I do believe that the Lord has given us a new view of John 14 through 17. This is not a matter of doctrinal debate, but a crucial matter concerning the divine life. The house in John 14 and the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22 are very crucial points. If we interpret the house in John 14 as the heavenly mansion and the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22 as a physical city for the believers to lodge in with God, we kill the New Testament ministry. This interpretation takes away the heart and kills the pulse of the New Testament ministry. Through this wrong interpretation the New Testament ministry becomes “an empty corpse.” This is not a debatable matter over doctrine. This is a crucial matter concerning the eternal life in which we must live today. We must realize that our destiny is the same way we live today with the Triune God in a five-fold way: the Triune God wrought into our being as our substance, as our entrance, as our constitution, as our living, and as our enjoyment. This is not a small matter. I hope that all of you will be saturated with this and soaked in this. Then you will minister nothing but the New Testament ministry. Even I hope that you brothers will preach the gospel in a new way, in the “New Jerusalem way.” Do not follow traditional theology. Put out some messages for the gospel from the New Jerusalem. You must believe that your listeners will be able to understand. They were created by God in this way. When you preach the items from the New Jerusalem, you will touch their God-created nature. They will understand and they will be saved in an intrinsic and basic life way. If you are a soldier in today’s United States army you must learn many new scientific things. It is not sufficient just to know how to use a rifle. This is too old. This would mean that as a soldier you are out of date. Today we are in the Lord’s up-to-date recovery. I do believe the Lord has been with us by His mercy. This is the Lord’s up-to-date recovery and I do beg you to review these messages, especially the last two messages, again and again.
My burden in these messages is to show you the vision of the Lord’s recovery today. I am not giving you a way to learn or some doctrines to get converted to. What you need is a vision with a thorough realization that the traditional theology and that much of the knowledge of the traditional doctrine are altogether a covering. Your natural concept, the doctrines that you have learned of the past, even the doctrines you have learned in the Lord’s recovery, are veils that cover you from seeing something further. You must remember the Lord’s word in Matthew 5:3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This word was spoken to the self-satisfied Jewish leaders who were loaded with their Jewish doctrines, Jewish theology, knowledge of the law, and knowledge of the Old Testament things. They were loaded and full of these items. Therefore, the opening word on the mount was that they needed to be poor in their spirit. Perhaps we are full of traditional theology, our natural, religious mentality, and ethics. We could also be full of character improvement, doctrines that we have been holding for years to seek spirituality and victory, and many other items. All these are veils. Many Christian teachers have been veiled and held back from going on to see what the Lord has shown us in these years, especially to see what is in John 14 and what the New Jerusalem is. There is no seeing of these things because many are self-satisfied. If you desire to go further and deeper into these mysterious truths, you must spend much time and much energy and pray much. This means you need to pay a price. You cannot pick up the things covered in the Life-studies so easily. Without the paying of a price in this kind of way, you can never go further.
As we have seen, John 14 through 17 is a section of the word on the multiplication of Jesus, that is, the glorification. The vine tree with its expansion of all the branches is the multiplication and glorification of Jesus. The newborn child in chapter sixteen as a corporate new man, with Jesus Christ as the Head and all the regenerated saints as the Body, fits in with the thought, the concept, of multiplication and glorification. Even the oneness prayed for by the Lord Jesus that all the believers would be one by being in the Triune God in chapter seventeen is the multiplication and the glorification of Jesus. If we interpret “My Father’s house” in John 14:2 as a physical mansion in the heavens, where would it belong in this section? It would be altogether a foreign body. The thought and the concept of such a thing is foreign to this section. It does not fit the context at all. It has nothing to do with the multiplication and glorification of the Lord Jesus. The only way to interpret “My Father’s house” so that it fits the context and the thought of the Lord’s multiplication and glorification is to see that this house is the mystical Body of Christ as His multiplication, His increase, to be God’s house today. This does not only fit the context but it also becomes a key to open up the entire chapter of John 14. If you are going to understand and get into the depth of chapter fourteen you need such a key—the key of interpreting My Father’s house as the very mystical Body of Christ to be God’s dwelling today which will consummate in His eternal dwelling, the New Jerusalem.
Merely for you to learn how to present this matter is not what we are stressing. You need to see such a thing and this seeing will reconstitute you. This is not a matter of learning doctrine. You must be constituted with this vision. Then automatically you will carry out God’s New Testament economy just as the Lord did in the four Gospels, just as the early apostles did in Acts, and just as Paul, Peter, and John wrote in all their writings. Then you will be fully governed, controlled, and directed by such a vision, and you will be restricted in the straight, central lane with its focus of the New Testament ministry. This is what we need.