The Constituents of the Vital Groups (3)
Eventually, we are the witnesses of Christ. In Acts 1:8 the Lord told the disciples, “You shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” A witness is one who has seen something. After Paul was saved on the road to Damascus, the Lord appointed Paul to be His witness (26:16)
The disciples witnessed that Christ had resurrected (1:22; 3:15; 10:39-41; 13:31). If we witness that Christ has resurrected, we must live a resurrected life.
The resurrected Christ was made by God the Lord of the whole earth and the Christ, the Messiah, for carrying out God’s economy (2:32-36). He was also made the Leader and Savior (5:30-32). He is the Ruler of the kings of the earth (Rev. 1:5) and the One who controls the whole earth to arrange the situation so that His chosen ones may believe into Him as their Savior to be saved. Also in His resurrection He was made by God the Judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). He will judge the living on His throne of glory (Matt. 25:31-46), and He will judge the dead on the great white throne (Rev. 20:11-15).
The crucial point of the witnesses of Christ is that they live Christ (Acts 22:15; Phil. 1:21a; 2 Cor. 13:3) in His resurrection and through His death (Phil. 3:10). They do not merely preach or speak about Christ, but they live a life that witnesses Christ. The constituents of the vital groups are the believers in Christ, the disciples of Christ, and the witnesses of Christ. All the full-time trainees need to realize that they are being discipled by Christ’s human living, by His all-inclusive death, and by His life-dispensing resurrection. After the training they should go out not just to teach, preach, and propagate but to witness. By the Lord’s mercy I have been discipled for about seventy years, and I am still under the Lord’s discipling today.(The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups”, ch. 2, pp. 74-77)
The church in Zamboanga 