Search
Scripture Reading: Acts 2:46; 5:42; Rom. 16:5a; 1 Cor. 16:19b; Col. 4:15; Philem. 2
Prayer: Lord, we need You in every way. Cleanse us with Your precious blood. We trust in this cleansing. Lord, we do not have any trust in ourselves. Give us the rich anointing. Lord, give us an open heaven so that we may see what is on Your heart. Lord, in this matter of home gatherings, we need Your revelation; we need Your enlightening. We do not like to follow the old, traditional way of any meeting. Lord, be with us and give us the instant utterance. Lord, give us the real understanding and real seeing, the inward seeing, that we may have the vision concerning Your way for us to meet regularly. Defeat the enemy. Lord, chase away all the darkness among us. We like to be under a clear sky, seeing the things You like to have us see. Lord, do cover us again with Your prevailing blood. Amen.
In this chapter we come to the very practical matter of the home gatherings. In the New Testament there are not many verses that talk about the way to meet. In today’s Christianity the understanding of Christian meetings is almost entirely based upon the natural concept. I would ask you to drop all those concepts. I was greatly frustrated for many years by these concepts. Even after coming into the Lord’s recovery, that kind of traditional frustration was still with me.
There was a certain way for the children of Israel to be gathered in the Old Testament. In Acts 7 it is are referred to as “the assembly in the wilderness” (v. 38). The King James Version uses the word church instead of assembly. There was a certain kind of meeting with the people of God in the Old Testament. They came together three times a year to meet around and within the temple (Deut. 16:16). Then on the day of Pentecost a new thing began. The one hundred twenty met in an upper room (Acts 1:13, 15), but they suddenly had three thousand added to them (2:41). They immediately began to meet in the temple (v. 46), but that way of meeting was according to their tradition. Footnote 461 in Acts 2 (Recovery Version) says,
In the initiation of God’s New Testament economy, the early believers and even the first group of apostles were not clear that God had forsaken Judaism with its practices and facilities, including the temple (see Matt. 23:38—“your house,” referring to the God-forsaken temple). Hence, according to their tradition and habit, they still went to the temple for their New Testament meeting.
In referring to the temple in Matthew 23:38 the Lord said, “Behold, your house is left to you desolate.” The temple was the house of God, but now the Lord called it “your house” because they had made it a den of robbers (21:13), and God had forsaken it. But the disciples still went to the temple for their New Testament meeting according to their tradition and habit. Although they were still under the influence of their tradition, they were so much under the power of the Spirit that they also met in their homes, even from house to house. The way to meet from house to house was absolutely new.
In Exodus 12, at the initiation of their exodus from Egypt, the Old Testament saints had the passover in their homes since there was not a center for their worship by that time. Every home with its household had a little home gathering to observe the passover. But when they entered into the good land, they had to keep the three annual Feasts of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles at the worshipping center of Jerusalem. Suddenly, on the day of Pentecost under the power and leading of the Holy Spirit, they began to meet from house to house.
The three thousand who were added to the church on the day of Pentecost were all Jewish. They were either local residents or from different countries where they had been dispersed. Many Jews from other countries came back to their fatherland to keep the Feast of Pentecost. When they were saved, they were all gathered by the Holy Spirit, so they began to meet in their homes, probably on the same day.
I have also considered how these three thousand were baptized. How could one hundred twenty baptize three thousand? Probably at least one-third of these one hundred twenty were sisters. From the very beginning the Holy Spirit led the new church to do everything by each member. They all did the baptizing. It could not have been a baptism done in a concentrated way with a large gathering and “one pastor and an assistant” to do the baptizing. They probably did their baptizing in a very “scattered way.” Peter surely could not control the situation, since all three thousand were new ones. These new ones did not have any training, they did not receive any instruction, and they gathered from house to house. We may ask who arranged their meetings, who assigned them, and were some leading ones and helpers appointed? These questions are all our natural thought. On the day of Pentecost there was no time for them to do these things. Suddenly they met, they gathered, from house to house.
In October of 1984 I went back to Taiwan and ran a risk to tell people that in all the home meetings there should not be any designated leader. I told them to forget about the leadership. I was so bold to tell them that even a sister or a little girl could be a leader. Then I went further to say that everybody could be a leader. It is superstitious to think that the Holy Spirit assigned a leader to each of the homes, pointing out certain ones to be the leaders. There is no hint in the New Testament concerning this.
We must also realize that the New Testament way is in the principle of incarnation. Do you believe that they spoke in tongues in the home meetings in every house, from house to house? Did they speak in tongues only on the big occasions? No doubt, they spoke in tongues before a big congregation. Acts 2 tells us that the many visitors from different countries heard some of the one hundred twenty speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost (vv. 4, 6, 8). They did speak in tongues before a big congregation, but there is no hint in the Word that they also spoke in tongues in the home meetings. My point is this: in a big congregation God borrowed the works of the powers of the age to come (Heb. 6:5) as evidence that what the apostles preached and ministered and how they acted were absolutely of God, not of man (2:3-4). God does not have any intention to do that much in a miraculous way. In the New Testament God’s doing is always in the principle of incarnation.
The Lord Jesus lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. When He was a carpenter, do you believe that He performed miracles? Do you believe that He did not do any carpentry? When Joseph asked Him to make a table, did He miraculously cause a table to appear? We must realize that God lived there in a man. I believe that Jesus did not do anything miraculous in those thirty years. In the three and a half years of His ministry He occasionally did something miraculously, but I do not believe that He performed a miracle every day and everywhere.
In the New Testament God’s move is always in the principle of incarnation. Incarnation is not only that God mingles Himself with man but also that God hides Himself within man. During this 1986 elders’ training, the Lord has done a great deal, but it has all been done in a hidden way. Throughout church history, how much has really been done by the Lord miraculously? If the Bible translators could have translated all the Bibles miraculously, there would have been no need of any labor. When the Lord’s move went to a certain country, was there a miracle performed to produce a new translation of the Bible instantaneously? If that were the case, there would be no need for Bible translators. But consider the tremendous amount of labor of the translators of the Bible to collect and train people to learn the foreign languages. The Spanish people could have asked the Bible translators, “Where is your God? Isn’t your God almighty, omnipotent, and able to do everything? Why wouldn’t you fast and pray for three hours to get a version of the Bible in Spanish?” This is superstitious. Many educated people become so superstitious in the matter of speaking in tongues. They resort to the human manufacturing of “speaking in tongues” to fulfill their superstition.
On the day of Pentecost three thousand one hundred twenty believers began to meet from house to house. I must believe that there was no tongue-speaking in those houses. Probably they mainly taught that one message given by Peter on the day of Pentecost. To us Peter’s message in Acts 2 may be quite familiar, but it was surely a shock to those three thousand new converts. In Peter’s message God’s New Testament economy can be seen. The Lord’s incarnation, His living in humanity on this earth, His death and burial, His going into Hades, His resurrection, and His ascension are the points of Peter’s message (vv. 22-36). Peter quoted Psalm 16 in saying, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will You permit Your Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:27; cf. Psa. 16:10). Peter told people that while Jesus was buried, He went to Hades. Then He came out of Hades, and His body came out of the tomb. What a description of the Lord’s death and burial, and what an interpretation of the Lord’s resurrection! It was prophesied in the Old Testament, but those blinded Jewish teachers never saw this light. But on the day of Pentecost Peter saw this. He also talked about the Lord’s ascension when he said that “God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you have crucified” (Acts 2:36). Peter told the Jews that God exalted Jesus and uplifted Him to the heavens. In the heavens He received the consummated Spirit and poured Himself out as the Spirit upon the hundred and twenty (v. 33).
Peter was wonderful on the day of Pentecost. He knew how to quote Joel 2, but he quoted too much. In Acts 2:19-20 Peter quoted from the book of Joel that God would show wonders and signs, but none of these wonders happened on the day of Pentecost. Joel 2 needs two fulfillments — one at the beginning of the New Testament age and another at the end of the New Testament age. The fulfillment of Joel begins and ends the New Testament.
The ending of the New Testament age is also prophesied in Zechariah 12. At that time the Lord Jesus will come down from the air to rescue the Jews from Antichrist’s persecution. The Spirit will be poured out again, and they all will repent. Zechariah 12:10 says that God will pour out on the house of David “the Spirit of grace and of supplications.” That is a fulfillment of the pouring out of the Spirit in Joel the second time.
Peter also did not forget to quote that wonderful verse in Joel 2:32 by saying, “It shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:21). What a message Peter gave on the day of Pentecost! Most Christians take Acts 2 for granted, but I believe that after listening to this message on the day of Pentecost, all those new converts were talking about it constantly. They probably had no heart to do anything except come together to have a gathering in every house to talk about this message.
We need to ask what they did in their home gatherings. Acts 5:42 tells us clearly that they taught and they announced. What did they teach? Do you believe that they taught the Ten Commandments or something concerning God’s creation? Did they announce and teach something from the Old Testament? In Peter’s first speaking, he did a lot of quoting from the Old Testament. They might have learned from Peter to quote something. Acts 5:42 tells us that they taught and announced the gospel of Jesus as the Christ. Christ Himself, the person, with all that He had done was the gospel announced by them. That was a real move by the Spirit among all the new converts in the principle of incarnation.
Following the book of Acts, Romans 16:5 refers to the meeting of the church in Prisca and Aquila’s house. The church in their house was the church in Rome. When I was young, I thought that the church in Rome was very big. The fact that the church in Rome met in Aquila and Prisca’s house, however, indicates that the membership, the size, of the church in Rome was not big but small. Aquila and Prisca were not wealthy, upper-class people, because they were tentmakers. Tentmakers in Rome could not afford a big mansion that could hold one or two hundred people. There are many churches in the United States that have over one hundred saints, but I do not believe the church in Rome had over one hundred saints. How could one hundred meet in one home? The saints in Rome probably had frequent home meetings in the house of Aquila and Prisca.
In 1 Corinthians 16:19 we again see the church in the house of Aquila and Prisca. This means that the church in Ephesus also met in their home when they lived there (Acts 18:18-19, 26). When I was young, I considered that the church in Ephesus was big, based upon the record in Acts 19 that many were saved and based upon the fact that the Lord mentioned Ephesus first among the churches in Revelation 2. But I never considered that it was in Aquila’s home. The New Testament reveals to us that the way the early believers took for their meetings was the home-gathering way.
Colossians 4:15-16 says, “Greet the brothers in Laodicea, as well as Nymphas and the church, which is in his house. And when this letter is read among you, cause that it be read in the church of the Laodiceans also, and that you also read the one from Laodicea.” The church in the house of Nymphas was the local church in Laodicea, meeting in his house. The dissenters argued with us that there were two churches in Laodicea — one in the home of Nymphas and the church of the Laodiceans elsewhere in the city. But Brother Nee stressed that the very church in the house of Nymphas was the church of the Laodiceans (see Further Talks on the Church Life, pp. 35-36). In these two verses one church is mentioned twice. The church at Laodicea met in the house of Nymphas.
In Philemon Paul refers to the church in the house of Philemon. Philemon lived in Colossae (v. 2 cf. Col. 4:17; Philem. 10; cf. Col. 1:2; 4:9), and according to history was an elder of the church there. It should be that the church in Colossae met in his house. Hence, it was the church in his house. Therefore, the church in Colossae, the church in Rome, the church in Ephesus, and the church in Laodicea met in homes.
This should prove to us that meeting in the homes was a custom and became a habit in the early days of the church. Based upon this we can see that the basic way for the believers to meet is in the homes. The church in Jerusalem had a large number of saints. At first three thousand were added, and soon another five thousand were added (Acts 4:4). After this, Acts tells us that in Jerusalem “believers were all the more being added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women” (5:14). Surely the church in Jerusalem could not build a hall, and eventually they were not allowed to meet in the temple. Then where did they meet? They met in homes, from house to house.
We should spread by the homes and in the homes. If you have the burden to spread the church to another area of the city, start meeting in the homes there. It is better to start the church in homes.
When we were in mainland China, one church started in a cemetery. A group of medical students was saved, and they had very little money and no house. They wanted to break bread to remember the Lord, so they went to a Chinese cemetery. In front of each of the tombs was a stone table for offering things to the ancestors of the deceased one. All the brothers and sisters sat around that table before the tomb and had the Lord’s table. This is the regular way to have the church life. Nearly all the churches in China were started in some homes, not by renting a place or building a hall.
When you start a church life around a stone table before a tomb, everybody functions. But if you rent a building and set up chairs for a meeting, many are bound. The room always changes the atmosphere of the gathering. If we would meet in a great, crystal cathedral, I am afraid that I would not be able to utter a word. It would also be hard to pray. That kind of “crystal-cathedral atmosphere” kills everything. That kind of atmosphere may be good for a drama or a play but not good for the church meetings for us to speak for the Lord and for us to open up our mouth to pray. Sometimes a hall may be too big for the church meetings. The best way is to “go to a cemetery to have a home meeting started there.” Then there would be no need to encourage everyone to function. I assure you that everybody would function.
My burden is that all the elders and the co-workers would endeavor to do one thing — to train our people to take the way of meeting “around a table before a tomb.” Because the saints are not used to meeting in such a way, we need to train them. When I first came to the United States, I was not used to speaking English, but I was eventually forced to. It is always hard for human beings to have a change, and it is easy for them to do things according to their habit. All the saints are used to meeting in the old way. When they are suddenly put into the homes, they do not know what to do. Just by one meeting, they may have immediately become discouraged. They may not like to have the home meetings and may want to go back to the big meetings. Some weaker ones may even think about going back to a denomination for the Sunday service. Therefore, we must endeavor to train the saints to have a change, a transfer. It is not so easy, but this is needed.
We need a lot of practice to do something properly and adequately. I recently composed a Chinese hymn for a big gospel campaign in Taipei. The meeting in which we used that hymn had over fourteen thousand attendants. I made approximately seventeen changes on my original version before it was printed. As a result, it would be hard for anyone to improve that hymn.
Do not expect that we can change the way from big gatherings to home meetings immediately or easily. But we have to do it. We must be transferred from one way to another way. Many children of Chinese parents in the United States have been transferred out of the old Chinese way of speaking into the new English way. We need to have a similar transfer in our meeting life. Otherwise, there is no way for the long run to have the church built up properly. You can never have a proper church life built up by big gatherings. Home gatherings are the only way.
For the long run, to have the proper church life and to get the proper increase and building up in the churches within the Lord’s recovery, we must take this way. Otherwise, we will be practicing Christianity. Whenever we want to have only big meetings, we are practicing Christianity. Big gatherings are only good for some gifted ones to pass on a word as a message to God’s children. This is good, but for the building up of the church in a locality, the only way is to have home meetings. There is no other way.
The way of home meetings annuls the clergy, swallows up and gives no opening to any ambition, and kills the hierarchy to the uttermost. The home meetings grind the hierarchy into powder. The more big gatherings you would have, the easier it is to build up hierarchy. If there were home meetings in all the Catholic churches, the pope would be brought down, and all the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals would be jobless. Some of the elders may be afraid of this. They may wonder how they could control the small groups once the church has been divided into them. They may be afraid that they would lose control.
Some of the elders would consider that the way of home meetings gives them a great and hard job to do. They may wonder how they are going to take care of all the home meetings. These elders are experienced, very spiritual, scriptural, honest, and faithful. They have been faithful to the church life and the church’s standing, and they have even sacrificed many things, but suddenly a new way comes in. They may think that with the way of home meetings, the impact is gone. To come together with three hundred and pray together is to them full of impact, and the Amens and Hallelujahs are like thunder. But in the new way each small group does not have more than ten saints. Five weaker ones may be meeting in one small group. When they come together, what could they do or present? Some of the elders may feel that I am forcing them to quit and that they cannot do their job or fulfill their duty.
After we started the home meetings in Taipei, I went to attend a home meeting. When Sister Lee and I arrived, a brother over eighty greeted us and ushered us in. No one else was there for the home meeting except us and the older brother’s granddaughter who was arranging the chairs. At that point my heart for the home meeting was cooled down. Then the older brother’s daughter-in-law came out of the room to play the piano, and I was somewhat comforted. But I wondered where everyone else was. The meeting was scheduled for 7:30 P.M., and it was already past that time. Later on, a good number of saints came. They were late because they went out to hunt people. Gradually, one came in and then another with new ones. I was encouraged. One brother who had come into the church life about thirty years ago told me that he was once backslidden, but he came back through that home meeting. This brother became the leader in this home meeting. He directed the meeting and started the reading of the Scriptures. There were about twenty people there, including a brother from a denomination and some new ones.
I considered that meeting as a gospel-preaching meeting, an edifying meeting, and a Bible-teaching meeting. While Sister Lee and I were leaving after the meeting, another new one came to attend the meeting. This was very good. The meeting could not end yet, because another new one had just arrived. If you want to have a show or something formal, you cannot have the home meetings. But if you want the reality for the building up and increase of the church, to catch and recover people in all kinds of conditions, you must have the home meetings.
The crucial point is that we must train our brothers and sisters to pay the price, to spend everything, to have the home meetings sustained all the time. Advise them that if they do not have time, it is better to miss some big meetings. But they should never miss the home gatherings. The home gatherings should be held regularly at least once a week. Do not change the time. Have the home meeting on the same day every week in a certain home. Then that home could let all their relatives, friends, neighbors, classmates, and colleagues know that in their home on a certain evening every week there is a Christian gathering. Something will be built up, and different people will come. I say again, we must train the saints to spend everything to sustain such a meeting regularly, all year round.
We also must train the saints how to move in the home meetings. This is a crucial point. Singing is not the main thing, although singing helps a lot. For this purpose I would also propose that every church should have a little training of singing. After the Lord’s table meeting, you could take fifteen minutes to refer the saints to the hymnal. You could tell the new ones and the other saints something about the hymns and, using the piano, ask them to sing some hymns in a learning way. You cannot do this once for all. You have to do this quite often. This practice will raise up something.
The most important thing, however, is to train everyone, old and young, brothers and sisters, new ones or old ones, to learn how to speak. We have found out that up to the present time the best way to speak is to use the messages. But do not use any message as a whole. You have to select good portions from a number of messages and footnotes to compile a message of about three or four pages. I have pointed out all the crucial points of the messages contained in the fourteen Epistles of Paul, but even that would be a little too much. You still need to drop something to make the word shorter. For every home meeting we need to use speaking material, but we always have to avoid anything official, formal, or ritualistic. We should not read anything formally, officially, or ritualistically. Do not follow the old way where we all take turns reading, and then someone stands up to give a concluding word. You have to forget about this old way. Actually, you should not read the material but speak it in a regular, ordinary, normal conversation.
Footnote 171 in 1 Corinthians 3 in the Recovery Version could be part of your speaking material. In the home gathering, one person could say, “Brothers, this footnote shows us that the word destroys means ‘ruins, corrupts, defiles, mars.’ Here the Bible tells us that if we destroy the temple, we will suffer. And to destroy the temple is to ruin it, to corrupt it, to defile it, and to mar it.” This kind of speaking is enough for the first person. Then someone else could speak the next sentence in a living way: “To destroy the temple of God means to build with the worthless materials of wood, grass, and stubble. We have to realize that to build the church of God with these natural things is to destroy, to ruin, the temple.” We have to practice getting into the material in a very simple way, like a speaking. You may explain something as we illustrated above, but you do not need to explain every clause or every sentence. The next person may continue to read (speak), “This refers to certain Jewish believers who attempted to build the church with the elements of Judaism, and to certain Greek believers who endeavored to bring philosophical elements into the building.”
It seems that this is a kind of reading. Actually, if you get used to it, your reading will sound like speaking. You will then speak your way through the material spontaneously. There should be no legality. At a certain point you may give a testimony. Do not tell a long story, a “sea story.” Just share a little bit. You have to believe that this kind of meeting will edify, nourish, enlighten, encourage, comfort, and even reprove people. This is an all-inclusive meeting. The saints will get this kind of help week after week throughout the year. It is not necessary to spend too long a time for this kind of speaking — just about fifty minutes at the most. You could have a meeting for two hours, so there is plenty of time to do many things in the meeting to cover so many needs. We need to endeavor in this way for the home meetings.
I know of one particular city in the United States that is endeavoring to help the foreigners, the immigrants, speak the local language. We need to endeavor in the same way to help the saints practice the home gatherings. This new way may cause some of the elders to want to resign. This will kill the ambition. There will be hardly any comfort, leisure time, or rest. There will only be burden and labor. No one will have the ambition to be an elder with this new way, because it is too hard. With this new way no elder can be idle.
The contents of Book 7 in this series were given as a preparation for this fellowship. Now around this globe more than six hundred churches will take the same way. These churches will be like a caravan. If all the cars are driving and you do not drive, your car may be crushed. All the churches on the whole earth will be going on in the same way. The churches in New Zealand, Australia, Ghana, Taiwan, the United States, and everywhere will take the same way as a great local church caravan moving and traveling through this globe.
In the present situation some may be taught and encouraged to be different. To them all the local churches should be different, and the teaching and leadership of the Lord’s ministry do not fit into their situation. Now you should realize why the eight chapters in Book 7 are a preparation to this fellowship. I am not saying that this kind of church should be dropped. Forget about this thought.
Some United States citizens do not have any idea about fighting, yet they enjoy this country to the uttermost. Somebody, though, is fighting for them. They may be taking advantage of the fighters, but they are still citizens of the United States. We should consider the churches who want to be different as local churches, but we cannot bring them in to fight the battle for the recovery. We need every church to be a fighter.
Suppose the six hundred churches throughout the globe were all different from one another and that each church went its own way. Where then would the impact be? This would be like the age of the judges, in which there was no king, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. When Gideon chose three hundred men to fight the battle for the Lord, they all became the same, and they fought the battle for all of Israel (Judg. 7:7, 18). We need such churches today. Wherever we go, it would be wonderful if all the churches were the same.
One particular news publication recently reported that during the past fifty years the Muslims have increased five times, from two hundred million to the present one billion. During the same period Hinduism increased one hundred seventeen percent, Buddhism sixty-three percent, and Christianity forty-seven percent. Even Buddhism got more increase than Christianity. The Muslims have such a high increase because they are all unified. Basically speaking, all the Muslims have one way regardless of their nationality or country. Christianity, on the other hand, is weakened by all the divisions.
One brother who is contacting some Jewish people said that some of them have said, “If Christianity is true, why do you have so many denominations?” This annuls the power. There is no need for others to oppose us. We ourselves are opposing one another. When I came to this country, I taught the truth from the Bible, and I was opposed. In mainland China some of the faithful brothers were judged and arrested. The policemen secretly told these brothers, “You did not make any mistake or do anything wrong. We know you are innocent people. The only problem is that your people are fighting one another.” That meant that other Christians were fighting against them by contacting the government, so the policemen had to come and arrest them at the order of the government. This is a shame to the Christians.
We Christians have lost our impact by our being different. This is the subtlety of the enemy. If only all the Christians in the United States were the same, what power and impact there would be! This would not only take the entire United States but also the entire globe. But where is such a thing today? Many Christians are fighting. They are not only fighting against us but against each other. The teaching that encourages the believers to be different is erroneous. This is why I studied the New Testament again to find any hint that there should be different churches. The more I studied, the more I realized that all the churches should be identical (see Book 7 — chapter 4). Because the Muslims around the world are one, their increase was fivefold in the last fifty years. The churches around the globe do have a certain amount of fellowship; this is our impact. But we must learn to be the same.
Our practice has to be in the sphere of the revelation of God’s New Testament economy. The home gatherings are something in the realm and even at the center of this revelation. This will never cause any trouble to produce divisions. The way of home gatherings is the biblical way, the way ordained by God and initiated by the moving Spirit at the very start of God’s New Testament economy.
