A WORD CONCERNING OUR NEED TO BE BROUGHT
INTO THE REALM OF GOD’S ECONOMY
At this point I would like to say a word concerning our need to be brought into the realm of God’s economy.
Most Christians consider the Bible to be a book which teaches them to be good, ethical, godly, and spiritual. This is not wrong; it is right and good. But this is only for their own benefit; this is not at all for God. Teaching people to be good, moral, ethical, godly, and spiritual is only a minor point in the Bible. The major point in the Bible concerns God’s economy, yet in Christianity today nearly no one talks about God’s economy. The books of Isaiah, Daniel, and Zechariah are on Christ, not only as our Savior, Redeemer, and Deliverer but also as the centrality and universality of God’s move to fulfill His economy on earth. Outside the Lord’s recovery, where can you hear such a word? Because hardly anyone cares for God’s economy, the Lord has been delayed for nearly two thousand years. The world situation is ready for the Lord Jesus to come back, but what about God’s economy?
The center of God’s economy is to have a Body to express Christ. Eventually, this Body will be Christ’s bride to match Him as His counterpart and to come down to earth with Him to carry out the final step of God’s economy. Today, the world situation is ready for His coming, but the Lord has not yet gained His counterpart. Therefore, He has no way to come back. He is still waiting.
Throughout the centuries, the Lord has been continually working through those who love Him to recover the lost truths. But because of their dullness, the Lord has had to move quite slowly. Martin Luther was strong concerning justification by faith, a basic item, but not concerning the church practice. Following Luther, the mystics were used by God to recover the inner life, and with Zinzendorf and his companions there was the recovery of the practice of the church life in an initial way. Later, in the nineteenth century, God used the Brethren to recover the practice of the church life in a much fuller way. However, they soon became degraded. Therefore, early in this century the Lord did something in China to gain the recovery of the church life in a full way. Now the recovery in this full sense has come to us.
I am concerned that the dear saints who have been brought into the Lord’s recovery have mainly received help first in the assurance of salvation and then in such matters as godliness, ethics, spirituality, and overcoming. All these things are very good. Nevertheless, I do not believe that many among us in the Lord’s recovery are clear about God’s economy. God’s economy is to dispense Christ into His elect that they might become first the Body of Christ to express Him and then the bride of Christ to match Him and fulfill God’s economy in the divine dispensing. Of course, I am happy that so many have come to receive help to seek God, to seek Christ, to grow in life, and to be more godly, more spiritual, and more overcoming, but I am not satisfied with this. I would rather that we all had the eyes to see God’s economy. My intention, my goal, in all these messages is to help you to advance beyond the realm of seeking for spirituality into another realm to see God’s desire, God’s good pleasure.
According to His eternal arrangement, or economy, God desires to have the church, a proper church in the biblical sense. Christianity is a totality of organization, but the church revealed in the Bible should be absolutely organic and full of Christ as life, full of the Triune God in His consummation—the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit—to constitute us with God’s life and nature and to join us with God as one spirit. This is God’s economy through His dispensing.
Today in Christianity, even among the most spiritual ones, what is taught is not food but sugar. That kind of teaching harms you more than it nourishes you. If you read these messages for the purpose merely to receive help to be more seeking after God, more seeking after Christ, and to grow in life, even this is in the realm of sugar. You need solid food (Heb. 5:11-14). Whereas milk is for babes, solid food is for the mature. Among the millions of Christians today, who is not a babe? We have been carrying out the life-study of the Scriptures now for seventeen years, yet most of the saints are still remaining, lingering, wandering, in the realm of being spiritual, victorious, overcoming, and so forth. Very few, even among the co-workers, are qualified to give a message on God’s economy with the divine dispensing. We need to be brought into another realm, not the so-called spiritual realm but the realm of God’s economy, God’s dispensing. I will not be satisfied until I see this. I am somewhat happy that the Lord has released all these truths among us, and I have the full faith and assurance that all these things will eventually be realized; yet I long to see their fulfillment.
(Life-Study of Zechariah, Chapter 14, by Witness Lee)
