In the foregoing messages we saw the failures in the churches, the degradation of the church, and the overcomers in the church. In this message we shall begin to consider the vital matter of the recovery of the church.
The word “recover” means to obtain again something that has been lost, or to return something to a normal condition. “Recovery” means the restoration or return to a normal condition after a damage or a loss has been incurred. When we speak of the recovery of the church, we mean that something was there originally, that it became lost or damaged, and that now there is the need to bring that thing back to its original state. Because the church has become degraded through the many centuries of its history, it needs to be restored according to God’s original intention. Concerning the church, our vision should be governed not by the present situation nor by traditional practice but by God’s original intention and standard as revealed in the Scriptures.
We need to understand the recovery of the church in relation to God’s intention and accomplishment and Satan’s work of destruction. The New Testament reveals that regarding the church God has a definite intention, purpose, and goal. The New Testament also gives us a clear picture of God’s accomplishment according to His intention. First, God purposed and then He came in to accomplish His purpose. Furthermore, the New Testament also gives us a clear record of how God’s enemy came in to destroy what God had accomplished. The satanic way to destroy God’s accomplishment has two aspects: the inward and the outward. The inward aspect is to damage and corrupt God’s people. Then Satan seeks to destroy God’s accomplishment outwardly. Nevertheless, God is a God with an eternal purpose. He is a purposeful God, and once He has made up His mind to do something, nothing can change His mind or stop Him. Therefore, after Satan’s destruction, God comes in to redo the things that He had done before. This redoing is His recovery. This is to bring back whatever has been lost and destroyed by God’s enemy, Satan.
The recovery of the church is typified by the return of the children of Israel from their captivity (Ezra 1:3-11). In order to understand the recovery of the church, we need to consider the history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a book of types, and the greatest, all-inclusive type is the history of the people of Israel. Many Bible teachers apply the things which happened in the beginning of the history of the people of Israel to Christian experience today. For example, they apply the Passover to the experience of redemption and the crossing of the Red Sea to the experience of baptism. Furthermore, we may apply the enjoyment of the daily manna and of the water from the cleft rock to our experience of taking Christ as our life supply and as our living water. We may even know how to apply the temple built by Solomon to our experience. However, not many Christians know how to apply the last part of the history of the people of Israel-the captivity in Babylon and the return from captivity. As we shall see, the return of the children of Israel from their captivity typifies the recovery of the church.
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