The next major item in the divine economy is the propagation of the pneumatic Christ. In the book of Acts, the completed Christ was being propagated, multiplied; on the day of Pentecost three thousand were baptized (Acts 2:41). To knock on people’s doors and to preach the gospel to them is to make them the multiplication of the pneumatic Christ. The gospel will make sinners a multiplication of the pneumatic, completed Christ.
This pneumatic Christ is the essential Spirit of life to impart the divine life of resurrection into God’s chosen and believing people (John 3:3, 5-6). We are not able to impart Christ to everyone. We will be able to impart Christ only to those who were chosen by God. In Luke 10 the Lord told the disciples that He was sending them as lambs in the midst of wolves (v. 3). However, among these wolves there are a good number of sons of peace who are God’s chosen people (v. 6). Our trainees in Taipei have the experience of being able to discern whether or not a person is a son of peace within a few minutes. A person may not be a son of peace on your first visit to him. But after a second or third visit, he may become a son of peace.
The pneumatic Christ is also the economical Spirit of power to baptize the regenerated believers into one Body (1 Cor. 12:13). When we preach the gospel to the people whom we are visiting and they open up themselves to the Lord by praying to Him and calling upon His name, two things immediately occur: they get regenerated, and they get baptized into one Body with millions of believers. We need such a clear vision to see what a great thing it is to go out by being linked to Christ so that people can be regenerated with the essential, pneumatic Christ and baptized not only into the Triune God but also into the Body of Christ. These two things occur immediately when a new one calls on the name of the Lord. At that time, these new ones may not be able to apprehend this much, but gradually as they grow in life, they will enter into the real vision of these wonderful truths.
We have seen some newly baptized ones enter into the full realization of these truths within half a year. In Taipei, we first set up meetings in people’s homes, and then we combined three or four homes together as a group. Finally, we combined a number of groups together for a community meeting. These communities set up their own hall by renting a place. They set up their own meeting and an offering box. These new ones in the communities are the elders, the deacons, and the attendants who do all the functioning. I would like to see this repeated in all the cities in the United States. We do not want to see anything of degraded Christianity.
Through our going out to knock on people’s doors, we bring them God’s completed Christ as the very pneumatic One, who is the essential Spirit of life and the economical Spirit of power, to produce regenerated and baptized believers. The church is produced organically by imparting God’s completed Christ into sinners to make them regenerated and baptized members of one Body. This one Body is the church, which is produced with the unsearchable riches of the processed Christ (Eph. 3:8). The unsearchable riches of this processed Christ are divine, heavenly, spiritual, and mysterious, yet they are so real and practical. By enjoying the unsearchable riches of this processed Christ, we all become members of His Body, which is the church. The Body of Christ is the fullness of Christ, the expression of Christ (Eph. 3:6), and the organism of the Triune God (John 15:1-5).
When we enjoy the riches of Christ, we become the fullness of Christ. This means that when we experience Christ, we will become His very expression. The husky, young American men, who assimilate so much of the rich American food, are the fullness of America. They are the expression of the riches of America, and this expression is the fullness produced by the riches. Christ possesses unsearchable riches. If we enjoy these riches, we will become His very expression, His fullness. The church today must be the fullness of the One who fills all in all. This is according to God’s eternal plan (Eph. 3:11) to accomplish the mystery hidden in God from the ages (v. 9). We need to practice the new way as persons who are linked with Christ and who go out with Christ to impart this Christ to people as life and as power that they might be regenerated and baptized for the producing of the church.