This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the eight messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry on October 2-4, 2020. The messages were provided via webcast from Anaheim, California, and the mutual fellowship, prophesying, and studying by groups were practiced locally in the various churches that participated. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Christian Life, the Church Life, the Consummation of the Age, and the Coming of the Lord." The present age--the age of grace, the age of the church--is the age of mystery, and the consummation of the age, the end of the age, will be the three and a half years of the great tribulation. In the dispensations from Adam to Moses and from Moses to Christ, everything was unveiled, and there was no mystery. It will be the same in the dispensation of the millennial kingdom and in the new heaven and new earth. However, in the dispensation from the incarnation of Christ to the millennial kingdom--the church age, the age of grace--everything is a mystery. During the church age, the age of mystery, Christ is building up the church, the Body of Christ, to be His bride. We need to see the signs of the Lord's second and imminent coming. The greatest sign of the end of this age, the last three and a half years of the great tribulation, is the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to the whole inhabited earth. To be taken by the Lord, we need to be those who are watchful for His imminent coming and prepared and ready to be His bride so that we may be raptured before the great tribulation. Every day we need to be watchful by paying the price to buy the Spirit as the golden oil so that we may supply the churches with the Spirit for the testimony of Jesus and be rewarded by the Lord to participate in the marriage dinner of the Lamb. If we want to save our soul-life, we will lose it, but if we lose our soul-life for the Lord's sake, we will save it. If we allow our soul to suffer the loss of its soulish enjoyment in this age for the Lord's sake, we will cause our soul to have its enjoyment in the kingdom age; we will share the Lord's joy in ruling over the earth. If we lose our soul-life, we may participate in the rapture of the overcomers. The salvation of our soul is our receiving the end of our faith. Those who would receive the end of their faith are those whose faith has been proven by fire in this age, that is, proven by all kinds of circumstances, environments, and sufferings that cause the loss of their souls. The salvation of the soul means that our soul will be saved from sufferings into the full enjoyment of the Lord at His coming back. We must be faithful in service in the Lord's commission to give God as food to the members of His household so that we may win Christ as our reward in the coming kingdom. God has set faithful and prudent slaves over His household as household administrators, stewards, channels of supply, to give His people food at the proper time, that is, to minister the word of God and Christ as the life supply to the believers in the church. Furthermore, we must be faithful in service in the Lord's gifts to make a profit for Him so that we may enter into the joy of the Lord in the coming kingdom.
