2022-5丨General Subject：Loving the Lord and Loving One Another for the Organic Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ

General Subject：Loving the Lord and Loving One Another for the Organic Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ

Message Eight Taking the God-ordained Pathway for the Church— the Way of Philadelphia—according to the Lord’s Up-to-date and Ultimate Recovery to Bring Us into a New Revival to Turn the Age

II. The characteristic of the overcomers in Philadelphia (vv. 7-13) is their aspiration to arrive at the highest peak of the divine revelation of God's economy—this highest peak is God becoming man to make man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead so that the Body of Christ can be produced, the bride can be prepared, and the New Jerusalem can be consummated:

Rev. 3:7 And to the messenger of the church in Philadelphia write: These things says the Holy One, the true One, the One who has the key of David, the One who opens and no one will shut, and shuts and no one opens:

Rev. 3:8 I know your works; behold, I have put before you an opened door which no one can shut, because you have a little power and have kept My word and have not denied My name.

Rev. 3:9 Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, those who call themselves Jews and are not, but lie-behold, I will cause them to come and fall prostrate before your feet and to know that I have loved you.

Rev. 3:10 Because you have kept the word of My endurance, I also will keep you out of the hour of trial, which is about to come on the whole inhabited earth, to try them who dwell on the earth.

Rev. 3:11 I come quickly; hold fast what you have that no one take your crown.

Rev. 3:12 He who overcomes, him I will make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall by no means go out anymore, and I will write upon him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which descends out of heaven from My God, and My new name.

Rev. 3:13 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

A. Even though the churches in Asia, in a general sense, had turned away from the apostle Paul's ministry (2 Tim. 1:15), one church was unique and was highly appraised by the Lord—the church in Philadelphia; the Lord highly appraised them and even appreciated them because they kept His word, which means that they did not turn away from the word of the apostle Paul's healthy teaching of God's economy, the highest peak of the divine revelation—Rev. 3:8; 1 Tim. 1:3-4; 6:3:

2 Tim. 1:15 This you know, that all who are in Asia turned away from me, of whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes.

Rev. 3:8 I know your works; behold, I have put before you an opened door which no one can shut, because you have a little power and have kept My word and have not denied My name.

1 Tim. 1:3 Even as I exhorted you, when I was going into Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus in order that you might charge certain ones not to teach different things

1 Tim. 1:4 Nor to give heed to myths and unending genealogies, which produce questionings rather than God's economy, which is in faith.

1 Tim. 6:3 If anyone teaches different things and does not consent to healthy words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the teaching which is according to godliness,

1. God's eternal economy is to make man the same as He is in life and nature but not in the Godhead and to make Himself one with man and man one with Him, thus to be enlarged and expanded in His expression, that all His divine attributes may be expressed in human virtues.

2. God's eternal economy is His plan to dispense Himself into His chosen, predestinated, and redeemed people as their life, their life supply, and their everything to produce, constitute, and build up the organic Body of Christ—1:3-6; 6:3-4; 2 Cor. 11:2-3; Titus 1:9; Col. 2:19.

1 Tim. 1:3 Even as I exhorted you, when I was going into Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus in order that you might charge certain ones not to teach different things

1 Tim. 1:4 Nor to give heed to myths and unending genealogies, which produce questionings rather than God's economy, which is in faith.

1 Tim. 1:5 But the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and out of a good conscience and out of unfeigned faith;

1 Tim. 1:6 From which things some, having misaimed, have turned aside to vain talking,

1 Tim. 6:3 If anyone teaches different things and does not consent to healthy words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the teaching which is according to godliness,

1 Tim. 6:4 He is blinded with pride, understanding nothing, but is diseased with questionings and contentions of words, out of which come envy, strife, slanders, evil suspicions,

2 Cor. 11:2 For I am jealous over you with a jealousy of God; for I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

2 Cor. 11:3 But I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your thoughts would be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity toward Christ.

Titus 1:9 Holding to the faithful word, which is according to the teaching of the apostles, that he may be able both to exhort by the healthy teaching and to convict those who oppose.

Col. 2:19 And not holding the Head, out from whom all the Body, being richly supplied and knit together by means of the joints and sinews, grows with the growth of God.

B. Those in Philadelphia are “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21) by pray-reading and musing upon His word to treasure up His word in their heart (Eph. 6:17-18; Psa. 119:11, 15); they lift up their hands unto the word of God, indicating that they receive it warmly and gladly and that they say Amen to it (v. 48; Neh. 8:5-6).

Luke 12:21 So is he who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

Eph. 6:17 And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God,

Eph. 6:18 By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints,

Psa. 119:11 In my heart I have treasured up Your word / That I might not sin against You.

Psa. 119:15 I will muse upon Your precepts / And regard Your ways.

Psa. 119:48 And I will lift up my hand to Your commandments, which I love; / And I will muse upon Your statutes.

Neh. 8:5 And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people (for he was above all the people); and when he opened it, all the people stood up.

Neh. 8:6 And Ezra blessed Jehovah the great God; and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped Jehovah with their faces to the ground.

C. For the overcomers to be pillars in the temple means that they will be pillars in the Triune God, for the temple is “the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb”; God is built into them to make them living and precious stones, and they are built into God to make them pillars of stone in God for their incorporation with God as the mutual abode of God and man—Rev. 3:12a; 21:22, 3; Psa. 90:1; John 14:23; cf. 1 Kings 7:17.

Rev. 21:22 And I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

Rev. 21:3 And I heard a loud voice out of the throne, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will tabernacle with them, and they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.

Psa. 90:1 O Lord, You have been our dwelling place / In all generations.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.

1 Kings 7:17 There were nets of checker work with wreaths of chain work for the capitals that were at the top of the pillars, seven for the one capital, and seven for the second capital.

D. That the name of God, the name of the New Jerusalem, and the Lord's new name are written upon the overcomer indicates that the overcomer is possessed by God, by the New Jerusalem, and by the Lord and that God Himself, His city (the New Jerusalem), and the Lord Himself all belong to him.

E. That the name of God, the name of the New Jerusalem, and the Lord's new name are written upon the overcomers indicates that what God is, the nature of the New Jerusalem, and the person of the Lord have all been wrought into them, labeling them with the Triune God as their “name badge” and making them God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—Rev. 3:12b; 22:4b.

Rev. 22:4 And they will see His face, and His name will be on their forehead.

Morning Nourishment

Rev. 3:8 ...You have a little power and have kept My word and have not denied My name.

1 Tim. 1:3-4 ...Charge certain ones not to teach different things nor to give heed to myths and unending genealogies, which produce questionings rather than God’s economy, which is in faith.

According to His heart’s desire, God made His eternal economy (1 Tim. 1:4b; Eph. 1:10; 3:9) to make man the same as He is in life and nature but not in His Godhead and to make Himself one with man and man one with Him, thus to be enlarged and expanded in His expression, that all His divine attributes may be expressed in human virtues.

God carries out His eternal economy through a number of steps. First, He created man in His image and according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26-27). Then God became a man...in His incarnation to partake of the human nature (Heb. 2:14a). He lived a human life to express His attributes through man’s virtues. He died an all-inclusive death and resurrected to produce the firstborn Son of God and become the life-giving Spirit (Rom. 8:29; Acts 13:33; 1 Cor. 15:45). This was all for Him to dispense Himself into His chosen people to regenerate them with Himself as their life for producing many sons—many God-men (1 Pet. 1:3)—for the forming of the churches with His many sons and for the building up of the Body of Christ with His brothers as the members to be the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God, consummating in the New Jerusalem as His eternal enlargement and expression.

We have to be controlled by the vision of God’s economy. We should not speak anything other than God’s economy [cf. 1 Tim. 1:3-4]. (CWWL, 1994- 1997, vol. 3, “The Ten Great Critical ‘Ones’ for the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” pp. 161-162)

In these seven epistles in Revelation 2 and 3, the striking point of the churches’ degradation was three kinds of teachings: the teaching of Balaam, a Gentile prophet (2:14); the teaching of the Nicolaitans to build the hierarchy (v. 15); and the teaching of the woman, the so-called prophetess, Jezebel, full of heresies and fornication (v. 20). These three kinds of teachings crept in because the churches left the teaching of the apostle [cf. 2 Tim. 1:15 and footnote 2].

In 1 Timothy 1:3 and 6:3 Paul warns not to teach differently. The saints should teach according to Paul’s teaching. Those in Asia definitely turned away from Paul’s teaching [cf. 2 Tim. 1:15], and the result of this turning away was that they received three kinds of heretical teachings...Within thirty years after Paul’s final Epistle to Timothy, these churches had reached such a point of degradation. It is dangerous to leave or turn away from the apostle’s teaching, from the apostle’s proper revelation.

One church was unique and was highly appraised by the Lord—the church in Philadelphia. The Lord highly appraised them and even appreciated them because they kept the word (Rev. 3:8). This means that they did not turn away from the apostle’s proper teaching. Although they were weak, the Lord still appraised them highly, telling them that they had a little power and that they had kept His word.

To turn away from the proper teaching is a terrible thing that will result in degradation and in picking up other teachings ... I hope that all the church people in the recovery would not be followers of those in Asia who turned away from Paul’s ministry. Rather, I hope that we would follow the pattern of the church in Philadelphia—keeping the Lord’s word even though we only have a little strength. Let us keep the word of the Lord, which is to remain in the teachings of the apostle, to remain in the healthy words, to remain in the unique revelation from the Lord with the proper leadership. Then we are safe. (CWWL, 1986, vol. 1, “Elders’ Training, Book 7: One Accord for the Lord’s Move,” pp. 173-174)

Further Reading: CWWL, 1986, vol. 1, “Elders’ Training, Book 7: One Accord for the Lord’s Move,” ch. 8