VI.　The testimony of Jesus is the bride of Christ—the overcomers who are the co-kings of Christ during the millennium—Rev. 19:7-9; 20:4-6:

A.　The Lord's recovery is for the preparation of the bride of Christ—19:7-9; 21:2.

B.　Ultimately, we will be conformed to Christ to be the wonderful Shulammite, who, as the duplication of Solomon, is the greatest and ultimate figure of the New Jerusalem as the counterpart, the bride, of Christ—S. S. 6:13; Rev. 21:2, 9-10; 22:17a.

C.　The Shulammite is likened to the dance of two camps, or two armies (Heb. mahanaim), in the sight of God; after Jacob saw the angels of God, the two armies of God, he named the place where he was Mahanaim and divided his wives, children, and pos-sessions into "two armies"—S. S. 6:13; Gen. 32:1-10:

1.　The spiritual significance of the two armies is the strong testimony that we more than conquer, we "super-overcome," through Him who loved us according to the principle of the Body of Christ—Rom. 8:37; 12:5; Deut. 32:30; Eccl. 4:9-12.

2.　God does not want those who are strong in themselves; He wants only the feeble ones, the weaker ones, the women and children; those who are counted worthy to be overcomers will be the weaker ones who depend on the Lord—1 Cor. 1:26-28; 2 Cor. 12:9-10; 13:3-5; S. S. 8:6.

3.　God needs a people who are one with Him, a people who are submissive to Him, signified by the plaited hair (1:11), and obedient to Him with a flexible will, sig-nified by the neck with strings of jewels (v. 10).

4.　When we consider how to arrive at the highest peak of the divine revelation, we should not trust in ourselves but depend on the Lord as love, power, and mercy to make us vessels of mercy, honor, and glory—Rom. 9:16, 21-23.

VII.　The testimony of Jesus is the bridal army, the overcomers who fight together with Christ, the embodiment of God, to defeat Antichrist, the embodiment of Satan, with his armies—Rev. 19:14-19; 17:14:

A.　In Ephesians 5 and 6 we see the church as the bride and the warrior; in Revelation 19 we also have these two aspects of the church—Eph. 5:25-27; 6:10-20:

1.　Before Christ descends to earth to deal with Antichrist and the totality of human government, He will have a wedding, uniting His overcomers (who have been fighting the battle against God's enemy for years) to Himself as one entity—Rev. 19:7-9; cf. Dan. 7:25; 6:10; Eph. 6:12.

2.　After His wedding He will come with His newly married bride to destroy Anti-christ, who with his army will fight against God directly—Rev. 19:11, 14:

a.　The Lord Jesus, the Word of God, will slay Antichrist, the man of lawless-ness, by the breath of His mouth—vv. 13-15; 2 Thes. 2:2-8.

b.　Out of Christ's mouth proceeds a sharp sword, that with it He might smite the nations—Rev. 19:15; cf. 1:16; 2:12, 16.

B.　In Ephesians 5 the word is for nourishment that leads to the beautifying of the bride for God's expression, and in Ephesians 6 the word is for killing that enables the church as the corporate warrior to engage in spiritual warfare for God's dominion, thus fulfilling God's original intention—5:26-27; 6:17-18; Gen. 1:26:

1.　By Christ as the life-giving Spirit sanctifying us, cleansing us by the washing of the water in the word, we are beautified with Him to be His holy, beautiful, God-expressing bride, a bride without blemish or imperfection—Eph. 5:26-27.

2.　By Christ furnishing us with Himself as the sword of the Spirit through our pray-reading of His word, we can practically take our stand in the reality of the Body to apply the whole armor of the Triune God and the killing power of the Spirit-word to deal with the elements of the enemy within us—6:10-11, 17-18.

VIII.　Ultimately, the testimony of Jesus is the New Jerusalem as the ultimate consum-mation of the tabernacle and temple—the eternal divine-human incorporation, the eternal building, of God and man—Rev. 21:9, 3, 22:

A.　We can live out and work out the New Jerusalem as the divine-human incorporation by taking the Lord as our abode for us to be His abode—John 15:4-5:

1.　When we love the Lord Jesus, He manifests Himself to us, and the Father comes with Him to make an abode with us for our enjoyment; this abode is a mutual abode, in which the Triune God abides in us and we abide in Him—14:23:

a.　To recover our first love for the Lord is to make Him everything in our life, giving Him the preeminence, the first place, in all things; nothing but love can keep us in a proper relationship with the Lord—Rev. 2:4; Eph. 6:24.

b.　The more we love the Lord as our unique Husband, the more we shall have His presence, and the more we are in His presence, the more we shall enjoy all that He is to us; the Lord's recovery is a recovery of loving the Lord Jesus— Isa. 54:5; S. S. 1:1-4; 1 Cor. 2:9-10.

c.　If we leave our first love toward the Lord, we will miss the enjoyment of Christ and lose the testimony of Jesus; loving the Lord, enjoying the Lord, and being the testimony of the Lord go together—Rev. 2:4, 7.

2.　We abide in Christ that He may abide in us by our dealing with the constant word in the Scriptures that is outside of us and the present word as the Spirit within us; when we abide in the Lord and let His words abide in us, we are one with Him in actuality—John 5:39-40; 6:63; 2 Cor. 3:6; Rev. 2:7; John 8:31; 15:7.

B.　The overcoming believers as the constituents of God's building, the New Jerusalem, are signified by jasper and other precious stones—Rev. 21:9-11, 18-21; 1 Cor. 3:12a:

1.　Jasper signifies the appearance of God, shining with the glory of God as the light of the New Jerusalem for the expression of God—Rev. 4:3; 21:11, 18-19a.

2.　The other precious stones signify the riches of the beauty of Christ in different aspects for the foundation of God's eternal dwelling—vv. 19b-21.

3.　By the judging Spirit, the burning Spirit, and the flowing Spirit—the Lord Spirit— we are being transformed by the experiences of the riches of Christ as the God of resurrection gained through sufferings, consuming pressures, and the killing work of the cross—Isa. 4:4; 11:2; John 4:14b; 2 Cor. 1:8-9.

4.　Through the process of transformation, we boast in our weaknesses and boast in Christ Jesus that the power of Christ as grace might tabernacle over us—v. 12; 11:30-33; 12:7-10; Rom. 5:3; 1 Cor. 1:29-31; Phil. 3:3.

5.　By our growth in the divine life in Christ as the living stone, we are being trans-formed into precious stones; through the process of transformation, the Triune God is being wrought into and structured together with us to the praise of the glory of His grace with which He graced us in the Beloved for us to become the New Jerusalem as the ultimate testimony of Jesus and the good news to the entire universe—1 Pet. 2:4; Rev. 21:18-21; Eph. 1:3-6; cf. Luke 4:18-19. . 2008 Living Stream Ministry