The vision concerning the believers is very crucial, central, and dynamic in the Lord’s recovery. The believers are those who were fallen sinners and who have been saved by the grace of God (Eph. 2:8) through their God-given and God-allotted faith (2 Pet. 1:1), which has brought them into an organic union with the Triune God in Christ (1 Cor. 6:17). Such an organic union with the Triune God is to be in union with Christ in His death, His resurrection, and His ascension, since the Triune God has passed through Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. When we are in union with Christ, we are in union with the processed God.
These believers have been forgiven of their sins (Acts 10:43), which have been washed away by the redeeming blood of Christ (1 John 1:7). They have been justified by God in Christ (Acts 13:39; 1 Cor. 6:11), and they have been reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10), so they have been redeemed back to God (Rev. 5:9). Based upon this, they have been regenerated in their spirit by the Spirit of God (John 3:6) to be the children of God unto the divine sonship (John 1:12-13; Rom. 8:16) and to be the members of Christ (Eph. 5:30) unto His stature (Eph. 4:13) to be His fullness (Eph. 1:23).
These believers possess the divine life (1 John 5:11-13) and partake of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) in addition to their human life and human nature. They are joined in their spirit to the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17) who is the Spirit. Thus, they are one spirit with the Lord, and such a spirit is a mingled spirit. The believers should constantly live a life in union with the Triune God in such a mingled spirit.
The believers’ being one spirit with the Lord issues in four things. First, they should walk according to the mingled spirit by the law of the Spirit of life that they might be freed from the law of sin and of death (Rom. 8:2). Second, due to their union with Christ in His death, resurrection, and ascension, Christ lives in them (Gal. 2:20), and Christ is to be formed in them (Gal. 4:19) that they may live Christ and magnify Christ (Phil. 1:20-21). Third, they should be transformed in their soul by the renewing of its parts (Rom. 12:2), the mind, the emotion, and the will, into the image of Christ from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18) that they may mature in the growth of life (1 Cor. 3:6-7). Finally, they should be built up in the Body of Christ by the growth in life unto the full measure of the stature of Christ (Eph. 4:13-16). These issues of the believers’ being one spirit with the Lord are brief yet all-inclusive.
During the Lord’s tarrying to come back, many of the believers died. Many of these died without maturity in life, and they died in the way of being defeated. After all the believers die, they go to Paradise (Luke 23:43), a pleasant section, a section of comfort, in Hades where the dead are kept (Luke 16:22-23, 25-26). Then the living believers will remain until the Lord’s coming back, which is His parousia, a Greek word meaning “presence” (see note 33 in Matthew 24—Recovery Version). At the Lord’s parousia the living believers will be raptured according to maturity. Those who mature first will be raptured first (Rev. 14:1-4). At the last rapture of the saints, all the dead ones will be resurrected and raptured with all the living saints to the air (1 Thes. 4:15-17). At this point, all the believers, dead or living, will appear before the judgment seat of Christ to be judged concerning their way of living after they have been regenerated (2 Cor. 5:10). The faithful ones will be rewarded (Matt. 25:21) to inherit the kingdom of God and of Christ in the millennium for them to share Christ’s joy and kingship for one thousand years (Matt. 25:21, 23; Rev. 20:6). The unfaithful believers will be assigned with a dispensational discipline (1 Cor. 3:15; Luke 12:47-48). This discipline will be a type of punishment during the millennium for them to become matured in life.
This coming kingdom is used by the Lord as an incentive to encourage the believers in this age to live Him in a victorious way, as a reward to the faithful ones, and as a way to cause immature believers to mature so they will be fully perfected to enter into the new heaven and new earth to participate in the eternal life in the New Jerusalem. This means that the millennium, the last one thousand years of the old creation, will be a dispensation for God to perfect His chosen, predestinated, called, and redeemed believers. Some Christian teachers think that the thousand years of the millennium as a dispensation is not for God’s perfecting of His redeemed people. They think that God’s perfection of His redeemed people will end with the present dispensation of grace. However, according to the vision we have seen, the coming one thousand years will still be a period of time in the old creation. As long as the time is still in the old creation, it will still be time for God to perfect His redeemed people. This means God will have used four dispensations, the dispensation before law, the dispensation of law, the dispensation of grace, and the dispensation of the kingdom, to perfect all His chosen and redeemed people.
He perfected some in the first dispensation before law, such as Abel, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. These patriarchs were fully perfected by God during the first dispensation. Now they are in Paradise waiting for the time to come when they will share the eternal blessing of the eternal life in the dispensation of the kingdom and consummately in the New Jerusalem. God also used the second dispensation, the dispensation of law, to prepare people like Moses, Joshua, and Caleb. Hebrews 11 gives us a list of the names of some saints whom God perfected in the first two dispensations. Then God used the third dispensation, the dispensation of grace, to perfect thousands of faithful believers, including Peter, James, John, Paul, Stephen, the other apostles, and all the faithful ones throughout the centuries until the present day. We must realize, though, that a good number of God’s chosen ones were not perfected in the first dispensation before law. Many of God’s chosen ones were not perfected, yet they were chosen. Many were not perfected in the second dispensation of law. Also, in the third dispensation, the dispensation of grace, a great many believers who were genuinely chosen by God never were matured in life before they died. They were not perfected. Surely God would not give up all of these unperfected believers who had been chosen and predestinated by Him in eternity. Romans 11:29 tells us that “the gracious gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Therefore, God will use the last dispensation, the dispensation of the kingdom, to discipline these unfaithful ones in the preceding dispensations to cause them to grow in life unto maturity that they might be fully perfected for the coming eternal blessing of eternal life in the New Jerusalem. After God’s continual perfecting work throughout the four dispensations, all of God’s chosen, predestinated, and redeemed ones will be fully perfected. Then the old creation will be over and the new universe will come in where all of these fully perfected, God-chosen ones will be transferred into the new heaven and new earth to enjoy the New Jerusalem as their eternal blessing of the eternal life. This is a sketch of the vision the Lord has shown us in His recovery concerning the believers.