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The purpose of the messages in this series is to train us to be proper Christians and even proper human beings. We must grasp and treasure our current opportunity and redeem the time to be trained and built up. Many students may attend the same school and even the same class, and they may even have the same professor. However, the outcome of their schooling depends on the students’ labor.
In order to be proper Christians, we must first be built up with the divine truths, the scriptural knowledge in the divine way. We must also be built up with the divine life, the life of God, which is God Himself in His Divine Trinity and in His processes. We have to know Him, experience Him, and enjoy Him. If we know Him, experience Him, and enjoy Him, we will possess Him and be able to minister Him to the lost world. Last, we must know the church and be brought into the proper practice of the church life. We have passed through many turmoils in the church, but we are still here. On the one hand, this is because of the Lord’s mercy and grace. On the other hand, it is because of the proper knowledge of the truth concerning the church as the Body of Christ and the truth concerning the proper practice of the church life. This proper knowledge has preserved many of us.
We must be built up as proper human beings. This is a matter of our character, that is, our behavior and habit. A person who has been properly built up is a right person with a right character. Today many young people have been damaged with respect to their character. It is because of this that we have a children’s work for the children. We need to build up our children’s character. From their youth they must learn to honor their parents, love their brothers and sisters, and respect others. We do not need to give the young ones too much knowledge of the Bible. We should rather build them up with the proper ethics and morality that will constitute a proper character. Many people today are short of such a proper training.
In our sleeping, in our rising up, in our dressing, and in every detail of our life we should be very strict to be built up in a good character. We must be punctual and learn to take care of even the small matters in a proper way. We must be strict in our speaking. We have to learn what to say when we talk to others; we should not be free and loose to express ourselves. Every matter related to our life should be in order.
It is a blessing for young people to be under authority. It is a shame that ambition, the desire to be over others, still exists in the church life. Nearly all the turmoils in the Lord’s recovery are due to ambition. If the “gopher” of ambition could be killed, there would be no further turmoils. It is ugly for one to consider that since he is older than others, he cannot be under them. Regardless of who we are or how old we are, we must learn to be under others. When we are under someone, we should learn to check with him before we do certain things. In turn, those who are over us will be instructed by those who are over them. In this way we will all learn something. We should not consider that we are so free to do as we please. If we do not keep the order among us, we will be in chaos.
Since my youth I have always been under someone. In this way I have learned much and received help. I was in the Lord’s ministry with Brother Nee for eighteen years. During this time I never did anything by myself. I always put myself under him. I will never regret this. Rather, I worship the Lord that I was under him. Brother Nee was only two years older than I. However, I always treated him as a father, and I received much help from him. It is difficult for those who are rebellious to learn anything. Rebellion robs people of the opportunities to learn. No child can learn anything if he is rebellious against his parents. Likewise, a student who rebels against his teacher in school will have difficulty learning his lessons. Every student must please his teacher so that his teacher may be happy to teach him. Nothing is so blessed as submission. We must learn to submit ourselves to someone else according to God’s arrangement.
When I was young, I learned the lesson not to touch anything that was not mine without first asking. One of the elders in Shanghai always instructed the young people in this way. When he knocked on someone’s door, he would wait for them to open it. When the door would open, he would not enter into the house until the host invited him in. Then once in the house, he would stand until the host offered him a seat. This brother learned the lessons of the inner life to a great degree. Eventually, his standing in the inner life was manifested. In a single day the Communists imprisoned one thousand of the leading brothers throughout the country, including this brother. Many of the brothers eventually lost their faithfulness to the Lord. The Communists spoke in a subtle way, saying that they were not persecuting the church. They asked only that the brothers would say that they believed in Jesus Christ but did not follow Watchman Nee. They tempted them, asking whether or not they believed that Watchman Nee was always right and never made mistakes. At first, the brothers did not reply to this manner of questioning. However, they eventually told the questioner that they felt Brother Nee had been wrong in certain things. After speaking in this way, they were allowed to return home. The brother from Shanghai, however, had learned the strict lessons of life and had taught others to always follow their inner feeling. He told his questioners that as a Christian his inner feeling did not allow him to say anything negative about Brother Nee. He said that whether or not Brother Nee was wrong was not his business. This brother was kept in prison until he died a half year later. The other brothers were good saints, but eventually, when the test came, most of them could not stand because they had not been built up with a strong character. We also may feel that we are right, but we may not have built up a strict character. It is not a small matter to build up our character.
We need to build up a habit of visiting people in their homes for the gospel, and we must learn the proper way to visit them. This should be a part of our church life and a lifelong habit in our Christian life. We should first visit people for gospel preaching to get them baptized, and after this we should continue to visit them to have home meetings with them. The way in which we visit people makes a big difference. We need to go out in a proper way, the trained way. Many saints have a sincere heart to visit people, but they go out in a natural way. I helped to compile our hymnal with over a thousand hymns, but I cannot play the piano because I was never trained by a proper tutor. In the same way, we may diligently practice to visit people for preaching the gospel, but we may not be doing it in the trained way.
When we visit people for the gospel, we should observe our rate of success, how many doors we knock on in order to baptize one person. We should also consider the way we care for the newly baptized ones. After they are baptized, we need to give them a good lesson on salvation. To fail to do this will create a great lack in our care for them. In visiting people we also need to properly proportion our time. After baptizing new ones, we need to care for them, but at the same time we may need to continue to knock on more doors in order to baptize others. If our practice is proper, our visiting of people will not be in vain. We will always gain people.
In order to preach the gospel in the best way, we have to be those who are very much interested in people. We have to like to talk to people, but not in the way of gossip, and we must be very concerned for them. Then for the sake of our gospel preaching, we must learn to be attractive persons. Christians who preach and minister Christ must be attractive. When we enter into people’s homes, they should be attracted by us. Some of us may be good saints, but we may not be attractive. When we enter into a home, the people there may be afraid of us and will not want to have anything to do with us. If we are this way, we are finished with the gospel preaching. A precious stone is valuable, but it may not be attractive. To Christ we should be the precious stones, but for the ones we visit we should be a “magnet” to attract them. We should be attractive not only in our speaking but even in the way we look at people. We should be soft and warm to them.
In the past centuries the Lord has not fully obtained what He has desired. In our youth we realized this and became burdened. We had received a revelation from the entire Bible, and we could not deny that the Lord had shown us something. However, at that time we were not able to carry out what the Lord had shown us. In the early 1960s I came to the United States and was burdened by the Lord to stay here to minister and release the truth. For several years I visited many places to contact the seeking ones. The Lord honored this, and the churches began to be raised up. I then realized that we should have conferences and trainings to release the truth from the holy Word consecutively, and from 1974 until the present time we have had two trainings annually.
After we finished the life-study of the New Testament in 1984, I felt that we needed to see the Lord’s new way to meet and serve in the church. By this time our situation and practice in the church had become stale, and we were at a standstill. We studied our situation and felt that we needed a training so that a group of saints could rise up to take the God-ordained way for the church. In February of 1986 we had an urgent meeting with the co-workers and elders in which I presented my feeling concerning our need. We were burdened to “sound the trumpet” to call some volunteers to fight for the people of God. We did not expect that all the saints in the Lord’s recovery would take the new way, and we did not feel that those who would not take this way were no longer a part of the church. Whether one takes this way or not, he is still in the church. We only asked that those who did not take this way would not criticize or oppose it.
From the very beginning of the Lord’s recovery among us, Brother Nee realized that there was the need for a training, but whenever he would begin a training, the enemy would come in to attack. In 1936 Brother Nee built a house in a suburb of Shanghai in order to have a training there. However, immediately after the completion of this house, Japan invaded China, and the house was destroyed. When Brother Nee tried again to have a training in the early 1940s, the enemy attacked again, and a turmoil arose in the church in Shanghai. This caused Brother Nee to suspend his ministry for six years. In 1948 Brother Nee resumed his ministry and held a training in his hometown for two terms. At this time, however, the Communists came in, terminated the training, and confiscated the buildings used for it. In Taipei we started to have a training for the new way in August of 1986. Only after a little over one and a half months, the criticizing of the training by a visitor began. Later, the criticizing spread to other countries, even to the United States, and went up to opposing, and the opposing went up to attacking. Eventually, the attacking went up to destroying. The training became a target for the enemy’s attack because this kind of training is a crucial factor for the defeat of the enemy. I am grateful to the Lord that He has burdened me to carry out the training in the Lord’s recovery.
A training in the Lord’s recovery is very crucial, and we must bear the burden to pray for it. Without a training the church cannot be prevailing. Because of the training, a number of saints who have been in the church life for only a short time have been growing quickly. Without a training, however, we may all be common Christians, simply attending the meetings year after year. To be trained makes a great difference in our Christian life. After a few months of training we will never be the same. The regular church meetings help us only in a general way. The training, however, helps us in particular ways. To be trained is to become more useful in the Lord’s hands.
The Bible likens the church to an army (Eph. 6:11-20; Rev. 19:14), and an army is formed with soldiers. Without training the soldiers could not be formed into an army. The enemies of a country always hate to see that country build up an army. Satan hates the church as the army. Because of this, it has been a struggle to have a training in the Lord’s recovery.
The Lord’s move on the earth is for the purpose of establishing His kingdom. In order to establish a kingdom, there is the need of fighting. After being trained, we become the fighting ones, the “soldiers” to fight for God’s kingdom. According to the book of Numbers, Israel was formed into an army in order for God to establish the kingdom in the good land (Num. 1:2-3, 45). Without the formation of the army, the kingdom could not be established. The fighting of the Israelites brought in God’s kingdom.
If possible, all the college graduates among us, both brothers and sisters, should not take a job immediately after their graduation. They should rather spend one or two years to be trained and then find a job. Whoever will be trained in this way will be a soldier. Some countries practice to train their young people in the military service after their graduation. After their training, the young people can find a job, but when the country has the need, all the trained ones can be recalled and formed into an army.
In fighting there is the need of wisdom. Once we have been trained, we should do everything with much discernment; we should not fight foolishly. To knock on people’s doors for the gospel, we have to exercise our discernment, and to talk to people in their homes also requires discernment. In order to discern, we need to exercise our wisdom. Wisdom is related to God and is mostly a matter of our spirit. In order to have wisdom, we must have God, and the more God we have, the more wisdom we have. We must contact God and stay with God to have wisdom for our discernment.
All the local churches are very good; they are in the Lord’s recovery and for the Lord’s recovery. However, the condition of the churches is not the same, and the condition of the saints is not the same. We must be wise to discern the condition of the church and the saints in our locality. The way we contact the church and the saints should not be according to our preference but according to their situation. Sometimes to contact the saints is like walking on thin ice, requiring us to exercise much care and to walk with discernment. The saints in the churches are not our “trainees.” Rather, they may be our spiritual fathers and mothers. We should be as gentle as lambs with them. In this way we will be useful to everyone. We will not damage anyone, and we will not cause a problem. However, we should not say that in order not to cause problems, we will do nothing. This is not the way of training. We are being trained to be useful, to do something for the Lord, yet without causing any trouble. We must be as useful as we can, as useful as the Lord’s sovereignty allows and His grace affords, taking every opportunity to be used by the Lord yet without damaging anyone.
Question: It is needful to dress properly when we visit people, but should the members of a gospel team dress uniformly?
Answer: We simply need to dress properly. Many institutions, such as banks, insist that their employees dress properly. However, it is not needful to dress uniformly. We may have some variety.
Question: Should we practice the trained way to visit people step by step only when we first begin to go out, or should we practice it step by step every time?
Answer: Large corporations train their salesmen not to speak according to themselves. The salesmen are told in writing what they should say. Then they learn to recite it until it becomes their own word. We should read the booklet The Mystery of Human Life and take its contents into our being. Then when we go out, we will not speak the gospel in a general way. We will spontaneously speak from our own being according to the instructed way. This principle has been proved by many business corporations and by other preachers of the gospel. We should not believe that our own way is better than the trained way. Our own way is natural, and the natural way of doing anything will not be successful. The most successful way is a trained way. Even in playing ball, we must be coached. We must do everything according to the coach’s instruction, and we have to practice until that instruction gets into our being. Then it will not merely be instruction; it will be “in our blood.” We should be trained until we get into the trained way and the trained way gets into us. Then whenever we open our mouth, the trained speaking will come out. If we practice this way, our visiting people will not be in vain.
We must make up our mind not to visit people in our own natural way. We should reject the natural way and always try to go out according to the instruction given in our messages. At first we may not be successful, but if we practice the trained way for about two weeks, we will see the results.
We must be the first ones saved by our preaching. If we doubt that people will be saved by the trained way, we have not first been saved by it. We must pray that we be saved by the message we are going to give others. Then we can go out with the assurance that they will be saved. This principle is the same with our teaching. If we doubt that our message will help people, we have not first been helped by it, and we should not speak it. The way to believe that what we preach will save others is to pray and get ourselves into our message. In this way we will be saved and have the assurance that others will be saved. Then we will be zealous to knock on people’s doors and find people to talk to.
