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Scripture Reading: Luke 14:15-23; 1 Cor. 9:19-23
Our service to the Lord in the New Testament includes preaching the gospel and meeting regularly for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. After much study I found that there are four steps in this New Testament service.
The first step is the preaching by the New Testament priests of the gospel to save sinners for God’s satisfaction (Rom. 15:16). The second is to feed the new believers. Right after their baptism, we should begin to feed, to nourish, the new ones. John 21:15 says, “Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon,...do you love Me more than these? He said to Him, Yes, Lord, You know that I love You. He said to him, Feed My lambs.” Here the Lord specifically tells us to feed His lambs, the new believers. Right after the delivery of her child, a mother begins to nourish, to feed, her baby. Without the proper nourishing, a newborn babe will die.
The third step in our New Testament service is the perfecting of the saints. It is not enough just to feed the young saints; we also have to perfect them. After a certain amount of growth in life, they have to be perfected that they may be able to build up the Body of Christ in the same way the gifted persons do. The Lord has given gifts to His Body — apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers — “for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ.” This is clearly revealed to us in Ephesians 4:11-12.
The fourth step is that all the saints should be trained in order to be brought into the practice of prophesying for the Lord in the church meetings. This point is clearly revealed in 1 Corinthians 14. According to this chapter, to prophesy does not mean to predict, or foretell, but to speak for the Lord, to speak forth the Lord, and to speak the Lord Himself that we may minister or dispense Him into others. With the genuine prophesying, people will not receive mere doctrines or teachings, but our speaking will minister Christ to people as their food supply.
Thus, there are four steps of our New Testament service revealed in the Bible: to preach the gospel, to feed the lambs, to perfect the saints, and to prophesy for the building up of the church.
First Corinthians 14:26 reveals that when the church comes together, each one has something of the Lord to share with others. This is very different from a meeting where a preacher or minister gives a message to a congregation. Over a period of time this kind of meeting, with one man speaking and all the rest listening, will kill the development of the spiritual functions within every member. Therefore, we all have to pursue, desire earnestly, and seek after the excelling gift of prophesying (vv. 1, 12, 39).
Among Christians today we cannot see the practice of the organic prophesying for the building up of the church, and there is no record of such a corporate practice in Christian history. Brother Nee saw the need for church meetings in mutuality over fifty years ago. In 1937 he spoke the messages that are published in The Normal Christian Church Life. In this book Brother Nee says that the big Lord’s Day morning meeting with one man speaking and the rest listening has no place among the meetings of the church. In 1948 Brother Nee gave the messages contained in Church Affairs. At this time he was much stronger. He said that the Lord’s Day message meeting in which one person speaks and the rest listen is according to “the customs of the nations” (2 Kings 17:8, NASB). He charged us all to persistently push against this unscriptural tradition and work to tear it down.
On the one hand, to have one man speaking edifies the saints, but on the other hand, to have only one man speaking annuls and kills the spiritual function, ability, and capacity of every believer. Because of this practice, many Christians have been fully annulled in their spiritual function and capacity. Very few know how to speak for the Lord. This is the situation in Christianity today, and among us it is nearly the same.
I began a thorough study of the New Testament service in October 1984. In my study I remembered Brother Nee’s words. In 1948 he strongly repudiated the big Lord’s Day message meeting and asked all of us to exercise considerable strength to overthrow this damaging tradition. I had heard all these things, yet in 1949 when I came out of mainland China to Taiwan, I did not put these things into practice. Later, I was full of regret for this and asked the Lord to forgive me. Then I sounded the trumpet, saying that the Lord’s Day morning meeting with one man speaking and all the rest listening should be annulled.
Although I sounded the trumpet in this way in Taiwan in 1984, for over three years I did not propose that the church in Taipei stop their Lord’s Day message meetings. Over three thousand saints attended these meetings. They were all influenced and deeply impressed that the best meetings were first, the Lord’s table, and second, the Lord’s Day morning message meeting. They liked the message meetings because they were all nourished by the messages that were given Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day. To suddenly stop this kind of meeting would have been a damage to the church. Instead, I spent over three years to train the brothers and sisters. Then in November of 1987, the elders in Taipei decided that it was time for them to stop the Lord’s Day morning message meeting, and they began to practice the organic prophesying as revealed in 1 Corinthians 14.
In this chapter I have no intention to stir up a so-called revival. In over sixty years of Christian experience, I have found that the way of big revivals does not work. What really works is the way ordained by God and revealed in the New Testament. The God-ordained way to preach the gospel is by every believer going to visit people to preach the gospel to them personally and directly. The New Testament charges us to go (Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15). We must go to reach people by visiting them where they are. To visit people for the gospel preaching is not merely to knock on doors; it is to reach people where they are. The Lord Jesus Himself went to reach people (Matt. 4:18-22; 9:9; John 4:1-42), and He also sent the twelve to do the same (Luke 9:1-6). Then He sent seventy to go into every city and place to find the homes of the sons of peace (10:1, 4-5). Physically speaking, as one person, the Lord could not go to many villages to visit that many people, so He sent the seventy to do this visiting work.
The basic principle in preaching the gospel is for you to go to people; do not ask them to come to you. If you will go to them, you will see that this makes a big difference. Go to a sinner’s home to visit him. Sit down with him and talk to him. Take the lead to pray with him, asking him to follow you. Then you could say, “Because you have prayed to the Lord Jesus and have believed in Him, you are now qualified to be baptized. Let us baptize you in the bathtub.” This is absolutely different from inviting people to come to you. Many of the saints have been quite successful in preaching the gospel in this God-ordained way.
We must be flexible in our way of reaching people in the gospel preaching. What does it mean to be flexible? Human beings are very legalistic. We easily make everything a legality. In the full-time training in Taipei, because there were so many large high-rise apartment buildings, we instructed the trainees to always turn to the left after leaving a door. In that kind of building, there might be over eighty units on one floor, so this kind of instruction helped the trainees make efficient use of their time. But in the United States we do not have so many large high-rise apartment buildings. Many people live in single houses. To rigidly practice this kind of “turning to the left” in the United States may not work so well because the situation is quite different.
The best way for the saints to visit homes is to form teams. Ideally, a team should have three persons, one older, one younger, and one middle-aged, with either one sister and two brothers or one brother and two sisters. But in the United States, many have taken this as a legality. Because we could not get an older one or a younger one, we would not form a team. Therefore, nothing is done because of our legality. We all must learn to be flexible. This does not mean that I am annulling my previous fellowship. If you practice those things, they will work, but it all depends upon the situation.
Do not think that the only way to reach people is by going as a team of three. There are many ways to visit people. In this message I will present a number of different ways to reach people with the gospel.
The first and best way is to visit your close relatives. Suppose you go to visit your grandfather. Although your grandfather loves you, he may not listen to you, so you should take some mature brothers with you. Then when you go to visit your grandfather, he will listen to these brothers and get saved and baptized. What you could not do in twenty-five years of preaching to him, these brothers could do in a short visit.
You also have many other relatives to reach with the gospel. You should make a list of all your relatives and go to visit each one. You do not need to knock on strangers’ doors. A stranger may slam the door in your face. Those are “cold doors.” You better go first to the “warm doors.” Your close relatives would never slam the door. You have the right to visit them. There are so many “warm doors,” so many close relatives, for us to visit with the gospel.
The second group of people we have to visit is our neighbors. We all have neighbors, and we may have lived by our neighbors for many years. We are Christians who love the Lord and are in His recovery. We are seeking Christ and desire to live Christ, abide in Christ, enjoy Christ, and experience Christ, yet after so many years, our next-door neighbor may still not be saved.
Is this a proper situation? The Lord said, “He who abides in Me...bears much fruit” (John 15:5). But “every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, [the Father] takes it away...You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and I set you that you should go forth and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain” (vv. 2, 16). The Lord said, “I set you.” Because we are branches in the vine, we have been chosen and also set. Our being set, our future, and our destiny is to bear fruit. This is why Paul says, “Necessity is laid upon me; for woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). We all must have this kind of realization.
Some may say, “As long as I have been saved, I will go to be with the Lord in the heavens.” Surely they will go to the heavens, but in the heavens the Lord will ask, “How much fruit have you borne for Me?” If we do not bear fruit, there is the danger that we will lose the enjoyment of Christ in this age. Then in the future at the Lord’s coming, He will ask us to give Him an account of ourselves (Rom. 14:10, 12). If we have not gained a profit for the Lord, He will say, “Cast out the useless slave into the outer darkness” (Matt. 25:26-30). This word in Matthew 25 is quite serious.
The Lord has burdened me to warn all of the brothers and sisters concerning our solemn responsibility to bear fruit and the serious consequences of not doing so. If I did not warn you, I would be responsible before the Lord, and your blood would be upon my hands (Ezek. 3:18-19; Acts 20:26-27). If you do not bear fruit, you will be cut off from the enjoyment of the riches of Christ today, and in the future you will be condemned as an evil, slothful, and useless slave and cast into the outer darkness. This is the necessity that has been laid upon you to preach the gospel.
We should not be discouraged; the Lord still allows us to live. Even as an old one, I believe the Lord will give me more years to live that I might bear more fruit. We need only bring one person to the Lord and to the church within one year. Some may feel that it is too hard to bear one fruit per year. I would tell them to try going out for fifty-two weeks, only once a week. If within fifty-two weeks they still could not gain one, they should not worry; the Lord is teaching them patience. They must continue to go out for another fifty-two weeks without worrying about not gaining one. They must simply do their duty one week at a time. If after the second year they do not gain anyone, they still have the third year. If in three years they could bear only one fruit, they should not consider that a small thing.
According to my study of history, there has never been one church on this earth that has continually increased by thirty-three percent each year. If every saint could get one person saved within three years, this would produce a thirty-three percent increase each year. In history there never has been such a church, so we should not despise gaining only one in three years. If we could all do this, it would be marvelous.
Many sisters do not have a job, but they stay home to take care of their little children. A sister can build up quite a good relationship with her neighbors so that all the neighbors know that she is a good and proper person and that she is training her children very well. They may like to have their children go to her home, and she can open a small children’s meeting class with about five children. The best time is in the afternoon when the children come back home from school. Many mothers would like to have a good neighbor to take care of their children, and their children need the other little ones to be their friends. Gradually, she could have more children, perhaps as many as fifteen. Through these children, every family’s door will be open to her.
There are many ways to reach people. If you cannot think of a way, pray, “Lord, I want You to tell me what I should do. I am desperate. I must bring some person to You. You must give me a way.” The Lord may tell you to just go out and stand in front of your house every day from five to six in the afternoon. You would stand there and do nothing but watch all your neighbors coming home. This may seem very strange, but after one week someone may stop and talk to you. This is your opportunity.
In a big denomination in Seoul, South Korea, they trained the sisters to contact their neighbors. Seoul is a big city of about ten million people. They have many large high-rise apartment buildings. Many ladies go to the grocery store with their children. They have to buy their things and bring them home while trying to care for their children. That denomination found out that there was such a need, so they sent some sisters to wait at the elevator door for the ladies returning from the grocery store. When one would come to the elevator, they would say, “May I help you? I will carry this bag for you. I will take care of this child.” That opened many doors to those sisters.
We must also visit our friends, colleagues, and schoolmates. Everyone has a friend, a colleague, or a schoolmate. If you are teaching school, all the teachers and staff are your colleagues. If you are a student, you have many classmates. First, we should try to build up a good feeling between ourselves and our colleagues or schoolmates. Then we can talk to them about Christ and make an appointment to visit them. We can ask them to give us a time to speak with them. They may try to avoid this, but if we are persistent, they will eventually give us a time to visit. Then when you visit, it is always good to bring a saint with you.
We all must learn to use the telephone wisely. The telephone can be very useful. Today there are some telephone salesmen who make over a million dollars a year. They are constantly calling people, one after another. We can use the telephone to make appointments with people to talk to them about Christ. We may even use the telephone book to call people. Simply pick a name and call: “Sir, I got your name from the phone book. I am a Christian who loves the Lord Jesus and would like to talk to you for a short time.” Most would reject you, but maybe three out of a hundred would receive you. Then you can visit these three.
Nearly every day my mailbox is full of business advertisements. This is a bother to me, and I throw all of these advertisements away. One day I asked, “Why do these businesses waste their money by printing and mailing all these things?” Then I found out that if they receive only a one percent response, they will not lose any money. Usually they will get a three percent response, and they make money. We should not expect that every house will have a son of peace. Actually, most doors will have wolves (Luke 10:3). In one night we may knock on twenty-five doors and meet nothing but wolves who reject us. This happened to many saints, but when they came to the last door, they got inside and found a son of peace. We do not know when we will find a son of peace. For a hundred and four weeks we may not get one. Yet the next day we may find a son of peace. We simply have to exercise our persistence, patience, and faith. I do not believe someone can go out continuously, regularly, once every week for fifty-two weeks, and still not catch one fish. If you are persistent, surely you will catch one. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons do not have the way to make many appointments because they have a bad name. Not many would give them an appointment. But we are different; we are Christians. We can call people on the phone and tell them: “I am not a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness. I am a Christian loving the Lord.” Surely some will answer in a positive way, and this will open some doors.
If a brother goes into a stationery store to buy some stationery, and there are no other customers in the store, he can buy something, and, of course, the salesman will be happy. You should not miss such an opportunity to speak to people. It may be good to have a card printed with your name, address, phone number, and something to indicate that you are a real Christian. Then at such an opportunity, you can hand the salesman your card and say, “I would like to talk with you about Christ for only a few minutes.” Do not talk too much because that is his business time. Two minutes would be enough. Then say, “May I come to see you?” This is the way to make an appointment by purchasing something. If you are going to buy three things, do not buy all three things in one store. Buy one thing at this store, and then go into the next store and try to make another appointment. Your purchase is the bait. The sisters have to consider how many things they buy in a month. There are many opportunities to speak Christ to people.
All these people are here for us. You may not have any intention to buy anything, but when you see a salesman standing there with nothing to do, you may buy a pair of socks for a few dollars. You can buy this in order to open his heart. Surely this is worthwhile; we are here for Christ. Also, you may buy the socks in a size that would fit this salesman. Then after you purchase these socks, you may say, “Sir, my intention is not to buy the socks; it is to preach Christ to you. I would like to give this pair of socks to you as a gift.” This may seem like an odd thing, but it can stir up people’s interest so that we can reach them with the gospel.
We need to save some of our time for going out to reach people. In whatever way we go, we must pray, “Lord, send me the best son of peace.” We must believe that the Lord will answer this prayer. Also, if we pray, the Lord will give us many different ways to reach people. We should not be so legal. We must exercise our wisdom. When the sisters go to the beauty shop, they must go purposefully. They should even go more often with the intention of talking to someone. Then all those who are working in the beauty salon would open their doors to these sisters. In this way we can get some doors opened to us warmly. Human beings are made by God for His purpose. As long as we can touch them, they will be saved, but do not expect to do a quick job. We must reach people with patience, gradually. If we are faithful to the Lord every week, we have to believe that we will bring at least two to the Lord every year. Each one of us can do it. It all depends on our labor, persistence, endurance, and patience.
Some of you can get the best product that can be sold door to door. Then you go out, not to preach Christ but as a salesman. Most people would open the door for a salesman. You should sell the product very cheap. You can show them that you get only five percent discount, and you would give this five percent to them. After the deal is made, you say, “I sold this to you so cheap because I am not for selling; I am for preaching Christ.” Give them one of your name cards, and ask for a few minutes to speak to them. Most buyers would give you some time. Then after a little talk, you can make an appointment to come back. This is another way to reach people with the gospel.
No one’s door is closed forever. People open their doors nearly every day, but we must find a way to keep them open. One brother told us that he visited an upper middle-class community, and no one would open their door because no one knew him. So he began to visit that neighborhood regularly, not to knock on doors but simply to walk back and forth. Many of the residents saw him quite often in that neighborhood, and eventually someone talked to him and opened to him. If you can get one person to invite you into his home, after two or three weeks some others may also be open to you.
Another way to reach people is to form a singing team of about six saints and go to an upper-class community. Sing proper Christmas songs throughout the neighborhood at about seven o’clock in the evening. Maybe they would be eating or just finishing their dinner. Then go the second night and sing again. Go every night for one week and see what will happen. You may not need to knock on any doors. Some will come out and say, “You have nice singing, marvelous singing. We all like it. We would like to know who you are.” By this way some doors will be opened to you.
We should not be bound to any one way in our gospel preaching. The Lord will not lead us in only one way. In Luke 14 first the master charged his slave to go to the streets and lanes of the city (v. 21). The slave came back and said, “What you commanded has been done, and still there is room” (v. 22). Then his master said, “Go out into the roads and hedges” (v. 23). The Lord is flexible, and He changes His leading. To visit and to talk to people are much easier on the streets and in the lanes of the city than on the roads, the highways. To whom can we talk on the highway? We could wait there for someone to run out of gasoline and stop right in front of us. That would be a good chance to talk to that person. If we are wise, we would have prepared some water so that we can say, “Sir, are you thirsty? I have some water.”
We may think, “How could I meet a person in this way every week?” But in fifty-two weeks we can meet one. If we go out once a week to stand beside the highway just waiting for someone to run out of gas, for fifty-two weeks, we can be sure that we will meet one person. Even if we do not meet one, the Lord will surely consider us to be faithful servants. We must also pray, “O Lord, send me one.” The Lord will answer us; He will send us one. This dear one who was driving the car may have his cousin with him, so we will also meet his cousin.
One thing is for sure. If we stay at home, we will gain nothing. We have been at home for years. Whom did we reach with the gospel? It is worthwhile for us to pursue any way by which we can minister Christ to others. However, our crucial need is not a way but a desperation to gain someone for Christ. We must be desperate. We should not tolerate our barrenness. If we do not bear fruit, the Lord will cut us off from His enjoyment, and He will judge and punish us at His coming. It is a necessity that we preach the gospel, for woe to us if we do not (1 Cor. 9:16). If we are desperate, surely the Lord will give us a saved sinner to offer up as a sacrifice to God.
If all the saints had been practicing the door-knocking since it was introduced in 1986, I believe that all the churches would have doubled by now, but the devil has been working to damage the saints and destroy their faith by putting doubt into their hearts. We must tell the devil that we do not have the time nor the ear to hear all this nonsensical talk. We would rather be desperate and go out to reach people. I believe our Lord, the Lord whom we serve, will be happy to see this.
