New Releases by Witness Lee

The most prevailing need among Christians today is to spend time every day reading and praying in the presence of the Lord. In the physical realm we need to spend time daily to obtain physical nourishment by eating physical food. How much more time we need to spend to obtain spiritual nourishment by eating the spiritual food! As people who have God living within us, we need to set aside some time each day to come to the Word of God to enjoy Him, to feed upon Him, and to receive spiritual nourishment.

There are three main aspects in God’s eternal plan for the church: the expression of God, the defeat of God’s enemy Satan, and the heading up of all things in Christ. For all of this, the church must be built up. In this classic booklet, Witness Lee fellowships concerning how the church can be built up. Contrary to what some may think, it is not by knowledge and gifts. “It is only by the inner experience of Christ as life that we can have the reality of the church life. The inner man must be strengthened so that Christ will make His home in our hearts and we will grow up into Him in all things. Then we will be filled unto all the fullness of God, by whom we will be built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit.”

Have you ever considered that the Bible is a prayer book? In this booklet, Witness Lee presents the rich practice of turning the words of the Bible into our prayer. “You can open to any page of the Bible and start to pray with any portion of the Word. The Bible is the Book, the Holy Book. Every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God is different from anything else.” When we take in the Bible “by means of all prayer and petition” (Eph. 6:18), turning it into our prayer, we are spiritually nourished. We call this practice pray-reading. When we pray-read, we are supplied, because there is really something of God in His Word; the Word of God is His very breath. If we would practice to pray-read, we would receive something nourishing and strengthening which will inwardly empower us and enliven us all the time.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones held in Anaheim, California, on April 4-6, 2025. The general subject of the training was “One Accord and Crucial Aspects of the Book of Acts.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

In Matthew 13 the Lord Jesus gives a parable concerning a treasure and a parable concerning a pearl. These two parables present the positive condition of the churches in the Lord’s recovery. The testimony of the treasure and the pearl is the gospel that we preach, and the local churches that we establish bear this testimony. If we truly see the testimony of the treasure and the pearl, we will give our all for this. “We should stand firm in faith and preach the gospel of the kingdom…May many saints rise up and be burdened by the Lord to preach the high gospel and establish the testimony of the treasure and the pearl in every town and village. May the Lord have mercy on us.”

The entire New Testament, from the first chapter to the last, reveals the Spirit and the church. Although we may be familiar with the fact that the New Testament unveils Christ and the church, we also need to see that the New Testament presents the vision of the Spirit and the church. The church is absolutely a matter of the Spirit. It was born of the Spirit and brought forth by the Spirit, and it exists with the Spirit. Moreover, the church is built up by the believers’ growth in life through the increase of Christ as the Spirit in them. The church is not built up by any human organization, doctrinal teachings, or miraculous gifts. Instead, the church is built up by the ministry of the Spirit, in which we mutually minister life in our spirit to one another for our growth in life. Thus, the church is absolutely a matter of the Holy Spirit in our human spirit.

Our service in the church must be in fellowship with God. In order to serve God and His people, we need to fellowship with Him. This is the first basic and fundamental matter related to our service. However, we also need to realize that we should serve in fellowship with one another. We are in Christ and in the new creation as members of His Body. Thus, we cannot do anything by ourselves in an independent way, because each of us has a different function in the Body of Christ. The building up of the Body of Christ is the primary matter. All the service and work of the church are for the purpose of the building up of the Body of Christ.

In order to be the Lord’s up-to-date expression, the church must never become old. Rather, we should be renewed day by day to be new in the spirit, in life, in the Lord’s testimony, in His way, and in His leading. We should never be the same as we were before. We must forget the things which are behind and pursue toward the goal. As the up-to-date expression of the Lord, we need to pay our full attention to three matters. First, we must pay attention to the divine life and the growth in life. Second, by the Lord’s mercy we must do whatever we can to help every member to participate in the practical church service. Third, we must help every member to function in the meetings. This is the way to be the church in reality: by having the growth in life, by every member participating in the practical service of the church, and by every attendant in the meetings functioning in a living way.

God’s eternal purpose is that we as a group of people would be regenerated, transformed, and built up together to be a Body for Christ and a house for Himself. For this, we have been created, predestinated, chosen, called, regenerated, and sanctified, but these are not ends in themselves. They are the processes and procedures by which God can attain His purpose. Paul’s Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians reveal this eternal purpose of God, and they also speak concerning the new man. Once we see God’s eternal purpose, we can see that the new man is a corporate man, the Body of Christ. Practically, the way to put on the new man is to put off the old man. If we are going to put on the new man, the Body of Christ, the church, we must realize that the old man, our self, has been put to an end. Thus, “from the time of our baptism we must always deny, reject, and renounce the self…. On the other hand, having realized that the Triune God is living in us as our life and our everything, we must live by Him, in Him, and with Him.”

In this booklet taken from Life-study of Luke, Witness Lee fellowships concerning the answer the Lord Jesus gave to the Pharisees when they asked him when the kingdom of God comes (Luke 17:20). “The Lord’s answer indicates that the kingdom of God is not material but spiritual. It is the Savior in His first coming (vv. 21-22), in His second coming (vv. 23-30), in His overcoming believers’ rapture (vv. 31-36), and in His destroying of the Antichrist (v. 37) to recover the earth for His reign (Rev. 11:15).”

Two passages in the New Testament speak of Christ’s becomings. John 1:14 tells us that He as God became flesh, and 1 Corinthians 15:45 reveals that He as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. From this we can see the three stages of Christ. In His first stage He was God with divinity only. In His second stage, the stage of the flesh, He became a man, having humanity added to Him to make Him a God-man. Then in His third stage He became the life-giving Spirit. By these three stages Christ has become living, practical, and available to us.

In leading the young people, there are two indispensable aspects: spiritual knowledge and spiritual life. The spiritual content we impart into our young people must be related to both aspects, and we should not lean too much toward one or the other; we must be balanced. According to God’s law in the universe, everything is balanced. Thus, in our service with the young brothers and sisters, we should keep the principle of being balanced; we should give the young people knowledge and life in such a way that these aspects interact with each other.

The Christian life is one of experiencing Christ at all times. In order to enjoy and experience Christ in full, we need to see who Christ is, what He has done for us, and we especially need to see that we are in an organic union with Christ. This is the most crucial aspect of the secret of experiencing Christ. In The Secret of Experiencing Christ Witness Lee points out that it is in this organic union of the Spirit with our spirit that Christ lives in us and we live in Him.

In order to participate in the church service, we need to see that all the believers are priests who serve God and minister Him into man. Every genuine believer in Christ has received a unique, particular gift that no one else possesses (1 Pet. 4:10), and we have all received a certain measure of the grace of God. To be a good steward, we must be those who impart such grace to one another by the gift we have received. In other words, we need to serve one another with the grace that we have received of God. We should minister our gift to one another according to the principle of mutuality (Heb. 10:24-25). There are five basic factors that enable us to serve as good stewards of the varied grace of God by functioning in the church meetings: being built up with others, offering up a sacrifice of praise to God, doing good and sharing with others, girding ourselves with humility toward one another, and submitting to one another. “If the Lord grants us grace to put these five matters into practice, we will be living, functioning members of the Body of Christ. This will uplift our spirit, enrich our inner being, and cause us to function in the meetings so that we may dispense the varied grace of God to one another.”

Christ and the cross are the center and the reality of the Bible. In their writing, all the apostles emphasized Christ and the cross, and when we know this matter, we will truly appreciate the preciousness of the Bible. “In order for us to grow in life, to see the spiritual things and the spiritual way, and to be proper Christians, we must know Christ and the cross. A person who does not know Christ and the cross cannot do a spiritual work or service that satisfies God’s heart. In order to grow spiritually or do a spiritual work, such as preaching the gospel or administrating the church, we must know Christ and the cross.”

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are synoptic in portraying the Savior’s humanity in different aspects with His deity. In the Life-study of Mark, Witness Lee leads the reader into Mark’s perspective and purpose in composing his Gospel, and he shows how Mark’s particular presentation of Christ applies to the believers’ experience of Christ. Witness Lee shows that in his Gospel, Mark presents the Savior as a slave. He explains that Mark does not tell the Savior’s genealogy and status, because the ancestry of a slave is not worthy of note. He further shows that in contrast to Matthew, who presents to us the Savior’s marvelous teachings and parables concerning the heavenly kingdom, and John, who presents His profound revelations of the divine truths, Mark’s intention is not to impress us with the Slave’s wonderful words, but with His excellent deeds in His gospel service. Mark’s Gospel provides more details than the other Gospels in order to portray the Slave-Savior’s diligence, faithfulness, and other virtues in the saving service He rendered to sinners for God. In Mark’s Gospel are the fulfillment of the prophecies in Isa. 42:1-4, 6-7; 49:5-7; 50:4-7; 52:13–53:12 concerning Christ as the Slave of God. His diligence in labor, His need of food and rest, His anger, His groaning, and His affection display beautifully His humanity in its virtue and perfection, while His lordship, His omniscience, His miraculous power, and His authority to cast out demons to forgive sins, and to silence the wind and the sea manifest in full His deity in its glory and honor. What a Slave of God! How lovely and admirable! Such a Slave served sinners as their Slave-Savior, with His life as their ransom, for the fulfillment of the eternal purpose of God, whose Slave He was.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones held in Anaheim, California, on March 24-26, 2023. The general subject of the training was “Knowing, Experiencing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1965, volume 1, contains messages and fellowship given by Brother Witness Lee primarily from January through July 1965. A portion of this volume contains messages given in December 1963 and in March 1966. During the period from January through July, 1965, Brother Lee traveled extensively. In mid-February through mid-March he visited cities in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio. From the middle to the end of April he visited Mount Vernon, Missouri, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the end of May he traveled to South Carolina and Florida and then went on to Brazil, Peru, and Panama before returning to Los Angeles at the end of June. He also visited Sacramento, California, in mid-July and may have visited the Pacific Northwest. Regrettably, there is no record of his speaking in any of these places. At the end of July he held a weekend conference in San Francisco. The contents of this volume are divided into eleven sections, as follows: 1. Four messages given in Los Angeles, California, from January 12 through May 25. These messages are included in this volume under the title Exercising Our Gifts to Build Up the Body. 2. Fourteen messages given in Los Angeles, California, the first nine of which were given from January 23 through May 29, and the remaining five of which were given on March 15 through 24, 1966. These messages were previously published under the title The Vision, Practice, and Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ. 3. Fourteen messages given in Los Angeles, California, from January 31 through May 18, 1965. These messages have been previously published under the title Preaching the Gospel in the Way of Life. The published book contained thirteen chapters. However, during research for The Collected Works, an additional message was discovered. This message is included in this volume as the first chapter. 4. Four messages given in Los Angeles, California, on April 9 through 11. These messages have been previously published under the title The Experience of Christ in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. 5. Six messages given in Los Angeles, California, from January 15 through April 2. These messages are included in this volume under the title Study on Hebrews. 6. Three messages given in Los Angeles, California, on May 7 through 21. These messages are published in this volume under the title Notes on 1 Timothy. 7. Two messages given in Los Angeles, California, on July 2 and 9. These messages are included in this volume under the title Study on Titus. 8. Four messages given in San Francisco, California, on July 23 through 25. One of the messages was spoken in Chinese and translated simultaneously into English. The English translation was edited for inclusion in this section. The messages given in this conference are included in this volume under the title Summer Conference in San Francisco. 9. One message that first appeared as an article in volume 3, number 1 of The Stream magazine in May 1965. The date and place of the original spoken message are uncertain. This message was previously published under the title The Baptism in the Holy Spirit. 10. One message that was first published as an article in volume 4, number 2 of The Stream magazine in May 1966. There is some evidence that it was spoken in Los Angeles, California, in the summer of 1965. The original article was later revised and published as a booklet entitled The Vision of the Church in 1968. This booklet is included in this volume under the same title. 11. Two messages given in Los Angeles, California, on December 24 and 26, 1963. The two messages were published in 1994 as chapters 4 and 6 of The Life and Way for the Practice of the Church Life, which is included in The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1963, volume 4. They first appeared in May 1965 in a slightly different form as a two-part article entitled The All-inclusive Spirit of Christ in volume 3, number 1 of The Stream magazine. The original article was later revised and printed as a booklet under the same title in 1969. This booklet, including the four diagrams that do not appear elsewhere, is included in this volume under the same title.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones webcast from Anaheim, California, on October 2-4, 2020. The general subject of the training was “The Christian Life, the Church Life, the Consummation of the Age, and the Coming of the Lord.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the Memorial Day weekend conference held in Seattle, Washington, May 24-27, 2019. The general subject of the conference was “The Experience of Christ.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones held in Anaheim, California, on April 5-7, 2019. The general subject of the training was “The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Christian Life and the Church Life.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the Thanksgiving weekend conference held in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 22-25, 2018. The general subject of the conference was “The Reality of the Body of Christ.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones held in Leipzig, Germany, on October 5-7, 2017. The general subject of the training was “The Recovery of the Church.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

"The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, shows us that God is our enjoyment. God also has His fullness (Eph. 3:19b). He is full for us to enjoy. His fullness is the expression of the riches of Christ, and the reality of Christ is in the Spirit. We know this by the revelation of the Word. The riches of Christ are revealed in the Word. Furthermore, we can realize God as our enjoyment in our spirit (John 4:24)."

"The Bible reveals that God is our enjoyment and that all the riches of God, what God is in His fullness, are the riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8, 19b). All the fullness of God is embodied in Christ (Col. 1:19) and becomes the items of the riches of Christ. The reality of Christ is the Spirit, who is the Spirit of reality (John 14:17), and all that Christ is, that is, all the riches of Christ, are revealed in the Word (1:1). Therefore, in order to know the riches of Christ, we have to know the Word, which is the revelation of all that Christ is. Moreover, the place in which we realize the Triune God is our human spirit (3:6). In order to realize Christ and always enjoy Him, we have to exercise our spirit. There is no other way to enjoy Him, and there is no other organ with which we can enjoy Him. We have to exercise our spirit to realize all that God is in Christ through the Holy Spirit and as revealed in the Word. These five items--God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Word, and our spirit--are the factors of our enjoyment of God." This book affords much guidance in how to enjoy Christ as the Word and the Spirit through prayer.

Much of what is preached and taught among Christians today concerns the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus, that is, the work He did during His life on the earth. However, just as the person of Christ has two aspects, so does His ministry. While He was on earth, He was the man Jesus. Since His ascension into heaven, however, He is the glorified Christ. His earthly ministry lasted for only a limited time, but His heavenly ministry is eternal; it will never end. What is Christ doing now? In this book, Witness Lee answers this question, opening up the second part of Christ’s ministry, the heavenly ministry, the ministry that continues today.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the Thanksgiving weekend conference held in San Jose, California, November 24-27, 2016. The general subject of the conference was “The Direction of the Lord’s Move Today.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

Christ is the life and content of the church, and the church is the vessel to express Christ. In order for Christ to be properly expressed through the church, His members need to learn certain crucial lessons related to dealing with the heart and differentiating the spirit from the soul.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the Thanksgiving weekend conference held in San Antonio, Texas, November 27-30, 2014. The general subject of the conference was “The Vision and Experience of Christ in His Resurrection and Ascension.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.

This book is intended as an aid to believers in developing a daily time of morning revival with the Lord in His word. At the same time, it provides a limited review of the Thanksgiving weekend conference held in Schaumburg, Illinois, November 28—December 1, 2013. The general subject of the conference was “The Mending Ministry of John.” Through intimate contact with the Lord in His word, the believers can be constituted with life and truth and thereby equipped to prophesy in the meetings of the church unto the building up of the Body of Christ.