God uncovered His universal divine government with respect to His eternal economy to the trainees of the Full-time Training in Malabon (FTTM) together with the co-workers from Regions I-V1 during the video training on the Crystallization-study of 1 and 2 Peter and Jude, held on February 5-8, 2008 at the fifth floor meeting hall of the church in Malabon. The crystals embedded in the epistles of Peter and Jude revealed a balance view of how God in His divine government accomplishes His eternal economy. God’s up-to-date burden and the crucial truth came into life in the 12 messages. Below are the deep impressions of the surpassing richness of the present truth as unveiled in every message.

Message 1: Living a Christian Life under the Government of God

The human life is full of suffering as 1 Peter 4:12-13 say, “Beloved, do not think that the fiery ordeal among you, coming to you for a trial, is strange, as if it were a strange thing happening to you; But inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice exultingly.” The believers are God’s chosen race, His particular possession, living a life with the highest goal—the New Jerusalem. Along with the enjoyment of Christ as life inwardly, believers are made sorrowful because they suffer the Father’s daily judgment in our environment (1 Pet. 1:17) so that they are purified, transformed, renewed, conformed, sonized, Christified, and deified in life and nature. The first epistle of Peter helped the believers to learn that the Christian life is under the government of God. His government is universal, absolute, and deals with all His creatures. God begins His governing from His own house (1 Peter 1:17). His government is also carried out by His righteous judgments. God governs by judging every thing that does not match His government so that the believers would eventually match up with what He is. The believers though now a new creation, holy children with a holy Father, but the old creation in them still does not match Him. Thus, God’s administrating hand comes to rid of their unholiness and unrighteousness by saturating and permeating them with Himself so that they in time become like Him in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Thus, believers should pass the time of their sojourning in holy fear, in a healthy, serious caution leading them to be holy in all manner of life. According to Hebrews 12, God the Father disciplines the believers that they may partake of His holiness. Christ, the Burden-bearer, enables them to take God’s governmental dealings administered through sufferings. Such a vision would perfect, strengthen, establish, and ground the suffering believers (5:10) that they grow unhindered in grace (2 Pet. 3:18).

Message 2: The Economy of God in 1 and 2 Peter

The subject of 1 and 2 Peter is God’s government, but this is not the central focus and basic structure of these epistles. The second epistle of Peter showed that there is the divine provision as God carries out His divine government. As the believers suffer, they have the divine provision to carry out His will. Everything that concerns God’s government should bring them back to the central focus and basic structure, i.e., the Triune God as their full enjoyment. The energizing Triune God operates in His economy to accomplish His complete salvation in the believers from being regenerated, feeding on His word causing them to grow, experiencing transformation, and being built up to give Him a dwelling place and to express Him. God is governing and supplying whatever the believers’ need. The human spirit and God’s Spirit are the means to partake of God, in His divine nature, as their portion. (1 Pet. 1:2-3, 5, 11; 2:1-3, 5, 9; 3:4; 4:14; 5:10; 2 Pet. 1:4.). Regardless of the environment and situation, believers are not to be distracted from this central focus—the all-inclusive Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God, who dispenses Himself through the redemption of Christ and by the operation of the Holy Spirit into His redeemed people as their unique portion of life and as their life supply and everything. This is altogether for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ, consummating in the full expression, the fullness, of the Triune God.

Message 3: The Operation of the Triune God

The Triune God passed through a process for the believers and became everything to them that they may partake of Him, in His full salvation, for their enjoyment (1 Pet. 1:18-20, 3). The Triune God operates in threefold ways—the Father’s choosing, the Spirit’s sanctifying, and the Son’s redeeming (1 Pet. 1:2-3). Even before the foundation of the world, God the Father chose the believers in Christ according to His foreknowledge. In eternity past, God already approved the believers, appreciated them, possessed them, and ordained them (v. 2, 20) through the sanctification of the Spirit. The Spirit’s sanctification occurred even before the believers’ redemption. In Luke 5:8-10, the woman signifies the Spirit. Her work of sweeping the house signifies the work before the sinner’s salvation. The sinner wanders in the world. But one day, the sinner heard the word of the gospel. The Spirit was already working through the Word, which is the lamp. The woman signifying the Spirit lit that lamp and started sweeping until she found the lost “coin.” Yet through the Spirit’s sweeping, sanctifying work, the sinner had come to himself, repented, and turned to God. Thus, the Spirit’s sanctification resulted in the participation of the sinner in the sprinkling of the Savior’s blood and which is the application of redemption. Thus, the sinner was washed, forgiven, justified, and reconciled to God. The sprinkling of Christ’s redeeming blood brings the sprinkled believers into the blessing of the new covenant with four main items, namely: the forgiveness of sins, a new heart and a new spirit, the inner law of life written in the heart, and God being their God and they becoming His people. His blood ushered them into such an enjoyment. Now they belong to Him and enjoy His full salvation, starting from regeneration unto glorification.

Message 4: The Full Salvation of the Triune God and the Full Salvation of Our Souls

Simon Peter’s utterances regarding salvation did not come merely from his knowledge, but mainly from his own experience. In Matthew 16:16, Peter was the one who received the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Then the Lord said, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). Later, however, when Jesus unveiled to them His crucifixion and resurrection (v. 21), Peter reacted naturally in rebuking the Lord and was rebuked in return by the Lord saying, “Get behind Me, Satan!” Peter’s soul was actually attacking Christ and the church. The Lord Jesus then spoke very boldly to all the disciples, saying, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (v. 24); and “For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake shall find it” (v. 25). Through this experience, Peter never forgot the Lord’s speaking concerning the denying and saving of the soul.

The epistles of Peter are filled with the operation of the Triune God, which produces the full salvation, composed of the Father’s regeneration, the Spirit’s application, and the Son’s redemption (1 Pet. 1:2-3, 5, and 9). The full salvation of the Triune God comprises many items in three stages: regeneration of the human spirit, transformation of the soul, and glorification of the body. First Peter 1:5 reveals the full salvation, where the soul is saved from the dispensational punishment of the Lord’s governmental dealing at His coming back. To lose the soul-life means to lose the enjoyment of the soul, and to save the soul-life means to preserve the soul in its enjoyment. If believers pay the price in this age by losing their soul-life now for the Lord’s sake, they will save it at His coming back. Today, the Lord needs those who are consumed and occupied with His satisfaction and pleasure over their own soulish enjoyment. The gaining of the soul will be the reward of the kingdom to the overcoming followers of the Lord (Heb. 10:35; Matt. 16:22-28).

Message 5: Life and Building in 1 and 2 Peter

The central thought of Peter’s epistles and of the entire Scriptures is life and building. Life is for building. Life is God Himself in Christ as the Spirit dispensing Himself into the believers for their enjoyment. Building is the church, the Body of Christ, God’s spiritual house, as the enlargement and expansion of God for the corporate expression of God (Gen. 2:8-9, 22; Matt. 16:18; Col. 2:19; Eph. 4:16). Life is God’s means to reach His goal of building. As life to the believers, Christ is the incorruptible seed. For God’s building, He is the living stone (1 Pet. 1:23; 2:4), the foundation stone (Isa. 25:16), the cornerstone (Acts 4:11, Eph. 2:20), the topstone of grace (Zech. 4:7), the stone of stumbling to the unbelieving Jews (1 Pet. 2:7-8), and the smiting stone (Dan. 2:34-35). Before believers were saved, they were just clay-men. But after they got saved, they became living stones, God-men, stone-men, Christ’s duplication through regeneration and transformation. Since God’s building is living; it is growing. The actual building up of the church as the house of God is by the believers’ growth in life (Eph. 2:21). In order to grow in life for God’s building, believers must love the Lord, take heed to their spirit, and guard their heart with all vigilance to stay on the pathway of life (1 Pet. 1:8; Deut. 10:12; Mark 12:30). For Christ’s life to be unhindered within, they must experience the dealing of the cross, the killing death of Christ in the all-inclusive Spirit as the Spirit of glory, so that the obstacles within can be dealt with and removed. These obstacles are (1) not knowing the pathway of life and not taking Christ as life, (2) hypocrisy, (3) rebellion, and (4) natural capabilities. Thus, believers need to be nourished with the guileless milk of the word, receiving the word by means of all prayer and petition and muse on His word throughout the day (1 Pet. 2:2; Eph. 6:17-18; Psa. 119:103.) By feeding on Christ, in the way of digesting and assimilating the word, believers grow unto maturity through transformation for God’s building.

Message 6: Becoming a Reproduction of Christ and Being Holy in All Our Manner of Life

Man’s entire tripartite being should become the reproduction of Christ as the model as exhorted by the apostle in 1 Peter 2:21 which says, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered on your behalf, leaving you a model so that you may follow in His steps.” As a man, the Lord Jesus, the God-man, lived absolutely under God’s government and continuously in the Father’s dispensing through the word. In order to become a reproduction of Christ, believers need to be in Him by being in the mingled spirit experientially. To follow in His steps is inward and organic. Christ is deeply related to the believers’ inner being (Gal. 1:16; Col. 3: 10-11). The first God-man who is now the pneumatic Christ lives again today. Ephesians 4:20-21 illustrated the believers’ threefold experience of Him, such as learning Christ, hearing Christ, and being taught in Him. The more believers are in Him, the more they will learn Him, hear Him, and be taught in Him. He, as the Spirit, teaches the believers concerning Himself as well as how He lives and how He lives again in them. It is not God’s intention that believers try to imitate Christ by their own effort as their outward pattern. What is needed is not imitation but reproduction (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18). Believers just enjoy Him as grace in the midst of sufferings and He, as the indwelling Spirit, reproduces Himself within them making their manner of life an expression of the Triune God, and they will be holy in all their manner of life (1 Pet. 1:15).

Message Seven: Grace in 1 and 2 Peter

The two epistles of Peter also speak at length about grace—the only way by which believers can live and sustain their Christian life under God’s governmental sufferings and dealings. Grace is a person—God is the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit for the believers’ enjoyment. He has given Himself freely, being everything to them, and doing everything in them, and for them. Whatever the believers need, He is. But grace never comes to those who complain and murmur; it comes to a lover of God as Ephesians 6:24 says, “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptibility.”

A big truth and revelation in God’s New Testament economy is the grace of God being surpassingly rich (Eph. 2:7), superabounding (1 Tim. 1:14), multiplying (1 Pet. 1:2, 2 Pet. 1:2), varied (1 Pet. 4:10), and all-sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9). In sufferings, persecutions, limitations, and weaknesses, this grace awaits to multiply as God is added and increased organically in the believers. Believers are still wretched in some areas yet grace has been saving and transforming the wretched ones. God is the God of all grace who has called the believers into His eternal glory to perfect, establish, strengthen and ground them through their sufferings (1 Pet. 5:10). Day by day, believers just need to gird themselves with humility toward one another that we can be the continual recipients of grace not only for this age but even until the New Jerusalem—the final product and ultimate exhibition of God’s grace for eternity.

Message Eight: The Christian Life and Its Sufferings

Suffering is something that all men face in the old creation (1 Pet. 1:6, footnote 2). As believers sojourning on this earth, they are still living in the old creation. Thus, sufferings are inevitable and unavoidable that under the mighty hand of God (1 Pet. 5:6) and in the day of His visitation (2:12) believers can be established and strengthened. Suffering is according to the will of God (4:19) and common to all believers (4:12) who are called to suffer (2:20-21). In suffering, believers should have the mind of Christ—the way Christ understands and realizes things (4:1). The purpose and goal of suffering is for God to prove and try the believers’ faith (1:6-7) and for them to follow the steps of Christ in His suffering for doing good (2:20-21). Sufferings are also used to arm the believers with a mind against the flesh that they may live not in the flesh but in the will of God (4:1-2); allowing them to share the sufferings of Christ and to rejoice at the revelation of His glory (4:12-14). In so doing, the sufferings become the means for them to be made witnesses of the sufferings of Christ (5:1). Sufferings also perfect, establish, strengthen, and ground the believers for the eternal glory into which God has called them (5:8-10). Moreover, 1 Peter also pointed out that not every kind of suffering will achieve God’s purpose for the believers. The wrong kinds of suffering are those which resulted from sin (2:20), doing evil (3:17), and meddling into others’ affairs (4:15). On the contrary, the right kinds issue from being treated unjustly (2:10), doing good (2:20, 3:17), not reviling in return (2:23), because of righteousness (3:14), and because of the name of Christ (4:14). The believers must be bold to magnify Christ that through dealings and sufferings they continually enjoy the abundance of His grace to live a holy and excellent manner of life glorifying God in His name.

Message Nine: The Supreme Preciousness of Christ in 1 and 2 Peter

Christ is not only precious but preciousness itself (1 Pet. 2:7a) for Christ is the supreme preciousness of God. The word precious means “of great value” that is not to be wasted or treated carelessly but is greatly and supremely loved, cherished, or treasured. Peter uses this word five times in his Epistles—precious stone (2:4, 6:7), precious blood (1:19), precious promises (2 Pet. 1:4), precious faith (2 Pet. 1:1), and precious proving of faith (1 Pet. 1:7). First, Christ as God’s precious stone is with seven eyes (Zech. 3:9) that whenever believers turn their hearts to Him and gaze on Him in their spirit, He infuses them with all His stone nature for God’s building. Second, the precious blood of Christ not only redeems believers from sins and lawlessness but saves them from their vain manner of life. Thus, believers are now on the pathway of being made holy as God is that they become the holy city, the New Jerusalem. Third, the precious promises are simply for them to pray-read, muse on, and eat so that they become partakers and enjoyers of the divine nature. Fourth, faith here has two aspects—subjective which is our believing ability, and objective which is the truth and item of the faith. The believers are likened to a camera, the objective faith to the scenery, and the “click” of the camera as the means to have the subjective faith. When believers look away to Jesus and behold Him, Christ as the life-giving Spirit being the click of faith shines into their spirit, making the scenery of Christ enters into their being to be their subjective reality. This is their precious faith. Finally, the trials and sufferings that caused believers to enjoy Christ are simply the precious proving of their faith, which will eventually consummate in their entering into the joy of the Lord in the kingdom age.

Message Ten: Partakers of the Divine Nature and the Development of the Divine Life and the Divine Nature for a Rich Entrance into the Eternal Kingdom

In the believers’ spiritual experience, they become partakers of the divine nature. A partaker is an enjoyer, and the divine nature refers to what God is, that is, the riches, the elements, and the constituents of God’s being. Hallelujah that God in His economy has come to the believers and has qualified them to enter into God Himself to enjoy Him to the uttermost! To progress spiritually is just to enjoy God. Since believers are destined to enjoy God for eternity, they should begin by enjoying Him today. As believers partake, they experience the development of the divine life and nature within. Believers have been allotted the wonderful equally precious faith, which is an all-inclusive seed where all the divine riches are; but they must be diligent to develop them. The full cooperation with the energizing Triune God will cause the divine riches to develop and mature from the seed of faith, through the roots of virtue and knowledge, the trunk of self-control, and the branches of endurance and godliness, to the blossom and fruit of brotherly love and love (2 Pet. 1:5-7). Finally, this development becomes the believers’ entrance into the eternal kingdom. The bountiful supply that they enjoy in the development of the divine life and divine nature will bountifully supply them a rich entrance into the coming kingdom unto the splendid glory of God.

Message Eleven: The Present Truth and the Way of the Truth

The present truth is being established into the believers (2 Pet. 1:12) and they should not be those “of whom the way of the truth will be reviled” (2:2). The present truth is the truth that is present with the believers, which they have already received and now possess. In every age of the Lord’s move, there is a present truth for that particular time. Thus, although there are many major and crucial truths in the Bible, believers need to know God’s present truth for them to be in the Lord’s present move today.

The way of the truth is the path of the Christian life according to the present truth. Deviation from this right track is called apostasy. It was because of such deviation that the church became degraded. Apostasy has been creeping in subtly; the second Epistle of Peter was written in a time of church’s degradation and apostasy. These dark conditions continue until today. The four main groups of apostasy are the following: (1) the Simonians who wanted to buy the power of the Spirit with money, (2) the Cerinthians who taught a mixture of Judaism, Gnosticism, and Christianity, (3) the Docetists who taught that Jesus was not a real man but only a phantom, and (4) Modernism, which is the biggest apostasy today, “de-Christianizes” people with the anti-God system of teachings couched in flowery academic terms, prevalent among most exclusive universities.

Hallelujah that the Lord has a recovery! His recovery always begins with the recovery of the truth as the base, the foundation, and the pillar of life and its experiences among the believers. Believers need to be clear that God’s truth in His recovery is progressive where each subsequent truth builds upon the previous truths recovered. It is also cumulative or all-inclusive wherein each further seeing of the truth does not negate any earlier seeing. Today, the Lord’s recovery has been standing upon the shoulders of brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee and all those whom the Lord used to fully recover the lost truths ages after ages. What a privilege that we are not only seeing justification by faith at the onset but seeing it into eternity, the full revelation of the New Jerusalem, the ultimate consummation of that faith. May the Lord’s divine power and divine provision continue to inoculate us, fighting the battle for the present, all-inheriting and all-inclusive truth and to uphold the absoluteness of the truth.

Message Twelve: Contending for the Faith, Enjoying the Blessed Trinity, and Taking the Way of Rapture by Giving Heed to the Prophetic Word

The book of Jude exhorted the believers to earnestly contend for “the faith” which is the objective faith as their belief (Jude 1-3). The Christian faith is composed of their belief concerning the Bible, God, Christ, the work of Christ, salvation, and the church. All real Christians should not have any disputes about these items. Jude 24 and 25 presented a beautiful doxology of praise to the Lord, for the culmination of His economy in dispensing Himself into the believers. The precious God, who is embodied in Christ, realized as the Spirit, and dwelling in the believers’ spirit, is able to guard them from stumbling. Praise the Lord! For this, believers need to exercise their faith to say Amen to His word. Moreover, for the believers to enjoy Him who guards them from stumbling, they need to cooperate with Him through the following eight points, namely: (1) committing themselves to His guarding; (2) having faith in God’s guarding power; (3) praying every day to be kept from the evil one; (4) being diligent to make our calling and selection firm by advancing every day in the growth in life; (5) talking with Him, consulting and conferring with Him, regarding everything; (6) growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; (7) guarding ourselves from idols; and, (8) having the protection and supply of the Body.

As believers are contending for the faith, enjoying the Blessed Trinity, and taking the way of rapture by giving heed to the prophetic word, their trust is in the precious Lord and God as the One who is able to guard them from stumbling and to set us before His glory without blemish in exultation. We give all our praise to Him—“To the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, might, and authority before all time and now and unto all eternity. Amen!” (Jude 25).

Alexa Elimanco
Razel Flores