How lovely is Thy dwelling place

Another similar hymn is Hymns, #851, which says,
How lovely is Thy dwelling-place!
Within Thy courts I long to be;
Thy presence, Lord, my spirit craves,
For this my heart cries out to Thee.

This hymn of nine stanzas was written according to Psalm 84, and these two hymns, composed in 1961, are poetic expressions of a saint's love for the church. Although the Brethren wrote many hymns concerning the church, they wrote few if any hymns concerning the attraction of the church. I greatly treasure these two hymns, and whenever I sing them, my heart is stirred up to love the church. I believe that when the saints in the Lord's recovery sing these two hymns, they have a sweet sensation within because they have the full knowledge of the church and practically participate in the church life.

Nothing is more precious among the truths in the Bible recovered throughout the ages than the recovery of the truth concerning the church. According to church history, the Brethren in England, under the leadership of Darby, recovered the church life in a fuller way than the recovery with Zinzendorf. Brother Nee emphasized, repeatedly that the sign of the church in Philadelphia recorded in Revelation 3 was fulfilled among the Brethren in England. The condition of these believers in the initial period of less than fifty years was wonderful. They received much light from the Lord, much of which concerned the truth of the church. They also unlocked almost all the types and prophecies in the Bible. Actually, our interpretation of the types in the Old Testament was helped very much by what the Brethren saw. Prior to the Brethren, some believers gradually and progressively received light concerning the types, but it was not until the time of the Brethren that almost all the types became unlocked. Nevertheless, much of what they saw was objective doctrine; they often neglected the subjective truths.

In Psalm 26:8 the psalmist said, "O Jehovah, I love the habitation of Your house,/And the place where Your glory abides." To abide means to remain for manifestation. When the people of Israel raised up the tabernacle and when they built up the temple, the glory of God descended upon the tabernacle and the temple to abide there, to remain there, to be manifested to the people. The psalmist told the Lord that he loved the habitation of His house and the place where His glory abode, remained, to be manifested to His people.

We have to say, "O Lord, I love Your church, and Your church is Your habitation. Your church is the place where Your glory abides to be manifested today." Psalm 84 expresses the psalmist's love for the house of God, which is the kind of love we should have for the church today. We have a hymn in our hymnal based on the psalmist's expression in Psalm 84 of his love for God's dwelling place (see Hymns, #851).

In the Old Testament, the tabernacle and the temple are types of the church as God's dwelling place. In Psalm 84 the psalmist tells us that he longs, even faints, for the courts of Jehovah, which are the dwelling place of God. The function of God's dwelling place is not only for God's rest but also for His people's rest. It is based upon this psalm that Hymns, #851 was written. In the Old Testament time, the children of Israel sang of the dwelling place of God in psalms. This indicates that they had the subjective experience of the holy temple as God's dwelling place.