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Two of the books in the New Testament that describe the Christian way of meeting are Acts and 1 Corinthians. Acts 2:46 says, “Day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they partook of their food with exultation and simplicity of heart.” Acts 5:42 says, “Every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and announcing the gospel of Jesus as the Christ.” Teaching and announcing were practiced by the believers from house to house. First Corinthians 14 describes the Christian way of meeting when “the whole church comes together in one place” (v. 23). In verse 26 Paul says, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.”
I recently spent some time to review the New Testament concerning the believers’ way to meet. In that review I found out that in the early days the way invented and ordained by the Spirit for the believers to meet is based upon two principles or two factors — mutuality and speaking. Mutuality and speaking are the basic principles and factors by which or with which we should meet. A church meeting that does not involve mutuality and mutual speaking is wrong.
In Acts as soon as the three thousand were added to the church, they began to meet. On the one hand, they met in a public place in the temple. On the other hand, they met in homes. Actually, the expression used in Acts is not in homes but from house to house. This indicates that they met in every house. They did not select some homes that were considered good for meetings. They met from house to house without selection.
Meeting in the temple was not the Christian way. The Christian way was to meet from house to house. This practice was altogether new. It was not there in the Jewish religion. In the Jewish religion their practice was to have big gatherings. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, made use of the temple as a kind of convenience to preach the gospel and to teach the Word. Through that kind of public meeting many were brought into the church. Once they became believers in Christ and were baptized, however, they began to meet in a way initiated, invented, and ordained by the Spirit. By that time these believers were full of the Spirit, so whatever they did was something of the Spirit. We should consider the way of meeting from house to house as something invented and ordained by the Spirit. In this way of meeting there was mutuality and speaking and even mutuality in speaking.
The one hundred twenty had no way to take care of the houses of those three thousand people. I believe there must have been eight hundred or a thousand houses. How could one hundred and twenty take care of so many small meetings? No doubt, all the newly converted and baptized people met by themselves, and they spoke. They had only heard that one message of Peter’s. Do you believe that they still spoke about the law on the day of Pentecost after being baptized? I do not think they talked in the way of the Old Testament. They became new persons. They may have referred to the Old Testament, but it must have been that they spoke what they heard Peter speaking on that day. Peter did refer in his speaking to the Old Testament, but he was not speaking the Old Testament. He was speaking the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ. The main subject of Peter’s speaking was Christ incarnated, living on this earth, crucified, resurrected, and ascended. Because of what these three thousand people heard, they became believers in Christ. When they met together that evening, they surely spoke the same thing that Peter did, and they continued to speak from house to house, day by day. Again, these new converts became new persons. Even though they had the background of their Jewish religion and of the Jewish way to meet with a large congregation, because they were baptized, I believe their concept became new. As a result, they came together in their homes and began to speak what they had heard in the big meetings.
Today in America there is the prevailing background of Christianity that always affects people. Some may get saved through our preaching of the gospel, and we may baptize them immediately. If they were to come back in the evening to partake of the Lord’s table, they already have the preoccupying thought that there must be a pastor or leading one to speak and that they are just coming to attend a kind of “service.” This concept kills their function. If we practice in a way where there is no mutuality in speaking, instead of learning to speak, the new ones get fully settled into the way of not speaking. A number of us have been speaking in the recovery, and our speaking has really spoiled the function of all the saints, especially the new ones. In a good sense our speaking helps people, but in another sense, a greater sense, our speaking really annuls the function of so many believers.
There is much speaking in the Pentecostal movement, but what kind of speaking is there? Is it the speaking of the word of wisdom concerning the deep things of God or the speaking of the word of knowledge concerning Christ, as the apostle Paul did (1 Cor. 12:8)? Absolutely not. What we want in the Lord’s recovery is the genuine speaking of the divine Word. This Word is always followed by the Spirit. Genesis 1 first says that God created the heavens and the earth, and then the Spirit of God brooded over the death waters (vv. 1-2). Then God spoke a word, saying, “Let there be light; and there was light” (v. 3). In the old creation God, the Spirit, and the Word all worked together to bring forth creation. In the New Testament it is the same. God, the Spirit, and the Word work together to bring forth the new creation. We need to preach the Word, to speak the Word. When the Word goes out, the Spirit honors, the Spirit follows, and the Spirit works. In our meetings the speaking of the divine Word should be mutual, not individual. Mutuality has to be prevailing, not individuality. We have to “kill” individuality. The way of individuality is a traditional way, a way of degraded Christianity.
The way to meet in mutuality and in speaking is the way God invented, the way God ordained. This way is God’s created way. No one can improve what God has created. Every year the design of cars is improved. But who can improve the way God designed man? Because man is God’s creation, no one can improve His design. The same is true of the heavens and the earth. No one can improve them because God created them. This is also true of all the natural principles and natural laws, which were created and ordained by God. No one can change them. They could only be put aside or not cared for.
The way of meeting in mutuality and in speaking was ordained by God. No one can improve it. This is the best way to meet, but it has been set aside by degraded Christianity. Now we in the Lord’s recovery must recover this at any cost. We have to annul individuality in our meetings.
We saw this matter more than fifty years ago. Brother Nee encouraged us to practice in this way, but we somewhat neutralized this practice. We did not have one speaker. Instead, we had three or four speakers. The mutuality was only for those three or four. The majority still became “jobless.” Their functions were all killed by our practice. Now we must fully come back to the God-invented and God-ordained way to meet in order to kill the traditional way. We have to promote this God-ordained way to meet.
This is not merely a matter of changing our meeting schedule. We must learn to get ourselves prepared. We should not think that to meet on the Lord’s Day morning is wrong. Whether it is wrong or not depends on the way we meet. If we still meet by the old way of practicing individuality in the matter of speaking, that is wrong. We must learn to practice the Lord’s Day morning meeting in the way of mutuality in speaking. More people could be saved in this kind of meeting with mutuality and speaking than in the so-called gospel preaching meeting with only one speaker (1 Cor. 14:24). The principle is that we have to shift from the traditional man-made way of meeting to the God-created and God-ordained way of meeting.
It is worthwhile to pay the price with some suffering in order to come back to the God-created way of meeting. We should not expect to have a success in this change immediately. I even anticipate some failure. Nevertheless, our failures will lead to success. We have to try this way of meeting again and again until we succeed. In any scientific endeavor nothing can be accomplished by just one experiment. Experiment after experiment is needed to get the desired results. We have a guide in the New Testament, especially in the book of Acts, concerning the way to meet. We have to believe in this guide. Do not be disappointed that by dropping your old way, you will suffer something. We must change our way at a cost. To remodel a house many things must be torn down. That is a kind of suffering and a sacrifice. If we do not dare to sacrifice something, we cannot do any remodeling. Because we are building, we must expect some failures, yet in this expectation there is much possibility of a success. It all depends upon our endurance. We must endure. We must try again and again. To take the way of the home meetings and the way of mutuality and speaking is a hard burden to put into practice. You should not expect to have an immediate success. You have to expect some failures, but you should not be disappointed. The Lord will help you to get through.
You must learn to have the word of God deposited in you. Then you must learn to speak the word of God, not on shallow things but on deeper things, such as the Triune God embodied, realized, and consummated; the seven major steps, or processes, of the Triune God; and the intensification of the Triune God. Learn to speak these higher things. First, you must learn to speak, and then you must teach others to speak. In your local church meetings you must instruct people to speak. Do not speak to replace them, but speak to instruct them. By your speaking, put them into practice. Let them practice speaking.
Good mothers all know that the way to raise up their children is to take the lead to practice certain things and then to leave time for the children to practice them. The mothers who cook for their families should set an example and then turn the cooking over to their daughters to let them learn. Their daughters may burn some things, but eventually they will learn how to cook. Sometimes the daughters will become much better cooks than the mothers. Perhaps you think you can speak so well, but if you give the younger ones the opportunity to speak, after two years they may speak better than you.
To exercise any control over the saints kills their function. I do not exercise any kind of control. I like to keep the doors open to let everyone have a chance to grow, to advance, and to finish what they begin. This is why, by the Lord’s mercy, there are so many churches on this globe. If we took the way of control, there might be only ten or twenty churches in the United States. I do not think we could have spread to other countries. Do not be afraid of others making mistakes. Do not be afraid of trusting others too much. We would rather overtrust than control.
We have never been charged by the Lord to control. Brother Nee told us that only the Lord Himself can protect His glory. No human hand can protect the divine glory. Your control in your locality does only one thing — it limits the Lord’s move by killing and annulling others’ functions. We must come back and practice the biblical way that God ordained, the way that God instituted — the way of mutuality and speaking.
Even when the whole church meets together, we must practice mutuality. First Corinthians 14 indicates that when the whole church comes together in one place, individuality should not be practiced but mutuality. Paul says that when the church comes together, “each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up” (v. 26). Even when the whole church comes together, we should practice mutuality in speaking. This is clearly revealed in 1 Corinthians 14. There is not a hint in the New Testament that shows that in the church meeting there should be just one or two persons speaking. The church meeting must be open to all attendants. Paul also tells us in 1 Corinthians 14 that “you can all prophesy” (v. 31). In this chapter to prophesy is not mainly to predict but to speak forth Christ, to speak for Christ, and to speak Christ.
God’s way is always to include all. Man’s way is always to select. To include all is a hard job, whereas to select is an easy job. Suppose you are taking the lead in a local church of one hundred and twenty saints. To get each one of the hundred and twenty to participate in the speaking, in the mutuality, is a hard job. To work this out you need to spend at least five years to labor day and night, but to go the way of selection is easy. Out of this one hundred and twenty, a certain brother may be quite eloquent, gifted, and knowledgeable. To let him speak and to encourage him to speak is easy. To set up a seminary and train some professional speakers is the easy way. But to promote all the members in your church under your leadership to speak is hard. This requires much labor.
Anything miraculous does not need to be taught. To practice the biblical way of speaking, though, is not an easy, shortcut way. Even a proper education can never be carried out in one year. We all know that for a person to become highly educated, he must spend one year in kindergarten, six years in elementary school, six years in high school, four years in college, another two or three years in graduate school, and another three or four years to earn a Ph.D. There is a Chinese proverb which says that to raise up a tree takes ten years, but to raise up a person takes one hundred years. It is not an easy thing to raise up a person, and neither can it be done quickly. Even the Lord Jesus was prepared for thirty years before His earthly ministry (Luke 3:23). To become a priest in the Old Testament took thirty years (Num. 4:3, 35, 39, 43, 47). Even to be an apprentice took twenty-five years (8:24). We should not take the easy way nor the shortcut way.
Open up your mouth to speak, but do not speak nonsense like most of today’s so-called speaking in tongues. Learn to speak the word of knowledge first, and then go higher to speak the word of wisdom (1 Cor. 12:8). Learn first to speak how Christ as the incarnated Savior is now our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption (1:30). These are the words of knowledge, which we all can learn and speak. After you speak this, you should teach others to speak this. The word of knowledge concerning Christ is in the first stage. From chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians we should go on to chapter 2 to speak the deep things of God (v. 10), that is, to speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, “the wisdom...which God predestined before the ages for our glory” (v. 7). Practice speaking. Speak about how Christ, after being righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to us, is now the life-giving Spirit transforming us. He is working to conform us to His own image as the very firstborn Son of God. You have to tell people that for Christ to be the firstborn Son of God means that He was God, that He became man by putting on human nature, and that He was sonized in His resurrection in His humanity to be the firstborn Son of God. We all are His brothers, and we should be the same as He is, possessing humanity with divinity mingled together. Our transformation unto conformation is for glorification. We have to learn to speak the word of wisdom of the deeper things concerning Christ.
Many Christians speak good things. They speak Christ as the Savior. They speak that Christ died for our sins, that Christ is resurrected, and that He is sitting on the throne. These are all good and right things, but they are superficial. Just by speaking these superficial good things, what could the Lord work out? How could the Lord build the church without transformation? Probably you do not even realize how deep the truth taught by Paul in the third chapter of 1 Corinthians is. In chapter 1 Paul speaks of Christ being our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. In chapter 2 he tells us about the deep things of God. In chapter 3 he tells us that we are God’s farm to grow something and that we are God’s building. Paul puts the plant life together with building. Humanly speaking, it is impossible for plant life to be for building. Plant life is not for building but for producing. In the divine thought, however, the producing life is for building. For this there is the need of transformation. Paul tells the Corinthians in this chapter that they are God’s farm and that he planted, Apollos watered, and God caused the growth (vv. 9, 6). He also says that the church is built with gold, silver, and precious stones (v. 12). This indicates transformation.
I am a little concerned that those of us in the churches cannot speak on transformation. This is why I am very much concerned to see that some among us would promote shallow things. This wastes our time. We are here in the Lord’s recovery endeavoring to climb up, but some may be helping people to “go down to the basement.” We are helping people to advance to “college” in the ministry, but some may be bringing people back to “kindergarten.” Your heart may be good, and what you do may be right, but the stage of your teaching may be wrong, and the direction may also be wrong. For us to have a change from the traditional way to the God-invented, Spirit-ordained way — the way of mutuality in speaking, with all the saints speaking the higher and deeper truths — we all have to labor.
I believe that in the long run the Lord will gain something. It is not only a matter of us gaining something. It must be that the Lord will gain what He desires. He needs a church that matches His standard. The Lord said that He would build His church “upon this rock” (Matt. 16:18). Brother Nee pointed out that this rock does not mean only Christ Himself. This rock is the revelation concerning Christ. Peter saw that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of the living God. The church will be built upon such a revelation. To say that Christ is the rock is easy, but to say that the revelation of Christ is the rock requires much study of the revelation.
Every denomination claims that their foundation is Christ, that Christ is the rock upon which they build their denomination. The Catholic Church claims the same thing. But do they know anything about the revelation of Christ? The revelation of Christ is altogether developed, explained, and presented from Matthew to Revelation. The entire New Testament is the revelation of Christ. For Christ to build up His church, we need to know the entire New Testament as the revelation of Christ. Today there is a shallow gospel with a shallow revelation of Christ telling a person that he is a sinner, that God loves him, and that God gave His Son for him. God’s Son came to be the Savior who died on the cross, resurrected, and is now in the heavens. He loves all men. If a person believes in Him, he will be saved, and when he dies, he will go to heaven. Since he has been saved, he has to be good, improve his character, and glorify God. Christ cannot build the church upon such a shallow revelation of Himself. We have been laboring in the United States for twenty-three years, trying the best to uplift the situation. I really suffer in my spirit to see the saints brought down to something shallow and elementary.
The Lord has released so many truths among us, which are mostly in print. I believe that with us in the Lord’s recovery something has really been sown into our being. I have the full assurance that some day what the Lord has been sowing in these twenty-three years in the United States will come out. If not in this century, then in the next century it will surely come out. What Paul did in his day did not come out at his own time, but eventually we are here enjoying the issue of his labor. Without Paul’s labor, what could we say and what could we see? What Paul saw is here not only in the Spirit but also in the Word. Without His fourteen Epistles, what could we know? Without his fourteen Epistles, how could we have the completion of God’s divine revelation (Col. 1:25)?
I believe that what the Lord has been doing in these past twenty-three years could never be in vain, but I am still human, hoping to see the result. Sometimes when I see something otherwise, my heart and my spirit surely suffer. If what we have done is something upon the sinking sand, it will go away. But what we have built upon the revelation of Christ is on the rock. The rock in Matthew 7 is the same as the rock in Matthew 16. At the end of Matthew 7 the Lord said that whatever is done according to His word is built upon a rock (vv. 24-25). That rock is the revelation because that rock is the word. The rock is not just the person of Christ directly but the revelation of this person. This is why the churches are also built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, that is, upon their teaching (Eph. 2:20). Their teaching is the revelation of Christ.
To be a professor in a top university you must publish something. In the top educational circles there is a slogan among the professors — “either publish or perish.” To be a professor at a top university requires a great amount of labor. These words apply to the elders — “publish or perish.” First you must learn something, and then you can “publish.” Before all the saints can be helped to speak, you have to be able to speak. If you do not take the initiative, who can start something? Our way is not the easy way or the shortcut way. The God-ordained way is the way of life. You cannot expect a baby born yesterday to be a good speaker after a week. You have to raise him up. This takes at least eighteen years. If the physical life takes time for growth and development, how could we expect the spiritual life to be fully grown overnight? How many among us in the Lord’s recovery have had a spiritual graduation? We must change our way at a cost, but to do so, the elders must labor. If you do not labor to “publish,” you will “perish.”
We have seen that the Christian way of meeting is talked about in Acts and 1 Corinthians. In Acts there are the small home meetings. In 1 Corinthians there is the meeting of the whole church. In both kinds of meetings, mutuality and speaking must be there. For mutuality and speaking to be the reality in the local churches, there is the need of a great amount of labor on the part of all the leading ones.
