LIFE-STUDY OF EZEKIEL
Message 24
THE RETURN OF THE GLORY OF GOD TO THE HOUSE
WEEK 12 - SUNDAY
Scripture Reading: Ezek. 9:3; 10:4; 11:23; 43:1-5
Read and pray: “And behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east; and His voice was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shined with His glory.” (Ezek. 43:2)
After the completion of the building of the house, the glory of the Lord returned. At the beginning of his ministry, Ezekiel had seen the glory of the Lord depart in a series of stages. First, the glory of the Lord went out from the temple and lingered at the entrance of the house (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4). From the entrance, it went out to the city.
From the city, the glory of the Lord went farther, to the Mount of Olives, on the east side of the city (11:23), and from there, the glory of the Lord ascended to the heavens.
When the Lord, in His departure, lingered at the entrance of the house, this indicated that He was not happy to leave. He did not want to go away, but He was forced to do so. Indicating His unwillingness to leave, He lingered and remained at the entrance. Eventually, He was forced to leave because of the abomination, prostitution, and degradation of the people.
But now the glory of the Lord is returning by the same way that He left. He departed from the east, and now He is coming back from the east (43:1-3).
THE GLORY RETURNED BECAUSE THE BUILDING
OF THE TEMPLE WAS COMPLETED
It is important to understand why the glory of the Lord returned. The glory of the Lord returned because the building of the temple was completed. This is the crucial point.
How the Lord desires to return to the earth! However, for His coming, He needs a place to set the soles of His feet for rest, a place upon which He can set His feet. His dwelling, His house, is the place on earth where He can set His feet.
Throughout the centuries, the enemy, in his subtlety, has kept Christians from knowing anything about the building. Christian teachers emphasize very much the matter of salvation and, to some extent, the matter of spirituality, but they rarely emphasize the matter of the building.
God’s concern is not only salvation or spirituality, but the building. For years the Lord has charged us with one thing: the building. The building is nothing other than the church.
Brother Watchman Nee was fully commissioned by the Lord with the burden for the church. I knew him very well, and I knew that he was full of burden for the church and for the building up of the church. He realized that for the building up of the church there was the need of the inner life, and the Lord gave him many messages on the inner life.
However, these messages were not released so that people could be spiritual in an individual way, but so that the church could be built up. All his messages on the inner life were for the building up of the church.
But the subtle enemy, Satan, has used some who claim to be spiritual to publish many of his messages on the inner life for use in individualistic spirituality.
Those who publish Brother Nee’s books on the inner life do not have much regard for his books on the church life. Many Christian bookstores sell “The Normal Christian Life”; “Sit, Walk, Stand”; “What Shall This Man Do?”; “Song of Songs”; and so on — all books on the spiritual life — but few sell Brother Nee’s books on the church.
They rarely sell “The Normal Christian Church Life,” “The Glorious Church,” “Additional Messages on the Church Life,” or other books by Brother Nee that have the word church in the title. Here we can see the subtlety of the enemy.
Do you believe that the Lord cares only for spirituality? Let me assure you that the Lord does not care only for spirituality; He cares for the building up of the church.
In this regard, we must expose the subtlety of the enemy. Some have said that Witness Lee is different from Watchman Nee — that Watchman Nee is for the spiritual life, but Witness Lee is too much for the church.
Brother Nee was not only for the spiritual life, but also for the church, as indicated by his books such as “Additional Messages on the Church Life,” “The Orthodoxy of the Church,” and “The Glorious Church.”
Today, the Lord is not concerned only with individual spirituality. Even if many spiritual people, such as Daniel, who had been raised up in Babylon, the glory of the Lord would not have gone there to fill him. The glory of the Lord did not return to Daniel; rather, it returned to the temple after it was rebuilt.
After the measuring of the entire building, the Spirit brought Ezekiel to the east gate, where he saw the appearance of the glory of the Lord returning. “And the appearance of the vision that I saw was like the appearance of the vision that I saw when I came to destroy the city; and the visions were like the vision that I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell upon my face.” (Ezek. 43:3)
When I first read this verse, I thought that the word “I” should be He. According to my impression, the verse should read, “When He came to destroy the city.” However, the correct translation is, “When I came to destroy the city.” It seems strange that Ezekiel would say that he came to destroy the city.
This means that when the prophet went to Jerusalem, the Lord also went. The Lord went there in Ezekiel’s going. At the beginning of his ministry, Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord leave the temple and the city; later in his ministry, he saw the glory return to the house of the Lord.
We need to be deeply impressed with the fact that the glory of God returned only after the rebuilding of the temple was completed. If we want to dwell in the church and manifest His glory in the church, the church must be completed.
If the church today corresponds to all the details of God’s holy building covered in these chapters of Ezekiel and thus is built up in every aspect, God will dwell in the glorious church. Therefore, for the glorious God to dwell in the church, the church must be built up to become the dwelling place of God.
God wants to have the church built up on the earth because He desires to have a dwelling place on the earth. He, the God of the heavens, wants to live on the earth. The place where He lives, His dwelling, is the church. Once God dwells in the church, those who want to seek God and contact Him must come to the church.
Our main burden in this study of Ezekiel is to see the dwelling place that God desires to have on the earth. If we have the grace to be built up in the church, the God of glory will live among us.
🌿Enjoy more:
Hymn: Praise the Lord - “His Exaltation”
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