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Scripture Reading: Luke 19:10; Acts 1:8
In the preceding chapter we saw that the work of God’s New Testament priests of the gospel, which is specifically carried out in sinners, includes four major steps. The first step is to go forth and visit people with the gospel that sinners may be saved and offered as sacrifices to God. The second step is to nourish the new believers. Saving sinners is like giving birth to babies; thus, what follows is the need to nourish and cherish the newborn ones that they may gradually grow in life. For this we need to feed the newly saved believers with the milk of the word in the Holy Scriptures that they may grow until they can present themselves as living sacrifices to God. The third step is to teach and perfect the saints. The gifted ones in the church perfect the grown-up saints for the purpose of making every one of them able to do the work that the gifted ones do, that is, the work of the building up of the Body of Christ. The fourth step, which is also the climax of the work of the priests of the gospel, is to help the perfected saints so that every one of them can prophesy. To prophesy is to speak for the Lord, speak forth the Lord, and speak the Lord into people, thereby dispensing and ministering Christ to others. This kind of prophesying is mainly not to predict but to present to others the Lord’s intention, the Lord’s gospel, and the Lord’s truths.
The church should have a meeting for all the saints to come together so that all the saints may be perfected to speak for the Lord. This meeting should not be for one or two persons to speak and the rest to listen but for every attendant to prophesy, to speak for the Lord. It is not that one man speaks and all the rest listen but that all speak and all listen to one another. In this way the riches of Christ are released through every member. Regardless of how rich a person’s speaking is, it can never replace the riches released by all the members. Through all the saints’ prophesying one by one, the riches that they have experienced in the church are ministered, item by item, for the satisfaction and edification of everyone. As a result, all the saints are built up through the supply of the riches of Christ to accomplish the work of the building up of the Body of Christ. These four steps of the work of the priests of the gospel are full and complete. They begin with preaching the gospel to save sinners for their regeneration, and they continue with nourishing and cherishing them and teaching and perfecting them that they may grow and mature in Christ, having the knowledge in truth and the experiences in life, so that they may speak for the Lord through the divine prophesying.
Such a complete work carried out by the priests of the gospel is clearly revealed in the New Testament. However, the condition of Christianity before our eyes is not like this. Consider the first step, that is, the preaching of the gospel for people to be regenerated. Every believer going out personally to bring people to salvation as a priest of the gospel should accomplish this step. But deformed Christianity has changed this to a big gospel campaign with a gathering in which one man preaches. In this way all the believers’ spiritual and organic faculties for gospel preaching are negated. The work of gospel preaching, which should be carried out by every believer, is borne solely by one person, and the rest of the saints mostly help only in some practical matters during the big gospel meeting, such as inviting people, ushering, sitting with guests, and after the meeting, speaking with them and recording their names. Thus, the saints’ direct, personal preaching of the gospel to sinners is annulled. This kind of Bible-deviating, deformed preaching of the gospel causes the saints over a period of time to form the habit of not preaching the gospel and thereby to become incapacitated in gospel preaching. If our organic faculties, whether physical or spiritual, are not exercised for a long period of time, they lose their function. We fully acknowledge that the big gospel meetings can save sinners; moreover, apparently the number of saved ones is considerably large. However, if we compare this practice with the practice of every believer preaching the gospel, there is still a great difference. According to statistics, it is rare for any Christian organization to have more than a thirty percent rate of increase of believers. This rate may not seem high, but if we can accomplish this, the result will be significant in a few years.
Let us consider this matter according to the way revealed in the Bible. If a certain locality already has some saints meeting together, they need to first love the Lord; second, they need to offer themselves to the Lord; third, they need to be revived within; and fourth, they need to be perfected. These saints need to be perfected in the truths of the gospel, such as knowing the difference between justification and sanctification, the relationship between redemption through the precious blood and salvation in life, and other matters. After this they need to be perfected in the experience of the gospel. Through such perfecting they will know that their sins have been forgiven, that they have been justified by God, reconciled to God, and joined to the Lord. In this way they are thoroughly regenerated in their spirit and have the Holy Spirit indwelling their spirit. Then they have to walk according to the indwelling Spirit that they may be justified subjectively, sanctified, and transformed in life. After they have been fully perfected in truth and in experience concerning the gospel, they still need to be perfected in the skills of gospel preaching. Not only in gospel preaching but even in playing the piano or playing ball, we need to learn and receive instruction from a teacher. In anything we do, we get to know how to do it not by birth but by learning. First we learn, and then we know. If we do not learn or practice, we can never know how to do something. If we always preach the gospel by holding big meetings, most of the saints will just sit with the guests, have a little contact with them after the meeting, and record their names. Then when they meet someone who has a question concerning the gospel truth, they have to bring him to a handful of evangelists, since they themselves are not clear or competent enough to explain such things. This proves that the old way of gospel preaching has annulled our faculties for gospel preaching.
If we were to cover our eyes with a black cloth so that we could not see anything, after a period of time our eyes would become blind. The reason for our blindness would be that we have not used our eyes. Why is it that the saints cannot preach the gospel? The reason is that they do not preach the gospel. We cannot speak, so we do not speak, and the more we do not speak, the more we cannot speak. This produces a vicious cycle that results in poverty. Conversely, although we cannot speak, we still should speak. Then the more we speak, the more we can speak; and the more we can speak, the more we like to speak. The physical strength of an elderly man diminishes over the years. As a result he does not like to walk. The less he walks, the slower he walks; and the slower he walks, the less he likes to walk. If this cycle continues, it will not be long before he is not able to rise up again after sitting down. For this reason he must struggle to walk, and the more he walks, the more he can walk. Consider the gospel preaching among us. Is our condition one of “the more we walk, the more we can walk,” or is it a condition of “the slower we walk, the less we like to walk”? Do we strive and struggle, or do we simply let the fallen nature take its course? Probably many of us no longer preach the gospel and have no desire to preach the gospel, considering ourselves as old branches that can no longer bear fruit. The most we may do is pray for the gospel when the Holy Spirit moves us.
In Colossians 1:28-29 the apostle Paul says, “Whom [Christ] we announce, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man full-grown in Christ; for which also I labor, struggling according to His operation which operates in me in power.” Paul stayed in Ephesus for three years, where he taught the saints publicly and from house to house and did not cease to admonish each one with tears, night and day (20, Acts 20:31). Paul labored in this way, not by himself but according to the power which Christ operated in him. This operation of power, as the heavenly “motor,” supplied him continuously with the power of the resurrection life that he might carry out and fulfill his priestly ministry of the gospel.
Brothers and sisters, we must see that what has been passed down by today’s Christianity is half right and half wrong. On the one hand, it has accomplished something by saving sinners; on the other hand, it has spoiled something by annulling the saints’ function for gospel preaching. The New Testament tells us that we all are priests of the gospel and must personally go forth to save sinners. We all need to struggle for this. The God-ordained way for gospel preaching is not for us to invite people to come and listen but for us to go and bring salvation to people. In the Gospels the Lord Jesus Himself was such a pattern. He desired to preach the gospel to us, the sinners, but instead of sitting in heaven and bidding us to go there, He came down from heaven to us. He came first to seek and then to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). He also sent out twelve disciples to pass through village after village to announce the gospel and heal the sick everywhere (9:1-6). Afterward, He also appointed seventy disciples and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to come, to find the sons of peace and reap His harvest (10:1-6).
One day He purposely went to the city of Jericho to seek a God-chosen yet fallen sinner, Zaccheus, and to bring salvation to his whole house (19:1-9). He also went to Samaria and sat by the well of Jacob, waiting for an immoral woman that He might give her the living water to quench the thirst deep within her (John 4:3-14). It was in this way that He went to different places to seek and save sinners. Therefore, after His death and resurrection He charged His disciples before He ascended to the heavens that they should go and disciple all the nations (Matt. 28:19) and that, after they had received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and had been clothed with power from on high, they should go everywhere to be His witnesses, beginning from Jerusalem, then to the surrounding cities in the entire land of Judea, passing through Samaria, and spreading unto the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
In preaching the gospel, we should keep the principle of beginning from our center, our “Jerusalem.” Our Jerusalem is our family and our relatives. Every one of us has our close relatives, distant relatives, colleagues, schoolmates, friends, and neighbors. These are people who are more intimate and acquainted with us. Many of them not only are not yet saved but may not even have heard the name of Jesus. Actually, when we go out to preach the gospel, there is no need to knock on new doors; it is enough to just knock on familiar doors. Our acquaintances — our family members, close relatives, distant relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and schoolmates — are more than enough persons to whom we can go to preach the gospel. When we save one person or one family, that person or that family in turn has his or their acquaintances; then the gospel can spread out little by little. Whoever is saved through us will be also perfected to be like us. Those who are saved through us will go and save others by the same way they were saved. This is the proper way for us to preach the gospel. If we are willing to be faithful to this practice, we will surely bear fruit.
After hearing these messages, every one of us should get a notebook and write in a list the names of all the candidates for our gospel. Then we should pray for them before the Lord one by one and look to the Lord’s leading to go and preach the gospel to them. If we all are willing to do this, it is not difficult; to be sure, we can have one person saved in three to four months. This requires us to knock on these doors, not of strangers but of our close or distant relatives, our older or younger schoolmates, our neighbors, our friends, and our colleagues. These doors are more than enough for us to knock on. Moreover, it is very easy to do this. Recently, the Jehovah’s Witnesses published statistics saying that they have 120,000 members in Japan, and they have gone out to visit people and have gained ten thousand people a year. They spent an average of over six thousand hours to gain one person. I am convinced that, according to the Bible, if we preach the gospel to the acquaintances around us, we do not need to spend even sixty hours; perhaps six hours are enough to bring one of them to be saved. This is not something so difficult that we cannot do it.
The Lord’s recovery has been in Japan for thirty years, since 1959. The total number of saints in the whole of Japan is under two thousand five hundred. This indicates that we have not done much in our move for the gospel. From today on, brothers and sisters, we must all be priests of the gospel of God to preach the gospel to our acquaintances. If only fifty of those hearing this message gain one person to be saved every three to four months, after one year they will become two hundred and fifty. If we carry this out, the result will be considerably great. According to statistics and the present situation, our preaching the gospel in the old way has been “losing money,” and we have been making many mistakes. Therefore, I have a heavy burden to stir you up to preach the gospel. Do not consider that you are here merely to receive the supply; rather, rise up and go to preach the gospel. In this way you will be a living person and will always bear fruit. If you bring one person to be saved in one month, yielding new fruit every month (Rev. 22:2), you will be the happiest person in the entire country. May our Christian life be a life of going forth to bear fruit. We should always preach the gospel, and preaching the gospel can never be wrong.
