This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight messages given during the spring 2018 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "Enjoying the Riches of Christ for the Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ." The goal of God's economy and of our enjoyment of the riches of Christ is the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ. This goal is God's purpose, God's will, and His good pleasure. The building up of the church as the Body of Christ is simultaneously the maturing of the one new man and the preparation of the bride.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight messages given during the spring 2019 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Wonderful Christ in the Canon of the New Testament." Christ is wonderful, glorious, excellent, supereminent, all-inclusive, invaluable, incomprehensible, and inexhaustible! The desire of God's heart is that the reality in Jesus, the God-man living of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels, would be duplicated in the many members of Christ's Body by the Spirit of reality to become the reality of the Body of Christ, the highest peak in God's economy. In the four Gospels we see that Jesus lived a life in which He did everything in God, with God, for God, through God, and by God. God was in His living, and He was one with God. The Lord wants the actual condition of His life to be duplicated in us, repeated in us, and wrought into us so that the actual condition of His life in the four Gospels becomes the actual condition of our life. In the Gospel of Matthew we see the wonderful Christ as the great light; as the One who has authority because He lived absolutely under the ruling of the divine life of the Father; as the King of the heavenly kingdom who ministered as the Physician; as the Bridegroom; as the unfulled cloth made into a new garment to cover us as our righteousness before God; and as our new wine, as the inward exciting life, put into fresh wineskins, the church life. We need to live in the reality of the Body of Christ according to the bird's-eye view of the reality in Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, which unveils a full picture of the Slave-Savior serving fallen sinners as a collective person with Himself as their all-inclusive salvation. The Gospel of Luke is a revelation of the God-man who lived a human life filled with the divine life as its content, thereby expressing God in humanity. In the Gospel of John we see that in the Godhead Christ is the Word; that is, He is God defined, explained, and expressed. In redemption Christ is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the human race and who satisfies the requirements of God's righteousness, holiness, and glory; and in resurrection Christ as the consummated Spirit is the breath as everything to us in living the Christian life and in being an overcomer. The intrinsic focus of Romans is on the wonderful person--Christ-- who, as the Spirit living within the believers, is higher and more subjective than the Christ presented in the Gospels. As the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ now indwells His believers as their subjective Savior. This wonderful One fully saturated Paul and permeated everything he spoke and wrote in this book, which presents the gospel of God. The deep thought in Romans is that God became man so that, in God's complete salvation, sinners may be redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed, and glorified to become the sons of God, who are the same as God in life and nature, to be the members of the Body of Christ expressed as local churches. 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.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains Messages 25 through 32 given during the spring 2022 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California, as the continuation of the general subject "Chapters Five through Eight of Romans--the Kernel of the Bible." The sixteen messages in this term emphasize Romans 7 and especially chapter 8. The deep divine thought in Romans is that God became man so that, in God's complete salvation, sinners may be redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed, and glorified to become the sons of God, who are the same as God in life and nature, to be the members of the Body of Christ. God sent His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and condemned sin in the flesh so that the sinners--serpentine beings, children of the devil--could be reconciled to God and justified by Him in order to receive eternal life and thus become children of God (8:3, 16). Jesus Christ our Lord, who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh, was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead (1:3-4). The firstborn Son of God, the first God-man, is the prototype for the production of the many sons, the many God-men, who, as members of the Body of Christ, are exactly the same as the firstborn Son in life, nature, and expression (8:14, 29). The prototype, the firstborn Son of God, is in our spirit as the law of the Spirit of life (v. 2). His main function as the law of the Spirit of life is to shape us, to conform us, into His image as the firstborn Son of God so that we may become His corporate expression. The law of life also functions to constitute us the members of the Body of Christ with all kinds of functions. The purpose of God's salvation is to have Christ reproduced in millions of believers so that they may become the members of His Body (12:4-5). Through God's organic salvation carried out by the divine dispensing of the Triune God as life to the tripartite man, the children of God are growing in life to become sons of God led by the Spirit. The sons of God, the many brothers of Christ as the firstborn Son of God, are the members of the Body of Christ. In order to live in the law of the Spirit of life, we need to activate this law within us. Loving the Lord with the first love is the first requirement for the law of the Spirit of life to be activated within us. We need to love the Lord with the first love, the best love, which is to give the Lord the preeminence, the first place, in all things, being constrained by His love to regard and take Him as everything in our life. To love the Lord with the first love is to have a personal, affectionate, private, and spiritual relationship with the Lord. When we contact this lovely and loving person, He will infuse us with Himself as love, and He will produce in us the love with which we can love Him. Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ. Taking heed to the inner sense of the spirit is the second requirement for the law of the Spirit of life to be activated within us. The secret of our Christian life that we all must learn is found in Romans 8:6, which is the most important verse in the Bible related to our spiritual experience of Christ as the law of the Spirit of life--"the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace." To set the mind on the flesh means to take sides with the flesh, to cooperate with the flesh, and to stand with the flesh; to set the mind on the spirit is to take heed to the spirit, to take sides with the spirit, to cooperate with the spirit, and to stand with the spirit, that is, to pay attention to our spirit. We need to heed this inner sense of life and peace in the spirit. 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.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains contains the last eight of the sixteen messages given during the spring 2023 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Crucial Points of the Truth in Paul's Epistles-Romans."

This issue of The Ministry of the Word includes the first nine messages of the 2007 spring term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Believers." Collectively, the believers are one of the seven persons in the eternal economy of God. The first three persons in God's economy are the three of the Divine Trinity--the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The fourth person, composed of the believers as a collective entity, is in the middle of this sequence of seven persons. The believers then become a corporate person--the church, the kingdom, and the New Jerusalem, which are the remaining three persons. The believers constitute a certain class or category of people who have received mercy from God to believe into the Son of God and in His redemptive work, particularly in His resurrection. First Peter 1:8 says, "Whom having not seen, you love; into whom though not seeing Him at present, yet believing, you exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory." In many ways, this verse is the theme for this line of ministry on the believers. We are those who exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, and the Lord, as the Author and Perfecter of our faith, will take us on from one degree of enjoyment to the next until we reach the highest enjoyment of the Lord. The believers are the happiest and most joyful people on the earth because God is pleased with them (Heb. 11:6). Last of all, we include a report of the 2008 Chinese-speaking Perfecting Training in Plano, Texas and a follow-up conference in Irving, Texas.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains a complete record of the twelve messages given during the semiannual training held December 25 through 30, 2017, in Anaheim, California, as the first part of the crystallization-study of Leviticus. The banners in the following section embody and summarize the crucial truths and main burdens in these twelve messages. These training messages are being published immediately following the training in order that they might benefit the saints participating in the many video trainings that are held throughout the earth. The Reports and Announcements section contains "An Update concerning Europe" and "An Update concerning the Publication of The Collected Works of Witness Lee." Also included is information concerning upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the nine messages given during the international training for elders and responsible ones held in Leipzig, Germany, from October 5-7, 2017. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Recovery of the Church." The intrinsic significance of the church is the corporate expression of Christ, who is the embodiment and expression of the Triune God. The reality of the church as the expression of Christ is heavenly, "Christly," and "resurrectionly." In time and space, however, the church can deviate and become degraded, deformed, and corrupted due to the enemy's work of producing substitutes for Christ, dividing the Body of Christ, and killing the function of the members of the Body of Christ. From the beginning, God's intention was to have the church, and this was taught by the apostles (Eph. 3:10-11). Although much of the truth concerning the church has been lost or distorted, our God is a God of recovery regardless of what the enemy has done. The Lord's recovery of the church brings us back to the beginning for the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose and original intention regarding the church. For the recovery of the church, we need to overcome the degradation of the church that was brought in according to the principle of Babylon--exercising human ability and effort, hypocrisy, self-glorification, and harlotry. The way to overcome the principle of Babylon is to take Christ as our burnt offering so that He can repeat the life of the burnt offering within us. By this way we can be "Christified" and become His duplication for the building up of the Body of Christ to consummate the holy city, New Jerusalem. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah record the return of the Israelites from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the city. This return signifies the Lord's recovery of a remnant out of today's division and confusion back to the original ground of oneness for the building up of the genuine church as the house of God and the kingdom of God. To strengthen and enrich the recovery of the church, the Lord needs priestly scribes like Ezra--those who contact God, are saturated with God, and are skillful in the Word of God to reeducate and reconstitute God's people for His testimony and His corporate expression on the earth. The Lord also needs those who are pure and properly aggressive like Nehemiah to build the great and high wall of the holy city for our separation unto God, the protection of God's interests, and the expression of God. Practically speaking, in the Lord's recovery today, we are mainly recovering the proper church life and the proper living of the church. The church life is the corporate living of the perfected God-men, a living in the reality of the Body of Christ. The church life is the life of Christ being lived out through His members in a corporate way. It is our being headed up under the unique headship of Christ and enjoying the mutual flowing of fellowship in oneness as the continuation of Christ's being glorified by the Father so that we may be the corporate expression of Christ. In order for the Lord to return, He must recover the life and living of the church. The church has two main aspects--universal and local. The church is constituted of the universal God, but it exists on earth in many localities; in nature the church is universal in God, but in practice the church is local, in a definite place. Without the universal aspect, the church is void of content; without the local aspect, it is impossible for the church to have any expression and practice. The genuine oneness is the Triune God who as the Spirit today is being added to us and is permeating us, taking us over, and filling us. Only the Triune God is the factor of the genuine oneness. The ground of oneness is simply the processed Triune God applied to our being. In Psalm 133 the fine oil, referring to the holy anointing oil in Exodus 30:23-33, signifies the all-inclusive compound Spirit. This anointing Spirit is the element of our oneness; when the compound Spirit applies Himself to us and spreads over and in our entire being in a gradual way, He makes us genuinely one. If we want to have the recovery of the church, we must have a clear revelation concerning the three most basic, essential, and crucial statuses of the church--as the Body of Christ, as the new man, and as the counterpart of Christ. The Body is the issue of the headship of Christ. Christ, as the One who fills all in all, needs His Body to be His fullness, the expression of the Head (cf. Eph. 1:22-23). For the building up of the Body of Christ, we need to practice the scriptural way to meet and to serve--the God-ordained way revealed in the holy Word. The new man is Christ in all the saints. This indwelling Christ permeates and replaces us to remove all natural distinctions and to constitute everyone with Himself. In order for us to experience the reality of Christ being all the members of the new man, we need to take Christ as our life and our person and live Him, not ourselves. The one new man fulfills God's eternal purpose of expressing God and dealing with His enemy. The church as the Body of Christ and the one new man will become the bride, the counterpart, of Christ. The Lord will return for His bride. The church, the counterpart of Christ, as typified by Eve, is a pure product out of Christ, built out of the uncreated life released by Christ through His death and resurrection. Only those who are regenerated of Christ and who live by Christ as the church can match Christ and complement Him. In the New Jerusalem the processed and consummated redeeming Triune God as the universal Husband will live a married life for eternity with this redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified corporate person as His wife. This will be the consummation of the universal divine romance. The Announcements section 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.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight messages given during the fall 2017 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Crucial Revelation of Life in the Scriptures." The central thought of God in this universe and in eternity is to have Christ as His expression through the church with the shining in life. God's expression is based on life and light, and the light is the shining in life. In order for God to have an expression of Himself in Christ through the church, the divine life that expresses Him must be embodied and expressed in Christ and then dispensed into, worked into, and expressed through the church. Only the life of God can express God. Based on this principle, we will see the crucial revelation of life throughout the Scriptures. Genesis 1 and 2 are not merely a record of creation; actually, nearly every item recorded in these two chapters is a revelation of Christ who is life to God's people for the producing and building up of the church. According to Genesis 1, God created many forms of life, beginning with the lowest form and progressing to the highest form of created life, that is, man, whom God created in His image. The purpose of the creation of man with God's image is that this man would express God. However, the created man had only a human life. Any form of created life can only express itself; it cannot express another kind of life. This means that man is unable to express God if he has only his created human life. In order for man to express God and fulfill His purpose, man must obtain and receive the life of God as his life. God has to enter into man to be life to man. Genesis 2 reveals that the bride of Christ--typified by the woman built from the rib taken from the man--is produced and comes into being by life. The real Eve, the church, the counterpart of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem, is built with the resurrection life that was released by the Lord through His death and imparted through His resurrection. This counterpart of the Lord is a building of life. For God to gain His corporate expression through the church, He must dispense and work Himself into us, His people, His believers. This is accomplished through our eating and drinking Him. We need to pass through three stages of the enjoyment of Christ by eating Him. The first stage is the eating of Christ as the Passover lamb in Egypt, the second stage is the eating of Christ as the manna in the wilderness, and the third stage is the eating of Christ as the rich produce of the good land. By our eating in the first two stages, we are energized to leave the world and are constituted with Christ as the heavenly element. Only in the third stage of the enjoyment of Christ as our food can we fulfill God's purpose. It was not until the children of Israel entered into the good land and enjoyed the produce of the land that they were able to defeat all the enemies, build up God's dwelling place on the earth, and bring in the kingdom of God. Likewise, for us to reach the goal of God's economy, we need to progress until we enter into the highest stage of eating Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit, as typified by the rich produce of the good land. In this stage we overcome the spiritual enemies, we are built up to be God's dwelling place, and we establish God's kingdom on earth. The history of God's people is not only one of eating but also one of drinking. In the Old Testament, before coming into the good land and building the house of God, the children of Israel journeyed through the wilderness. During that journey they came to Marah, a place of bitter waters. Moses followed God's command to cast a tree into the bitter waters; the waters then became sweet. This tree signifies the tree of life, the crucified and resurrected Christ, who today is the Spirit mingled with our spirit. In our spirit we have the crucified and resurrected Christ as our Healer. He is the One who transforms our bitter circumstances and makes them sweet, and He also heals all our diseases. Before the building of the house of God, the Bible speaks of the springs of water (Exo. 15:22-27), the water out of the cleft rock (17:6), and the water from the well (Num. 21:16-17). Christ as the living, spiritual rock was smitten by the authority of God's law so that the water of life in resurrection could flow out of Him and into His redeemed people for them to drink. After God's people built the house of God in the good land, the Bible speaks of the river of God's pleasures (Psa. 36:8b), the river whose streams gladden the city of God (46:4), a fountain going forth from the house of Jehovah (Joel 3:18), and living waters going forth from Jerusalem (Zech. 14:8). We need to experience the flowing of the living water out of the house of God (Ezek. 47:1-5). In order to be in the flow, we have to be in the building; that is, we need to be in the church. In the New Testament we can see the crucial revelation of life in the book of Matthew. In the decree of the kingdom's constitution given by the Lord in chapters 5--7, He displayed the two possible ways people may live and work before God (7:13-14, 21-27). The broad way that leads to destruction is according to the worldly systems satisfying the natural tastes, to get the crowd, to maintain a career of man, and to achieve man's enterprise. The constricted way is according to the divine regulations. This way, which leads to life, fulfills the spiritual requests, brings in God's elect, bears the testimony of Jesus Christ, and carries out God's economy for the building up of the Body of Christ. We take this way by walking in the spirit; this will restrict us and cause us to live a normal Christian life. We will thereby become vital, healthy believers who take the way of life for God's building. There are three basic elements in Matthew. First, Christ is the King as the kingdom bringing in the reality of the kingdom. Second, He is the King in His all-inclusiveness. Third, He is the kingly bread. When we partake of this kingly bread, we eat, digest, and assimilate the King and the kingdom with its reality, and we eat and digest the King in His all-inclusiveness. The ruling element is in the food. When we take in this food, we gradually become the reality of the kingdom of the heavens. 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.