I.　In the Lord's recovery, we need Ezras to constitute God's people by educating them with the truth so that they may be God's testimony, His corporate expression, on earth—Neh. 8:1-8, 13; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15; 1 Tim. 3:15:

A.　Ezra was a priest and also a scribe; thus, he was not a letter-scribe but a priestly scribe—Ezra 7:6, 11-12, 21; Neh. 8:1-2, 8-9, 11-12; 12:26.

B.　Ezra was skilled in the law of God, which is linked to God's economy—Ezra 7:6, 10-12:

1.　God's economy is God becoming a man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead to produce the organic Body of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem—Rom. 8:3; 1:3-4; 12:4-5; Rev. 21:2.

2.　The center, reality, and goal of God's economy is Christ—Col. 1:15-18.

3.　The law is linked to God's economy because the law was given as God's testimony—God's portrait, God's image—Exo. 25:16, 21:

a.　The living law of God as God's testimony dwells in Christ, making Him the testimony of God—Col. 2:9.

b.　As God's testimony, the law is a type of Christ, the image of God, who is God's portrait and testimony—1:15.

c.　In typology, to keep the law means to express God—1 Cor. 10:31.

d.　Those who have the living of a God-man bear the image of God; they are a portrait of God and even a duplication of God—Phil. 1:19-21a; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:4, 9.

C.　Ezra spoke what had been spoken by Moses—Ezra 7:6; Neh. 8:14; 2 Pet. 1:12.

D.　The priests and the Levites were gathered to Ezra the scribe in order to gain insight into the words of the law; in Nehemiah 8:13 insight refers to apprehending the intrinsic significance.

II.　In the Lord's recovery we need Ezras, priestly teachers who contact God, who are saturated with God, who are one with God, who are mingled with God, who are filled with God, and who are skillful in the Word of God; this is the kind of person who is qualified to be a teacher in the recovery—Matt. 13:52; 2 Cor. 3:5-6; 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11:

A.　The Lord Jesus taught the people in order to bring them out of the satanic darkness into the divine light—Mark 6:6; cf. Acts 26:18:

1.　Man's fall into sin broke his fellowship with God, making all men ignorant of the knowledge of God, with such ignorance issuing in darkness and death—Eph. 4:17-18.

2.　The Lord as the light of the world came as a great light to shine on the people who were sitting in the shadow of death—John 8:12; Matt. 4:12-16.

3.　The Lord's teaching released the word of light that those in darkness and death might receive the light of life—John 1:4.

B.　Teaching equals revelation, which is the opening of the veil—1 Tim. 2:7; Eph. 3:3-4, 9:

1.　To teach is to roll away the veil; as we are teaching others, we should be taking away the veil so that they may see something of the Triune God.

2.　When we speak something in the church meeting, our speaking should be the rolling away of the veil; this means that our teaching should present a revelation—1 Tim. 4:6, 11, 16.

C.　The kind of person we are determines the kind of Bible we have—1 Cor. 2:11-16:

1.　Our understanding of the Bible is always according to what we are—2 Cor. 3:12-16.

2.　What we see in the Bible and what the Bible is to us depend upon what kind of person we are—John 5:39-40; Matt. 5:8; 6:22-24, 33; Luke 11:34-36.

III.　The greatest need we must meet is to bring the saints in the Lord's recovery into the truth to carry the recovery on—1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15:

A.　The recovery has the highest truth—the truth that is the consummation of the truths recovered during the past centuries—1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15:

1.　We have both the objective truths and the subjective truths in the Holy Scriptures—Luke 24:39; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:34, 10; Col. 3:1; 1:27.

2.　In our study of the Bible, we should not merely pay attention to the "branches" but go deeply into the "roots" and the "trunk."

3.　We need to see the crystallized significances of the steps of God's economy and of the Body of Christ—John 1:14; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Eph. 1:22-23; 4:4-6.

4.　We need to refute and correct the defects and errors of traditional Christian theology—Col. 1:25; 2 Tim. 2:15, 25.

B.　To be constituted with the truth is to have the truth wrought into us to become our intrinsic being, our organic constitution—2 John 2:

1.　The intrinsic element of the divine revelation must be wrought into and constituted into our being—Col. 3:16.

2.　Once the truth gets into us through our understanding, it remains in our memory, and then we retain the truth in our memory, causing us to have an accumulation of the truth—1 Pet. 1:13; 2 Pet. 1:15; 3:1.

3.　After the truth gets into our memory, it becomes a constant and long-term nourishment; then we have an accumulation of the truth, and we are under the constant nourishment—Col. 3:16, 4; 1 Tim. 4:6.

C.　We must learn to use the new language of the new culture in the divine and mystical realm—Neh. 13:23-24; 1 Cor. 2:12-13; John 16:12-15.

D.　All the saints in the Lord's recovery should be trained in the divine revelation—2 Tim. 2:2, 15:

1.　Nearly all the crucial revelations in the Bible have been covered in the ministry of Brother Nee and Brother Lee; we should pay our attention to these pure and healthy things and not waste our time collecting "poisonous gourds"—2 Kings 4:38-41.

2.　We all need to be helped through the Life-studies and the Recovery Version with the footnotes to see the intrinsic significance of the word of the Bible—Neh. 8:8, 13.