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We all hope that our human life is a blessed human life, and we all wish to enjoy blessing and happiness. The Chinese pay much attention to being blessed with good fortune and happiness. For a person to have a blessed human life, he must first obtain the source of blessing. The real source of blessing is none other than God Himself. The Lord Jesus is the embodiment of God, and He is also the expression of God. He is the practical source of blessing in human life. When we have the Lord Jesus, we have the source of blessing, and when we have the source of blessing, we have a blessed living. The source is like a fountain, and the living is like a flow. The Lord Jesus lives in us as our source, and we live out the Lord as His course, His flow. As to how the Lord flows out of us, that is a matter of outlet. Even with a riverhead and a watercourse, without an opening this river cannot flow freely. For instance, the Yangtze River runs through the whole of China and eventually finds an outlet and flows into the East China Sea. The Lord who lives inside of us also wants to flow out of us. Therefore, we are now faced with the need for an outlet.
Before the early apostles passed away, the vision of God had been completely revealed, but on the other hand, the church had also become degraded and gone downhill. We can see traces of the degradation of the church in 2 Timothy, 2 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John. The church’s degraded condition on earth worsened step by step. However, regardless of how Satan causes the church to become degraded, God’s hand that holds the church has never let loose. Because every word in the Bible shall by no means be annulled but shall be fulfilled, God’s hand has always been rescuing. This rescuing is the recovery.
We know from history that the church went through a long period of great darkness, and this dark age lasted for ten centuries, from approximately A.D. 500 all the way up to A.D. 1500, from the gradual formation of the Catholic Church to the Reformation beginning with Luther. During this period the Bible was a closed book to man. It was not until after the Reformation that the Lord raised up some to open up the truths in the Bible.
In the 1700s the Lord raised up Count von Zinzendorf in Moravia, and the biblical truths shone brightly. After 1820 the Lord again raised up a group of His lovers who were called “the brothers.” Later, people called them the Brethren. Among them was J. N. Darby, who gave a very thorough exposition of the Bible. In church history he is known as the “king of Bible exposition.” The Brethren not only had the light in their biblical exposition, but they were also strong in their spirit. However, their biblical exposition gradually tended toward letters and thus annulled life so that eventually all that remained were empty letters in black and white. Furthermore, due to the differences in the interpretation of truth among themselves, the Brethren also underwent division after division so that in the end they completely lost their influence.
In The Orthodoxy of the Church Watchman Nee says that the church in Philadelphia refers to the Brethren assembly at its most flourishing time. However, the Brethren declined and became Laodicea. In the early twentieth century, Europe and America, the two most influential continents in the world, were utterly damaged by Christianity. They were like fields planted in a messy and cluttered way without any room to plant something else. Therefore, God chose China, sowing the seeds of recovery in that virgin soil. This is the beginning of the recovery among us.
From 1922, when our first meeting was raised up in Foochow, until now, it has been exactly sixty-four years. The Lord’s greatest recovery among us is not in power, nor is it merely in the matter of life or the church. The Lord’s most prevailing recovery among us is the recovery of truth.
Brother Nee was only in his thirties when he first attended the Keswick Convention. When he opened his mouth to speak, people were immediately subdued by the clear truths he presented. It was the same way when I went to the United States twenty-eight years ago. The truths I spoke astounded the pastors and preachers in the audience. They had never heard such clear truths.
In the United States I traveled back and forth between the East and West Coast for over ten years, visiting place after place, and afterward, churches were raised up in those places. In 1974 the Lord gave me the burden to release the life and light in the New Testament and the understanding of the Word. Therefore, I no longer traveled frequently. Instead, I spent six months every year to write outlines and footnotes in preparation for the ten-day trainings in the summer and the winter. Over eleven years we have had twenty-two trainings, covering the Gospel of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, to Revelation, the last book.
The Lord truly did an extraordinary work among us. The release of the truths that the Lord has given to us has been a strong revival in the history of the church. We expound the Scriptures neither according to theology nor according to tradition. Rather, our way of expounding the Word is according to the experience of life. Our understanding of the Bible comes from our personal experience of life and our observation in leading the churches. In more than ten years of releasing the truth, the Lord has granted us much precious light from the first book of the New Testament to the last book.
Through the recovery of the truth the Lord has raised up many churches in all parts of the world. In 1949, in the Lord’s recovery there were less than a hundred churches overseas, most of them being in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. But from 1949 to 1984, not counting mainland China, there were more than six hundred churches in the six major continents. Today there are more than one hundred churches throughout North America, in the United States and Canada. Central America plus South America also have more than a hundred churches. Thus, there are a total of more than two hundred churches in the Americas. In addition, Europe, Africa, and Australia have about eighty or ninety churches, plus more than a hundred in the Philippines, over twenty churches in Japan, and over twenty churches in South Korea. There are more than six hundred churches altogether in the East and the West, scattered throughout the six major continents of the world. Recently, the Lord’s work has come even to India and Burma. This shows us that the churches in the Lord’s recovery are everywhere in the six major continents over the whole globe.
Through us the Lord first recovered the truth. Next, through the recovery of the truth He spread His testimony to every place. This spread was not only in one continent or several countries but in all six major continents. Fifty years ago in a conversation between Brother Nee and me, we both saw this matter very clearly. Although we were raised up by the Lord in China, the Lord’s recovery was not merely for the Chinese people but for the whole world. Back then we did not know how the Lord’s recovery would spread out, because we were born in China and grew up in China, and the vast land of China was more than enough for us to do the Lord’s work.
In 1949, before we left Shanghai, there were more than four hundred churches, with co-workers in thirty-three provinces. Shanghai was the biggest church and the center of the work. At that time, while I was serving in Shanghai, Brother Nee was focusing on conducting the training on Mount Kuling. That was truly a wonderful scene. However, the political situation changed suddenly, so Brother Nee sent me to Taiwan. At that time my view reached only as far as Japan and Southeast Asia. Unexpectedly, the Lord led me to live permanently in the United States in 1962, thereby bringing the truth of the Lord’s recovery to the English-speaking world.
After World War II, having become the leading nation in the world, the United States spread its influence throughout the entire earth. As a result, after the Lord’s recovery came into the United States, within ten years it spread to the Americas, Europe, and Australia. It was the Lord who accomplished all these things. Today Central and South America are completely open to the Lord’s recovery. Even if we send up to a thousand full-time workers, they would still not be enough to meet the need of these places.
While observing the world situation in 1984, I saw that under the Lord’s sovereignty the island of Taiwan has a wealth of talents, a high level of education, a thriving economy, and a low crime rate. Then I thought of preparing one thousand full-timers who would first receive the training and then go marching into the villages and small towns to “gospelize,” “truthize,” and “churchize” Taiwan to make it a model for the spread of the Lord’s recovery. At that time you all declared fervently, “O never speak of sacrifice! / A privilege untold / Is to be His at any price, / In Calv’ry’s hosts enrolled” (Hymns, #473, stanza 2). I was greatly touched. We used one thousand full-timers as the base number in our preparation to gospelize Taiwan. We planned to first gospelize Taiwan and then bring the truths of the Lord that had been recovered among us to every corner of the world.
The raising up of the churches in Australia, Europe, Africa, and America is mainly through the literature in the Lord’s recovery. However, the literature alone is not adequate; there is the need for people to go and strengthen the churches. South America, Europe, and Australia have always hoped for people to go to help them. It is well-known that the best place for producing workers is Taiwan. The current phase is to have all the full-timers go through a year of training in Taiwan, work through every town and village in Taiwan, and then set out to go overseas. In the soon-to-be-launched full-time training, those who join the training must first study Greek and learn its grammar; then they will be able to use reference books and dictionaries. Second, they must learn English so that they can at least read and speak it. Third, they need to choose and learn either Japanese or Spanish. In this way the needs of various places can be met.
After a year of training, the trainees will be sent out to every city, town, and village to preach the gospel and to stay to lay a solid foundation for the church there. During this period they should come back every few months to continue to study foreign languages until they can listen, speak, and write. After learning for a few years, the trainees should have a solid foundation of the truth with much practical experience in how to preach the gospel, how to lead others, and how to build up the church. Then regardless of where they are sent, they will be able to considerably strengthen the church in that locality.
Taiwan is the training base, as well as the nursery, of the Lord’s recovery. From here we will begin to bring the truth to every continent in the world step by step.
Today my greatest joy is that the Lord is the source of my blessing, the flow of my blessing, and even more, the outlet of my blessing. In faith I can see one thousand trained full-timers springing up from the small island of Taiwan to saturate the entire island, including the mountainous regions, with the gospel and the truth. This will cause the whole earth to see that within the six major continents there is a little island that has churches not merely in the big cities but even in all the villages. Furthermore, the world will see that the gospel these people preach is a high gospel, the truth they have is transparent, and their understanding of the Bible is thoroughly clear.
In the next few years, in step with the promotion of the truth, the Recovery Version of the New Testament in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish will be completed one after another. This will be the best means by which we can go out and proclaim the truth. Equipped with such a Recovery Version, all those who have gone through the full-time training and who have learned the truth, preached the gospel in the communities, built up churches in villages, and gained proficiency in several foreign languages will go to all parts of the world. At that time many of those who are preaching the gospel, speaking the truth, and building up the churches in all parts of the world will be from Taiwan. The thought of such a long-term vision brings me much joy. I believe that this vision will be fulfilled in time, and its fulfillment will not be too long from now. May none of us be slack but rather pray much for the Lord’s spread in Taiwan.
At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Zachariah (1:67-79), Elizabeth (vv. 41-45), Simeon (2:28-32), and Anna (vv. 36-38) all spoke prophecies concerning the Lord Jesus, and Mary “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” (v. 19; cf. v. 51). Kept...in her heart in Greek means to carefully retain and remember. Mary carefully kept and remembered these prophecies in her heart. Then one day she saw with her own eyes the fulfillment of each of them. I hope you would also carefully keep and remember these words. What we speak is not something idealistic nor something in a dream. What we speak is a specific way. One day you all will see the fulfillment of these words.
Lastly, I hope that those who go out for the propagation of the Lord’s recovery will not merely have a clear understanding of truth but will also be properly dressed. This shows others that the people of the kingdom of the heavens are a noble group of people. Regardless of whether we are in a large meeting or a home meeting, everyone should be properly dressed with appropriate attire. This should be the outstanding feature of our living on the earth, since we are people with a heavenly calling. I hope that not only the trainees will practice this but that all the saints in the churches will also do the same thing. Regardless of the kind of meeting it is, everyone should dress appropriately.
Above is our overall plan, and we are now pressing forward toward this goal. Our goal is not merely to gospelize, truthize, and churchize Taiwan but even to use Taiwan as a model and a starting point to gospelize, truthize, and churchize the entire world.
God promised Abraham, saying, “In your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Acts 3:25). Today this promise has yet to be fulfilled. Now we have inherited this promise that through us all the people in Taiwan and in the whole world will be blessed. We are delivering the gospel not only to the whole island of Taiwan but also to the whole world so that all the people may receive the Lord Jesus as the source of blessing in their human life.
(A message given at the graduating college seniors conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 1, 1986)
