In the New Jerusalem
Christ, the Lamb, is the lamp
with God as the light in Him :
Because the divine light shines through the Redeemer,
this light has become lovable and touchable.
Through the Lamb, the redeeming One,
God’s light becomes an enjoyable shining
for His dispensing.
God as the light
is in the Lamb as the lamp :
The city of New Jerusalem
will have a particular kind of light
—the redeeming and shining God;
the redeeming God
shines as the radiant God.
The illuminating glory of God
is the light within Christ,
and the redeeming Christ
is the lamp containing the light :
God’s glory is the light of the city,
and God as the content
is contained by Christ
and shines out through Christ.
God in Christ
will be the shining light
as an enjoyment to the entire city;
the first enjoyment in the New Jerusalem
is God as our light.
In the New Jerusalem
there will be no night,
because in the holy city
God Himself will be the “sun”
that will never go down.
This may be
our experience in the church life today also;
when we open our entire being to the Lord,
we are in the light,
and the light is God Himself
to be enjoyed by us
in our daily life.
Because we have
the redeeming and shining God as the unique light,
there is no need
for natural or artificial light :
The light of the New Jerusalem
is the unique, eternal, divine light
in which the redeemed elect live and move
within the holy city :
We have the real light,
which is the source of all light;
the light is God Himself
who shines in Christ;
this is the intrinsic essence
of the New Jerusalem.
The entire New Jerusalem
will be the Holy of Holies,
and the light in the Holy of Holies
is God Himself
in His eternal glory.
According to the principle of the new creation,
we Christians have God in us as light,
and we should never try to generate our own light.
For the building up of the Body of Christ,
we need to live under the shining
of the radiant redeeming God as light
through the word of God.
Light is a ruling power
that causes all things
to be in oneness and harmony :
Light is a ruling power;
it rules when it shines :
Where there is darkness,
there is chaos,
but when light shines
with its ruling and governing,
there is order.
Where God is,
there is light shining,
and where light shines,
there is ruling power.
If in the church life
as a miniature of the New Jerusalem
we have God in Christ as the center,
we will have light,
and the first thing that light does
is to rule and keep everything in order.
When we have God as light in Christ,
we first have order and then life :
When light shines,
it also generates;
life comes from light.
When the light of God shines into us,
the life of God comes into us;
light always brings life to us.
God in Christ as the shining light
is the ruling center of the New Jerusalem :
From this light
come all the riches of life.
God is light,
and from Him
flows the river of water of life;
in this living water
grows the tree of life.
Where there is the light of God,
there are the ruling power and order,
and when there are
the ruling power and order,
there is
the generating power,
the yielding of life;
this is a picture
of the New Jerusalem.
In the new heaven and new earth
with the New Jerusalem as the center,
all things will be headed up in Christ;
this will be the complete fulfillment of Ephesians 1:10 :
In the New Jerusalem
everything will be saturated with life
and will be under light.
In Revelation 21
we see
the Head,
the Body surrounding the Head,
and all the nations
walking in the light of the city;
the whole universe
will be headed up in the light
shown through the transparent city.
The heading up in the church life
as a miniature of the New Jerusalem
is by life and light :
God’s way of recovery is
Christ versus Satan,
life versus death,
light versus darkness,
and order versus confusion.
The collapse comes from the factor of death;
the heading up comes from the factor of life.
God’s way to recover the oneness among His creation
is to impart Himself into us as life.
If we try to be headed up
without growing in life,
we will fall into organization.
In order to be delivered
from the heap of collapse
in a practical way,
we need to grow in life;
the more we grow in life,
the more we will be headed up
and rescued from the universal collapse.
When God comes into us as life,
the light of life shines within us :
This life swallows death,
and this light dispels the darkness.
If we are in the life and under the light,
we will be delivered out of confusion
and brought into order, harmony, and oneness.
When we are full of Christ as life,
we are under the light
and are controlled by the power of light.
As God is light,
so we, the children of God, are children of light,
and we are even light itself
because we are one with God in the Lord.
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Prophecy note, 3 August 2014
If a brother
is full of Christ,
through this brother’s presence
in his home,
the light of life
will shine forth
and enlighten the entire home,
enabling others
to walk by his light.
The light of life
from within him
will dispel the darkness
in his home,
and the power of life
within him
will swallow up any death.
Even if
the brothers have opinions
and are fleshly
and the sisters are not in harmony
because of their tempers,
this one brother’s presence
will be as the shining
of the New Jerusalem
and will eliminate
all the quarrels and disharmony.
The flesh will not
be able to operate,
and tempers will not
flare up.
As a result of his shining,
his entire family
will walk in the light.
Everyone will be in one accord
and headed up.
This is how God works
to bring the entire home
into the light.
When life has completely finished
its work in the church,
the church will be
the New Jerusalem.
Eventually, the nations will walk
by the light of life,
which the church has received;
however, the universe itself
will not receive the life of God.
The shining of the New Jerusalem
is the manifestation, the glory,
of the sons of God.
All the nations
will be brought into this shining,
and they will walk in this light
and be controlled by this light.
Creation will be completely released
from the slavery of corruption
and will be brought into the freedom
of the glory of the holy city.
If we are in the life and under the light,
we will be delivered
out of confusion
and brought
into order, harmony, and oneness.
As God is light,
so we, the children of God,
are children of light,
and we are even light itself
because we are one
with God in the Lord.
In the New Jerusalem
there will be no night,
because in the holy city
God Himself will be the “sun”
that will never go down.
Day 6
God needs to work Himself into us [the church] as life
so that we may be full of light
and be controlled by this light.
Then we will have the oneness, the harmony,
and this will be the real building up.
It is by this building
that God will shine out
and shine upon all creation
to bring them
out of confusion, the slavery of corruption, and vanity.
That time will be the fullness of the times.
It will be the time
that all creation will be liberated,
because death will have been swallowed up.
After the end of the coming millennial kingdom,
the ancient serpent and death
will be cast into the lake of fire.
Death will be the last enemy
to be dealt with by God.
After death is dealt with,
the universe will be full of light.
Under this light
all creation will be freed
from the slavery of corruption
and liberated from vanity
and brought into the freedom
of the glory of the sons of God,
which is the shining of the New Jerusalem.
The shining of the New Jerusalem
is the manifestation, the glory, of the sons of God.
All the nations
will be brought into this shining,
and they will walk in this light
and be controlled by this light.
Creation will be completely released
from the slavery of corruption
and will be brought into the freedom
of the glory of the holy city.
Today God is working Himself into us as life.
Therefore, we need to be dealt with,
and we need to be permeated and saturated with God.
Then we will be full of light,
and under this light
we will be controlled,
have oneness and harmony,
be built up,
and become the universal vessel
through which God will head up all things
under the shining of His Body.
God placed the city
in the center of the new universe
so that the nations might walk by its light.
Without the city,
the nations would be in darkness.
Darkness is always a sign of death;
moreover, being in death
is to be void of oneness.
When the nations walk
by the light of the New Jerusalem,
all things are one
in the light of the city.
Isaiah 2:5 says,
“House of Jacob,
come and let us walk
in the light of Jehovah,”
and 11:9 says,
“The earth will be filled
with the knowledge of Jehovah.”
The knowledge of Jehovah
is light,
and light brings everyone into oneness.
If a brother is full of Christ,
through this brother’s presence in his home,
the light of life
will shine forth
and enlighten the entire home,
enabling others to walk by his light.
The light of life from within him
will dispel the darkness in his home,
and the power of life within him
will swallow up any death.
Even if the brothers have opinions and are fleshly
and the sisters are not in harmony because of their tempers,
this one brother’s presence
will be as the shining of the New Jerusalem
and will eliminate all the quarrels and disharmony.
The flesh will not be able to operate,
and tempers will not flare up.
As a result of his shining,
his entire family will walk in the light.
Everyone will be in one accord and headed up.
This is how God works
to bring the entire home into the light.
When life has completely finished its work in the church,
the church will be the New Jerusalem.
Eventually, the nations will walk
by the light of life,
which the church has received;
however, the universe itself
will not receive the life of God.
Today in the church,
the condition of some brothers and sisters
may be compared to
the center of the new universe, the New Jerusalem,
which shines forth the life of God,
but the condition of others
may be compared to the surrounding nations,
which receive
the shining and influence of the New Jerusalem.
Day 5
In the new heaven and new earth
with the New Jerusalem as the center,
all things will be headed up in Christ.
This will be the complete fulfillment of Ephesians 1:10.
If Christ as life
is not able to shine forth from the church
to be the light of the nations,
all the things of creation
will have no way
to be headed up in Him.
When the nations walk
by the light of the city,
there will be
no harm to men and no damage to things.
At that time
the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah,
and all things will be headed up in Christ.
Because God is the source of life,
He recovers the oneness of the universe
by entering into man to be man’s life.
First, He became a man, a part of “all things”
which will be headed up in Christ.
He then imparted His life into believers,
making them the constituents of the church,
and He works in them
so that they can shine Him forth as light to all things.
Through the shining,
all things will walk in the light,
be in one accord,
and be headed up in Christ.
Hence, the condition of oneness in the universe
is altogether related to
life and death, light and darkness.
At the top of the New Jerusalem,
Christ is the Head with God in Him as the content.
From Him
flows the river of life
with the tree of life
to supply all His sons,
and the redeemed ones as the sons of God
are filled with life.
The whole city
shines out this life as light,
and the nations, representing the whole universe,
walk in the light of this city.
Because Christ is at the top of the city as the Head,
all things are headed up in Christ through the Body, the church,
which consummates in the New Jerusalem.
At that time
the entire universe
will be in harmony,
and there will be
no more death and, thus, no more darkness and no more confusion.
Within, the city is full of life,
and without, it is full of light.
The whole environment surrounding the city
will be under the regulation of this light.
Then the entire universe
will be headed up in Christ
through the church.
This will be
the full manifestation of Christ
being Head
over all things
to the church,
which is His Body.
Within the city
there is the life,
but outside the city
there is only the shining.
All the nations
are under the shining,
but they do not have the life.
The life is only in the city,
and this life is God Himself
imparted to all of His children.
By this life
they are full of light,
and this light will shine through them
to bring all creation
out of darkness, confusion, and the bondage of corruption in vanity
into the order of the manifestation of the sons of God.
In Revelation 21
we see
the Head,
the Body surrounding the Head,
and all the nations
walking in the light of the city.
This will cause the new heaven and the new earth
to be a bright sphere.
Therefore, in the new heaven and the new earth
with the New Jerusalem as the center,
all things will be headed up in Christ,
thereby fulfilling the heading up of all things in Christ
spoken of in Ephesians 1:10.
In order for this to take place,
we need the dispensing of life.
The life that is dispensed into us
eventually becomes the light of men.
In the dispensation of the fullness of the times,
all the nations will walk in the light of the city.
This means
that there will be
no death, no darkness, no corruption, and no confusion.
Instead, everything will be in order,
headed up under Christ, the unique Head,
to express the Triune God in eternity.
This heading up of all things
will be an eternal expression of the Triune God.
Today’s church life
is a foretaste of this.
It is a miniature of
the new heaven, the new earth, and the New Jerusalem.
As those in the miniature,
we are enjoying the dispensing of life with light,
and we are being headed up in Christ.
Day 4
Where life is,
there light is also.
John 1:4 says,
“In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men.”
This light is the light of life.
In Revelation 21
we have both life and light.
Because the New Jerusalem is saturated with light,
it has no need for the light of the sun.
In the New Jerusalem
we will have
the glory of the Triune God
as our shining light.
In the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem,
there will be no night, no death, and no darkness.
Instead, there will be life and light.
This will cause everything
to rise up and be in good order.
Life regulates,
and light controls.
In the church life
we do not have regulations,
but we do have
the regulating life and the controlling light.
When the church is full of life,
it is also full of light.
Then everyone in the church
is regulated by the inward life,
not by outward rules,
and everyone is controlled and kept in order
by the light of life.
Here in life and in light,
we are headed up.
God in Christ
is the center of the New Jerusalem
as the divine vessel.
We may also say
that Christ as the expression of God
is the center of this divine corporate vessel.
In the picture of the New Jerusalem,
the invisible God is likened to light
that shines with glory.
When light shines,
it does a work.
Light is a ruling power;
it rules when it shines.
Darkness, on the other hand,
brings in confusion and disorderliness without any rule.
In order to destroy a government,
one must first throw everything in it into darkness.
If all the lights in a major city
were to go out,
the whole city would be in darkness,
and there would be robbery, looting, and killing.
When the lights come back on, however,
there is the ruling and governing,
and order is restored.
In the six days of God’s creation for restoration,
the first thing restored was light.
When God divided the light from the darkness,
light came in to rule.
Where God is,
there is light shining,
and where God shines,
there is the ruling power.
If we have the presence of God in the church,
we have light,
we are in the light of God,
we are in God as light,
we are under the light of God,
and all of us are ruled.
All confusion is subdued,
and all things are brought into order.
If there is confusion among us,
it means that we do not have God as light
and that we are in darkness.
Today the church
is a miniature of the New Jerusalem.
In this smaller New Jerusalem,
if we have God as the center in Christ,
we have the light,
and the first thing light does
is (to) rule and keep everything in order.
When light shines,
it also generates.
Life comes from light.
When the light of God shines into us,
the life of God comes into us.
Light always brings life to us.
When we have God as light,
we first have order
and then life.
We can see this in Genesis 1.
On the first day
when light came in,
there was a dividing,
and the keeping of order began.
Before light came in,
everything was in chaos.
After light came in,
light was divided from darkness,
and things began to be kept in order.
After this,
the waters below
were divided from the waters above,
and life came out of this order.
If there is the light of God,
there are the ruling power and order,
and if there are the ruling power and order,
there is
the generating power, the yielding of life.
All kinds of lives
came out
because of the light.
This is
the picture in the New Jerusalem.
God is the ruling center of the New Jerusalem
as the shining light.
From this light
come all the riches of life.
God is light,
and from Him
flows the river of water of life,
and in this living water
grows the tree of life.
Day 3
The light of the holy city
is the unique, eternal, divine light
in which the redeemed elect live and move within the city.
In the whole universe
there are only three kinds of light.
First, there is the natural light,
the sun and the moon, created by God.
Then there is the artificial light
made by man.
Third, there is the real light, the genuine light,
which is God Himself.
Revelation tells us
that in the New Jerusalem
we do not need
the natural light of the moon and the sun
or any artificial light.
This is because we have the real light,
which is the source of all the light.
This light is God
who shines within Christ
and is diffused over all the nations.
In the ancient times
the outer court of the tabernacle was lit
by the sun during the day and by the moon at night,
and the Holy Place was lit
by the lampstand.
In the Holy of Holies, however,
there was no sun, no moon, and no lampstand.
The light in the Holy of Holies
was God Himself in His eternal glory.
In the same way,
the holy city in eternity future
will have no need of the sun or of the moon
because God Himself will be the light.
This indicates
that the entire city of the New Jerusalem
will be the Holy of Holies.
As we have seen,
the measurements of the city in three dimensions also
prove that the city is the Holy of Holies.
Besides the New Jerusalem,
the Holy of Holies in both the tabernacle and the temple
is the only structure in the entire Scriptures
that is equal in three dimensions.
Similarly, the Holy of Holies
is the only other place
where there is need of no light other than God.
This shows
that in eternity
the holy city
will be the Holy of Holies.
In the New Jerusalem
God Himself in Christ
will be everything to us.
The Triune God
will also be our light
to enlighten us.
Here we have the intrinsic essence
of the New Jerusalem.
Today we Christians
actually have
God Himself within Christ as our light.
We do not need philosophy, the human-made light,
and we do not need ethical teachings, such as those of Confucius.
We do not need any kind of religious teaching
because we have God Himself within us.
We do not need someone
to tell us to love our parents,
for we have a divine light in us
all day long shining within us
to let us know
that we should honor our parents.
We need to realize, however,
that Paul tells us
to honor our father and mother.
If all Christians have God as the light within them,
why does the New Testament still teach many things?
In Ephesians 5:22 through 6:9
Paul unveils the kind of living
needed in ethical relationships.
These charges are not given
in the first chapter of Ephesians
but in the last two chapters.
Before giving us this kind of teaching,
Paul says in Ephesians 5:14,
“Therefore He says,
Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
The New Testament
first reveals
not the teaching
but the divine light.
Because we are still in the old creation,
we may need this teaching.
In the New Jerusalem, however,
there will be nothing old and no teaching.
If we care for
the new creation and the inner anointing all the time,
there will be no need of teaching.
Because we are in the old creation,
we may need teaching
to remind us
to awaken from our sleep.
Psalm 119:130 says
that the opening, or entrance, of God’s Word
gives light.
Day by day
we need to enter into the holy Word.
Then we will see and be in the light,
which is God Himself
through His Word.
Therefore, we should not realize or do anything
according to our natural ability
or according to the education we have received.
We have God as our unique light
to apply to our life.
Day 2
Just as light cannot be separated from a lamp,
so God can never be separated from Christ.
Light is one with the lamp.
Likewise, God is the light,
and Christ as the Lamb
is the lamp.
They cannot be separated;
They are two in one.
Without the Lamb, Christ as the redeeming One,
we can never come to touch, to contact, God as light
since we are so sinful and in darkness.
Because no one can stand before God in His light,
we need redemption;
that is, we need the Lamb.
It is only by redemption and by the blood
that we can come to contact God.
First John 1 says
that God is light
and that when we come to fellowship with Him,
we are in the light.
Then when we are in the light,
we see how sinful we are;
hence, we need the blood of Jesus
to cleanse us.
We can testify of this
from our experience.
Whenever we contact God as light,
we have the sense
that we need
redemption, the redeeming blood of the Lord and the Lord as the Lamb.
Christ as the Lamb, the redeeming One,
is the Mediator between God and man.
Through Him and in Him
we can contact God,
and in Him and through Him
God can reveal Himself to us.
Today
God as light
is in the Lamb, the redeeming One,
and in eternity
Christ will still be the Lamb
in whom God as light will be experienced by us.
Just as the light is in the lamp
and is one body with the lamp,
so God is in Christ
and is one body with Christ.
God is the content of Christ,
and Christ is the expression of God.
Christ and God
are one.
In eternity
the Lamb as the lamp
will shine with God as the light
to illuminate the New Jerusalem
with the glory of God,
which glory is the expression of the divine light.
In the New Jerusalem
the Triune God
is not only our light
but also our lamp.
If we have light without a lamp,
the light is not properly formed.
We may illustrate this by electricity.
Electricity produces light,
but the light is in a light bulb.
Without a light bulb,
the electricity by itself
might harm us.
In Revelation
the Lamb is the redeeming person,
and this Redeemer is the lamp.
The Lamb as the lamp
is altogether for expression.
The entire New Jerusalem
is under the expression of Christ the person as the lamp.
We may liken the lamp to a big bulb
which is able to enlighten a city
whose breadth, length, and height are vast.
Such a large entity
has only one lamp,
which is Christ.
God the Father as the light
needs a lamp;
without an adequate lamp or bulb,
an electrical light
will not shine
in an enlightening way.
In like manner,
without Christ the Lamb being the lamp,
God could not shine
in an enlightening way.
If God did not shine,
we would not be able to see
His golden, divine nature.
The Son, being the Lamb in His person,
is the lamp to express all
that the Father is
as the light
and as the source of the divine riches.
All the divine riches
are embodied in this lamp.
We may say
that a light bulb is the embodiment of the electrical light,
that is, the embodiment of the electrical “riches.”
Because we are under the shining of the Son
as the embodiment of all the divine riches,
we can enjoy these riches.
The light establishes and confirms us
in our experience of the Triune God.
Our Triune God
is our lamp, our light,
and He shines within us
through the lamp.
This is our present experience
and will be the coming New Jerusalem.
The holy city
will be the consummation of all
that we have experienced for so many years.
It will be
an intensification and a consummation
of our present experience.
The New Jerusalem
will not be something new to us in eternity future
if we are now experiencing it.
Day 1
The New Jerusalem will have
a particular kind of light
—the redeeming and shining God.
The redeeming God shines
as the radiant God.
The illuminating glory of God
is the light within Christ,
and the redeeming Christ
is the lamp
containing the light.
God is always contained in Christ;
He is the unique container of God.
God’s glory is the light of the city,
and God is contained by Christ
as the content,
shining out through Christ.
In the Bible
darkness is a form of punishment.
God punished the Egyptians
with a thick darkness for three days,
and in the future
God will punish Antichrist and his kingdom
with darkness.
Part of the enjoyment in the New Jerusalem
is that there will be no night.
The city will be full of light,
and this light is God the Father.
He will be
not only the nature of the New Jerusalem
but also the shining light
as an enjoyment to the entire city.
The first enjoyment in the New Jerusalem
is God as our light.
Our experience today
is the same.
When we are left in darkness,
that is a real punishment.
When we open our entire being to Him, however,
we are in the light,
and the light is God Himself
enjoyed by us in our daily life.
In the New Jerusalem
there will be no night,
for “night will be no more”.
In the new heaven and new earth
there will still be the distinction
between day and night,
but in the New Jerusalem
there will be no such distinction.
Outside the city
there will be night,
but within the city
there will be no night
because we will have
an eternal divine light,
that is, God Himself.
For the believers,
there will be no night
because in the holy city
God Himself will be the “sun”
that will never go down.
Revelation 21:11 and 23 tell us
that the New Jerusalem has the glory of God
and that her light is
like a most precious stone,
as a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
In the New Jerusalem
Christ, as the lamp of the holy city,
will shine
with God within as the light
to illumine the city
with the glory of God, the expression of the divine light.
The glory of God, which is God expressed,
illumines the New Jerusalem.
Hence, the glory of God,
with God as its substance, essence, and element,
is the light of the New Jerusalem
which shines in the Lamb as its lamp.
The expressed glory of God,
or the God of glory expressed,
is the light shining in Christ as the lamp
through the jasper wall of the New Jerusalem
like the most precious jasper,
which bears God’s appearance
rich in life.
In 21:23 we see
that God is the light
and Christ is the lamp.
This indicates
that God and the Lamb are one light.
God is the content,
and the Lamb, Christ, is the light-bearer, the expression.
This means
that God who is the light
will shine in Christ as the lamp
throughout the city.
This is a matter of the divine dispensing,
for the shining of the divine light
is actually the dispensing
of the processed Triune God into the believers.
God, the divine light,
needs a lamp.
Without the Lamb being the lamp,
God’s shining would kill us.
However, with the redeeming Christ as the lamp,
the divine light does not kill us
but instead illumines us.
First Timothy 6:16 says
that God dwells in unapproachable light.
In Christ, though, God becomes approachable.
Because the divine light shines through the Lamb, the Redeemer,
it has become lovable and touchable.
Through the Lamb as the lamp
God’s light becomes an enjoyable shining
for God’s dispensing.