When the apostle John ate the little scroll, it was sweet in his mouth but bitter in his stomach (10:10). Our experience is the same. When we saw the vision, we were happy because the vision was so sweet. But after seeing this vision, throughout the years we have had a bitter feeling in our experience. This bitter feeling concerns the poor situation among Christians today. Even among us who are so close to the Lord’s ministry there are many who do not care for God’s building. They care for their blessings and their personal spirituality. Others care for being fundamental and doctrinally correct, but they do not care for God’s building. They need to be revolutionized and transformed. May I say a frank, honest, and loving word to these dear ones? Forget about doctrine and look at yourself. Who and what are you? It matters little whether the doctrine is correct or not. What truly matters is what you are. For years you have been concerned with doctrine, but has there been any change in you? Are you still the same as you were twenty-five years ago? Perhaps you have never experienced any transformation and building. You may consider yourself to be spiritual, scriptural, fundamental, and right. But in what part of your being have you been transformed, and with whom have you been built up? Day by day, you embrace the Bible, endeavoring to be fundamentally correct in doctrine, but what about your being? Has there been a change in you?
What is God’s building? God’s building is to dispense Himself into us and to work Himself into our being. Consider again the illustration of petrified wood. The wood is natural, having no mineral element whatsoever to give it the substance of stone. There is no wood in God’s eternal building. In His building there are only precious stones, gold, and pearls. The twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem are layers of precious stones (21:19-20), and the entire wall is built with jasper (21:18). In the New Jerusalem there is nothing of mud or wood. By nature we all are either muddy or wooden. Everyone would rather be wooden than muddy, thinking that wood is superior to mud. Nevertheless, neither mud nor wood is useful in God’s building hand. We need transformation. The muddy people need to be transformed into precious stones, and the wooden ones need to be petrified. The way for a piece of wood to be petrified is to allow the living water to flow through it to carry away the wooden substance and to replace it with a solid mineral element. The process of petrification in the physical world is a symbol of the spiritual reality. Today God is truly “petrifying” us by the flow of His divine life. This flow is clearly revealed in Revelation 22:1, which says, “And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” This river flows throughout the whole city.
I constantly have a bitter taste within me, a bitter feeling concerning today’s Christians. They appear to know much, but actually they are more than ignorant and know nearly nothing. It does not matter what you know. You may know many things, but every part of you may still be mud or wood, indicating that you have not been transformed. We must be transformed by God’s dispensing Himself into our being. Forget your knowledge of the Bible and forget your religion, and just take care of one thing—how much you have been transformed by the living God’s dispensing Himself into you. This is what truly matters. You may be able to recite so many verses in the Bible, yet you yourself mean nothing. Nothing counts in God’s economy but Himself dispensed into your being. I hope that many of you will be able to say, “I don’t know very much about the Bible. I only know one thing: day by day God is dispensing Himself into me. Every day, something of God flows in to carry away my natural element and to replace it with His divine essence.”
I am deeply burdened! It does not matter whether you are good or bad, holy or unholy, spiritual or unspiritual. The only thing that matters is whether or not you have been touched by the Lord and have been transformed. We must be willing to open ourselves and say, “Lord, get through. Lord, flow in, through, and out of me and carry away every particle of my natural element. Lord, I hate the outward improvement and am tired of being corrected outwardly. I am tired of religion and Bible knowledge. I am tired of being individually spiritual. Lord, I am desperate about my condition because I have so little of Your divine essence. I have been taught and ‘edified’ for years. But still I am what I am.”