God’s Eternal Purpose Being Realized through the Local Churches

To Gain a Corporate Body

Witness Lee observes that in the local churches God is gaining a corporate Body for Christ’s expression, and a corporate new man to carry out His will. It is not individual spiritual Christians, but believers built together practically in Christ in the local churches that express this great, universal new man.

We individual believers have been created into one new man. We must be impressed with such a vision so that we could never be independent. We cannot be independent because we all are part of this great, universal new man. God does not want millions of individual Christians. What God wants is a corporate man. All the local churches on this earth are not only the Body of Christ for His expression but also the one new man on this earth to carry out God’s will. The local churches cannot be independent from one another. If they were independent from one another, the one new man would be cut into pieces and death would be the result. We must see the awful result of the wrong teaching that the local churches are autonomous.

(Witness Lee, Body of Christ, 22-23)

Witness Lee explains above that the way God gains His corporate body is by His believers gathering together to meet as the local church in their respective localities. There must be a practical expression on earth of the mystical Body of the Son of God. God is gaining this expression in the local churches today.

In God’s plan, He desires to have a Body for His Son in the universe. Yet in a practical way, God desires those who are part of this Body to become churches in the different localities. God desires that each one of these churches be a miniature and a representation, in the different localities, of the mystical Body of the Son of God.

(Witness Lee, Elders’ Management, 11)

God’s Purpose

Corporate Body

Displaying God’s Wisdom

Satan’s Defeat

Expressing God through Sonship

Heading Up All Things

Bibliography

Links