Life-Study of Hebrews

Life-Study of the Bible #29

by Witness Lee

In the Lord’s recovery during the past five hundred years the church’s knowledge of the Lord and His truth has been continually progressing. This monumental and classical work by Brother Witness Lee builds upon and is a further development of all that the Lord has revealed to His church in the past centuries. It is filled with the revelation concerning the processed Triune God, the living Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the experience of life, and the definition and practice of the church. In this set Brother Lee has kept three basic principles that should rule and govern every believer in their interpretation, development, and expounding of the truths contained in the Scriptures. The first principle is that of the Triune God dispensing Himself into His chosen and redeemed people; the second principle is that we should interpret, develop, and expound the truths contained in the Bible with Christ for the church; and the third governing principle is Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. No other study or exposition of the New Testament conveys the life nourishment or ushers the reader into the divine revelation of God’s holy Word according to His New Testament economy as this one does.

877 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Witness Lee (李常受, pinyin Lǐ Chángshòu) was a Chinese Christian preacher associated with the Local Churches movement and the founder of Living Stream Ministry. He was born in the city of Yantai, Shandong Province, China, in 1905, to a Southern Baptist family. He became a Christian in 1925 after hearing the preaching of Peace Wang and later became a close coworker of Watchman Nee. Witness Lee moved to Taiwan in 1949 as the Communists were advancing in mainland China. During the 1950s, his ministry extended throughout Southeast Asia and in 1962 Lee moved to the United States, relocating the base of his ministry to Southern California. He gave his last public conference in February 1997 at the age of 91. Many of Lee's spoken messages have been published in over 400 books and translated into more than fourteen different languages. Lee's major work is Life-study of the Bible, comprising over 25,000 pages of commentary on every book of the Bible from the perspective of the believers' enjoyment and experience of God's divine life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Lee was also the chief editor of a new translation of the Bible entitled the Recovery Version.

Reviews

[Reese Walling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm once again in awe at the revelation brought ought in another one of Witness Lee's Life-Studies of the Bible. As the title attempts to portray, these studies are not merely a commentary on historical or doctrinal exposition, they usher you into the very Person [sic] of the Writer [sic] of each book, opening up the Word through in a way of life as opposed to dead knowledge. I lack the utterance the properly convey my appreciation of these Life-Studies, so I'll simply say that if you haven't read one, you're missing out.
This Life-Study of Hebrews brought out the revelation of this epistle of the heavenly Christ who far surpasses everything of the Old Covenant. He is the very Creator God (1:2, 8-9), much greater than all the angels (v. 5). He is superior to Moses (3:3), Joshua (4:8), and Aaron (7:11-12), bringing in a superior covenant with better promises (8:6). The Covenant came in through the better sacrifices (9:23) and the better blood (9:14). Ultimately, Christ is superior to Judaism and everything related to it, imploring all Christians and Jews to cross the river, leave the old behind, and come forward with boldness to our great High Priest's throne of grace!
This superior One, who is the God of the universe (1:1-3), the only begotten of the Father, incarnated for the purpose of sharing in what we are (2:14). This union between God and man in the God-man Jesus Christ enabled Him to not only be the Only Begotten, but also the Firstborn with many brothers (1:6; 2:11). This heavenly, exalted Christ came to bring us where He is! He is our Forerunner (6:20), bidding us to come all the way into the Holy of Holies (10:19) to partake of all that God is (6:4; 8:2; 12:10), thus making us holy (3:1), lest we shrink back to destruction (10:39) and fall victim to all the warnings given in this epistle (2:1-4; 3:7-4:13; 5:11-6:20; 10:19-39; 12:1-29).
There is so much more I want to share, especially concerning the contents of the Ark (ch. 9) and the Sabbath rest (ch. 4), but I think I'm not allowed to type many more characters, lest I intimidate anyone who may have initially considered reading this...
Praise the Lord for this Life-Study!

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a profound and marvelous book for the Book of Hebrews! It is so wonderful to see that we today are also the Hebrews, the river-crossers, that need to follow Christ as our Caption of Salvation to enter into the glory by pressing on everyday to be in our spirit.

I truly appreciate that this book is fundamentally different from any Bible interpretation for people to study theology and know God outwardly. On the contrary, it's presently how this very God, who created the heavens and the earth, has become man and has become the life-giving spirit (1 Cor.15:45), so that we can receive and experience Him today by today, not as doctrines, but as life, another life added into us.