Merely to hold the Bible in your hand and read Micah 5:2, saying that Christ will be born in Bethlehem, does not work. You may say after you have read it that you have got it, but you have not seen it. You have got it, but nothing has happened to you. Those chief priests and scribes knew the Bible so well, but the Lord did not go to them. He went far away to a heathen land to reveal this matter to some heathen, not through the Scriptures, but through something which human hands can never touch—a heavenly star. You may have the Bible, yet you may miss the star. To hold the Book in your hand is easy, but to wait and look unto the star is rather difficult. You simply don't know when and where the star will appear. You may study the Scriptures and obtain a degree in that, and you may learn all that the Bible has to say about Christ, but you simply cannot determine when the star will come. The Book was with the Jewish people, the religious people, but the star appeared to the heathen. Have you seen this? We may think that the star should have appeared to those priests praying in the temple, but it appeared to some pagans far away from the temple.
Oh, we all must see this star. It is not a matter of seeing the Bible, but absolutely of seeing the star. What is the star? The star is the living revelation, the living vision, not the old and dead knowledge of the Scriptures, not the dead knowledge of Micah 5:2. What we need today is not merely Bible knowledge, but the heavenly vision, the instant vision, the living vision, the vision that human concept can never teach.
The star in Matthew 2 is just the beginning of this matter in the New Testament. If we go to the last book, the Book of Revelation, we see two things: the first is that the Lord Jesus is the star, not the evening star but the morning star; secondly, we see that all the angels of the churches are stars. Here we must realize that the angels are not those heavenly beings, but the spiritual people who take the spiritual responsibility in the church—they are the stars. In this book we have Christ as the morning star and those faithful followers of Christ in the churches as the stars. Now where is the star? It is so clear, the star today is in the church. At the beginning of the New Testament the star was outside of religion, but at the end of the New Testament the star is within the church. Have you seen these two ends of the New Testament? If you would see the star today, there is no need for you to look to the sky, there is no need for you to do as those wise men. Today the star is in the church and among the churches. The root and offspring of David, the Son of God as well as the Son of man, Jesus Christ as the morning star, is walking today among the local churches. Where then must you come to see the star? To the local churches.
If we are for religion, we are through as far as the star is concerned. But if we are in the genuine local church, praise the Lord, the star is here. So many of us have proved this by our experience: when we were in religion we simply had the sense of being in darkness, but when the Lord brought us into the local churches, Hallelujah, we saw the star, the brightness of the star. The heavenly star today is in the local churches.