I.　A recovery is the restoration or return to a normal condition after degradation, damage, or loss—Dan. 1:1-2; 2 Chron. 36:22-23; Ezra 1.

II.　We are in the Lord's recovery, and His recovery is unique; there is not another recovery, just as there is not another Body of Christ or another New Testament.

III.　We need to see the difference between the Lord's recovery and Christianity:

A.　The teaching of today's Christianity is like that of James—right to a certain degree but devoid of the highest peaks of God's revelation—Eph. 1:17-23.

B.　The Lord's recovery is absolutely different because it is up to the standard of the divine revelation, whereas Christianity is devoid of it.

C.　The three aspects of the Lord's recovery are the revelation of God, the God-man life, and the practice of the church—2 Cor. 13:14; Phil. 1:19-21; Rev. 1:11.

IV.　The Lord's recovery is not a common, or ordinary, Christian work; it is the gathering of the Lord's remnant to recover God's kingdom in the church—Matt. 16:18-19; Rom. 14:17; Rev. 1:4-6:

A.　The Lord's recovery is not a work, a teaching, a theology, or a movement; the recovery is Christ Himself as the seed of life sown into our being—Matt. 13:3, 37; Mark 4:3, 14, 26-29.

B.　The enemy knows where the Lord's recovery is and that the recovery will defeat him and establish the kingdom of the heavens—Rev. 11:15.

V.　The Lord's recovery is different from today's religion; it is impossible for there to be reconciliation between the recovery and Christianity— Matt. 13:31-33, 44-46; Rev. 18:4; 19:1-3, 7-9:

A.　The recovery is for bringing us out of the unscriptural system of clergy-laity back to the beginning for the pure practice of the church life according to the divine revelation—Rev. 2:6, 15; Matt. 16:18; Eph. 2:20-22.

B.　There can be no reconciliation between the Lord's living testimony and the traditional church—1 Tim. 3:15-16; 2 Tim. 2:19-22.

VI.　The background of the Lord's recovery is Christianity, whose characteristics are confusion and division—Gen. 11:1-9; 1 Cor. 1:10-13:

A.　First Corinthians 12:12 tells us what the Lord wants instead of division and confusion—"one" stands in contrast to division, and "Christ" stands in contrast to confusion.

B.　The Lord intends to recover His church from confusion and division, back to Himself.

C.　This is what the Lord's recovery is—an answer to confusion and division.

VII.　What differentiates the Lord's recovery from Christianity is our nature and standing—Eph. 3:8; 4:3-6:

A.　The church is an entity composed of Christ as its content and nature; Christianity is composed of divisions and has sundry things as its nature— 3:8.

B.　As for our standing, the ground of the church is the genuine oneness—4:3-6.

C.　To remain in the Lord's recovery, we must keep Christ as life and the oneness as our standing—Col. 3:4; Eph. 4:3.

VIII.　There is a gap between the Lord's recovery and traditional Christianity because the recovery is based wholly on the pure Word, whereas Christianity is filled with traditions—Prov. 30:5-6; Matt. 15:3, 6b; 13:33:

A.　The great discrepancy between the recovery and Christianity includes three categories of things that are not scriptural—division, organization, and traditions.

B.　The history among us has been one of coming completely out of Christianity without compromise—Ezra 1; Rev. 18:4.

C.　The history of the Lord's recovery is a history of coming out of and being outside of the present evil age—Gal. 1:4; 6:14:

1.　Paul needed to be delivered from Judaism, the religious age of his time.

2.　Today we need to be delivered from Christianity, the religious age in our time.

D.　There should be no bridge between the local churches and Christianity— Rev. 1:11:

1.　Everything should be after its kind (Gen. 1:12); the denominations are after their kind, and the local churches should be after their kind.

2.　We should be what we are without compromise or pretense.

E.　We need to maintain the gap between us and Christianity; the wider this gap is the better because it is a gap between us and the present evil age— Gal. 1:4.

IX.　The church is the tabernacle, or temple, of God (Eph. 2:21-22); however, the church changed in nature from being a tent to a camp— Heb. 13:13:

A.　The camp signifies a group of people, in particular, a religious people, who are not faithful to the Lord.

B.　At this present time, Christianity is not a tent but a camp:

1.　This means that the church degraded to become Christianity.

2.　In principle, Christianity as a religious system comprises a group of religious people, belonging to the Lord in name and honoring the Lord with their mouth but having their hearts set on something other than the Lord—Matt. 15:8-9; 2 Tim. 3:5.

C.　According to the history of the church, those who really sought the Lord had to leave organized Christianity, that is, leave the camp and go forth to the Lord outside the camp—Heb. 13:13; 2 Tim. 2:19.

X.　It is absolutely of the Father's sovereign mercy that we are in the Lord's recovery—Rom. 9:15-29.