This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains a complete record of the twelve messages given during the December 2023 semiannual training, held in Anaheim, California. The Key Statements on the following page embody and summarize the crucial truths and main burdens covered in these twelve messages.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the semiannual training held December 25-30, 2023, in Anaheim, California, on “Laboring on the All-inclusive Christ Typified by the Good Land for the Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ, for the Reality and the Manifestation of the Kingdom, and for the Bride to Make Herself Ready for the Lord’s Coming.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the semiannual training held December 25-30, 2023, in Anaheim, California, on “Laboring on the All-inclusive Christ Typified by the Good Land for the Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ, for the Reality and the Manifestation of the Kingdom, and for the Bride to Make Herself Ready for the Lord’s Coming.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

Festschrift in honor of Arie de Kuiper, a Dutch theologian in Indonesia.

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 nine messages given during the spring 2002 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is “Christ and the Church in the Psalms.” Christ is revealed and typified in the Psalms, and the church also is typified in the Psalms—as the house of God for God’s dwelling and as the city of God for God’s kingdom. The main line in the Psalms concerns God’s economy as it relates to the all-inclusive Christ and the church as the expression of Christ, the counterpart of Christ, the complement of Christ, the bride of Christ, and the Body of Christ. These messages focus in sequence on the particular psalms that refer to the central line of God’s economy concerning Christ and the church. Christ is the center, circumference, hub, rim, substance, and content of the Bible as a whole and in the book of Psalms in particular. Christ is the centrality and universality of the Psalms. Those who study the Psalms should have a spirit of seeking the Lord, of wanting Him, thirsting for Him, pursuing Him, desiring Him, asking for Him, and inquiring regarding Him. Furthermore, this Christ is found in God’s dwelling place. To know Christ in a full way, we must know Him in the house of God, which is the church as God’s dwelling place, and in the city of God, which is the church as God’s kingdom. The church is the enlargement, expansion, reproduction, surplus, fullness, and expression of Christ for His glory. Eventually, the church consummates in the New Jerusalem, which also is Christ. The enlargement of His house to become the city, the kingdom in reality, provides the Lord the ground to return and reclaim the earth from the usurping hand of Satan. The progression of the revelation through the books of the Psalms is summed up in four words—Christ, house, city, and earth. Our goal in studying the Psalms should be to experience Christ for the building up of the church as the house and the city so that the Lord will have a beachhead in order to come back and reclaim the earth. According to God’s view, having a group of people who exalt Christ and become the church as the house and the city will provide Him a way to repossess the entire earth. Therefore, the deepest burden of this study of the Psalms is the fulfillment of the first and last verses of Psalm 8: “O Jehovah our Lord, / How excellent is Your name / In all the earth!” 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 nine messages given during the international training for elders and responsible ones held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on October 4 through 6, 2018. The subject of this series of messages is "Propagating the Resurrected, Ascended, and All-inclusive Christ as the Development of the Kingdom of God." We are propagating a person—the resurrected, ascended, and all-inclusive Christ, who is emphatically revealed in the book of Acts. To propagate Christ is not merely to spread the truth concerning Him; it is actually to reproduce Him, just as a husband and wife propagate by bringing forth children who are the same as they are in life and nature. Today we are the reproductions, the increase, of the resurrected Christ as the firstborn Son of God. The propagation of Christ can be carried out only by His witnesses, by those who have seen Him. In the book of Acts the Lord charged His disciples to be His witnesses. In the New Testament the meaning of witness is primarily to bear a living testimony of Jesus Christ in His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. We need to live by the divine life in our human life so that we would be witnesses, those who bear a living testimony of the resurrected and ascended Christ in our human life. Through death Christ entered into another realm, the realm of resurrection. The reality of resurrection is the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. Thus, the realm of resurrection is the realm of the Spirit, which is also the divine and mystical realm. We all have been begotten, regenerated, in Christ's resurrection, and we all have been ushered into the same realm. Moreover, the church is in this realm; the church exists in the realm of resurrection. Christ's resurrection was the focus of the apostles' testimony. The Lord's ascension was His initiation into His living and ministry in the heavens; this initiation brought Him into a new realm, that is, into the heavens where He now has His living and is ministering there. Whereas resurrection is a matter of life, Christ's ascension is a matter of position, and position is a matter of authority. The resurrected Christ is in the heavens executing God's administration. The resurrected Christ ascended to the heavens to be exalted by God and to be given the kingship, the lordship, and the headship over all things. The ascended Christ has also obtained the throne, the glory, and all the authority in the universe. The ascended Christ is God's Anointed to carry out God's commission to work out the spreading of the gospel and the building up of the church. The Christ revealed in Acts is the all-inclusive Christ. He is the Author of life, God's Servant, the Leader and Savior, the Son of Man, God, the Lord of all, the Judge, and the object of the believers' faith. The resurrected, ascended, and all-inclusive Christ whom we are propagating is the kingdom, and we are propagating Him as the development of the kingdom. The development of the kingdom of God, that is, the kingdom of the divine life, is the spreading of Christ as life into His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The kingdom of God is the main subject of the apostles' preaching in Acts; this is indicated by the fact that the resurrected Christ, in His appearing to the apostles through a period of forty days, spoke to them concerning the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the Savior as the seed of life sown into His believers, God's chosen people, and developing into a realm over which God can rule as His kingdom in His divine life. The entrance into the kingdom of God is regeneration, and the development of the kingdom is the believers' growth in the divine life. The kingdom of God is the church life today, in which the faithful believers live, and it will develop into the coming kingdom as a reward to be inherited by the overcoming saints in the millennium. Eventually, the kingdom of God will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the eternal kingdom of God, an eternal realm of the eternal blessing of God's eternal life, which all of God's redeemed will enjoy in the new heaven and new earth for eternity. What kind of Christ can be reproduced through us depends on what He is to us in reality. If we know Him as resurrection and the power of resurrection and if we know Him in His heavenly ministry with His supreme authority, realizing that He is the center of God's governmental administration in the universe, we will announce and propagate this kind of Christ. If we realize, know, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, spontaneously this Christ will be reproduced through us. The Reports and Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a report entitled "The Ministry of the Word Literature Exhibition." Also included is 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 final nine 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." These messages continue to emphasize the enjoyment of the indescribably rich and all-inclusive Christ as everything to us as seen in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, we see that we need to have a pure heart to see God, which is to gain God so that we may become God in life and nature. The more we experience and enjoy such an all-inclusive Christ, the more we will become the building material for and even the builders of the church, fulfilling the greatest prophecy in the Bible to bring in the kingdom of God.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the last eight messages given during the fall 2002 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "Christ and the Church in the Psalms." The messages in this issue cover Psalms 118 through 150. In Psalm 118 we see Christ as the stone for God's building. God's building is God's expression. God's eternal intention is to have a corporate, glorious, living, organic, eternal divine-human expression of Himself, which is His building. Christ, the stone which the builders rejected, became the head of the corner in resurrection. Christ, the stone, is constituting Himself into us through transformation to make us living stones for God's building. Then He, as the foundation stone, cornerstone, and topstone, and we, as the many living stones, will become the glorious dwelling place of God, which is typified by the temple. In Psalm 119 we see that Christ is the reality of the law as the testimony of God and the word of God. Christ is the reality of the law as the testimony of God, signifying Christ as the living portrait of all that God is.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final 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." God's ultimate intention is to gain a corporate God-man for His corporate manifestation. The intrinsic element of God's eternal economy is that the Triune God in humanity, the wonderful Christ as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, is sown into God's chosen people as the seed of life, the seed of God, so that He might grow in them, live in them, develop in them, and be expressed from within them as the farm of God for the building up of the church as the house of God and the kingdom of God. The seed of life is actually God in Christ as the Spirit through His word sown into us. This seed contains everything related to God's economy, to the divine life, and to the growth, development, and function of that life. The seed of life is not only a substance, a reproductive element, or an essence but also a person--the all-inclusive Christ. The seed of life sown into us needs to grow to maturity so that we may be the kingdom of God. In resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit for imparting life. The life-giving Spirit is the extract, the essence, the concentrated form of the all-inclusive Christ. The totality of all that the all-inclusive Christ is as the life-giving Spirit is for our experience and enjoyment. Without the experience of Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the Lord cannot have His Body. If we never have any experience or enjoyment, we will never grow. There is always a spiritual war related to the growth in life. If the enemy cannot stop the sowing of the seed, then he will do everything he can with every believer to prevent the seed from growing to maturity. However, there is a fighting element in this seed. The only way to enter into the coming kingdom is to grow into the kingdom. Second Peter 1:5-11 reveals that our growth in life to maturity becomes an entrance into the kingdom richly supplied to us. The law of the Spirit of life is the subject of Romans 8. God's life is the highest life, and the law of this life is the highest law. The law of the Spirit of life is not a thing but a person--the processed and consummated Triune God embodied in Christ and realized as a living law in our spirit. This law of life is the spontaneous power, the natural characteristic, and the innate, automatic function of the divine life. While we remain in touch with the Lord, staying in contact with Him, the law of the Spirit of life works automatically, spontaneously, and effortlessly to dispense God as life into our being and to overcome the law of sin and of death (vv. 10, 6, 11). We activate the law of the Spirit of life by remaining in touch with the Lord. We need to cooperate with the indwelling, installed, automatic, and inner-operating God by prayer and by having a spirit of dependence, thus maintaining our fellowship with the Lord of life and the Lord of work. Romans 8 reveals that the processed Triune God as the law of the Spirit of life gives the divine life to the believers for their living. There are four laws in Romans 7 and 8. One law is outside of us, and the other three correspond to the three lives that are within us as regenerated persons. Outside of us is the law of God, the law of moral commandments, which is a portrait of God. Within us is the law of sin and of death in our flesh, the law of good in our soul, and the law of the Spirit of life in our spirit. The only way we can match and become the living portrait of God is by living according to the law of the Spirit of life in our spirit. God's desire and goal are that we live by the divine life and minister life to others for the building up of the church. The all-inclusive, indwelling Spirit is constantly transmitting this life into each one of us to build up the church, edify the saints, and minister the riches of Christ to everyone who contacts us. In Romans 8 we also see that the desire of God's heart is to have many sons for His corporate expression (v. 29). The Father sent His Son--who was born under the law and born through a woman--to redeem us out from under the law. Having redeemed us, He "sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father!'" (Gal. 4:6). Now our spirit has become a spirit of sonship. As the divine life grows within us and transforms us, it spontaneously shapes us into the form, the image, of the firstborn Son of God. We are to be conformed to the image of God's firstborn Son, Christ as the first God-man, that we may be a group of God-men who are exactly like Him. Paul's Epistle to the Romans reveals God's complete salvation in two aspects. God's judicial redemption is the procedure of God's complete salvation for the believers to participate in God's organic salvation as the purpose of the complete salvation of God. Redemption entails the forgiveness of all our sins, reconciliation, positional sanctification, and justification. God's organic salvation is the organic aspect of God's complete salvation through the life of God (Rom. 1:17b; Acts 11:18; Rom. 5:10b, 17b, 18b, 21b) as the purpose of God's salvation, accomplishing all that God wants to achieve in the believers in His economy through His divine life (Gen. 2:9; Rev. 22:14). Organic salvation entails regeneration with God's life, sanctification with God's holy nature, renewing with God's element, transformation with God's being, conformation into God's image, and glorification, which is our full sonship. Glorification sonizes our whole being, from spirit to soul to body. All the items of God's organic salvation are carried out by Christ as the life-giving Spirit in His heavenly ministry organically and subjectively. Being saved in His life is actually the process of resurrection, with the resurrection life of Christ as the element, increasingly taking place in our inner being so that we are sanctified, which is to be saturated with God's holy nature. It is in resurrection that we are renewed, we walk in newness of life, and we serve in newness of spirit (Rom. 6:4; 7:6). The experience of God's organic salvation equals reigning in Christ's life. The issue of our reigning in life, living under the ruling of the divine life, is the real and practical Body life expressed in the church life (12:1-4, 9-12, 15, 18). 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.