I.　In this universe there are two histories: the history of man, the human history, and the history of God, the divine history; the former is like an outward shell, and the latter, like the kernel within the shell:

A.　In the Minor Prophets the human history is clearly defined and is signified by the four kinds of locusts in Joel 1:4, and the divine history is with Christ and His mighty ones, the overcomers, in 3:11.

B.　The divine history within the human history is also revealed in the Bible in considerable detail; God's history is our history because He is in union with us:

1.　We need to see God's history in eternity past as a preparation for His move to be in union with man:

a.　The divine history began with the eternal God and His economy—Eph. 3:9-10; 1:10: 1) According to His economy, God wants to work Himself into man to be one with man, to be man's life, life supply, and everything, and to have man as His expression—Gen. 1:26; 2:9. 2) God's intention in His economy is thus to have a corporate entity, composed of God and man, to be His expression for eternity—v. 22.

b.　God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity to make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ for the carrying out of God's eternal economy—Acts 2:23.

c.　The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His "goings forth" from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man—Micah 5:2.

d.　God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world—Eph. 1:3-6: 1) He chose the believers to be holy, to be sanctified unto Himself with His holy nature—v. 4. 2) He predestinated them, marking them out, unto sonship, making them sons to Himself with His divine life, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced them in the Beloved—vv. 5-6.

2.　Before Christ's incarnation God moved with men and among men; this was not His direct move to carry out His eternal economy for Christ and the church but His indirect move in His old creation for the preparation of His direct move in His new creation for His eternal economy:

a.　God's history is of two portions—the history of God with man, found in the Old Testament, and the history of God in man, found in the New Testament.

b.　God's history in man began with the incarnation and continued with His processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; Hosea 11:4 says that these are the cords of a man, the bands of love.

3.　The divine history, God's move in man, continued with the processed Christ, the God-man, as the prototype, unto the New Jerusalem, the great God-man, the ultimate fulfillment of God's eternal economy:

a.　Through Christ's incarnation and human living, He brought the infinite God into the finite man, He united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man, and He expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues.

b.　Christ's crucifixion was a vicarious death, an all-inclusive death, an all-inclusive judicial redemption, which terminated the old creation and solved all problems (John 1:29); in His crucifixion He terminated all the things of the old creation, He redeemed all the things created by God and fallen in sin (Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20), He created (conceived) the new man with His divine element (Eph. 2:15), and He released His divine life from within the shell of His humanity (John 12:24; 19:34; Luke 12:49-50).

c.　In His resurrection He was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4; 8:29), He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and He regenerated millions of people to be sons of God and members of the Body of Christ, the church (1 Pet. 1:3).

d.　He ascended to the heavens and then descended as the Spirit to produce the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God—Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:1-4, 16-21.

e.　Thus, the church also is part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history; this part of God's history has lasted for more than nineteen hundred years and is still going on.

f.　At the end of this part of the divine history, Christ will come back, descending with His overcomers as His army (Joel 3:11) to defeat Antichrist and his army: 1) There will be the meeting of two figures—Antichrist, a figure in the outward, human history, and Christ with His overcomers, the Figure in the intrinsic, divine history. 2) The Figure in the divine history will defeat the figure in the human history and then cast him into the lake of fire—Rev. 19:20.

g.　Following this, the thousand-year kingdom will come; eventually, this kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth; the New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God's history.

II.　We need to have a clear view of these two histories—the physical, human history represented mainly by the four kinds of locusts (Joel 1:4), which are the four sections of the great human image in Daniel 2, and the mysterious, divine history represented mainly by the history of the great crushing stone (Christ with His overcomers), which will crush the great human image, the totality of human government, and become the eternal kingdom of God, which will fill the whole earth forever—vv. 31-45:

A.　The corporate Christ, Christ with His overcoming bride, will come as a stone to crush the aggregate of human government to bring in God's kingdom—vv. 34-35; Joel 3:11; Rev. 19:11-21; cf. Gen. 1:26.

B.　Whereas Daniel 2 speaks of Christ coming as a stone cut out without hands, Revelation 19 speaks of Christ coming as the One who has His bride as His army. Dan 2 ( omitted ) Rev 19 ( omitted )

C.　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: Eph 5 ( omitted ) Eph 6 ( omitted ) Rev 19 ( omitted )

1.　On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry His bride, the overcomers, who have been fighting the battle against God's enemy for years—cf. Dan. 7:25; 6:10; Eph. 6:12.

2.　Before Christ descends to earth to deal with Antichrist and the totality of human government, He will have a wedding, uniting His overcomers to Himself as one entity—Rev. 19:7-9.

3.　After His wedding He will come with His newly married bride to destroy Antichrist, who with his army will fight against God directly—vv. 11, 14:

a.　The Lord Jesus, the Word of God, will slay Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, 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. 19:15a; cf. 1:16; 2:12, 16.

4.　After crushing the human government, God will have cleared up the entire universe; then the corporate Christ, Christ with His overcomers, will become a great mountain to f ill the whole earth, making the whole earth God's kingdom—Dan. 2:35, 44; 7:22, 27; Rev. 11:15.

5.　To be the bride in the divine history, we need the beautifying word of God, and to be the warrior in the divine history, we need the slaying word of God—Eph. 5:26; 6:17-18; cf. 2 Tim. 3:16.

III.　We all were born in the human history, but we have been reborn, regenerated, in the divine history:

A.　The divine history, the history of God in man, was from Christ's incarnation through His ascension to become the life-giving Spirit and then continues with His indwelling us through God's organic salvation of regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification to make us the glorious bride of Christ—Rom. 5:10; Eph. 5:27; Rev. 19:7-9.

B.　This culminates in Christ as the Spirit, the processed and consummated Triune God, marrying the church as the bride, the processed and transformed tripartite man—22:17a.

C.　Now we need to ask ourselves this question: Are we living in the divine history, or are we living merely in the human history?

1.　If our living is in the world, we are living in the human history.

2.　But if we are living in the church, we are living in the divine history; in the church life God's history is our history; now two parties—God and we—have one history, the divine history.

3.　With the divine history there is the new creation—the new man with a new heart, a new spirit, a new life, a new nature, a new history, and a new consummation—Hymns, #16; Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 3:16; Matt. 5:8; Titus 3:5; Eph. 5:26; 6:17-18. Hymns, #16 WORSHIP OF THE FATHER—HIS NEWNESS 1 Our Father, as the evergreen, Thou art forever new; Thou art the ever living Lord, Thy freshness as the dew. (CHORUS) O Father, Thou art unchanging, Thou never hast grown old; Thru countless ages, ever fresh, Thy newness doth unfold. 2 O Thou art God, and Thou art "new"; Without Thee all is worn, But all with Thee is ever fresh, Though many years have gone. 3 Each blessing Thou hast given us Thy newness doth contain; Thy covenant, Thy ways are new, And ever thus remain. 4 Now we Thy new creation are— New spirit and new heart; We're daily from the old renewed, New life Thou dost impart. 5 The earth and heavens will be new And Thy new city share; New fruits each month will be supplied, For all is newness there. 6 O Father, Thou art ever new, And all is new in Thee; We sing the new eternal song, New praise we give to Thee.

4.　We praise the Lord that we are in the divine history, experiencing and enjoying the mysterious, divine things for our organic salvation so that we may become His overcoming bride.