Gold signifies the divine nature of God for the base of God’s building. This divine nature is the golden base within us for God’s building. The more we partake of the divine nature, the more we have the base for God’s building. I do not care for people’s humility or for people’s pride. Human pride and human humility are the same. Both human pride and human humility are useless for God’s building. I only care how much God you have, how much divine nature you have partaken of, and how much divine nature you are partaking of day by day. It is possible to be a very good wife and a very nice husband and still not have much of God’s divine nature. We all need to ask how much God we possess. This is the base for the building up of the church. According to my realization, the Lord has done much in these last twenty-three years in the United States. Many of the saints have really partaken of the divine nature and have a substantial amount of the divine nature within them. This is the base for God’s building and this is the base in which I put my trust for the work. Man’s humility can never be the base for the building up of the church. Only God’s nature, God Himself, can be such a base. Neither a proud nor a humble person is good for the building up of the church. Only those who are partaking of the divine nature daily are good for the building up of the church. The basic thing in the Lord’s recovery is not a great number of people, but how much divine nature is here as a base for the building up of His Body.
We must realize that we are not simply allegorizing the Bible, but pointing out the real things in the Biblical allegories. The entire New Jerusalem is an allegory. Even in human language there is the need of allegory because some things cannot be expressed or described by mere plain and direct words. Because this building up of God’s eternal dwelling place is altogether mysterious, spiritual, heavenly, and divine, there is the need of an allegory to express and describe it. Gold, pearls, and precious stones are all part of this allegory to express and describe the divine reality.
From the time I was a young believer I realized that I was regenerated, born again. However, I never realized that within me there was something divine. It was not until a number of years after I had received the Lord that I began to realize in a small way that through regeneration God had come into me. As a human being regenerated by God, you not only have the human nature but also the divine nature. Nature always denotes a certain kind of essence. Any element or substance has its essence. God is the divine gold as the element, and in this element is the essence with its nature. Today we believers have this divine nature.
We all have to fight the battle, showing people that the Bible unveils to us that we believers have God within us as the divine nature. We are not merely studying the New Jerusalem. We are here to dig out all the divine truths that we may realize what we are today, where we are today, where we are heading, and what we should be. We have to realize that we are the people who have the divine nature, the divine element, the divine substance, and the divine essence, in our being. As a believer you are “a golden man.” You are not a muddy man. All the sisters need to realize that they are not muddy women but “golden women.” Because we are so golden, we cannot go dancing. Do you think a golden man would quarrel with his wife? Gold never changes. Despite what you do to it, it remains the same. We the believers in Christ today are golden! We are divine! We have the divine nature! We all have to declare that we are not muddy but golden. Gold is the base for the building up of the dwelling place of God for eternity.
The Lord Jesus told Peter that he was a stone (John 1:42) and reminded him in Matthew 16 that he was a stone (v. 18). He also said that He would build His church. Today the Lord is doing a building work. From the day of Pentecost the Lord began to build the church with you and me as stones based upon God’s divine nature. The stones are built upon the golden base, which is the site. All the materials are built upon this site and the site is the base. The base for the Lord’s building today is God’s divine nature. It is not your knowledge, your education, your good character, your kindness, your humility, or even your love. The base is the nature of God. I have the assurance and the confidence to say that in the Lord’s recovery there is a strong base of the divine nature within so many of us who are loving the Lord.
What we have seen in this chapter is according to the divine revelation. The base for God’s eternal building and for His present building work is His divine nature. We all should say, “Lord Jesus, thank You. Through Your redemption I have the position, the standing, and the right to take my God as my divine nature. Thank You, Lord, that I have taken and am still taking and enjoying You as my divine nature.” The basic elements of the structure of the New Jerusalem are the gold as the base of God’s building (Rev. 21:18b, 21b), the pearls which signify the produce of Christ in His redemptive work with His secreting life for the entry (Rev. 21:21a) into God’s building (1 Cor. 3:12a; John 3:5), and the precious stones (Rev. 21:11, 18a, 19-20) signifying the produce of the Spirit in His transforming work (2 Cor. 3:18) with His divine element for the building up of God’s building. All these three precious materials are built together and built up to be a universal wife, the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2, 9), the redeeming God, which corresponds with and reflects the wife in Genesis 2, who was a type of this universal wife of the redeeming God.