The linking faith is the divine requirement for the overcomers to meet Christ in His triumphant return. This is based upon Luke 18:8, where the Lord said, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Today the entire world is unbelieving. Where is faith today among not only the Gentiles, the pagans, but also among the Jews, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Pentecostal people? If the Lord came today, where could He find faith? Nearly no one on this earth is believing. But by His mercy, in the past years, through Brother Nee’s leadership, we have been brought into a situation of learning not to trust in ourselves for anything, but to believe that our God is everything.
I hope that when the Lord comes back He can find you and me as the believing ones, who always trust in Him, not in ourselves, and who always have no assurance in ourselves. Our full assurance is in Him. This is the linking faith. This faith qualifies the overcomers. It is the divine requirement for you and me as the overcomers to meet Christ in His triumphant return.
Eventually, the Lord will find some, a small number of overcomers, who are living by the linking faith when He returns. In the ancient times, Elijah pleaded with God against Israel by saying, “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars; and I am left alone, and they are seeking my life” (Rom. 11:3). Then the Lord told Elijah, “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (v. 4). Look at today’s world. It is hard to see any believing ones. But here and there some believing ones are hidden.
I believe that in comparison, there are more believing ones hidden in the recovery than in other places. People may say concerning us, “They can do nothing. They only say, ‘O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah.’ When they come together they say, ‘Lord Jesus, I love You. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Amen.’ This is all that they can do.” This is because we are only for Christ Himself. We are not for big miracles, big works, or big careers. When the Lord comes back, He is expecting to find such people. Christ expects to find, at His coming back, the ones who live by the linking faith. Christ expects to find us as His hidden overcomers.
The believers who live an overcoming and exulting life by the linking faith will be found by Christ at His return as the treasures ready to receive the salvation of their souls as the end (result) of their faith (1 Pet. 1:8-9). In a sense, we do not know anything or do anything. We only know how to overcome and how to exult by the linking faith. Those who live by faith today will eventually receive the end of their faith, that is, the salvation of their souls. We have received a salvation, but this is just the initial salvation. The progressing stage of salvation is the stage of transformation. The completing stage of salvation is the stage of glorification. If we live by the linking faith in the progressing stage to be transformed, we will be kings with Christ in the millennial kingdom.
We are now making ourselves ready for that day. To make ourselves ready is to become an overcomer, who is always linked by the living faith with the Triune God. Every day, morning and evening, you have to say, “Lord, I praise You that from morning to evening, I am linked to You. There is a living faith that links me with You so that I live You, walk with You, and live with You. I am one with You, just as You are one with me.” This is the qualification for you to be an overcomer, to meet Christ at His coming back.
The overcomers will be rewarded by Christ with the co-kingship and the top enjoyment of the divine life with Him in the millennium (Rev. 20:4, 6). The Lord will then say to His overcomers, “Well done, good and faithful slave....Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21, 23). This is just like what J. N. Darby once said: “O the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing nothing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.”
The three points covered in this message are essentially crucial to a believer who lives the life of a Christ-pursuing God-man that he may be one of the overcomers whom the Lord desires to have for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy in the last days as the consummation of this age. Right after we have received Christ into us as our Savior and life by being attracted by Him, the divine grace, which is the consummated Triune God, begins to abound in us. The first issue of the abounding of the divine grace is the linking faith, which is the living God moving in us to link us to all His unsearchable riches. This linking faith is the measure according to which God dispenses into us His superabounding grace to meet our need (Rom. 12:3). Such a faith is the indicator of the living of the Christ-pursuing God-man, which is the real expression of the consummated God in Christ as His embodiment for the building up of the organic Body of Christ to be the organism of the consummated Triune God. So, such a faith constitutes the overcomers for the satisfaction of Christ’s desire. Thus, this overcoming faith qualifies the Lord’s overcomers, who are waiting for and eagerly expecting the coming back of the Lord, who will find them at His coming as men of His linking faith (Luke 18:8), as treasures for His kingdom in the thousand years of His reign.
This is the ultimate fulfillment of Romans 1:17, that “the righteous shall have life and live by faith.” The righteous shall have life and live by faith! This word should be the banner of God’s eternal economy, which is altogether a matter in faith (1 Tim. 1:4)!
The righteous, those who are absolutely right before God and before man, shall have life, the divine life. Then, how can we, the vile sinners, have the divine life of the righteous God according to His righteousness? By faith! It is by faith, which is the moving and working God in Christ who puts us into Christ as our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), that we, the sinners, have the divine life according to God’s righteousness judicially. By this linking faith we are linked to God in Christ to participate in all that the all-inclusive Christ is, has, and has attained to, for the producing of the organic members of Christ to constitute and build up His organic Body, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the enlargement and expression of the eternal Triune God in His unlimited glory in the mysterious mingling of divinity with humanity for eternity (Rev. 21:2—22:5). This is the eternal fulfillment of the gospel in Romans 1:17, that “the righteous shall have life and live by faith”!