Thank and praise the Lord for making us the church in Philadelphia, the church of brotherly love, which is the recovered church.
The Lord is today gaining the local churches as the procedure to bring forth and bring in the Body of Christ in reality; when He has the reality of the Body of Christ in a sufficient way expressed on earth, He can return, for the bride is prepared.
However, may the Lord save us from merely living in the local church life and not being in the reality of the Body of Christ.
In His epistle to the church in Ephesus in Rev. 2, the Lord warned them that, if they do not return to the first love and do the first works, He will come and remove the lampstand from them.
He didn’t say that the church will cease to exist; rather, if they do not return to the first love and do the first works, rejecting the works of the Nicolaitans, He will come and remove the lampstand.
The local assembly will still exist, but it will be an empty church, a church without the Lord’s testimony. Oh, Lord!
It is possible for a local church to exist yet to be empty, for the church doesn’t have the Lord’s testimony, and there’s no reality of the kingdom of the heavens in that church.
The reality of the kingdom of the heavens is the content of the church life; without the reality of the kingdom, the church is empty.
The reality of the kingdom is Christ Himself as our life; Christ as life is the essence and substance for us to live a proper church life.
It is in this life that we are built with other believers to bring in the real church life, which is a glorious expression of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God.
Because Christ is the embodiment of the Triune God, when Christ is expressed, the entire Triune God is expressed.
This expression, however, depends on whether or not the believers live a life that is in the reality of the kingdom, a reality that is fully revealed and described in Matt. 5-7.
These chapters are a complete message on the constitution of the kingdom of the heavens, and this constitution is the reality of the kingdom life. This reality is the genuine content of the church life.
May we all be those who live in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens today, taking Christ as our life and person, and being recovered back to the divine revelation in the word of God, so that we may live the genuine church life and have the Lord’s testimony.
It is of concern if the saints try to practice the church life apart from Christ; if we do this, our church life will be nothing more than a religion with its own kind of tradition. Oh, Lord!
May we be recovered back to the pure revelation in the word of God and be in reality the church of brotherly love, the recovered church, the church in Philadelphia!
The Church in Philadelphia Prefigures the Recovered Church, the Church of Brotherly Love, the Proper Church Life
In Greek the word Philadelphia means “brotherly love”; the church in Philadelphia, as seen in Rev. 3, is the church of brotherly love.
As a sign, this church prefigures the proper church life recovered by the brothers who were raised up by the Lord in England in the early part of the nineteenth century, the Brethren.
The church of brotherly love is a reaction to the dead reformed church, just as the reformed church (prefigured by the church in Sardis) was a reaction to the apostate Catholic church (prefigured by the church in Thyatira).
Each of the seven churches prefigures a stage in the history of the church, and many of these stages or prefigures still exist today; the one that follows the other is a reaction and a further recovery of the Lord from the previous stage.
The Lord has reacted in His Body through the Brethren to the degraded Protestantism and the apostate Catholicism by recovering the proper church life.
Today in the church life in the Lord’s recovery we are in the recovered church, the church of the brotherly love, and the outstanding features of the church in Philadelphia need to become our reality, practice, and experience in the church life.
We can testify today in the church life that we love the Lord, we love the saints, and we love all men, for the Lord has poured out His love into our heart, and we enjoy and express the love of God.
We can testify that we keep the Lord’s word, we want to remain in the Lord’s pure word, we treasure the divine revelation in the word of God and nothing else, and we allow the Lord’s word to dwell in us richly.
We in the church life has received the Lord’s mercy not to deny His name; we do not denominate ourselves but rather, we keep the Lord’s name, we enjoy His name, we are gathered in His name, we call His name, and His name is everything to us.
We abandon any other name and we cling to the Lord and to His name, we remain in His word and treasure His speaking, and even though we have little power, we do our best to keep His word and not deny His name.
Amen, may the Lord make this our reality, and may we remain in the pure revelation of the word of God, not deny the Lord’s name, call on His name, be filled with His love, and stand for the Lord as His testimony in this dark age today to be His overcoming ones!
Let us see more concerning a few of the specific features of the church in Philadelphia, and how can we apply this to our situation today.
The Recovered Church keeps the Lord’s Word: they have Little Power but Keep the Lord’s Word!
An outstanding feature of the church in Philadelphia is that she kept the Lord’s word (Rev. 3:8); they have little power, but they have kept the Lord’s word.
What does this mean and how does this apply to us today?
We in the recovered church need to keep the Lord’s word; we need to leave all other words and teachings and simply remain in the Lord’s word.
We need to even be strict about it, rejecting any other teachings, any winds of teaching, any different teachings, and keep only the word of the Lord.
Our basis and our focus shouldn’t be any teaching or practice but the divine revelation in the Word of God.
We may not be strong, prevailing, or powerful, but with our little power, we should simply remain the Lord’s word and keep His word.
What pleases the Lord is not that we would be strong but that we use our little power to do the best we can.
We need to eat the Lord in His word, muse on His word, and be constituted with the word of God; our daily living should be filled with the enjoyment of the Lord in His word.
Actually, the Lord Himself is embodied in His Word, and God has breathed Himself out in the word of God (2 Tim. 3:16).
Every word of God is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness so that we may become men of God filled with God as the living breath.
We can abide in the Lord only by abiding in His word.
We need to let the word of God dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16), teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our heart to the Lord.
In the recovered church life we need to come back to the pure revelation in the word of God, stick to God’s word, and pay attention to what the Lord speaks to us in His word.
This doesn’t mean that we merely memorize the word of God but rather, we learn to take the word of God by means of all prayer and petition, allowing the word to make its home in our heart, speak to us, infuse us with God, divide the soul and the spirit, and regulate our daily living from within (Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12).
What a privilege it is to abide in the Lord by abiding in His word, keeping His word, and refusing to follow any wind of teaching or different teachings!
There may be all kinds of winds of teachings blowing, and there may be so many different teachings being taught, but we come back to the word of God, remain in the Word, enjoy the Lord in His word, and lovingly seek Him in His word.
We want to have an ear to hear what the Spirit speaks to the churches, and His speaking is in His word.
We do love the life studies and the footnotes in the Recovery Version Bible, but our emphasis is the word of God which we read, enjoy, pray over, muse over, and masticate, for the word of God is what God speaks to us.
We want that the written word of God become the living word of God to us through the exercise of our spirit, and this word would be applied to us in our daily living.
May we be the recovered church who keeps the Lord’s word, remaining in the enjoyment of the Lord’s word, and not leaving the pure revelation in the word of God!
Lord Jesus, we want to keep Your word in the recovered church life today. We come to You in Your word every day to breathe You in, be infused with You, fellowship with You, bathe in Your countenance, and be saturated with Your beauty. Be so real to us in Your word. We want to read Your word, pray over Your word, muse over Your word, and abide in You by abiding in Your word. May Your word be our daily food, drink, and spiritual nourishment. May Your word operate in us to divide our soul from our spirit to make us spiritual men. Amen, Lord, we say Amen to Your word, for we keep Your word with our little power in the recovered church today!
In the Recovered Church, we do not Deny the Lord’s Name – we do Not Denominate ourselves but Keep His Name, whom we Love
The church in Philadelphia has little power, but they keep the Lord’s word and do not deny His name (Rev. 3:8). What does it mean to not deny His name?
Some think that to not deny the Lord’s name is to tell everyone that you are a Christian and, when asked or pressed about it, to say that You believe in Jesus.
But this involves much more than this.
As believers in Christ, we have been betrothed to Christ through the new covenant ministry, and we are a pure virgin to marry Christ, our Husband; we are Mrs Christ, and we need to keep only His name.
To deny the Lord’s name is to denominate ourselves with any other name besides the Lord’s name.
This is something that is widely practiced and even accepted in Christianity today.
Some pastors or theologians in Christianity even say that it was only at the beginning of the church life in Acts that the believers didn’t have any name, but that throughout the ages there has been a “development”, so we need to “live with it” today, for it is only when the Lord returns that we all “drop our names” and are His church.
There are so many names today such as Calvinism, Lutheranism, the Wesleyan church, the Baptist church, the Pentecostal church, the Anglican church, the Chinese church, the Apostolic church, the Church of God of prophecy, the Born again church, the Zion Christian church, etc.
For us to deviate from the Lord’s word is apostasy, and for us to denominate the church with any name other than the Lord’s name is spiritual fornication.
The recovered church returns to the Lord’s word in a full way and has abandoned all names other than that of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the church life in the Lord’s recovery, we are being recovered from any other name to one name: Jesus Christ.
We don’t meet in the name of this or that person, we don’t gather around this or that great teaching, and we don’t denominate ourselves as “the Witness Lee church”, “the church of Watchman Nee”, or anything else.
We don’t even call ourselves the local church as in taking this as our name; we are simply the church of God, the church of Christ, the church, exalting no other name except the name of Jesus and gathering ourselves in no other name but the Lord’s name.
We are gathered in His name, we lose sight of all but Him, and we love to call on His name.
We do not have a lot of power, but in the recovered church we keep His name, we call His name, we love His name, and we remain in His name.
On one hand, we reject any heretical teachings, and on the other hand, we remain only in the name of Jesus, keeping His name and abandoning any other names.
We have benefitted very much from the ministry of those who went ahead of us, and we appreciate and love the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, but we are not “the church of Witness Lee” – we are simply the church of Christ, keeping the Lord’s name.
And since we live in a certain locality, we take that locality as our name – the church in London, the church in Seul, the church in Birmingham, the church in Berlin, etc.
In Christianity, however, there are so many names, so many denominations; we do not condemn the believers in Christianity but we do condemn the system of denominating themselves, the teachings that they emphasize to divide themselves, and the practices that replace Christ as the unique focus.
We simply want to return to the pure word of God from all heresies and traditions, and we exalt only the Lord’s name by abandoning every other name in the recovered church.
Lord Jesus, we love You and we love Your name. We have little power, but we keep Your name and we abandon all other names. Save us from denominating ourselves by any other name but by Your name. Gather us together in Your name and according to Your word. We love the name of Jesus, the highest name in this universe. We love to call on Your name and have Your very presence. Your name is so sweet, we love to call on Your name and enjoy all that You are. Amen, dear Lord, we return to the pure word of God from all heresies and traditions, and we exalt the Lord’s name by abandoning every other name! Lord Jesus, we love Your name and we love Your Word!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msgs. 238, 412 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Vital Factors for the Lord’s Recovery of the Church Life (2021 ITERO), week 8, The Factor of Living an Overcoming Life in the Recovered Church to Consummate the Divine Economy and Become the New Jerusalem.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Hallelujah, Philadelphia, / Thine are works that please the Lord. / Strength thou hast, though just a little / And hast kept His living Word. / Thou His holy name denied not, / But confessed it here below— / Lo, a door is set before thee, / Through which none but thee can go. (Hymns #1275)
– Now Philadelphia comes at last; / That which she has she should hold fast / The brothers’ love, the name, the word; / This church has satisfied the Lord. / We as the brothers all are one; / We’re one by life, and life alone. / If we His word and name do keep / A glorious building God will reap. (Hymns #1274)
– Gathered in Thy name, Lord Jesus, / Losing sight of all but Thee, / O what joy Thy presence gives us, / Calling up our hearts to Thee! (Hymns #204)
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