Book Description

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the eight messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry on October 2-4, 2020. The messages were provided via webcast from Anaheim, California, and the mutual fellowship, prophesying, and studying by groups were practiced locally in the various churches that participated. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Christian Life, the Church Life, the Consummation of the Age, and the Coming of the Lord." The present age--the age of grace, the age of the church--is the age of mystery, and the consummation of the age, the end of the age, will be the three and a half years of the great tribulation. In the dispensations from Adam to Moses and from Moses to Christ, everything was unveiled, and there was no mystery. It will be the same in the dispensation of the millennial kingdom and in the new heaven and new earth. However, in the dispensation from the incarnation of Christ to the millennial kingdom--the church age, the age of grace--everything is a mystery. During the church age, the age of mystery, Christ is building up the church, the Body of Christ, to be His bride. We need to see the signs of the Lord's second and imminent coming. The greatest sign of the end of this age, the last three and a half years of the great tribulation, is the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to the whole inhabited earth. To be taken by the Lord, we need to be those who are watchful for His imminent coming and prepared and ready to be His bride so that we may be raptured before the great tribulation. Every day we need to be watchful by paying the price to buy the Spirit as the golden oil so that we may supply the churches with the Spirit for the testimony of Jesus and be rewarded by the Lord to participate in the marriage dinner of the Lamb. If we want to save our soul-life, we will lose it, but if we lose our soul-life for the Lord's sake, we will save it. If we allow our soul to suffer the loss of its soulish enjoyment in this age for the Lord's sake, we will cause our soul to have its enjoyment in the kingdom age; we will share the Lord's joy in ruling over the earth. If we lose our soul-life, we may participate in the rapture of the overcomers. The salvation of our soul is our receiving the end of our faith. Those who would receive the end of their faith are those whose faith has been proven by fire in this age, that is, proven by all kinds of circumstances, environments, and sufferings that cause the loss of their souls. The salvation of the soul means that our soul will be saved from sufferings into the full enjoyment of the Lord at His coming back. We must be faithful in service in the Lord's commission to give God as food to the members of His household so that we may win Christ as our reward in the coming kingdom. God has set faithful and prudent slaves over His household as household administrators, stewards, channels of supply, to give His people food at the proper time, that is, to minister the word of God and Christ as the life supply to the believers in the church. Furthermore, we must be faithful in service in the Lord's gifts to make a profit for Him so that we may enter into the joy of the Lord in the coming kingdom. The prayer of the age is the prayer of the church as the Body of Christ, the prayer that exercises the authority of Christ as the ascended Lord and Head of the Body, for the fulfilling of God's economy. To fully enter into this kind of prayer and be able to exercise the authority given by the Head to the Body, we need to realize that we are members of the Body, and we must live, act, and move in the Body. In His heavenly ministry Christ is interceding, ministering, and executing God's administration, and we need to be those who respond to Christ's activities in His heavenly ministry by our prayers in the church as the temple of God, a house of prayer. We need revelation to know the reality of the Body of Christ and to enter into the realm and intrinsic significance of the reality of the Body of Christ as God's heart's desire and His ultimate purpose. Only a revelation from God will usher us into the realm of the reality of the Body of Christ, and only then will the Body become our experience. In order to live together with other members in the reality of the Body of Christ, we need to have a consciousness of the Body of Christ. The overcomers typified by Zion are the reality of the Body of Christ and consummate the building up of the Body in the local churches to bring in the consummated holy city, New Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies as God's dwelling place in eternity. We need to follow Paul's pattern of having an overcoming life of fighting the good fight, finishing our course, and loving the Lord's appearing. To fight the good fight of the faith means to fight for God's New Testament economy; in particular, it is to fight for Christ as the embodiment of God and for the church as the Body of Christ. A proper Christian life involves running the course, the race, for the carrying out of God's economy according to His eternal purpose. We need to seek out the journey that the Lord has ordained for us and faithfully walk on it, paying any price to wholeheartedly continue on our journey until we reach the end. The journey that the Lord has ordained for us is the race that we must run with endurance by looking away unto Jesus as the Author and Perfecter of our faith. As those who love the Lord Jesus, take Him as our life, live Him, and magnify Him, we should await His coming and love His appearing. This should be our heart's desire and our living as those who hope to enter into His joy, be saved into the Lord's heavenly kingdom, and receive the crown of righteousness. God's desire is to end this age and bring in the age of the kingdom. In order for God to accomplish this, He must have His dispensational instrument. All of us should look to the Lord and pray that we will have dispensational value to God. Because the church has not attained to God's purpose, God will choose a group of overcomers who will attain to His purpose and fulfill His demand; this is the principle of the man-child. The man-child consists of the overcomers who stand on behalf of the church, take the position that the whole church should take, and do the work for the church. The rapture of the man-child to heaven, the casting of Satan to earth, and the declaration in heaven that the kingdom has come signify that God's gaining of the man-child is His greatest dispensational move because it brings an end to the church age and introduces the kingdom age. The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.