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Scripture Reading: Matt. 16:18; Eph. 4:11-16; 1 Cor. 14:26
In this chapter I would like to fellowship concerning how we should go on according to our present situation. We need to see the vision of the Lord’s present recovery and put this vision into our practice.
The Bible presents us with a clear picture of God’s desire for the church as the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23a), the expression of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9). The Lord Jesus told us that He would build His church upon the divine revelation of Himself as the Christ (Matt. 16:18). He does not, however, build up His church directly. In order to build His church He first accomplished His full redemption from His incarnation through His ascension. In His ascension He poured Himself out upon God’s chosen ones to make them His Body (Acts 2:2-4, 16-17a; 10:45; 1 Cor. 12:13), and He constituted some of His members as particular gifts for the building up of this Body (Eph. 4:8). In His ascension He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers (v. 11). These are the particular gifts that are considered as the joints of the supply in Ephesians 4:16. The article the in this verse is emphatic and indicates a particular and rich supply. According to the New Testament revelation, this particular, rich supply is the riches of Christ. The riches of Christ are the rich supply for His Body. These particular riches of the rich Christ are being distributed to His entire Body by the joints.
We must be clear about these four categories of particular members who are the joints of the Body of Christ: the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. The written record of the New Testament was completed by the end of the first century. In the first century the church did have these four categories of joints. Some have even called the first century the age of the apostles. Those who think this way have a mistaken concept. If we say that the first century was the age of the apostles, this implies strongly that after the first century there were no more apostles. John Nelson Darby was one who taught that there were no more apostles after the first century. Actually, however, we have to see and admit that there have been these four categories of gifted persons throughout the history of the church.
There have been evangelists such as C. H. Spurgeon in England and D. L. Moody and Charles Finney in the United States. There have also been many shepherds. Pastor is another term for shepherd. When the Brethren were raised up by the Lord in the early part of the nineteenth century, many great teachers were produced. They opened up the Bible to a greater extent than it had ever been opened since the first century. According to church history, there have also been a number of apostles. William Carey went to India and brought the Lord’s name, the gospel, and the Bible there. Surely he was an apostle. Hudson Taylor was sent by the Lord to China, and David Livingstone went to Africa. These brothers were also apostles.
It is hard to make a distinction between an apostle and a prophet. It is also hard to draw a line between the prophets and the teachers. The teachers are very close to the prophets because they both teach. According to 1 Timothy 3:2, the elders must be those who are apt to teach. Furthermore, according to 1 Timothy 5:17, some of the elders should be those who labor in word and teaching. Thus, the prophets, the teachers, and the elders all teach. It is not so easy to distinguish these persons. We have to admit, however, that throughout the past centuries of church history, the church has had apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers.
In the early days of the Lord’s recovery in China, Brother Watchman Nee was greatly influenced by Brethren teachings. He greatly admired John Nelson Darby. When I went to Shanghai to visit him in 1933, he gave me Darby’s synopsis of the entire Bible. I received much help from those volumes. In 1933 Brother Nee was invited by the Brethren to visit them in Europe, England, and Canada. During that trip he saw the real situation among them. He realized that we could not follow the Brethren in an absolute way because of their serious mistake in the practice of the church life. At that time he began to study the Bible to see the proper practice of the church life. The light that he received during that time is in the book entitled The Assembly Life. Because he was influenced by Darby’s teaching regarding the apostles, however, he said that we dare not say that we are apostles today. Actually, some brothers among us at that time were like apostles, so he was forced to say that we were “unofficial apostles,” whereas brothers such as Paul, Peter, and John were official apostles. Darby also taught that there were no longer any elders in the church. The Brethren assemblies have “responsible brothers,” not elders. Eventually, I considered this matter, and I realized that many brothers are responsible brothers. Everyone who functions is a responsible person. Based on Darby’s concept concerning apostles and elders, Brother Nee said in The Assembly Life that unofficial apostles have the unofficial right to establish and appoint the unofficial elders. At Brother Nee’s request I wrote a long preface to this four-chapter book that was published in 1934.
Within the next three years Brother Nee saw more light. In 1937 he became bold to say, “If we are not the apostles, who are?” Since the gospel was preached in many pagan regions, churches were established, and elders were appointed, how could there not be apostles? From that time he began to say that we were official apostles and that the elders established by us were official elders. This light concerning the apostles is in his book The Normal Christian Church Life.
Throughout the history of the church in these past nineteen centuries, some of God’s people were in the category of the gifted ones mentioned in Ephesians 4 — apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. Even today, although Christianity has become so degraded, these kinds of persons are on the earth. These categories of gifted persons are given by the Head and used by the Head to perfect the saints. The Head does not build the Body directly, but the Head gives the gifts. The gifts also do not build the Body directly. Instead, they perfect all the saints, and the saints do the direct building work.
Even the evangelists are for the perfecting of the saints. For many years my concept has been that the evangelists are good only for going out to preach the gospel, but Ephesians 4 tells us that Christ gave them to perfect the saints. After our four-year study, which began in 1984 in Taipei, we see that in the proper procedure to build up the Body of Christ, the first step is to preach the gospel. For this we need the perfecting, the training. The Greek word for perfecting implies the thought of equipping and furnishing. When a person joins the army, they teach him and equip him with a uniform, weapons, and ammunition. They also furnish him with supplies. Perfecting is teaching, equipping, and furnishing. It is hard to find someone among us in the Lord’s recovery who has really been perfected in the preaching of the gospel. If we were at war and were suddenly gathered to form an army, would we know how to fight? We might shoot ourselves instead of shooting the enemy. We would need to be perfected to fight. When we go out to preach the gospel, this is the real fighting against the devil and his demons.
A proper evangelist, in his perfecting of the saints, would know how to stir them up. After his speaking to the saints, their hearts would be burning for the gospel. Is there anyone in our locality burning for the preaching of the gospel? There may not be anyone. We may want to preach the gospel, but we may not have the burning spirit to do it. If a real evangelist were to stay with us for even a short period of time, we would be burning for the preaching of the gospel. This is part of his perfecting work.
There are many things that we have to do to perfect the saints in the preaching of the gospel. In the past, whenever I trained the saints to preach the gospel, I first taught the truths of the gospel. I taught truths such as who Christ is, what redemption is, what justification is, and what it is to repent, believe, and be baptized. We prepared a manual with all the gospel truths in it. Even in the coming days, when we perfect the saints in the preaching of the gospel, we may need to use that manual to see all the truths of the gospel. We need to see the difference between justification and reconciliation and the difference between forgiveness of sins and the washing away of sins. If we do not know these truths of the gospel, how can we preach the gospel adequately? I also taught the saints how to classify the different kinds of people to whom we are preaching the gospel.
Recently, some of the saints who were trained in Taipei picked up new skills in their gospel preaching. When you knock on a person’s door and they ask who it is, how you answer will many times determine whether or not they let you in. You may say, “We are here to bring you good news!” This answer may get you in the door, but then you may say the wrong thing to them, and they may ask you to leave. For the preaching of the gospel today, we need more perfecting. The burden of the gifted persons is to perfect the saints, and the perfected saints do the direct building work.
After being perfected, the saints, according to Ephesians 4:15, will grow up into the Head, Christ, in all things. Here is a problem: Are not the members of Christ in Christ already? Suppose a brother comes to you, an elder, and says, “First Corinthians 1:30 says that God has put us into Christ. Why then does Ephesians 4:15 say that we have to grow up into Him? Aren’t these two verses contradictory?” If you give him a doctrinal answer concerning the twofoldness of the divine truth, you may lead him into the forest. The elders first need to be perfected so that they can perfect others. If you were perfected, you might answer the brother like this: “It is true that we are in Christ, brother, but what about our living? Although you are in Christ, you may still go to the movie theater. Is going to the movie theater the living of one who is in Christ? You are in Christ, but you are not living in Christ in a practical way. Therefore, you need to grow in life so that you can grow up into Christ practically.”
If the saints do not get perfected, how can they grow and cause the Body to grow? In other words, how can they build the church? Ephesians 4:15 says that we need to grow up into the Head, Christ, in all things, and verse 16 says that out from the Head, all the Body causes the growth of the Body. The entire Body is joined closely together and knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part. For the entire Body to cause the growth of the Body, all of us need to be perfected. We have to admit that we are short of being perfected. We may have been generally edified in the past by listening to messages, but how much of the truth has been constituted into us? How many of us can tell what sanctification and holiness are and what the difference is between them? This shows us how much perfection we need. For the perfecting work to take place after the gospel has been preached, there is the need of home meetings, small group meetings, and church meetings.
All of us who are elders and co-workers must endeavor. We must learn from the apostle Paul, who labored day and night and who served the Lord with tears (19, Acts 20:31). Paul indicates in his Epistles to both Timothy and Titus that they had to stay to teach and train the elders. In Brother Nee’s book Church Affairs, he points out that after the elders are established, they need to be perfected by the apostles who established them (ch. 1). He points out that there is the need to show the elders how to do the work. Brother Nee saw this and practiced it. One day when I was with him, he told me, “Witness, we have the blueprint in our hand.” This meant that he had the plan for building up a local church. While I was with him in Shanghai, I saw something, I learned, and I received the perfecting. Then I went back to Chefoo and practiced what I saw. I stayed in Chefoo from 1940 through 1942, and at the end of 1942 a big revival broke forth. According to my observation of the situation of the churches in the United States, most of the elders are groping because they have not been perfected. Because I have been so busy in traveling to different churches and in the editing of many publications, I have not had the time to stay in one place to be with the saints for an extended period of time. I have had to put out many books to supply the churches with the spiritual food, the life supply.
What should we do in our present situation as elders and co-workers? By His mercy we must have a clear view of how the Lord, in His New Testament economy, builds up the churches. He builds up the churches first by giving gifted persons to His Body. Then He uses these gifted persons to perfect all the saints, and the perfected saints do the direct building work. We elders and co-workers should be the gifted persons, yet we may not know how to perfect others. This is why we must endeavor to learn the truths and endeavor to fellowship with one another concerning how to perfect a new one. Immediately after someone gets baptized, we have to consider how we can keep him and perfect him. We may have baptized many new ones in the past, but very few of them remained because no one went back to them again and again to perfect them. To do this requires much labor.
Instead of laboring, we like to do a routine work. A company, a factory, or a corporation does not make money through its routine workers. I was told a story concerning the Honda corporation that illustrates this point. In one of their big office buildings, there were many Americans in a big office space doing routine work eight hours a day. That work helped the corporation, no doubt, but the real money was made due to the fact that a small number of Japanese in a back office stayed late into the night to labor. It is also true that in the best colleges the professors must labor hard. There is a slogan in the universities that says, Publish or perish. We need to put this slogan on our wall to remind us that we have to endeavor to learn something.
In the past our Lord’s Day morning meetings were carried out in a routine way. Very few came to the meeting with a sincere heart, burdened for the meeting. Most did not bear the burden even to pray for the meeting, because they knew that the responsible brothers would. The situation in the eldership in some places in the past was not so encouraging. Before a brother became an elder, he may have been sitting in the back in the meeting without much exercise. One day he was appointed to be an elder, and then he came to sit in the first row. During the meeting, the need might have arisen for a hymn or for a word to be spoken. The elders all looked at one another, but no one could meet the need.
Most of the elders do not endeavor; instead, they do a routine work. If I were doing a routine work, I would not be able to travel so much in order to hold so many conferences, nor would I be able to publish so many books. My fellowship with you here concerns the destiny of the Lord’s recovery. It is a matter of life or death. Do we really love the Lord? Are we really for Him and for His recovery? If we are, we have to forget about the routine work and endeavor and labor to do something extra. Even as an older brother, I am still studying. The point is this: if there is no labor, no work, there is no result, no profit. People who desire to make a big profit in business do not waste their time. Anyone who works only eight hours a day cannot be wealthy. He can only make a living as an employee. Who among us is laboring for the Lord’s recovery?
If we had been laboring, we would have studied the new way to carry out the increase and spread of the church. We would have practiced visiting people by knocking on their doors to find out about it and to break through in our increase. Spontaneously, we would have set up a pattern for the other saints to follow. In the flock the sheep taking the lead may be considered as the head sheep. The elders are the head sheep. When they go in a positive direction, the rest of the saints will follow them. In some places the elders did not do this. Instead of getting into preaching the gospel by visiting people in their homes and practicing it to set up a living example, they restricted the saints from knocking on doors and poured cold water upon this practice. Some want to stop the saints from going out to knock on doors. They do not care for the fruit, the increase.
In order to go on, we all need to drop our old concepts and pick up the new view of the Lord’s present recovery. For the building up of the Body of Christ, we need the material. In Haggai the Lord charged the Israelites, “Go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house, and I will take pleasure in it and will be glorified” (1:8). Today we need to go to knock on doors because we need the material for God’s house. I am sharing this with the hope that we could be rescued from the wrong understanding and wrong position. We all have to admit that there are many ways to preach the gospel, but to visit people in their homes is the best way.
The Lord told us in Luke 14:23, “Go out into the roads and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.” The higher-class people are not in the hedges. Only those who are lazy and idle will be there. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says that God has not called many wise, powerful, or wellborn people. Instead, most of the people God has chosen are the weak of the world, the lowborn of the world, and the despised (vv. 26-28). In Luke 14 the Lord told us to compel these people to come in.
We may be fully biased in our understanding and yet still believe that we are enjoying Christ. If we have not been bearing fruit for years, we may be cut off from the vine without realizing it (John 15:2a, 6). We may be in a self-deceiving position. If we are really enjoying Christ, we will surely bear fruit. Where has our fruit been in the past years? For our local church to remain at the same number year after year is a shame. I must be honest to the One whom I serve and to the ones whom I serve. We are too biased. We must come back to the straight way.
First, we have to visit people to gain them for the Lord’s Body. Second, we must keep going back to visit them to have home meetings. Regardless of how little we think we know, we still must contact them as much as we can and minister to them as much as we know. After a child is born, the mother must immediately begin to care for him. We must go back again and again to visit the new ones begotten through us to take care of them. According to Ephesians 5:29, the Lord knows how to cherish and nourish His Body. We have to follow the Lord to cherish and nourish the new ones. Third, we also need to have small group meetings to teach and perfect them. Fourth, we have to perfect them to speak for the Lord, to prophesy, in the church meetings. Regardless of a person’s ability, as long as he will labor, there will be some result. We have received a view of the Lord’s present recovery. Now we must put this view into our practice.
You also must take good care of the present situation you are in. You may be in a local church that is not so high, so living, or so encouraging. Hardly anyone may like to visit people by knocking on their doors, and some may even oppose it. What should you do in such a situation? You may have been sick with the same disease, so you should be able to sympathize with all the sick ones. You should be patient with them. You need to visit these dear ones to pray with them, to have fellowship with them, to warm up their cold heart, and to stir up their down spirit. You may have to do this for an entire year to get a few to rise up to realize the burden you are bearing. I believe the proverb that says, “Where there is a will, there is a way.”
We need to practice the Lord’s present recovery, His new way, but we should not be too hasty or rough. We need to be patient with the saints, and we should not categorize them. We should love everyone with the same love and avoid creating any kind of division. We need to be with the saints the way Paul was in Ephesus. He told the brothers there, “You yourselves know...how I was with you all the time” (Acts 20:18). He was with the saints day by day for three years. Many of us may have to work for a living, but we still should have the evenings and weekends to give to the Lord. We can use our leisure time for the Lord’s interests.
The unbelievers spend much time for their pleasure, amusement, and recreation. Actually, the best amusement is the church life. A brother among us told the story of his grandfather who was a baker. He worked in a bakery from 4 A.M. to 4 P.M., but nearly every day the first thing he did when he came home from work was to go and visit people for the Lord. No matter how we labor, it is much better than being idle. How wonderful it is to be in the Lord’s recovery, and now by His mercy we have a way to practice the church life by the preaching of the gospel, home meetings, small group meetings, and church meetings. This way is full of labor but also full of joy. If we take this way, we will enjoy the Lord’s presence, and we, our family, and our church will be greatly blessed.
According to our present situation, I feel that the wisest thing is for us to go on in a positive way. We must bring the saints into the full realization of the new way gradually by the Lord’s leading. We should not lead the church into this in a hasty way. I want to point out again that the new way is composed of the following steps: (1) preaching the gospel for begetting, (2) having home meetings for nourishing, (3) having group meetings for teaching, and (4) having church meetings for building.
We have to visit people in their homes to pass on the gospel to them. I hope that all the churches will try to enter into preaching the gospel by visiting people in their homes. Once they believe and are baptized, we have to go back to them. In the first month it is best if we can visit them ten times. We need to continue to visit them in order to nourish and cherish them. In the first two or three times with them, we should do our best to help them realize that our Savior, Jesus Christ, is today the life-giving Spirit in their spirit. They need to realize that they have a regenerated spirit that they can exercise by calling on the name of the Lord and praying. Whenever we exercise our spirit, He moves and works within us. We can also help them to speak, first by helping them to give a testimony of their salvation. From the very beginning, we can train them to speak for the Lord. Every time we go to visit them, we can check with them, “Do you have something to say for the Lord or of the Lord?” We should always do this. Then from the very beginning of their Christian life, they will learn to speak the Lord.
We do not have many verses in the Bible that tell us how to carry out the home meetings and small group meetings, but we know that we need to pray much, exercise our spirit, and release our spirit when we meet with the new ones in their homes. We need to pray, praise, sing, and read verses from the Scriptures in a living way. Then the new ones will follow us and learn from us. The children spontaneously speak the language of their parents. When we release our spirit, they will learn from us. When we speak, we can also instruct and encourage them to speak by exercising their spirit. We can encourage them to first tell how they were saved and then encourage them to speak concerning how they experienced the Lord. They may say, “This morning I did not have any joy. Then I prayed to the Lord and called upon Him, and I became joyful.” We can encourage them by saying, “Amen! Hallelujah! This is a good testimony.” After about three months they can be brought into the habit of speaking.
We need to go on from the home meetings to bring them into contact with other saints in their neighborhood for a small group meeting. In the small group meetings, there is the need of further teaching. It is helpful to use either the Life Lessons or Truth Lessons because all the necessary verses and material are there. It is not necessary to try to finish a lesson in one session. We may cover one lesson in three meetings with them. We also need to perfect the new ones to prophesy in the larger church meetings. Recently, I heard a new one who had only been saved for one year stand up in a meeting to speak on the life-giving Spirit. He spoke a good message concerning all the different titles of the Spirit, the essential and economical aspects of the Spirit, and the functions of the Spirit. Such a new one is evidence that the new way really works.
If there are fifty saints in a local church, we need to look to the Lord that all of them will be occupied with some practical service to the Lord. Fifteen saints could go out to gain people by knocking on their doors. Another fifteen may take care of the home meetings. Perhaps the ones who go out to preach the gospel could transfer the care of their new ones to the ones who are burdened for home meetings. Another fifteen saints could pick up the burden to take care of the small group meetings. Within a short time, maybe just three or four months, all fifty saints could be occupied with some practical service to the Lord, taking care of new ones and young ones. If each saint could take care of one newly baptized one for one year, think how much this new one would grow! All the teaching materials, the lesson books, are ready for us to use. We can pass these things on to the new ones through the Spirit by much prayer. By taking this way, it will be easy for the church to double in a year. The new ones that we gain will be born, raised up, and taught in the scriptural way. They will be xerox copies of us, doing the same thing that we do in our service.
It is not worthwhile for us to remain in the old way any longer. We need to take the new way gradually and positively. After the small group meetings, we need church meetings, or district meetings, of about fifty saints. Occasionally, we can have conferences to meet the need of the churches through the ministry of the word. This way of gospel preaching by visiting people, home meetings, group meetings, and church meetings is scientific. This is the God-ordained, scriptural way that we must take for the building up of the Body of Christ. We pointed out in chapter 7 that even the Southern Baptists have said that visiting people in their homes with the gospel is the New Testament plan and will never be improved on. If we do not visit people where they are, how can we expect to gain them? If we only beget them and do not visit them again and again to nourish them and cherish them, how can we expect to keep them? In the past we encouraged the saints to share in the meetings, but we did not properly teach them to do this. If we do not teach the new ones under our care properly, how can we expect them to speak? All over the world today, there is a common system of education with six years of elementary school, six years of junior high and high school, four years of college, two to three years of graduate school for a Master’s degree, and another two or three years for a Ph.D. This is the scientific way of educating people that is practiced, in principle, worldwide. The new way to practice the Lord’s present recovery is also scientific and cannot be improved upon.
As we practice the new way, we should not criticize other places that are not practicing the same way that we are. Every place will be practicing the new way to one degree or another depending on the situation in that locality. I also ask the leading ones in every place to not restrict any of the saints. This is my word of love. An elder should not have the attitude that the saints need to get permission from him to go out and knock on doors. The elders may have the heart to keep the church in a good order, but they should not restrict the saints in this way. All the saints need to be free to exercise in order to develop their function. The people in the world exercise themselves by going to worldly and even sinful amusements, but actually the best amusement for the human life is the church life. The church life is the best place for us to exercise ourselves unto godliness (1 Tim. 4:7). To come to the church meetings to sit and listen to others is not to exercise. To exercise is first to pray much and go to knock on people’s doors to preach the gospel to them. This will help us to enjoy the Lord more. It will even give us a greater appetite for the Lord as our spiritual food. The more we exercise, the greater our appetite will be. We can continue to exercise in the home meetings, small group meetings, and church meetings. We have to instruct the new ones how to prophesy in the church meetings with the exercise of their spirit. We even need to instruct them to speak loud enough for others to hear them. We need to perfect them.
If we take this new way that the Lord has shown us, we will double after one year, and many of the saints will have been trained, perfected, and instructed to speak with content. I believe that the Lord will recover this way to the uttermost. The result of this way is not a great congregation of people coming together as a façade to make a good show. If we are faithful to the Lord, the time will come when the Lord will gain twenty thousand out of a city of one hundred fifty thousand. On the Lord’s Day they all may be serving the Lord in different ways. Some may go out to knock on doors, some may go out to take care of home meetings, and others may be taking care of small group meetings. Then many homes throughout the city on nearly every street and lane will be worshipping the Lord, singing hymns to Him, praising Him, and speaking Him. Occasionally, maybe once a month or once every two or three months, the whole church will come together. If we do not have a big hall, we can use an auditorium or a stadium. We do not need the eldership to control things without the proper moving in the Lord’s way. This is not according to the Scriptures. On the day of Pentecost three thousand were baptized (Acts 2:41). Within a short time, “the number of men came to about five thousand” (4:4). How could so many be under the control of the elders, that is, without the positive activities according to the Lord’s leading? The only way that things could be under the elders’ control is for the church to remain with a small number. Such lack of increase is a shame to us.
The way in the past did not work. The Lord desires to discard everything of the old, traditional, and unscriptural way. He desires to do something for His recovery in a new way. We must pick up the view of the Lord’s present recovery. Otherwise, we will make ourselves dropouts. We will remain contented in our oldness. Whether or not we will go on with the Lord in His present recovery is up to us. But we have to realize that when the age turns, it will not wait for us. Once the age changes, we can be passed by and become dropouts as far as the Lord’s move is concerned. We must see the vision of the Lord’s present recovery and practice it. Week after week and month after month, we will experience and learn something. As we do this, I have the assurance that the Lord’s joy will be with us. Even more, I believe that this practice will bring us into His presence. I am so strong in my old age to work so much because I have the deep sensation and consciousness that I have the Lord’s presence. While I am speaking, I have the assurance that I am in His presence. His presence gives me the boldness. We must realize that no one can shake the Lord’s recovery, because it has been built upon life and truth. Although the storms come, the foundation of the Lord’s recovery can never be shaken. The Lord’s recovery is something built solidly on Christ as the rock, and it is still going on.
