by our flesh. Instead, we live by God who is now mingling Himself with us as one. The believers’ life is to live such a human yet divine life. It is in this life that we can be kings to enjoy our God-ordained portion, which is Christ as our good land. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” pp. 181-182)

　　Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msgs. 1-2, 14-16, 189, 230