总题：认识真理，对真理绝对，并在现今邪恶的世代宣扬真理
第一篇 认识真理，对真理绝对，维持真理的绝对，并在现今邪恶的世代给真理作见证
KNOWING THE TRUTH, BEING ABSOLUTE FOR THE TRUTH, AND PROCLAIMING THE TRUTH IN THE PRESENT EVIL AGE
Message One
Knowing the Truth, Being Absolute for the Truth and for Upholding the Absoluteness of the Truth, and Testifying to the Truth in the Present Age of the World
Scripture Reading: John 18:37b; Eph. 2:2; Rom. 12:2; 1 John 5:19b-20
I. The Lord's recovery is the recovery of the divine truths as revealed in the Word of God—2 Tim. 3:16:
A. Truth is the Triune God with His word—John 1:1, 14-17; 14:6, 16-17; 15:26; 16:13; 17:17; 18:37b.
B. Many truths in the Word have been lost, misunderstood, and wrongly applied; thus, there is the need of the Lord's recovery—2 Tim. 2:15.
C. The recovery has the highest truth—the truth that is the consummation of the truths recovered during the past centuries—vv. 2, 15.
II. In John's writings the Greek word for truth (aletheia) denotes all the realities of the divine economy as the content of the divine revelation, conveyed and disclosed by the holy Word—John 17:17; 18:37b:
A. Truth is God, who is light and love, incarnated to be the reality of the divine things for our possession—1:1, 4, 14-17.
B. Truth is Christ, who is God incarnated and in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, as the reality of God and man, of all the types, figures, and shadows of the Old Testament, and of all the divine and spiritual things—Col. 2:9, 16-17; John 4:23-24.
C. Truth is the Spirit, who is Christ transfigured, as the reality of Christ and of the divine revelation—14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13-15.
D. Truth is the Word of God as the divine revelation, which reveals and conveys the reality of God and Christ and of all the divine and spiritual things—17:17.
E. Truth is the contents of the faith (belief), which are the substantial elements of what we believe, as the reality of the full gospel—Eph. 1:13.
F. Truth is the reality concerning God, the universe, man, man's relationship with God and with his fellow man, and man's obligation to God, as revealed through creation and the Scriptures—Rom. 1:18-20; 2:2, 8, 20.
G. Truth is the genuineness, truthfulness, sincerity, honesty, trustworthiness, and faithfulness of God as a divine virtue and of man as a human virtue, and as an issue of the divine reality—3:7; 15:8; 2 Cor. 11:10; 1 John 3:18.
H. Truth denotes things that are true or real, the true or real state of affairs (facts), reality, veracity, as the opposite of falsehood, deception, dissimulation, hypocrisy, and error—Mark 12:32; John 16:7; Rom. 1:25.
III. The divine truth is absolute, and we must be absolute for the truth and for upholding the absoluteness of the divine truth—3 John 3-4, 8:
A. To be absolute to the truth means to set aside feelings, to ignore personal relation-ships, and to not stand for the self—Matt. 16:24-25; 1 Pet. 1:22:
1. The truth is the unique standard, and we must stand on the side of the truth to oppose ourselves; upholding the absoluteness of the truth is possible only when we are delivered from ourselves—John 8:32; 2 John 2; 3 John 3-4.
2. If the truth is not something absolute for us, we do not know God, and we do not know God's word—2 Thes. 2:10; 1 John 5:20.
3. If we are not absolute for the truth, we will sacrifice God's truth for our-selves or our own desires—Prov. 23:23.
4. We should honor God's truth, take the way of the truth, and not compromise the truth in any way—2 Pet. 2:2.
B. We should be absolute for both the objective truths and subjective truths— John 8:32; 14:6:
1. The truths in the Bible have both an objective aspect and a subjective aspect; the objective aspect is for the subjective aspect—Rom. 8:34, 10; Col. 3:1; 1:27.
2. The objective doctrines are for the subjective truths, and the subjective truths are for the producing of the church—2 John 1-2, 4; 3 John 3-4, 7-9a.
3. The Lord desires to recover the subjective truths in the Holy Scriptures, especially the subjective aspect of the truth concerning the Triune God and the church—John 1:14; 14:16-20; 1 Tim. 6:15-16; 2 Tim. 4:22; 3:15-16.
4. Many crucial subjective truths have been buried, but in the Lord's recovery these truths have been resurrected to become recovered, resurrected truths— John 17:17; 18:37b.
IV. When we testify to the truth in "the age of this world," we are one with the victorious Christ in fighting against Satan, the devil, the father of lies, "the ruler of this world," "the god of this age" who "has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers"—Eph. 2:2; John 8:44; 12:31; 2 Cor. 4:4:
A. The devil's nature is a lie and brings in death and darkness; with darkness is falsehood, the opposite of truth—John 8:44:
1. The devil "does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him"— v. 44.
2. The satanic darkness is versus the divine light, and the satanic lie is versus the divine truth—1 John 1:6.
3. As the divine truth is the expression of the divine light, so the satanic lie is the expression of the satanic darkness—John 8:12, 44.
B. "The god of this age" is Satan, the deceiver, the ruler of this present age; he dominates today's world and hunts for man's worship by blinding the thoughts, the minds, of the unbelievers—2 Cor. 4:4:
1. Blinded in 2 Corinthians 4:4 means to veil a person's understanding.
2. Thoughts in this verse denotes the understanding of the mind.
C. "The whole world lies in the evil one"—1 John 5:19b:
1. The entire satanic world system and the people of the world, the fallen human race, are lying passively under the usurping and manipulating hand of Satan, the evil one.
2. In Greek the evil one refers to one who is pernicious, harmfully evil, one who influences others to be evil; this evil one is Satan, the devil, in whom the whole world lies—v. 19b.
3. This evil system, the kingdom of darkness, was judged when its ruler, Satan, was cast out by the Lord's crucifixion in the flesh—John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11.
D. This world in Ephesians 2:2 refers to the satanic system, which is composed of many ages:
1. An age is a part of the world, the satanic system.
2. The age in Ephesians 2:2 refers to the present and modern appearance of the system of Satan, which is used by him to usurp and occupy people and keep them away from God and His purpose.
3. The present evil age in Galatians 1:4 refers to the religious world, the religious course of the world.
E. If we want to testify to the truth in the present age, we must obey Paul's command in Romans 12:2: "Do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind":
1. To be fashioned, conformed, is to assume an outward expression that does not come from within us nor is representative of our inner being as a regenerated child of God—John 1:12-13.
2. We should not be assimilated by the world to the extent that we who have been separated from the world unto God have the same image as this age.
3. We need to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, allowing the mingled spirit to spread into our mind, thus becoming the spirit of the mind and causing our mind, emotion, and will to be renewed by a new element being wrought into our inner being—Eph. 4:23; 1 Cor. 6:17; Rom. 12:2.
F. "Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth"; being girded with the truth is for the strengthening of our entire being—Eph. 6:14a.
G. We can testify to the divine truth because we know the truth by being in the true One—1 John 5:20:
1. The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, has come and has given us an under-standing that we might know the genuine and real God—John 1:14, 18; 1 John 5:20.
2. First John 5:20 twice speaks of "Him who is true," the true One, the True:
a. The term the true One refers to God becoming subjective to us, to the God who is objective becoming the true One in our life and experience.
b. The true One is the divine reality; to know the true One means to know the divine reality by experiencing, enjoying, and possessing this reality.
c. Verse 20 indicates that the divine reality, which is God Himself, has become our reality in our experience; the God who was once objective to us has become our subjective reality—v. 6.
H. Because we know the true One and the Spirit of truth (v. 20; 4:6) and because Christ, the truth, is living in us and the Triune God is operating in us to make us God-men—the reproduction of Christ, the first God-man—we can testify to the truth as the Lord Himself did when He said, "For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, that I would testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice" (John 18:37b).