Page 9 - The Christian Life and the Church Life_Government of God
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                                  Message 1
                     The Universal Government of God

            By the will of God and by His sovereign authority, with His grace, He
        gives me the privilege and the blessing to be with you again to seek the Lord
        together, to learn whatever He has in His heart for us during this time. It
        has been a few years since I had been here; but the Philippines, with all the
        churches and all the saints, have always remained deep in my heart. The Lord
        has assigned to us the general subject of the training, “The Christian Life
        and the Church Life under the Government of God.” This is a very particular
        emphasis and a very particular way of viewing our Christian life and our
        church life. As we will go on to see, we are viewing this and considering
        this from the perspective of the government of God in the universe. In this
        opening word, I want to try my best to lay the foundation in truth so that we
        are clear based upon the divine revelation concerning what the government
        of God is.
            We start with eleven points I wrote down for myself; and I hope you could
        take them in. Writing down will help you understand something which is, for
        almost all of us, something quite new. In the universe created by God, God
        Himself has two systems. The first is what we call the system of grace; we
        have properly been experiencing this, enjoying this, receiving blessing from
        this since the moment we were saved. The system of grace is God’s complete
        arrangement for us to be redeemed from the fall, to be saved judicially and
        organically, to be reconciled to God, to have our sins forgiven and forgotten,
        to be born of God to be His children in life and nature, to be a new creation
        in Christ. Everything related to the Christian life from the moment we are
        regenerated until we are mature and ready to be raptured is altogether a matter
        of God’s grace. But there is another system. It is separate from the system of
        grace but they work together, and that is God’s government.
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