Before we start to move, start to work, start to take action, in the preaching of the gospel, I have a heavy burden with a heavy word to fellowship with you all.
Some may wonder why we use the term vital groups. This is a special term. The reason that we need to have this kind of training with these groups is that for centuries the Lord’s church on this earth has become degraded. Then the Lord raised up the recovery. To go down is easy. To go up is not so easy. Even to stand where you are and where you should be is also quite hard. The recovery has been with us for seventy years, but regretfully we have been gradually going down and down to a situation that cannot be considered normal. Rather, it has become abnormal.
When I made the decision to return to Taiwan in 1984, I realized that our rate of increase in the Lord’s recovery had become quite low. The real situation in the recovery on the earth by that time was not fully exposed to me. Eventually, my going to Taiwan to carry out the God-ordained way to build up the church stirred up much opposition. Ambition became prevailing among certain ones. These ones had a real conspiracy with a plan concerning how to take over the recovery. The speaking of these rebellious ones devastated the truth.
Because of this background, I have a real burden to carry out this training for the vital groups. Besides the full-time training, we need this training. The full-time training is our common church training, but this training for the vital groups is very special. This training is for the rescue of the recovery from degradation.
We need to see that the degradation of Christianity is completely and absolutely due to the absence, the shortage, of the divine revelation. Proverbs 29:18 says that without a vision, the people run wild. This verse can be applied to today’s Christianity. Church history shows us that many of those in Christianity are wild, without restriction and without control. The situation in Christianity may be likened to the period of time spoken of in the book of Judges. Judges tells us that during that time every man did what was right in his own eyes (21:25). We need to be rescued from this situation of degradation.
In this message I would like to speak a brief and clear word to you all, hoping that this could be a real vision to you. What I want to share with you is the extract, the very essence, of all the messages given in Atlanta in the Thanksgiving Day conference of 1992. The title of these messages was The Constitution and the Building Up of the Body of Christ. Then I want to share the extract of the two messages given to the elders after the winter training of 1992 on the book of Job. These two messages were entitled The Ministry of the New Testament and The Teaching and the Fellowship of the Apostles.
In the Thanksgiving Day conference I gave six messages concerning the Body of Christ. These six messages cover four points: the constitution of the Body of Christ, the growth of Christ in His Body so that the Body can grow, the transformation of the saints in the Body of Christ, and the building up of the Body of Christ. Constitution, growth, transformation, and building up are all either by life or with life. The messages I gave to the elders after the winter training of 1992 cover three more crucial points: the ministry of the New Testament, the teaching of the apostles, and the fellowship of the apostles. We all need to see a vision of these seven points.
The constitution of the Body of Christ is with life. The Body of Christ as the church has been constituted not with by-laws or by a charter, but with Christ Himself as the element of life. The Triune God in eternity came in incarnation to become a sower to sow Himself as the seed into the human heart (Matt. 13:3, 19-23). This shows the way that the Body of Christ was brought forth or how the Body of Christ was produced. It was produced by a kind of constitution with Christ Himself as the embodiment of the Triune God to be the life seed sown into our being. Then we all became the many grains of this unique seed (John 12:24).
The one grain sown into us eventually became many grains, and the many grains are the components of the Body of Christ but not the constitution. We are only the components, but Christ Himself as life is the constitution. The Body of Christ is composed of the believers, but it is constituted with Christ as the element of life. Not many Christians see or know what the constitution and the composition of the Body of Christ are. The very church in the eyes of today’s Christians and in the speaking of today’s Christian teachers is merely a kind of composition of believers. They have not seen that the Body of Christ is a real constitution.
Our human body is a picture of the Body of Christ. Our body is not just a composition but a constitution. A wooden stand is a mere composition because it is lifeless, inorganic. But because our physical body is organic, it is a constitution of an inner life. If the inner life is taken away, the components of our body will become a heap of collapse. With the life, our body becomes a constitution. The Body of Christ is just like this.
The Body of Christ is not merely a composition of believers of many nationalities. We all have been born into the Body of Christ. Our stomach and our two eyes were born into our body. They were organically constituted into our body. In like manner, we were born, organically constituted, into the Body of Christ. I do not consider each of you as being composed into an organization. Rather I consider each one of you as a living, organic member constituted into the Body of Christ through your regeneration with the very Christ whom you received into you and into whom you believed. The constitution of the Body of Christ is with the all-inclusive Christ as the life element. Today you are not in an organization as a composition; you are in an organism as a constitution. This organism is constituted not just according to the truth but with the very Christ as the all-inclusive life element.