Quotes from Witness Lee

The heart is deceitful above all things, / And it is incurable; / Who can know it?" (17:9).

Our need is to see that our God today has passed through the process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement to become the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit for us to drink. He is such a compound Spirit, and we have a spirit with which to drink of Him. In spirit we are one with Him. If we see this vision, the focal point of the divine revelation in the Bible, we shall know how to drink the Lord as the water of life. (Life-study of Exodus, pp. 515-518)

Jeremiah 13:23 says, "Can the Cushite change his skin, / Or the leopard his spots? / Then you also may be able to do good, / Who are accustomed to do evil.

Rachel expected that God would give her a second son, but she did not know that this would cost her her life. Many of us have done the same thing. We prayed for a particular matter without knowing what it would cost to have our prayer answered.

God's righteousness has nothing to do with the law. We can never obtain God's righteousness by going to the law. As far as God's righteousness is concerned, the law is over. The law was the old dispensation. Now without law, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested through faith of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, days are coming, / Declares Jehovah, / When I will raise up to David a righteous Shoot… / And this is His name by which He will be called: / Jehovah our righteousness" (23:5-6; cf. 33:16).

To say that we trust in the Lord is still somewhat of the Old Testament. The New Testament is not a matter of trusting but a matter of oneness. If you are one spirit with the Lord you don't need to trust. When you need to trust, that means you are not one spirit with Him. You are separate from Him; He is He and you are you. So one needs to trust in the other. But when you and He are one, there is no need of trusting. Have

1 Cor. 1:9 God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

While He dwells in us, He builds Himself as the very element into our being to build up a kind of wonderful constitution for Him to dwell in.

We believe that Christ is going to come again. But do not think that the Lord Jesus will automatically come if we sit and passively wait. No, there is a work which the church must do. As the Body of Christ, we must learn to work together with God. We should never think that it is enough just to be saved. It is not. We must be concerned with God's need. (CWWN, vol. 34, "The Glorious Church," pp. 61, 63-64)

If we partake of Christ as the real manna, we shall find it difficult to lose our temper....This heavenly food causes our lusts to be restricted. It also deals with our selfish ambition. On the one hand, the heavenly manna nourishes us and heals us; on the other hand, it eliminates the negative things in us. Because eating is such a crucial matter, the regulating of man's diet is another basic concept in the Bible.

The energizing element of Christ is a supply, a factor, for us to live Christ.

What a difference there is between human virtues as the product of human effort and Christian virtues as the product of the divine life and nature within us!

The pledge of the Spirit is the foretaste of God as a sample and guarantee of the full taste of God. God has put Himself into us as a kind of down payment or foretaste so that we can taste Him within.

The spiritual warfare is defensive, not offensive, because the Lord Jesus has already fought the battle and won the victory. The work of the church on the earth is simply to maintain the Lord's victory. The Lord has already won the battle, and the church is here to maintain His victory. The church's work is not to overcome the devil but to resist him who has already been overcome by the Lord.

The brass means, "Not I," and the lily means, "But Christ.

Every natural man is a man who "dies in a tent" [Num. 19:14]; his physical body is a tent, and the one who is in the tent is dead.

The Lord Jesus has set His suffering life before us as an underwriting for us to copy by tracing that He may be reproduced in us [1 Pet. 2:20-21].

some are willing to help others enter into the land of Canaan to reach God's glorious goal, but they have no desire to enter into God's glorious goal to inherit the land themselves.

if we lust for ease and comfort today—caring only for ourselves, stopping halfway, and giving up our rights in the matter of pursuing the Lord—we will not be able to recover those rights; neither will there be any compensation for them. This is an eternal loss.

Here, at Babel, rebellious man built a city with a tower for making a name for man, but Abraham, in the good land, erected a tent for his dwelling and built an altar for calling on the name of the Lord. That manmade tower at Babel was surely an offense to God. To set up a tower for making ourselves a name is equal to denying God's name. It is better that we conceal our name.

the message or the word regarding His way is the gospel.

The two persons of this couple were of one source, of one nature, and had the same one life. Without doubt, they also had one living.

Lord Jesus, I love You. I want to live in Your presence. I want to walk with You because I love You.