At the end of the Scriptures in Revelation 21 and 22, a city appears. This city is not a physical city that is built up with material stones. It is a spiritual symbol describing an entity composed of redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people. It is a city of living people. This city is a living city built with living people as living stones. Each stone has the name of a person written on it, one stone bearing the name of Peter, another stone bearing the name of John, and so on. Hallelujah! We are all stones.
What is the purpose of this city? The wall of the city is a hundred and forty-four cubits in height, and every stone in the wall is jasper (Rev. 21:17-18a). Furthermore, the city is full of God’s glory (v. 11). What do these jasper stones signify? Revelation chapter four reveals that God, who sits on the throne, is like a jasper stone in appearance (v. 3). John saw God sitting on the throne with the likeness of a jasper stone. Therefore, the fact that the wall of the city shines brightly like a jasper stone signifies that the city is the expression of God. God is first manifested on the throne and will eventually be manifested in the entire city.
This is the principle seen consistently throughout the Scriptures. The beginning of the Bible says that God created man that man may be like Him. The end of the Bible says that God’s redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people have corporately become like Him.
What is in the middle of the Scriptures? In the Bible there is something called the old man and also something called the new man. Genesis chapter one concerns the old man created by God, and Ephesians chapter four concerns the new man. Ephesians 4 shows us that the new man, which is the church, was created according to God (v. 24). The old man was created according to the image of God, so the new man was also created according to the image of God (Col. 3:10). The ultimate manifestation of the new man in Ephesians 4 is the city, New Jerusalem, at the end of Revelation. The New Jerusalem is the aggregate of the new man and the ultimate manifestation of the new man. Therefore, in the beginning of the Bible man is the expression of God, in the middle of the Bible man is the expression of God, and also at the end of the Bible man is the expression of God. The Scriptures consistently show us that God desires to be expressed and that He does not want to be expressed merely through Himself. He wants to be expressed through man.
This expression is not individual but corporate. In the beginning when God created Adam, He did not create only one person. Rather, He created mankind. Adam was not an individual man but a corporate man, that is, mankind. Millions of Adam’s descendants were included in him. Thus, God did not merely create an individual man, He created a corporate man. God does not want to be expressed merely through an individual. His desire is to have a corporate expression.
We often speak about the ground of the church. In order to see the matter of the ground of the church, we do not have to wait until Revelation 1. The ground of the church is already implied in Genesis 1:26. How can we say this? We can say this because in the beginning when God created man, He did not create two individuals. If He had created two individuals, there would have been two grounds on which to stand. In the beginning God created only one man. Genesis 5:2 says, “Male and female He created them,...and called their name Adam, on the day when they were created.” The male was named Adam, and the female was also named Adam. God did not create two persons. He created only one man. You may argue, saying that God created a male and a female. This is correct, yet the male and the female were just one person. From God’s viewpoint, He created only one man.
We may have been born in the twentieth century, but when were we created? Were we created or born? We were all firstly created and then born, because when Adam was created, we also were created. Adam, Abel, Paul, and we were all created at the same time. The only difference is that Abel and Paul were born earlier than we were. We were created at the same time but born at different times. This shows us that we are all on the same ground.
In Genesis 9, due to Satan’s infiltration and man’s fall, nations were formed. These nations typify today’s denominations. However, in Acts on the day of Pentecost, people who had come to Jerusalem from different nations and who spoke different dialects were gathered together. There in Jerusalem, many of them received grace and the divine life and therefore were built together to become one new man. This new man is the church, which is for the expression of God.
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