The speaking of Job, of his three friends, and of Elihu was altogether lacking in the exercise of the spirit to contact God. They did not pray, and they did not have fellowship with God or with one another in spirit. Although they were godly men, they did not come together to pray by exercising their spirit to touch God. Instead of exercising their spirit, they exercised their mind to compose poetry and to make a display of their knowledge. In this matter, Elihu followed the example of the older ones and spoke in the same way. Therefore, he said, "Hear me;/I too will declare what I know" (32:10). As we have pointed out, Elihu was a person who was full of the knowledge of good and evil. He was not a person in the spirit.
In the book of Revelation, at the very beginning, John said, "I was in spirit on the Lord's Day" (1:10). Here the word spirit refers not to the Spirit of God but to the human spirit as the organ for us to realize and respond to God's move. Only spirit (our spirit) can respond to Spirit (God's Spirit).
At that time John had been exiled to the island of Patmos. John was alone, having no church, church meetings, or fellowship with the saints. Nevertheless, John was in spirit. This means that John was a person who remained in his spirit. Because he was in his spirit, he was in reality a member of the Body of Christ and a part of the new man.
While he was in spirit, John saw a number of visions, resulting in his writing the twenty-two chapters of the book of Revelation. This book is composed of four major visions: (1) the vision of the churches (chs. 1—3); (2) the vision of the destiny of the world (chs. 4—16); (3) the vision of Babylon the Great (chs. 17—18); and (4) the vision of the New Jerusalem (chs. 21—22). John was in his spirit when he saw these four visions (1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10). We too need to be in our spirit to see the visions in this book. It is not merely a matter of mental understanding in our mind but of spiritual realization in our spirit.
First, John saw the lampstands as the symbols of the churches (1:12, 20), indicating God's economy concerning the Body of Christ. Then in this book there are the seven epistles to the seven churches (chs. 2—3). In these seven epistles we have the speaking of the Spirit to the seven churches. This is followed by the scene in the heavens (chs. 4—5), the seven seals (6:1—8:5), the seven trumpets (8:6—11:19), and the seven bowls (15:1—16:21). John also saw the destruction of religious Babylon (17:1-18), the destruction of material, commercial Babylon (18:1-24), the marriage of the Lamb (19:5-10), Christ's defeating and destroying of Antichrist (19:11-21), the binding of Satan (20:1-3), the millennial kingdom (20:4-6), and the judgment of the great white throne (20:11-15). Eventually, John saw the new heaven and the new earth with the ultimate consummation of God's economy, the New Jerusalem (21:1-27). Such visions came to him because he was in spirit.
When I was young, I was very interested in studying the prophecies in the book of Revelation. Today I have less interest in the prophecies but more interest in being enlightened by considering the spiritual visions in this book, in particular the visions of the seven lampstands and of the New Jerusalem. At the beginning of Revelation, we have the local churches as the golden lampstands; at the end, we have the New Jerusalem as the unique, universal golden lampstand in eternity (21:10-11, 18b, 23). Seeing the visions in Revelation will help you to be a person in the spirit.