In this issue of The Ministry, we include six messages from the 2002 Memorial Day Conference in Seattle, Washington, May 24-27. The general subject of this series of messages is, "A New Reviva--Living the Life of a God-man for the Reality of the Body of Christ." The following four statements summarize the burden for these messages: 1) God's economy is God becoming man that man may become God in life and in nature for the producing of the Body of Christ; 2) the reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living of conformity to the death of Christ by the power of the resurrection of Christ; 3) the Spirit is the reality of the Triune God, the reality of resurrection, and the reality of the Body of Christ; and 4) whenever we turn to our spirit and exercise our spirit, we enter into the reality of the Body, because the Body is in our spirit. Last of all, we include two reports: 1) a recent training among the young people in West Africa, and 2) recent and upcoming trainings and conferences in Russia.

In this issue of The Ministry we include six messages given during the 2001 Thanksgiving Weekend Conference in Jacksonville, Florida, November 22-25. The general subject of the conference was "The World Situation and the New Revival." The burden for this series of messages can be expressed in the following four statements: 1) in His economy, God desires to make Christ the centrality and universality of His move on earth, 2) God's ultimate move in His recovery is to work Himself into us that we may live Him out and express Him as the Body, 3) the Lord's recovery is for the preparation of the bride of Christ, who is composed of all His overcomers, and 4) the corporate Christ, Christ with His overcoming bride, will come as a stone to crush the aggregate of human government to bring in God's kingdom. Last of all, we include a report concerning a recent conference in Ghana, West Africa.

This issue of The Ministry includes the first nine messages given during the 2004 spring term of the Full-time Training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What is typified by the experiences of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is realized in the New Testament, especially in Galatians 3--6. Abraham's experiences represent the experiences of God the Father (3:8, 29), Isaac's experiences represent the experiences of the Son (4:28), and Jacob's experiences represent the work of the Spirit in discipline and transformation (cf. 5:16; 6:8; 5:22-23). The experiences of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob culminated in God's people, Israel. God's goal always was and still is to have a corporate people to express and represent Him on the earth. The existence of such a people--Israel in the Old Testament and the Israel of God in the New Testament--depends upon certain kinds of spiritual experiences had by all the people of God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the foundation of the nation of Israel. Their experiences were not merely for themselves. Their experiences were to gain a corporate people, all of whom know God and experience Him as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Last of all, we include a report concerning the 2005 Chinese-speaking perfecting conference in New Jersey.

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 contains the first and second of a series of crucial messages given by Brother Lee to the co-workers in Southern California in August 1996 concerning the principles of fruit-bearing and of shepherding the young ones in corporate living. The first principle of fruit-bearing is that it is not by mass production. The second principle of fruit-bearing as seen in John 15 is that each branch bears its own fruit. As branches of Christ, our unique responsibility is to bear fruit. Brother Lee’s burden in the second message is expressed in the following excerpt: “I want to shepherd and disciple you from the Bible so you can see this matter and have a change. I am discipling you to change your concept. The God-man concept is that Christ came to save sinners, especially the top sinners....If we lose this spirit, whether we are elders, co-workers, or serving ones, we are finished. This is the main reason why we are so barren, bearing no fruit for so many years” (p. 24). Our need is to learn of the Lord to shepherd people according to His heart of love. Love covers many sins. To uncover is not love. Covering brings in blessing, but uncovering brings in a curse. The next three messages in this issue are Messages Seven, Eight, and Nine from the Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which were given in the Living Stream Ministry’s Summer Training of 1998. Message Seven emphasizes the main point of Christ being our High Priest—He ministers God into us. Message Eight stresses the wonderful fact that Jesus as the Apostle came to us with God to share God with us that we might partake of His divine life, nature, and fullness so that we might be formed and constituted into His church, the house of the living God. The subject of Message Nine is the Sabbath rest, which is simply God’s satisfaction in His heart’s desire. When man is on earth expressing and representing God, God’s desire is satisfied. Lastly we include a report concerning the use of the Internet to spread the Lord’s ministry and a letter from the co-workers in the former Soviet Union concerning the usefulness of the training in the Lord’s move throughout the former Soviet Union.

This issue of The Ministry contains the first nine messages given during the 2006 spring term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "Knowing and Experiencing the Intrinsic Constitution of the Building of God." The building of God is the corporate expression of the processed and consummated Triune God in and through His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, renewed, sanctified, transformed, and glorified people. It is the corporate expression of the Triune God produced by the mingling of God and man and by the building of God into man and man into God. God's goal is to build up the Body of Christ to consummate the New Jerusalem, which is the consummate building of God. This glorious, consummate building has a number of outstanding characteristics. However, the highest characteristic of the building of God is that it is a personal building, that is, a person, the corporate God-man. When our Lord Jesus Christ came through incarnation to be a man, the God-man, He Himself was a building (John 1:14; 2:19, 21). The Lord Jesus Himself, as the mingling of God and man, was God's building in miniature. As an individual man, He was both the tabernacle and the temple. However, God's goal is to enlarge this individual building by multiplying Christ through death and resurrection and then working this Christ into our whole being until we are the same as He is in every way except in the Godhead. The result will be a corporate building, which is a corporate person--the bride of Christ and the wife of the Lamb. God's goal in the whole universe is to gain such a spiritual, organic, and personal building. Last of all, we include a report concerning a recent international blending conference in Accra, Ghana, West Africa.

In this issue of The Ministry, we include six messages from the Spring 2002 International Elders and Responsible Ones' training held in Anaheim, California. The general subject of the training was knowing the Body, and these six messages were on the specific topic of the principles of the Body. The remaining messages on practical fellowship concerning the function of the elders and building up the Body will be included in the next issue of The Ministry. Message One, concerning the vision of the Body, tells us that we need revelation to know the reality of the Body of Christ and to usher us into the realm of the Body. This heavenly vision includes three things: "Me," "Jesus," and "chosen vessel" (Acts 9:4-5, 15). Message Two, concerning the constitution of the Body of Christ, unveils that the Body of Christ is constituted with the Triune God and His redeemed people, with His redeemed people as the outward framework and the Triune God as the inward element. Message Three reveals three levels of the oneness of the believers: 1) in the Father's name and by the Father's divine life, 2) in the reality of the sanctifying word, and 3) in the divine glory for the expression of the processed, mingled, and incorporated Triune God (John 17:6-24). Message Four testifies that the genuine oneness of the Body of Christ is the oneness of the Spirit (Eph. 4:3). Message Five shows how the church ground is constituted of three crucial elements: 1) the unique oneness of the universal Body of Christ, 2) the unique ground of the locality in which a local church is established and exists, and 3) the reality of the Spirit of oneness. Message Six concludes this section on the principles of the Body by pointing out the blessing of life on the ground of oneness (Psa. 133). We also include a report concerning a recent conference in Armenia.

In this issue of The Ministry we include the final eight messages of "The Visions of Ezekiel concerning God's Economy" given during the 2001 fall term of the Full-time Training in Anaheim. The book of Ezekiel is composed of four main sections. The first section concerns the vision of the appearance of the Lord's glory. The next section concerns God's judgment both on His disobedient and wayward people and on the nations. The third section concerns the Lord's recovery by life. The first message of this volume deals with the vision of the throne above the clear sky. The highest point in our Christian experience and in our living as Christians in the church life is not simply to have a crystal-clear sky. We need to reach the highest point where we see the man on the throne and realize that God's goal is to have many men on the throne with Christ as the God-man. The last message of this series focuses on the last section of Ezekiel, on the vision of the holy building of God. Next to God Himself, this is perhaps the greatest matter in the Bible because it involves the totality of God's work in His economy through the ages to produce an expression of Himself. Last of all, we include a report of the first International Blending Conference in Accra, Ghana, held in March 2002.

In this issue of The Ministry we include nine messages of "The Visions of Ezekiel concerning God's Economy," given during the 2001 fall term of the Full-time Training in Anaheim. God's economy is His plan and arrangement according to the desire of His heart to dispense Himself in Christ as the Spirit into His chosen and redeemed people as their life, life supply, and everything, thereby working Himself into them to make them His corporate expression. The book of Ezekiel gives us a condensed vision of God's economy. It begins with a vision of God's glory and ends with a vision of God's building and ultimately of God's city, showing us that God's goal is the building, His corporate expression. The visions of Ezekiel are messages of God for the present age, an age in which God's people have fallen into captivity in Babylon, where they do not live in Christ properly and continually and where they do not enjoy the riches of Christ. Last of all, we include reports concerning the Lord's move in South Africa and Holland.

This is a special combined issue (June/July) of The Ministry. It contains a complete record of the messages given in Anaheim, California, during the 2002 Summer Training on the Crystallization-study of Philippians. These messages are being published immediately following the training in order that they might benefit the saints participating in the many video trainings held throughout the earth. The burden for the twelve messages given during the 2002 Summer Training on the Crystallization-study of Philippians may be summarized by four statements: 1) the Christian life is a life of living Christ for the constitution and building up of the Body of Christ; 2) we need to work out our own salvation by obeying the inner operating God; 3) we need to be conformed to the mold of Christ's death by the power of His resurrection that we may attain to the out-resurrection from the dead; and 4) the Christian life is a life full of Christ as forbearance but without anxiety. We also include two reports concerning the free mass distribution of the ministry literature and concerning the Lord's move in His recovery.