Page 132 - The Christian Life and the Church Life_Government of God

The Recovery of the Church as the Israel of God 131

belongs to you as it belongs to God and to Christ. There is no verse that says
“the church of the workers” or “the church of the ministering brothers.”

Our responsibility is to set forth the principles, so I do feel I must follow
the Lord in this matter to point out something I’ve never heard in the 53 years
I’ve been here. When I heard it, I thought, “This is a joke, you must not be
serious. Workers placing a quarantine on a whole church? This is ridiculous!”
Eventually you might quarantine the whole recovery in your country, only
you and your sectarian followers, and the criterion is: if you do not agree
with us, we mark you out, and we will warn the saints to not go. There is
no such thing in the Bible, in spiritual reality, in the kingdom of God, in
God’s economy, in the Lord’s recovery, as quarantining a church. I do not
need to repeat because our Brother Mark clearly presented that this is a very
grave matter. When we took action a number of years ago regarding a certain
person, it was after many years of attempts and fellowships to resolve the
matter, and it involved blending co-workers in the entire earth in one accord.
It was a Body matter.
Now, as Mark pointed out, messages seven and eight are based fully on
the first six messages. In other words, if we live the Christian life under the
government of God and practice the church life under the government of
God, there will be a twofold issue.
The first is building. This will bring us into a situation where we will
desire to absorb the pure milk of the Word to become “stonized” believers
to be built up into God’s spiritual house. The more we live under God’s
government with His blessing and provision, and the more our church is
under God’s government, the more growth in life there would be, and the
more building there will be.
Now in message eight is a second issue, and this will be very new to
many of us, that is, the recovery of the church as the Israel of God. Let us
admit that we are learners here. Even this expression Israel of God, which is
found in Galatians 6, and is used along with the expression the household of
the faith is something we are not familiar with. The main idea is this – the
Israel of God, that real Israel, composed of all believers, Jews or Gentiles,
are becoming a corporate entity to carry out God’s government and kingdom
rule on the earth.