This book is composed of a message given by Brother Witness Lee in San Bernardino, California, on September 22, 1990.
Scripture Reading: Eph. 4:11-16; Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Heb. 10:24-25; 1 Cor. 14:1, 3-5, 12, 23a, 24, 26, 31; Eph. 3:8-10
The Lord’s recovery is the recovery of three main items. These items are vital for our practice of the church life, and it is crucial for us not to miss any of them.
First, the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the oneness of the Body of Christ. Throughout the past centuries Christians have been divided again and again. In the eighteenth century Count Zinzendorf saw the need of keeping the oneness of the Body of Christ, and a century later the Brethren in England saw more concerning the oneness of the Body and practiced it to some degree. Then in 1920 the Lord raised up Brother Watchman Nee in China and showed him the Body of Christ. He put what he saw into writing, and we received much help from him. From that time many young saints in China took the stand for the testimony of the oneness of the Body. The Lord’s recovery is testifying that regardless of differing races, cultures, or levels of education, all Christians should be one. There is no reason for us to be divided. This is clearly revealed in the New Testament.
Second, the Lord’s recovery is the recovery not of any doctrine, but of Christ as our all in all. Christ is everything. He is the center, and He is also the circumference. We care only for Christ. In the past sixty years the Lord has used us to put out many publications concerning Christ, the church, and the Body of Christ in oneness.
Third, the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the function of all the members of the Body of Christ. The Lord desires that every member of His Body be a functioning member. Almost all Christian groups practice the system of the clergy and laity. The clergy consists of the professional preachers, pastors, and ministers who serve God in place of the other members of the church. Actually, the clergy replaces the members of the Body of Christ, and this replacement spontaneously annuls and kills the function, the capacity, and the usefulness of the members of Christ. This is an offense to the Lord. The Lord’s recovery is for the annulling of the clergy and laity and the developing of the gifts, functions, and capacity of all the members of the organic Body of Christ (Eph. 4:11-16).
According to the parable in Matthew 25:14-30, the Lord has distributed talents to all of us. To some He gave five talents, to some He gave two talents, and to some He gave only one talent. Brother Nee told us that the problem today is not with the five-talented ones but with the one-talented ones. He pointed out that not many churches have five-talented members, but they all have many one-talented members. Moreover, if we add together five one-talented members, they will equal a five-talented member. In a big family all the members, including the parents, grandparents, and children, must do something for the family. Every member of the Body, regardless of how long he has been saved and how many talents he has received, must serve. As long as he has been saved, he must participate in the church service.
Brother Nee also pointed out to us that, according to 1 Corinthians 14, there is the need of the proper prophesying in order to build up the church as the organic Body of Christ. To prophesy is the best way to build up the Body. However, in most Christian meetings on the Lord’s Day, there is a congregation with one or two speaking while the rest listen. The rest of the congregation are “pew members.” After many years of meeting in this way, the functioning capacity and gifts of the members are spontaneously annulled.
In 1984 I realized that we were lacking something related to the third item of the Lord’s recovery—the universal priesthood of the members of the Body. In the service among us, there was the danger that the system of the clergy and laity was being built up. Almost every local church depended on a good speaker for the Lord’s Day morning meeting, and not many saints were participating in the proper church service. As a result, our service was not fruitful. For almost ten years our increase in numbers was very low. After six years of study, practice, and experimenting, the Lord has given us a clear view concerning the universal service. We have received mercy of the Lord, and He has shown us the God-ordained way revealed in the New Testament.
The God-ordained way is to practice God’s New Testament priesthood of His gospel (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9). This way consists of mainly four practices. First, we must preach the gospel regularly by visiting sinners. God so loved the world that He gave His Son, the Savior, Christ, that the sinners, the people of the world, might believe in Him and have His eternal life (John 3:16). God desires all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). The Lord’s main charge to His disciples after His resurrection was to preach the gospel to all the creation (Mark 16:15). To preach the gospel is the first thing the church must do for the Lord. If we mean business with the Lord in His God-ordained way, we must bear the burden to preach the gospel to get sinners saved.
Then we must feed the new believers regularly in their homes. After the new believers have believed and have been baptized, we must consider them as our babies and ourselves as their begetting parents. After their delivery, babies need the adequate care to be nourished and cherished so that they may grow. If we help them to be saved and baptized and then leave them alone, they will die spiritually.
We also need to perfect the saints in group meetings. After feeding, nourishing, and cherishing their children, parents must educate them. Almost twenty years are needed to properly perfect children through education. In the same way, we must do our best to raise up the new believers by teaching, instructing, and correcting them through the group meetings.
Finally, every believer should prophesy in the church meetings for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ. Everyone must be trained to prophesy, which is to speak the Lord, speak for the Lord, and speak the Lord forth into others. All the believers have been charged by the apostle to pursue, to desire earnestly, and to seek to prophesy (1 Cor. 14:1, 12, 39).
We have been weak in all four aspects of the priesthood of the gospel. We have been weak in preaching the gospel regularly by visiting sinners and weak in feeding the new ones. Moreover, we have depended on the Lord’s Day morning meetings and the conference and training meetings to raise up and perfect the saints. We have not practiced the direct perfecting of the saints. Likewise, we have been weak in prophesying in the church meetings. The practice of one man speaking and all the rest listening has annulled 1 Corinthians 14 for us.
We all, without exception, must learn the four practices of God’s New Testament priesthood of His gospel. First, we must learn to bear fruit by visiting sinners. We are the branches of Christ as the vine (John 15:5). As branches of the vine, we should bear fruit yearly. Although many of the saints have been listening to the messages of the ministry for many years, they have not borne fruit. This is a great problem.
All the large denominations have been bothered by the decrease or slow increase in their numbers. We also in the Lord’s recovery have been very weak in the increase. In 1975 there were about ten thousand saints in the local churches in America. Today we have less than eighteen thousand. We have not doubled our numbers in fifteen years. It is not too much for a church with one hundred saints to gain thirty new ones in a year. All one hundred saints meeting in a local church do not need to go out for the gospel. If only thirty go out and each one bears one fruit yearly, the church will have a thirty percent increase yearly. However, we have failed to practice this.
The God-ordained way is a diligent way. To maintain a job, one must be regular and on time. Otherwise, he will lose his job. In the same way, we must be very diligent and regular in the new way, the God-ordained way. We must not say that the new way does not work. It is very workable. However, it does not work if we do not work regularly. To remain in the Lord’s recovery indicates that we love the Lord, but if we love the Lord, we must mean business with Him. Many of us have been barren for many years. We must reconsider our situation and even make a vow to the Lord to give Him three hours a week to reach some sinners.
We may not need to visit new people for the gospel. We can simply make an appointment with our friends, relatives, neighbors, and colleagues and visit them with some other brothers or sisters. Sometimes it is difficult to help our own relatives to be saved, but if two brothers or sisters come with us, our relatives may be saved on the first visit. Then once they are saved, they may have several more acquaintances for us to meet. Ten saved ones will lead to many new acquaintances with whom we can make appointments. This requires our time, but we do not need to use too much time. It is sufficient to go out once a week for three hours, regardless of our situation.
After we baptize new believers, we should return to their homes to have home meetings. The home meetings should be in the new ones’ homes; we must go to them to feed them. When we have two or three new ones, we can stop visiting sinners for a while and spend all our time feeding the new ones. We should always have two or three new ones under our care. Some among these new ones will move away, and we will not have the way to take some of them on with the Lord. If this happens, we must go out again to find someone else.
After feeding and nourishing the new believers, we should bring them to the group meetings. We perfect the saints in the group meetings not according to the old way with regulation or formality, but according to the new way, which is full of the Spirit, life, singing, and praising. In the group meetings there should be fellowship of each one’s up-to-date incidents (Heb. 10:24-25). It may be that after meeting in the Lord’s recovery for several years, we still do not know each other’s situation. We have to keep our fellowship up-to-date. The only way to do this is in the group meetings. In the group meetings we should open up to one another. When someone opens up his situation, the others in the meeting can pray for him. In this way everyone’s situation is known to the others. The mutual fellowship issues in the need to mutually intercede for one another. Out of this mutual intercession comes mutual care and mutual shepherding.
The group meetings should also have mutual questions and mutual answers to carry out the mutual teaching for the perfecting of one another (Eph. 4:12). In the past the elders may have divided the saints into group meetings and assigned a leader to be the teacher in each group meeting. That way was not profitable, and we have given it up. The group meetings should have no assigned teacher. Everyone is a teacher, and everyone is a learner. Everyone can ask, and everyone can answer.
When we come together in the group meetings, we may first fellowship about our present situations. Then we can intercede for one another, care for one another, and shepherd one another. Then we must take care of the teaching, the perfecting. The new ones may not know how to ask the proper questions, but we should not teach them. Rather, we should simply take the lead to ask something for their sake. Then the others will answer, and everyone will learn. After twenty minutes of answers from everyone, the question will have been adequately covered. Spontaneously, there will be the perfecting. This is the proper teaching. In this way everyone in the meeting will become interested in asking and in answering questions. This way of teaching will cover many subjects throughout the year. After fifty meetings in a year, everyone will have received fifty teachings. After meeting in this way for two years, the new ones will surely know how to speak for the Lord, and everyone in the group meeting will be perfected.
For the sake of the group meetings, we must pick up the burden to learn the truth. We have many publications covering many subjects, such as justification by faith, baptism, reconciliation, and forgiveness of sins. We must learn from these in order to equip ourselves with the adequate knowledge of the truth. When a question is raised in a group meeting, no one may be able to answer it adequately. In this case someone can give a longer answer that covers the subject in a good way. Then all the attendants will learn, and no group meeting will ever be in vain. All the attendants can carry out this kind of perfecting. After meeting in this way, all the newly perfected ones will be able to speak for the Lord in the church meetings.
All of us need to prophesy in the church meetings for the building up of the local churches so that the organic Body of Christ might be built up universally for the fulfillment of God’s New Testament economy (1 Cor. 14:1, 3-5, 12, 23a, 24, 26, 31; Eph. 4:12, 16; 3:8-10). The prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14 is defined in verse 3: “He who prophesies speaks building up and encouragement and consolation to men.” The prophesying that builds up the Body of Christ is either to build others up or to render encouragement or consolation. To speak building up, encouragement, and consolation is not to predict. Prophesying in this way is not a miraculous gift. Learning is needed for our prophesying (v. 31), but to predict miraculously or to speak in tongues does not require learning.
In order to prophesy for the building up of the church, we must learn much. When Mary, the Lord’s mother, visited Elizabeth, they prophesied one to another (Luke 1:42-55). Mary’s prophecy consisted almost entirely of quotations from the Old Testament. This indicates that Mary was very well acquainted with the Word of God and had learned much. In today’s Christianity it is difficult to find the proper prophesying. The learned pastors, preachers, and ministers who have studied in seminaries have become the professional speakers. Many Christians do not know how to speak for the Lord because they have never learned or practiced.
We should take the lead to practice the God-ordained way in a local church. Then we can help others to take this way. We want to cooperate with the Lord to keep the oneness of the Body of Christ and to experience Christ as life and everything as a testimony of God’s economy. We must also have the universal service with every member functioning in the practice of the God-ordained way.
