I.　The Lord's recovery is mainly founded upon four pillars: truth, life, the church, and the gospel—Eph. 1:13; 4:18; 5:23-25, 29, 32; 6:15.

II.　The first great pillar in the Lord's recovery is the truth—John 18:37:

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

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

C.　The truth is absolute in itself, and we must be absolute for the truth—2 John 1-2, 4; 3 John 3-4, 7-8.

D.　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.

E.　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.

F.　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:

1.　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—John 17:17.

2.　The solid truth that is constituted into us becomes in us a constant and long-term nourishment—1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Thes. 2:13.

G.　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.

III.　The second great pillar in the Lord's recovery is life—John 14:6; 11:25:

A.　Both the truth and the life are the Lord Himself, but they are two different aspects of what He is—14:6:

1.　The truth is the outward definition and explanation, and life is the inward and intrinsic content—8:32; 11:25.

2.　The Lord is in us as our life, but the experience of life needs an explanation; this explanation is the truth—Col. 3:4; 1:5:

a.　If we receive the Lord according to this explanation, we have life; in order to experience and enjoy the Lord as life, we must know the truth—1 John 1:1-2, 5-6.

b.　The experience of the Lord as life is contained in the Lord as the truth—John 14:6. John 14:6 Jesus said to him, I am the 1way and the 2areality and the blife; no one comes to the Father except through Me.

3.　If we are not clear about the truth and do not understand or know the truth, we will have no way to enjoy the Lord as our life—8:32; 11:25.

B.　The Lord wants His church to know Him as the truth and to receive and enjoy Him as life, and the content of the church must be the growth of Christ in us as truth and life—Matt. 16:18; 1 Tim. 2:4; John 8:32; 10:10.

C.　Life is the Triune God dispensed into us and living in us—God the Father as the source of life, God the Son as the embodiment of life, and God the Spirit as the flow of life—Rom. 8:2, 10, 6, 11; John 5:26; 1:4; 1 John 5:11-12; Rev. 22:1.

D.　Life is the way to fulfill God's purpose; God's desire for man to express Him in His image and to rule in Him with His dominion can be realized only by God's life—Gen. 1:26; 2:9.

IV.　The third great pillar in the Lord's recovery is the church—1 Tim. 3:15-16:

A.　The Lord's recovery is a recovery of the truth and of life so that He may have the church; the truth brings in life, and once we have life, we become the church—John 18:37; 10:10; 1 Cor. 10:32.

B.　The church is the house of the living God—1 Tim. 3:15:

1.　As the house of God, the church is the dwelling place of God—the place where God can have His rest and put His trust—Eph. 2:21-22.

2.　The church as the house of God is the Father's house, the enlarged, universal, divine-human incorporation—John 14:2; 12:23; 13:31-32.

C.　The church is the supporting pillar and the holding base of the truth—1 Tim. 3:15:

1.　Truth in 1 Timothy 3:15 refers to the real things revealed in the New Testament concerning Christ and the church—Matt. 16:16, 18; Eph. 5:32.

2.　As the pillar, which bears the truth, and the base, which holds the pillar, the church testifies the truth, the reality, of Christ as the mystery of God and of the church as the mystery of Christ—Col. 2:2; Eph. 3:4.

D.　The church is the corporate manifestation of God in the flesh—1 Tim. 3:15-16:

1.　God's manifestation was first in Christ as an individual expression in the flesh—v. 16; Col. 2:9; John 1:1, 14.

2.　God is manifested in the church as His enlarged, corporate expression in the flesh—Eph. 2:19; 1:22-23.

3.　The great mystery of godliness is that God has become man so that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead to produce a corporate God-man for the manifestation of God in the flesh—Rom. 8:3; 1:3-4; Eph. 4:24.

V.　The fourth great pillar in the Lord's recovery is the gospel—1:13; Col. 1:5:

A.　The gospel that we preach in the Lord's recovery is the purest, highest, most complete gospel—Rom. 1:1, 3-4; Mark 1:14-15; Acts 20:24; Eph. 3:8; 6:15; 2 Cor. 4:4.

B.　The gospel includes all the truths in the Bible; the entire Bible is the gospel of God—Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5:

1.　The truth is the gospel, and the light of the truth is the light of the gospel—Mark 1:1, 14-15; John 8:12, 32.

2.　We should not think that the gospel is one thing and that the truth is another thing—Eph. 1:13:

a.　The truth is the gospel, and our preaching of the truth is the preaching of the gospel—Col. 1:5.

b.　To preach the gospel is actually to speak the truth, because the real gospel preaching is the speaking of the truth—Acts 8:4, 12, 30-35.

3.　For the preaching of the high gospel, we have a strong burden to encourage everyone to pursue the knowledge of the truth—1 Tim. 2:4:

a.　We should study the truth to the extent that we can expound the truth and announce the truth; this is to preach the high gospel.

b.　If we are filled with the truth inwardly, we will spontaneously express it outwardly by speaking the mystery of the gospel to people—1 Thes. 1:8; Eph. 6:19.

4.　The commission of the church today is to preach the gospel, the content of which is the truth; our preaching of the truth is the preaching of the high gospel—Mark 16:15; 1 Tim. 2:4.