We also need a bird’s eye view of the whole Bible. If we detach a part from the whole, it is difficult to understand. To understand even one phrase of the divine revelation, we need the whole Bible. The Bible begins with “In the beginning God...” (Gen. 1:1), and the Bible ends with the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21—22), which is the Holy City, the Bride, the tabernacle of God. The Jews only hold on to the God of Genesis 1:1. They say they have God, but they only have God alone. However, God desires a counterpart. This is why we need to see the revelation of the whole Bible.
Matthew chapter one tells us that a virgin will conceive and bring forth a Son, who is to be called Jesus, which means Jehovah the Savior. His name is also Immanuel, meaning God with us. He is not only God, but God with us. There is a plus. When I was speaking concerning this in a certain place, a young seminary student was offended. He said, “Brother Lee, do you mean that God is not complete? Do you think that God is short of something? Why should God need a plus?” I simply did not have the heart to answer this young man. But within I said, “Young man, you go on to have your complete God, but I have God-plus!” The religious concept today is terrible. They say that God is complete and does not need anything, but the Bible says that God desires a bride. It is certain that before Jesus came, God was only God; He was never mingled with man, and He never came to be with man. Immanuel really means “God-plus,” but the natural religious concept would not accept this.
The first time I gave a message on eating Jesus was in 1958 in Taipei. Immediately after the meeting, a well educated brother came to speak with me in a very polite and political way. He said, “Brother Lee, your message tonight was really good, but you used some terms which are not so refined. In fact, they are rather wild.” When I asked to which terms he was referring, he said that to speak about eating Jesus was not good. I replied that I was not the first to say this. The Lord Jesus said in John 6:57, “He that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” Later I discovered that the word “eateth” in Greek does not only mean to eat, but to masticate, to chew finely. But this is not the religious concept of all Christians.
Likewise, Christians have never heard that God desires to have a counterpart. But this is the revelation in the divine Word. After man’s creation, man was alone. Man needed a counterpart. God did not create one for him; He builded him one. The word for “made” in Genesis 2:22 is rendered “builded” according to the Hebrew. “And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, builded he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” When anything is built, there is the need of material. The material with which God builded man a counterpart was a piece out of man. Then God brought this counterpart back to the man, and the man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen. 2:23).
The beginning of the Bible reveals how a bride came out of man and was brought back to man. The end of the Bible also is the revelation of a wedding, the wedding of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7). Eventually this bride is a “city-lady,” the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:9-10).
In the beginning God was alone, but at the consummation, at the end, God has a big plus. In the beginning there was only God, but at the consummation, God is surrounded by a big city with a high wall built up with precious stones (Rev. 21:19). God is in the Lamb, for Revelation 21:23 tells us clearly that God is the light and the Lamb is the lamp: “For the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof.” Out of the throne of this Lamb-God flows the living water of life: “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1). Along with the flow of the water of life, the tree of life grows (Rev. 22:2). This reveals that the Lamb-God is flowing out to water and supply every part of the city. Eventually the whole city becomes His expression. It is not an individual expression but a corporate one. This is the Body-Christ as the ultimate consummation of the whole Bible.