I.　Christianity has two big defects—a negligence with regard to life and a shortage of truth—Titus 1:1-2.

II.　The Lord's recovery is the recovery of the light of the truth—1 John 1:5-6:

A.　Truth is the shining of light, the expression of the divine light—v. 5.

B.　The truths as revealed in the Scriptures have been lost, missed, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and wrongly applied throughout the ages; hence, there is the need of the Lord's recovery—John 17:17:

1.　The Lord's recovery is the recovery of the divine truths as revealed in the holy Scriptures, the holy Word of God—2 Tim. 3:16.

2.　The goal of the Lord's recovery is to recover the reality, life, livingness, strength, power, and impact of the matters revealed in the Scriptures.

C.　In His recovery the Lord is moving on by His word, by the truth—Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5; 1 Tim. 2:4:

1.　In the recovery the truths from Matthew to Revelation have been recovered by the Lord—1 John 5:20.

2.　The truth in the recovery is the consummation of the truth of the past nineteen centuries—2 Tim. 2:2:

a.　We are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

b.　Thus, the truth has been extracted, condensed, and crystallized for us.

D.　There is a great difference between the way the Bible is used among most Christians today and the way it is used among us in the Lord's recovery— 2 Cor. 3:6; John 5:39-40:

1.　The majority of believers use the Word in the way of letters.

2.　In the recovery we use the Word in the way of life, light, and spirit.

3.　What we have seen in the Bible is absolutely different from deformed Christianity.

III.　Second Timothy, with its emphasis on the truth, is a book of recovery—2:15-26:

A.　When Paul wrote this Epistle, he wrote it in the sense of recovery.

B.　Because the church had fallen from its original state to a degraded, deformed, and transmuted state, Paul wrote 2 Timothy to recover the corrupted church life with the truth; this was a recovery—vv. 15, 18, 25.

IV.　We need to have the truth wrought into us and constituted into our being—1 John 1:8; 2:4; 2 John 1-2; 3 John 3-4:

A.　To be constituted with the truth is to have the intrinsic element of the divine revelation wrought into us to become our constituent, our intrinsic being, our organic constitution.

B.　The kind of church we build up depends on the kind of truth we teach; thus, there is a desperate need of the living truth to produce the church, to help the church to exist, and to build up the church—1 Tim. 3:15.

C.　The solid truth that is constituted into us becomes in us a constant and long term nourishment—4:6.

D.　If the truth is wrought into us and constituted into our being, we will be able to protect the interests of the riches of God's divinity and the attainments of His consummation—Rev. 21:12a, 17.

E.　The Lord's word, His truth, is in the Bible, but the Bible needs the proper interpretation—2 Tim. 2:15.

F.　We have to pay the price to learn the truths—Prov. 23:23:

1.　We must enter into the intrinsic significance of the holy Scriptures to find out what the Lord says and what He wants.

2.　We have no right to invent anything; rather, we discover what is in the Bible.

3.　After we have learned the truth, we still have to experience Christ so that He may become our reality; in this way, when we speak to people, we will not give them knowledge or doctrine, but we will minister Christ to them.

V.　We need Ezras to teach the people, to educate them, and to constitute them with the heavenly truths—Ezra 7:10-12, 21; Neh. 8:

A.　The greatest need we must meet is to bring the saints in the Lord's recovery into the truth to carry the recovery on—2 Tim. 2:2, 15:

B.　The main responsibility of the elders is to teach the saints with the truths—1 Tim. 3:2; 5:17; Titus 1:9:

1.　It would be unseemly for an elder to make decisions and expect the saints to follow them but not visit the saints with the truths.

2.　The real eldership is not to exercise authority; the real eldership is to visit the saints and to shepherd them, feed them, and take care of them by speaking to them concerning the truths—1 Tim. 3:2; 5:17.

VI.　The standard of the Lord's recovery depends upon the standard of the truth we put out; the truths will be the measure and the standard— John 18:37:

A.　"If all of us today in the Lord's recovery did not care for the apostles' teaching preached by Brother Nee and me, the church and the Lord's recovery would become degraded. To remain in the apostles' teaching is a tremendous grace" (How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, p. 44).

B.　"Instead of the mere superficial doctrines in the Bible, we want the depths of the divine truths in the Word of God. We would like to follow the Lord Jesus in ministering the riches of the Triune God to people and in presenting to them the depths of the divine truth in the holy Scriptures" (Life-study of Mark, p. 165).

C.　"I believe that eventually the truths of the Lord's recovery will conquer the theology of Christianity, and the revelation of the recovery will captivate all the seeking ones to be the overcomers. This will close this age and bring in the kingdom with its kings" (The Ten Great Critical "Ones" for the Building Up of the Body of Christ, p. 65).