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In this chapter we will speak about the principles of the home meetings, which are everyone speaking, no one assuming the headship, and every home having a meeting. In order to have everyone speaking, we need to begin with the training meetings of the co-workers and elders. This training of the co-workers and elders has continued for five or six weeks, yet the more we have met, the more silent many of us have become, and I have become the de facto “head.” It would be contrary to spiritual principle to ask all the saints to speak when we ourselves remain silent in the co-workers’ and elders’ meetings. If the co-workers and elders say nothing in these meetings yet speak much when they return to their own localities, their speaking is a kind of performance. This is hypocrisy.
In translating the book of Matthew, we found out from the original language that the word hypocrisy actually means “the putting on of a mask.” This indicates a performance. In Greek this word means not merely a false show or pretense but the putting on of a mask or makeup; hence, it is a performance. For example, a young man can put on a mask of an old man and thus present himself as an old man. I hope that the co-workers and elders are not performing or putting on masks. Instead, everyone should be speaking. Instead of making me the “head,” all of us should forget about being the “head.”
When a person opens his mouth, he is immediately exposed. Matthew 26:73 tells us that after Peter denied the Lord three times, someone identified him, saying, “You also are one of them, for your speech also makes it clear that you are.” The best way to hide oneself and remain anonymous is to remain silent. But remaining silent is actually the putting on of a mask. Once we open our mouth, our real self is exposed. This should in fact be the way we are in the home meetings. We should be open to one another. There should not be any masks. We should come simply as we are. Once we come as we are, we are no longer pretentious, and it becomes easy to mutually support one another in spirit, to supply one another, and to be built up together. We must drop our masks and speak the truth in love. This is one secret to the home meetings.
At present, we are in “the season of speaking”; everyone should speak. If we do not speak, it is like a rainy season with no rain. I beg the elders and co-workers to open their mouths to speak, because I want to know how we are all doing in the above three matters.
I hope we will understand that the new way is the Lord’s leading among all the churches in His recovery today. We should not consider this matter to be merely my burden or concern. All of us need to change our concept and accept this burden as our burden. It will be difficult to carry out the new way if we do not have the same burden and feeling.
In order to have a feeling for this matter, we must first have a clear picture. Christianity has made all the life matters unclear and muddled, including the operation of the Spirit and the function of the Lord’s word. Christianity has taken on many kinds of ways. For example, organization is one of their ways. Control is a way; outward arrangement is a way; fundraising is another way. The effectiveness of Christianity today depends fully on these four ways: organization, control, arrangement, and fundraising. If these four things are taken away from Christianity, nothing will be left.
We should examine the present condition of the Lord’s recovery in the light of these four things. If we take away organization, control, arrangement, and fundraising, will the church still exist? Before the Lord we have received a concern and burden to rid ourselves of these four things in His recovery. We want only the Lord’s life, His Spirit, and His word. We do not want any organization, control, arrangement, or fundraising.
In mainland China the Communists took these four things away from Christianity. They thought that by doing so, Christianity would be through. It is true that Christianity as a religion was through, but Christ is not through. The Lord’s life, His Spirit, and His word are not through. The taking away of the above four matters actually provided an opportunity for greater growth. This surprised the Communists, so they began to organize their own kind of “Christianity.” Actually, they are atheists; they do not believe in Christ. Their purpose in organizing was to control, restrict, and thus curb Christianity. The enemy knows that if he fails to destroy the Lord’s work through persecution, he can still resort to control through organization. Among the so-called Christian countries, the result of the development of such organization in Christianity has been the evolution of the clergy-laity system.
I would like to point out that we are not blind. The Lord has shown us clearly that while He was on earth, there was no organization, control, arrangement, or fundraising. When He had needs, some of the women gave their money to minister to those needs and those of His disciples (Luke 8:2-3). In Acts the apostles did not resort to any kind of organization, control, arrangement, or fundraising. However, I am afraid that the brothers and sisters are still under the influence of old concepts. They may have heard the truth, but the old concepts still remain with them. I hope that all the co-workers, elders, and full-time serving ones would rid themselves completely of these old concepts and fully pick up the new way that the Lord has led us to take in His recovery.
In the Bible we do not find such things as organization, control, arrangement, and fundraising. The Bible reveals to us that God gave man life and breath, and He wants man to receive Him as life by taking the tree of life. Although man fell, Christ came to accomplish redemption. Furthermore, He became the Spirit to reach man and to speak to man. Life, the Spirit, and the word — these are the three precious things that God has given to man. From the beginning of the Old Testament, we find these three things, but Judaism came in and gradually developed a kind of organization. God sent the prophets to the Jews to speak to them, and the Spirit followed the prophets. Once the prophets spoke through the inspiration of the Spirit, life followed and worked on man. The picture is even clearer in the New Testament. The Lord Jesus came as life (John 11:25), and He came to speak God’s word. Moreover, He gives to us the Spirit without measure (3:34). We need to preserve and maintain these three precious things — life, the Spirit, and the word. We must reject anything apart from these three things.
Some may ask, “Do we still need the meeting halls?” Strictly speaking, we can do without the meeting halls. The meeting halls are dispensable. We can meet even if we do not have the meeting halls. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He did not have any meeting hall, yet He met with the disciples all the same. A genuine church will increase continuously even when it does not have a meeting hall.
The four Gospels tell us that when the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He used the Jewish synagogues. He was not there to participate in the so-called “services”; He went to call men out from the fold. He led people out of the Sabbath tradition on the Sabbath day. Christianity, however, has created another, new Sabbath; it has invented its modern “synagogue.” We also see this with the disciples of John the Baptist. John came out of Judaism and rejected the legal Jewish formalities, but his disciples created a new religion based on his work. This is regrettable. The Lord Jesus said, “John came neither eating nor drinking” (Matt. 11:18). John the Baptist did not eat or drink, because he was for life, and he had the Spirit with him. However, his disciples preached abstinence as a religion. When they saw that the Lord dined and drank with sinners, they interrogated Him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but Your disciples do not fast?” (9:14).
Today we need to change our concept. For two thousand years God has been doing the work of recovery, the goal of which is to reject everything that is not of life, the Spirit, and the word. Eventually, however, man again has come up with an organization and a way of control. When John Wesley was raised up, he was full of the Spirit and life. But later, when the person was gone, the Spirit, the life, and the word left also, and all that remained was the Methodist Church. One hundred seventy years ago, the Brethren were raised up by the Lord in England. They rejected everything and upheld only the Lord’s word. Brother Nee said that the light that came through their exposition of the Word poured out like a cascading waterfall, but among them today life is gone, the Spirit is gone, and the word is gone. The things that remain are the organizations, such as the “closed Brethren” and the “open Brethren.” We are fearful that we could end up the same way. We should learn the lessons from those who have gone before us.
This is the reason that I am fully determined to risk everything to knock down the old ways practiced by Christianity today and to “sink them under the sea.” I hope that the co-workers and elders could see this and respond to this burden. We should change our concept. We are not here for the big meetings, because the big meetings can take care of only some of the people. We must see that it is not enough to depend on the big meetings alone. This is not the way. There is no prospect and no future in this. The Lord Jesus did not go to the synagogue to build up the synagogue. He knew that there was no prospect and no future in such work. He went to the synagogue to gain a group of people. The apostle Paul did the same thing. He was clear that he was sent by God not to build up the synagogue but to bring people out of it. Dear brothers, if we see this, we need to preach this faithfully with all boldness.
In the book Church Affairs Brother Nee stressed that our Sunday morning message meeting is absolutely a practice of Catholicism and Protestantism. For us to continue in this way is to walk “in the statutes of the nations” (2 Kings 17:8). He proposed that we overturn this tradition of having a Sunday morning message meeting and change it instead to a gospel meeting. Although he spoke about this, the churches did not respond, and no church took the lead to do anything. If I were to ask today whether or not we want to maintain the Lord’s Day morning meeting as we have in the past, we may all say yes. However, if we do this, it will be difficult to promote the practice of the new way.
I do not mean that we should drop the big meetings or that we should disband them. It is good to utilize them, but it is not good to consciously build them up. This is similar to what the Lord Jesus and the apostles did. They utilized the synagogues, but they did not build up the synagogues. Brothers, we should all be clear about this, and we should pick up this burden to return to our localities to speak and promote this. The first task of a revolution is the work of propaganda. In the same way, in practicing the new way, we must first have the promotion. Recently, at least three brothers stood up and said, “We need to propagate Brother Lee’s burden. We need to work out Brother Lee’s burden.” I beg you not to say this again. We must say, “We need to carry out the Lord’s burden. We need to propagate the things that God has entrusted to us.” I hope that we all will have this concern and burden and that we will settle for nothing less than the complete overturn of all the old things.
Of course, we must still take care of the big Lord’s Day morning meeting because there are still some people who prefer the big meetings. If we do not take care of the big meetings, these people will be lost. However, we must be clear that there is no future or prospect in building up the big meetings. We thank the Lord that recently all the big meetings have been changed to small meetings; each meeting has been split into different places. According to our old concept we wanted to see as many people as possible coming to the big meetings in order to gain new ones. But now in terms of practicing the new way, we would like to see fewer people in such meetings. If a day comes when only five people are left in the big meetings, we should jump for joy. Of course, if there is not an increase in the other meetings, we would mourn in sorrow. What I mean is this: If a day comes when we have five to six hundred people learning the truth in classes of forty or fifty each, but there are only five people left in the so-called big meetings, we should consider this a cause for celebration.
Today we still need to keep the door open to the big meetings. One day when no one “comes to the shop” any longer, we can “close the shop.” If, however, the big meetings become bigger and bigger in number, we should find the reason that they are increasing. Let me repeat: The practice of the new way takes care of all aspects of the church life. This is similar to what the Lord Jesus and the apostles did while on the earth. When Paul was in Philippi, he went to a place of prayer by the river (Acts 16:13). This was the place where the Jews and devout Gentiles would go for prayer. Paul did not go there to build up something. He was merely using that place to achieve his purpose. Today we need to do the same. We must use the big meetings, but we are not here to build up the big meetings. Sometimes when the saints have friends and relatives whom they want to bring into the church life, they prefer to bring them to the big meetings. The big meetings are still a place for gaining people. We still need to take care of these meetings, but our emphasis is the home meetings, and we must build up the home meetings.
A nation is not built upon a school or a club; its foundation is the homes. Without the homes a nation cannot exist. In the same way, if the church is to prosper today, the homes need to rise up. If the homes in the church are strong, the church will have a good prospect and a bright future. This is the new way revealed to us in the Bible. Today in mainland China, Satan hates the churches that meet in the homes. These churches comprise more than fifty million believers. The authorities condemn the “shouters,” who are predominantly those who meet in the homes. Some saints have written telling us how strong and revived these home meetings in mainland China are. They have no apparent leaders. Whoever tries to be the leader is asking for trouble because the authorities focus their attention on the leaders. However, when everyone is a leader, the authorities can do nothing.
This is one reason that we are practicing to have no “heads” among us. Rather, everyone should be a speaker. Whoever assumes the headship is asking for trouble. We must learn from the brothers and sisters in mainland China. They have no pastors or preachers. Everyone preaches, and the more they preach, the stronger they become. One preaches to ten, and ten preach to a hundred. In this way the gospel becomes more and more powerful. No one could have believed that within a period of a dozen or so years more than fifty million Christians could be raised up in mainland China. It is possible that in a few years the number could double to one hundred million. One county alone has more than one million Christians. The leading ones have all been imprisoned, and no one wants to be the “head.” Yet the saints are still very active and powerful in preaching the gospel. Some of the imprisoned ones have been sentenced to terms of fifteen years, yet they still have small group meetings in their prison cells with some of the guards trying to join them in secret. This is even more than what Paul did. Paul brought the Philippian jailer to salvation, but he did not have meetings in his prison cell. This shows that the practice of everyone speaking is truly the way the Lord ordains and blesses.
We need to see that the real prospect and future of the church lies in the homes. In order to evangelize Taiwan, the first thing we must do is build up the home meetings. Once the home meetings are built up, Taiwan will be gospelized within one or two years. However, if we still depend on our old ways, old organization, and old arrangements, and if we only depend on our past training, I am afraid that Taiwan will not be gospelized in fifty years. I hope that the co-workers and elders would change their view. We need to see this clearly. Once we see it, we will have the burden, and when we speak, our spirit will be released.
The most pressing need now is for all of us to promote this and to persuade others to do this in the various meeting halls. We need to take the lead. The saints will follow us. It will not work if we try to push others to do this but are unwilling to do it ourselves. But if we do it and urge the brothers and sisters to do the same, the result will be a success. I am concerned that the co-workers and elders may feel that they are merely following and obeying the training, merely doing what they have been told. If this is the concept that we have of the practice of the new way, we have failed. We must have the inward light. Our concepts must change. Our eyes must be opened. Only then will we have the boldness to push the saints aggressively. I am not asking that we busy ourselves with the arrangements of the home meetings. I am asking that we stir up the burden and stir up the saints until the saints fight to go to the home meetings. When a person is sick, he has no appetite for food. We cannot force food down his throat. The best way is to stir up his appetite. Once he becomes hungry, he will want food. I hope that the co-workers and elders can make every saint in the churches or the halls a “glutton” for souls; everyone will be starving to save some souls. If we can do this, the home meetings will be successful, and the evangelization of Taiwan will be accomplished.
If we do not change our concept, and if we think that the new way is merely a change of method, from managing big meetings to managing small meetings, from managing small meetings to managing home meetings, and if we think that this can be accomplished easily by mere arrangements, we will find ourselves facing nothing but failure. It would be better if we did not make any arrangements. The minute we make arrangements, everything dies. If we make arrangements for one home, we kill that home. If we make arrangements for a second home, we stifle that home. Then if we make arrangements for a third home, we bury that home. The homes are like plants. If we do not move them, they live, but once we move them, they die. Now we ourselves must first rise up, taking action in an aggressive way. Then we will see others taking action who follow after us. When that happens, the new way will sprout.
A tree is known by its fruit, and parents are known by their children. If we are active in the new way, and if we are hungry for the home meetings, the ones who are saved through us will also be active and hungry. But if we are indifferent and unconcerned about the new way, the ones who are saved through us will also be loose and unconcerned. If we take this attitude, Taiwan will not be gospelized in one hundred years. In a positive sense all the co-workers and elders from now on must be “hungry wolves,” actively gaining people and caring for them.
The co-workers and elders must also strengthen their prayer. We need to consider this matter as a burden and pray for it. In order to be a hungry one, one must first be a fasting one. The co-workers, elders, and full-timers need to fast and pray often. It is not too much to fast and pray weekly. We must pray by fasting, saying, “Lord, You must turn the church around absolutely from the old way of Christianity. You must turn us to the home meetings. Burn in every home! Stir up every home!” To merely act a little after I speak is not the way. We need to pick up the burden in a genuine way and pray with this burden pressing heavily upon our shoulders.
Fasting is the result of heaviness of burden and pressure in the spirit. When one becomes so pressed that he is unable to eat, he is fasting. Once we pray according to the burden within, the Lord’s Spirit will come upon us. When the Lord’s Spirit comes upon us, something will happen. This is different from a mere change of method. Although we speak of changing the system, we are merely borrowing this expression for convenience. In reality, if we have only an outward way without a burden that burns within us, and if we do not fast or pray, this “change of the system” will be an empty shell. It will never bring forth any results.
I have no way to describe the heaviness of my burden. I hope we all will see this and pick up this burden. The need in the Lord’s recovery is great, and there is no way for us to meet the need. I have mentioned before that throughout my life of serving the Lord over the past fifty or sixty years in both the East and the West, I have never seen a place like Taiwan today where needs abound. The way the high-rise apartment buildings are constructed today is simply a preparation for the gospel. Within one building there are sixty to seventy homes, and they all share a common entrance. It is easy for everyone to know everyone else. Are we not touched by the situation? Our need today is people. At present, there are approximately ten thousand saints in the church in Taipei. Among them only four thousand are active members. If we do not work on the homes, and if we do not stir up every home, how can we answer to the Lord, and how can we answer to all the saints?
I have heard that many denominations are now turning their attention to these urban communities and have gained many people from them. However, they are still carrying on their practice in the old way. I hope that when we go to these communities, we will be different. We should practice “universal conscription”; everyone should be a soldier, and every home should rise up. If we stir up the homes with the homes, and if we perfect the homes with the homes, soon twenty homes will be stirred up in a community. Perhaps in two years many home meetings will be established in that community. This requires our labor. To depend solely on the one or two hundred co-workers and elders that we have here can be compared to attempting to quench one’s thirst with only a drop of water. What we need to do is stir up the homes. Of course, we cannot wait until all the homes are stirred up before we begin our work. On the one hand, we need to make personal visits to the communities, and on the other hand, we need to train the saints through the practice of the home meetings. If we cannot break through in the matter of the home meetings, we will not be able to have an army. Every home that is stirred up becomes a part of the army.
During the Second World War, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States could not enlist the adequate number of fighting men by the standard way. The government opened up the opportunity for anyone interested to join the army. As a result, the number of volunteers more than met the demand. The American government also diverted its resources and turned many factories into arsenals. In this way all the needs were met. Today in Taiwan we need to evangelize the entire island. The Lord has provided us with an open door. If we have three to five thousand people responding to this need, we will gospelize Taiwan in at least two years.
I have heard reports of the visitation work in the communities. These reports are very encouraging. We are well received, and many people are open to us. Although we do not have the adequate manpower, we should still endeavor to do this work. In particular, the full-time trainees should go out at least twice a week. I have made the decision that when we go out again, we will match two young full-timers with one older saint. I believe that there will be more open doors because of this, and people will take our gospel even more seriously. The training center in Taipei needs to plan, and the co-workers and elders must take the lead to encourage the working saints and the elderly saints to dedicate some time to go with the full-time trainees to visit the communities and to bring the meetings to people’s homes.
To bring the meetings to the homes is the very heart of the God-ordained way. It will be a great failure in the Lord’s recovery if we cannot bring the meetings to the homes. For the past twenty years in the Lord’s recovery, we have been bringing people to the meeting halls. The more we work in this way, the fewer people we have, and the worse the condition of the homes becomes. More and more our meetings have become a kind of Sunday morning service. In Christianity many people “go to church” to listen to the singing of hymns and to attend the “service,” but their homes are deplorable; their tables may still be scattered with mah-jongg game pieces. In the morning the family attends the service, but in the afternoon the mah-jongg game goes on in the homes. In order to overturn this degraded situation, we must bring the meetings to the homes. I hope that every home will be mobilized, that everyone will become a soldier, and that together we will become an army of the Lord.
At present in Taipei there are about sixty new urban communities. Let us suppose that we can set up a center for meeting in every community, and every center takes care of fifty people. Immediately we will have three thousand people. If each center takes care of one hundred people, we will have six thousand people. This is not a small matter. This is the reason that we must endeavor to work on the communities.
Recently, I took some time to observe the teaching of the truth classes in hall one in Taipei. On the one hand, the brothers took my word and stayed away from free expounding, keeping themselves instead to teaching the text. On the other hand, as the brothers have followed my words, they have become somewhat “robotic”; they no longer act according to the leading of the Spirit. If asked why they are doing what they are doing, they may say, “Brother Lee told us so.” I would like to point out the shortages here according to my observation.
First, your spirit is not strong enough. When you are teaching, you are not exercising your spirit. There are two ways to teach. One way is the institutional teaching, the teaching in the schools. In this case the teacher reads or teaches, and the students are occasionally asked to read. This kind of teaching does not require the exercise of the spirit. The other kind of teaching is the teaching in the church. This requires the spirit. If we do not exercise our spirit, we will turn Truth Lessons into a school textbook. If neither the teacher nor the students exercise their spirit while reading Truth Lessons, the result will be a killing meeting where people come merely to warm the pews and sleep. Throughout all these years we have been taught that our meeting is a matter of the exercise of the spirit. Any time we meet, we must stir up our spirit and exercise our spirit. This is not a matter of being loud or soft. It is a matter of exercising the spirit. When we exercise our spirit, we can read in a living way. If we do not exercise our spirit, we will read in a mechanical way. I have pointed out that there are many ways to read Truth Lessons. We can read them with life, with repetition, with emphasis, with prayer, with explanation, and with singing. However, no matter how we read them, the key is to exercise the spirit.
In our reading we should not be legal but flexible. While we read, we can ask questions to emphasize the main points. As I have said before, in order for a chicken to live, it needs feathers, skin, and bones. The feathers are worthless, but without the feathers the chicken cannot exist. In the same way today, while we are serving others, we must remove the “feathers” and the “skin” from the “meat.” Once in a while we may also serve the “bones,” but the main thing we serve others is the “meat.” When we ask questions, we should not concentrate on the “feathers” or “skin.” Rather, we should give others the “meat.” We need to know what the meat and the feathers are. If our questions are on the main points, we can ask ten questions, and the time will still be well spent.
We may take the outline of the Old Testament as an example. I have no intention to teach the brothers and sisters history. Yet most of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament are a record of history. Without history, the Old Testament would be like a chicken without bones, feathers, and skin. However, if someone merely focuses on the history when reading the Old Testament, he will be lost, unable to understand what he is reading. For this reason, in writing Truth Lessons, I gave a general sketch of the history of the Old Testament. The main points, however, are the spiritual matters related to life. If we have the discernment, we will spontaneously pick up the meat, that is, the spiritual points and the points related to life. We will not read the lessons in a dead or legal way.
We should not merely run through a lesson in a nondescript way. To do so is to take the way of classroom teaching. Such reading does not differentiate the meat from the bones and feathers. In reading, we must separate the bones, feathers, and skin from the meat. When we come to the important points, we need to read with emphasis. If we do this, the meeting will be living, and the message will be nourishing. In editing the materials, I have purposely left out many bones, skin, and feathers and have kept the meat. For example, with the twelve books of the Minor Prophets, the main points are the meaning of the names of the prophets and their prophecies, especially their prophecies concerning Christ. The main purpose of the material is to show everyone that all the prophets in the Old Testament spoke of Christ. Although I included the background, history, and dates related to these prophets and their spiritual significances in the lessons, the goal of the lessons is to show the reader a picture of the entire “chicken.” When we teach, we need to bring out these main points. The thing that bothers me the most is that none of us have presented these main points in a clear way. This is a great loss. It defeats the whole purpose of teaching Truth Lessons.
At the end of each lesson there is a summary and some questions. This is the most crucial portion of the lesson and contains the real significance of the entire lesson. All the teachers should first study the summary and ponder the questions. Then they will know the main points. In teaching, we should impart the main points into others. We should speak, ask questions, and answer with our spirit, and we should read these portions with repetition and emphasis. If we do this, in one hour we will give the attendants an impression of the main points concerning Christ.
First Timothy 3:2 says that one of the qualifications of an elder is to be apt to teach. I hope that every elder would participate in the teaching of the truth lessons on the Lord’s Day morning. The elders should not excuse themselves from this responsibility simply because others can teach better than they can. They must be teachers. First Peter 5:3 indicates that the elders must take the lead in everything, becoming patterns of the flock. If the elders do not take the lead in teaching but assign this responsibility to others, they are acting contrary to God’s word. Even if others can do a better job of teaching, they should still take the lead in teaching. By doing this, the elders will be forced to learn the truth and speak the truth. In principle, the elders should know more of the truth than the other saints.
Today in practicing the new way, we need every saint to speak. If the elders only encourage others to speak, yet they themselves do not speak, they are left without any excuse. No elder in the Lord’s recovery should be an “honorary” elder. Every elder should be a practical and useful elder. The first responsibility of an elder is to teach. This is the greatest need of a church. If we read the Bible carefully, we will find that there is not much mention of the affairs that the elders should handle. This proves that the scriptural requirement concerning the elders lies in teaching, supplying life, shepherding and care, becoming patterns of the flock, and not so much in the arrangement of affairs or the management and organization of the church. Strictly speaking, once the church life is built up in the saints’ homes, there will not be much need for the arrangement of affairs and organization. At that time the elders should take the lead even more in learning the truth, learning to speak, and teaching the truth.
This is the grace that the Lord has reserved for the elders. You need to be a few steps ahead of the saints. You should know the truth a little more than the saints so that you can fulfill your responsibility in the church. The foremost requirement of the elders is to be apt to teach. Never surrender such responsibility of teaching to other brothers and act merely as an overseer. Even if others are more gifted, the elders should still take the lead in this matter. By taking the initiative and participating, they induce others to follow. By this practice a good foundation will be established.
The Chinese have a saying, “Champions are found among the students, not among the teachers.” Sixty years ago there was a famous opera singer in Chinese drama; everyone knew him, but no one knew who his teacher was. I am not a “champion,” but I truly hope that everyone taught by me would become a “champion.” If you learn and put into practice what I have taught you, I believe you will do a better and more excellent job of teaching than I can. If you do this, the teaching of the truth lessons will be living, with much spirit, having a good grasp of the main points, and with much supply of life.
In Chinese cooking, one famous dish is plain steamed fish. The whole fish is steamed, and the original taste of the fish, including the head, the fins, the tail, and even the bones, is retained in the cooking. The fish is very tasty and fresh. Because Westerners do not like the bones in fish, they usually cut the fish into fillets and throw away the head, the fins, the tail, and the bones. However, the taste is sometimes lost in this way. Today we are not here to serve merely the “fish fillet”; we must learn to cook our “plain steamed fish.” If we teach the truth lessons in this way, we will make them tasty and appealing.
The burden in this chapter is first to bring the church to the homes, and second to bring the saints into the truth. If we can achieve these two points, the new way will succeed, the gospelization of Taiwan will be realized, and there will be a bright future in the Lord’s recovery. Therefore, we need to give our all to do these two things. We must build up the home meetings, and we must teach the truth. I hope that we will pray much before the Lord for these two matters.
