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II. The way to understand the Word of God:
E. Taking care of the context.
F. Expounding God’s Word with God’s Word.
G. Learning from the saints of the past:
1. Relying on the teaching that the Brethren have received (the higher theology).
2. Knowing thoroughly the inner-life teaching.
3. Receiving Calvin’s revelation concerning predestination.
4. Refusing the insistence of Arminianism on human responsibility.
5. Holding the balance of the truth concerning the kingdom reward and punishment.
In this chapter we shall learn how to read the Word of God practically. We all know that the Bible is the Word of God and that it is extremely mysterious and all-inclusive. Its most central point is to reveal God Himself to us. The purpose of this revelation is not merely that we may know God, as is often emphasized by Christians, but much more that He may work Himself into us. The way He accomplishes this is through dispensing. Even though we cannot find the word dispensing in the Bible, still the fact of dispensing is in the Bible, just as the term the Triune God is not in the Bible, yet there is the fact of the Triune God.
How can we prove this? Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Here we can see that when love comes, this love becomes grace, and when grace comes to us, it comes through fellowship; this is dispensing. Moreover, in Romans 8 we can even see the steps of this dispensing. First, Christ, the life-giving Spirit, who is God Himself, comes into our spirit, causing our spirit to have the life of God (v. 10). Then He desires to enter into our mind, which is the major part of our soul, so that our soul may have the life of God (v. 6). Last, He supplies His life to our body (v. 11). Thus, our spirit, soul, and body all have His life. This process is God’s dispensing. This is the central and major point in the Bible. The Divine Trinity is for the dispensing of God Himself into us.
God desires to dispense Himself into us. However, this is not so simple that it can be accomplished in one step. In order to do this, God had to pass through steps and processes beyond human imagination. He had to take at least five steps, and He had to complete some great accomplishments. The first step was incarnation. God became flesh, which was not a simple matter. The Creator of the universe, almighty God, has now become flesh! We must realize that in the Bible, the word flesh does not mean the untouched, undamaged man; rather, it refers to the fallen, defiled, and damaged man. This Triune God, the Creator of the universe, came in the likeness of such a man — in the likeness of the flesh of sin (v. 3) — through incarnation. No wonder the Bible says that He had “no attracting form nor majesty” (Isa. 53:2).
The second step of God’s process was His passing through human living. I often say that it took Him at most nine months to become incarnated, but His human living lasted for thirty-three and a half years. In particular, the first thirty years of His life were not a small thing. It was not a simple matter for the unlimited God, the Lord of all, to be such a lowly person, Jesus, on the earth in a small town, Nazareth, in the home of a carpenter for thirty years. Bible scholars seldom see this. I have listened to many ministries for many years, yet I have never heard anyone give a sermon on this subject.
The third step was His crucifixion. His death was not a common death, and it is difficult to explain. On the one hand, He was killed by man, as Peter testified, “The Author of life you killed” (Acts 3:15a). But on the other hand, the Lord Himself said concerning His life, “No one takes it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John 10:18a). Who could ever capture Him unless He was willing to die? In the Garden of Gethsemane, the officials of the temple in Jerusalem came with soldiers to find Jesus, the Nazarene. When Jesus said, “I am,” they all drew back and fell to the ground (18:6). When Peter drew a sword and cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest, the Lord said, “Put the sword into its sheath” (v. 11). This indicates that He was willing to give Himself up to man.
On the cross He died a sevenfold death and terminated all the negative things in the universe, including sin, Satan, the world, the old creation, the old man, the flesh, and the ordinances of the law, which were against us. This is on the negative side. On the positive side, His all-inclusive death released the divine life that was in Him. This is like a flower seed which falls into the ground. Once it receives moisture, its outer shell begins to rot; this is a kind of death. When such a death occurs, the inner life of the seed begins to germinate. The more the shell dies, the more the inner life germinates. When the shell dies completely, the inner life’s germination will also be completed; thus, a tender sprout will grow out. This shows that death releases life. Our Lord Jesus was such a seed sown into the ground. As His outward body was dying, His inner life was germinating (1 Pet. 3:18), allowing Him to come out of Hades and the tomb. This was His resurrection. In resurrection He took another form; that is, He became the Spirit of life. This Spirit of life is still He, but in a different form, just as the flower seed and the sprout are really one thing but in two different stages.
The fourth step of His process was resurrection. When Christ entered into resurrection, He brought us also into resurrection (Eph. 2:5-6). At the same time, He also became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Having passed through the four steps of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, He ascended to the heavens. It was not only the Lord of all but the man of Nazareth who went to the throne in the heavens. How wonderful! Incarnation is God entering into man, and resurrection is man entering into God. While He was living the human life, it was God who was on the earth; when He ascended to the heavens, it was a man who entered into the heavens. Hallelujah! God was on the earth for thirty-three and a half years; today a man is in the heavens. Then it was God who was living on the earth; today it is a man who is living in the heavens.
This is the process of five steps that our God, the Triune God, passed through. By His coming and going, He brought God into man and man into God. God lived a life on the earth, and a man now lives a life in the heavens. This is the revelation of the Bible. The Lord Jesus, in whom we believe, is such a Lord. In these last days it is His mercy to make all these details clear to us. When I preached these things in the United States, the leading Christian country, many theologians and Bible scholars were pierced in their hearts. They falsely accused me, saying that since I am an old Chinaman, I preach Oriental thought and old Chinese philosophies. Some even said that I am a pantheist, that I consider everything as God. What darkness they are in! To this day no prominent theologian or professor of theology has written a proper book to refute my theological viewpoints. Today the whole of Christianity is in darkness. In other words, they know almost nothing of the truth. We need to know that obtaining a doctor’s degree in Hebrew and Greek does not mean that one knows the Bible. Many of these people are even unbelievers; they read the Bible with blind eyes. It is not sufficient to know the Bible in the way of understanding the meaning of each word in the original language; we must see the light revealed by the meaning of each word in the original language.
For example, when the Sadducees argued with the Lord Jesus, saying that there was no resurrection, the Lord Jesus answered, “Concerning the dead, that they are raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the section concerning the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’?” (Mark 12:26). In reading the phrase the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the Lord saw the matter of resurrection. He said, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (v. 27). Apparently these men are dead, but since God is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, they will be resurrected. This was the way in which the Lord Jesus read the Bible. He had the divine light. To study the Bible, we need light, which does not come by studying the letters. If we desire to go beyond the letters and seek the revelation of life, we need enlightenment.
Today’s theology is very shallow and superficial. It seems that theologians only skate on the ice and are not willing to break the ice and dive into the ocean to explore the depths. Even the hymns used by today’s Christianity are shallow and superficial. We are sorry to say that today’s Christianity is so shallow and knows so little. Today we are here to be trained. I surely have a burden, especially for you young people. I really treasure the fact that you have dropped everything in order to learn to serve the Lord and to study His Word. Today I am here to have an honest talk with my family. I have to say that the blindness and shallowness of today’s Christianity have wasted many people’s time and even their whole lives. I was born in Christianity and have been involved with many aspects of Christianity, such as organized Christianity, fundamental Christianity, the inner- life movement, the Brethren, and the Pentecostals. I cannot say that I have read all the books of Christianity; however, with sixty years of experience, I know most of the different denominations well. I have experienced and seen many things. I was born in China and worked for the Lord in Shanghai, the largest city in China. I have been in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and America. I have been to all the major continents except Africa. I hold no degrees, and I do not know Hebrew. I know only enough Greek to be able to use reference books. But I cannot deny one fact: that today’s Christianity is desolate, shallow, and ignorant of the truth. You can discern this by looking at their hymns. Even their best writings are very shallow.
Concerning the matter of understanding God’s Word, I have mentioned four points. First, we must understand God’s Word literally. Second, whereas literal comprehension requires that we use our eyes and our mind, we also need to use our spirit to pray-read God’s Word. The Word of God is the bread of life and the spiritual milk; it is also God’s breathing out. Since it is food, we need to eat it; since it is milk, we need to drink it; and since it is breath, we need to breathe it in. By pray-reading we are able to eat, drink, and breathe. This is what is lacking among many Christians today. They exhaust their minds to study the letter of the Bible, but they do not use their spirit to pray-read the Word of God. Therefore, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures...Yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). To study the Scriptures is one thing, but to come to the Lord by prayer to touch Him and gain His life is totally another matter. The common problem of today’s theological seminaries is that they place too much emphasis on mental exercise to study the letter of the Bible in a doctrinal way, thus neglecting the use of their spirit to pray-read the Word.
I read a book about a contemporary of John Wesley named George Whitefield. His preaching was even more powerful than that of Wesley. He prayed on his knees over the Greek New Testament from beginning to end. His biography mentions that whenever he preached the gospel or ministered God’s Word, he prayed for a long time beforehand over what he would say. No wonder his preaching was so full of authority and power! One day he was speaking about hell. He described it so vividly that one person from the congregation stood up quickly and ran to a huge column in the assembly hall. He held on to the column and cried, “Oh! Be careful, or else we will all fall into the lake of fire!” Whitefield’s preaching was so powerful that it seemed that he was presenting the lake of fire before the eyes of the congregation.
The matter of pray-reading the Lord’s Word is not a theory. We read the Word with our eyes and comprehend the letters with our mind; then we need to use our spirit to pray-read the Word. You may try this not only with Bible passages of comforting and enlightening words; even pray-reading the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew a few times will cause you to sense the painting of the inner anointing, just as drinking a good beverage will make you feel fresh and living. On one occasion, someone said to Brother Nee, “I do not have a good memory, and I often forget the verses that I just read. It seems that I am wasting my time. What I read in the morning I will forget by the evening; I might just as well not read the Bible at all.” Brother Nee answered, “No, it makes a great difference whether or not you read. You see, it is just as one cleans rice in a bamboo basket in a pond. When the basket is immersed, it is full of water. But when it is taken out of the pond, the water is gone. By repeating the process of immersing the basket and taking it out of the water eight or ten times, the rice is washed. When you get up in the morning, you read the Bible and pray a little, but later, after working for two hours, you have forgotten all the verses that you have read. Yes, the words are gone, but the effectiveness of the washing still remains.”
Therefore, in reading the Bible we do not need to understand it too clearly in our mind. Exercising our mind too much might distort the meaning of the Bible. The most important thing is to let our spirit be fed. Every morning we should immerse ourselves in the water of the Lord’s Word eight or ten times. Two hours later we may become dry again. But even though there is no more water, neither is there any more dirt; we have been cleansed. Therefore, when we read the Lord’s Word, having used our mind to understand it, immediately we should turn to prayer. Do not think that you are smart and can compose a prayer by yourself. Let me tell you, young people, the best way to pray is to use the words of the Bible. For example, we can convert Matthew 1:1 into a prayer: “O Lord Jesus! I worship You. I love You, son of Abraham. O Lord Jesus, You are the son of Abraham. How precious! You are also the son of David. Oh, the son of David! Lord Jesus, son of David! The generation of Jesus Christ. Jesus — the name is so sweet! Oh, Christ — the name is so high! Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Amen. Jesus, Amen. Christ, Amen. Jesus Christ, Amen!”
Brothers and sisters, the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. We have to read the letter, because this is how the Bible is written, and we have to use our mind to comprehend. However, we must convert the letter of the Bible into prayer. Once they have been converted into prayer, God’s words become spirit and life. Not only so, we also need to take a further step: having understood and prayed over the words, we need to seek the revelation of life by going beyond the letters.
Now we will continue what we talked about in the previous chapter concerning the matter of taking care of the context in our reading of the Bible. It is very dangerous to neglect the context. For example, Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool has said in his heart, / There is no God. / They are corrupt.” If we omit the first and the last parts of this verse, all that is left is, “There is no God.” Many people expound and understand the Bible in such a way. Those friends who accuse me of preaching heresy usually slander me by this method. They take sentences out of context in order to misinterpret my writings.
Paying attention to the context requires much consideration because there are no specific limits as to the boundary of a passage. A prominent Bible scholar has said that in order to expound a single sentence of the Bible, one needs to use the entire Bible. This means that we need all sixty-six books of the Bible to explain a verse. For example, in Matthew 18:20 the Lord said, “Where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” I would say that this verse concerns the building up of the local church. How can I be so bold to say this? Because the entire context of Matthew 18 reveals this. Not only so, if we read the entire context of this chapter, we must admit that the Lord’s word “gathered into My name” is related to recovering the brothers who have committed wrongdoings, and this is surely for building up. In chapter 16 the Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build My church” (v. 18), but He did not mention there how to build the church. Chapter 18, however, reveals to us that the way to build the church is to gather together into the name of the Lord. Not a great number of saints but a small number, even two or three, may meet together to recover some brothers. To recover the brothers is to build up the brothers. To make peace, to forgive, and to be understanding of the brothers are the building up. If three thousand or even five hundred people meet together with one person preaching and others listening, after the dismissal of the meeting no one knows whether there are any complaints, discontent, or other problems. There is no building. However, when three or five saints are gathered together, everything is out in the open, and nothing can be hidden; therefore, there is a need for fellowship, restoration, peacemaking, and understanding. This is the true building up. We can have such a definitive interpretation of these verses in Matthew 18 because of their context. Therefore, I would say that studying the Bible is not a simple matter, and comprehending the Bible is even more difficult. In order to comprehend one verse, you may have to research the entire Bible. It is just like a lawyer who cannot make a decision on a legal case according to only a single code of the law. In fact, all the codes are related to each other. A good lawyer is one who not only knows the law in depth but also can assimilate and use it in a comprehensive manner.
In general, Bible scholars use the Word of God to explain God’s Word; this is to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. For example, some may interpret the word water in John 3:5 in a spiritual way, considering the water as God’s word, because according to James 1:18, God “brought us forth by the word of truth.” First Peter 1:23 says, “Having been regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.” Ephesians also mentions “the water in the word” (5:26). We have already pointed out that this exposition of the word water in John 3:5 is not right; it is not according to the literal meaning of the word but is interpreted in a spiritual way. Others even say that this water refers to the water in a mother’s womb. This interpretation is too literal. It is not wrong to expound the Word literally, but it must be done not in a natural way or according to human concepts. From the context of this verse, we can see that the Lord Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who must have heard what John the Baptist had said to the Pharisees: “I baptize you in water, but He who is stronger than I is coming...He Himself will baptize you in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 3:16). Thus, we must have a way to determine the appropriate context of a verse. When the Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus that he must be “born of water and the Spirit,” He meant, “You must accept the baptism of repentance preached by John the Baptist. First you must repent; then he will put you fully into the water to bury you, and I will come after him to baptize you with the Spirit to enliven you.” This is death and resurrection. The old man dies and is buried, and the new man is resurrected. Is this not the real significance of being born anew? So you see, this interpretation is according to the literal understanding, yet not in the natural way. Therefore, whenever you encounter a sentence in the Bible and you do not understand its meaning, do not try to figure it out by thinking this way or that way. You should go to the entire Bible to see what is said concerning this sentence; that is to use the words of the Bible to expound the Word.
We also need to learn from the saints of the past. We must realize that we were not born in the first century; we are not the first group of Bible readers. We were born in the twentieth century, and we cannot ignore those who have gone before us. We cannot work in isolation from them. We must see how the so-called church fathers, from the end of the first century to the second century, interpreted the Bible. Since then, in generation after generation there have been Bible scholars. During the time of the Reformation, Wycliffe and his contemporaries rose up; then Luther consummated their teachings. They all had various interpretations concerning the Bible. Afterward, a number of different schools emerged. Today we are standing on their shoulders, and a great deal of our knowledge of the Bible has been gained from them.
In the twentieth century the schools of theology that we have studied, either in the West or in the East, can be classified as follows: The first is secular theology. It is difficult to find this kind of theology in China. In the United States most of the large, well-known universities have divinity schools. These schools are not theological seminaries. They study theology as a kind of literature with a certain cultural background. This kind of secular theology is bad, but there is a still worse kind, which is called modern or liberal theology. Liberal theologians do not recognize the authority of the Bible or the existence of God as revealed in the Bible. They do not accept the fact that the Lord Jesus is God, nor do they believe in miracles, angels, or Satan. Their belief is very much like that of the Sadducees (Acts 23:8).
Besides these, there is also the orthodox theology represented by many theological seminaries. Every denomination has its own seminaries, and their teachings differ one from another. Nevertheless, although their emphases are different, their fundamental theological views are nearly the same. They all accept the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. They believe that God is unique, yet He is three in one; that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God incarnated to become man; and that He died on the cross for us, not for martyrdom but for our redemption. They believe that He resurrected bodily and spiritually, then ascended to the heavens and is now sitting on the throne, and today He is the Savior and the King of kings and Lord of lords. All these are the basic beliefs of the theology of the so-called fundamentalists.
There is still another theology that has been regarded as one of the schools among the fundamentalists, that is, Reformed theology. However, those who teach it hold a major doctrine that is erroneous to the point of being heretical: they do not believe that the believers have two natures. We know that before we were saved, we inherited the old nature from Adam, and after regeneration we received a new life and a new nature from God. Therefore, we have two natures, the nature of the old man and the nature of the new man. This doctrine is totally scriptural. Yet Reformed theology, instead of saying that we have two natures, says that our original nature is old but gradually will be improved into a new nature. There is a great danger hidden in this teaching: it implicitly denies the fact of regeneration. Reformed theology also says that the millennial kingdom is a condition that will be achieved on earth, before the second coming of our Lord, through gradual improvement. It says that although mankind is wicked and fallen at the present time, men can be gradually improved through the teachings of the Bible and the preaching of the gospel. This theology was prevailing prior to the First World War, but the sudden outbreak of the war in Europe totally annulled their teaching. After the war people dared not to talk too much about this doctrine. Then the Second World War came, and the fighting was more intense; thus, they became even more uncertain as to how the Lord Jesus could come back. Even today Reformed theologians still believe that teaching the truth and preaching the gospel can change human society and cause it to gradually advance into a utopia. This utopia is equal to the millennial kingdom. This doctrine is erroneous, heretical, and unacceptable.
In addition, during the first half of the last century, in the late 1820s, the Lord raised up the Brethren in England. They had many Bible teachers; the first among them was John Nelson Darby. There were also C. H. Mackintosh and William Kelly. First, they unlocked many biblical principles; second, they unlocked the types; third, they unlocked the prophecies; fourth, they unlocked the dispensations; and fifth, they unlocked the proper knowledge concerning the Triune God and the person of Christ. Finally, they also unlocked the truth concerning the church. These are the six conclusions we can obtain through their writings.
First, they unlocked the principles of the Bible. There is one set of principles for the books of the Old Testament and another set of principles for the books of the New Testament. The culmination of Darby’s writings was the five-volume commentary on the Bible called Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. He abstracted every book in the Bible and found the underlying principles in each book. This was his greatest strength; this was also where I received the most help.
Second, the Brethren dug out the types in the Bible. While reading the New Testament, they picked up all the related verses. For example, Romans 5:14 says that Adam is a type of Christ. Galatians 4 says that Abraham had a wife named Sarah and a concubine named Hagar. These two women signify two covenants, the new covenant and the old covenant. In the Gospels the Lord Jesus also said, “Behold, something more than Solomon is here” (Matt. 12:42), “Have you not read what David did?” (v. 3), and “Something more than Jonah is here” (v. 41). Solomon, David, and Jonah in the Old Testament are types of the Lord Jesus. When we read the New Testament in this way, we will spontaneously realize that there are many shadows, types, and prophecies in the Old Testament describing the things in the New Testament. Generally speaking, it was the Brethren teachers who unlocked the types in the Old Testament. This was the greatest help that I received from meeting with them for seven and a half years.
Third, they unlocked the prophecies. The prophecies in the Bible can be divided into two categories. The first category consists of the prophecies concerning the Lord Jesus; these are the prophecies with promises. For example, Genesis 3:15 says that the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. This is a prophecy, but it is also a promise. Then in Genesis 22 God said to Abraham, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (v. 18). Here the word seed refers to one person, Christ (Gal. 3:16). Later, this prophecy and promise were also used to refer to the seed of Isaac (Gen. 26:2-4), the seed of Jacob (28:13-14), and the seed of Judah. Genesis 49 says that Judah is a lion who will reign and has gone up from the prey (vv. 9-10). This prefigures Christ. Then in 2 Samuel God promised that David would have a son who would reign as a king and that his kingdom would last forever (7:12-13).
The book of Isaiah prophesies, “Behold, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel” (7:14). “For a child is born to us, / A Son is given to us; / ...And His name will be called / ...Mighty God, / Eternal Father” (9:6). The entire fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is full of prophecies and promises. There is no place in the New Testament that gives as clear an account of the gospel of Christ as Isaiah 53. Then Jeremiah 33 prophesies that Christ as God’s righteousness will become our righteousness (vv. 15-16). The book of Daniel prophesies that Messiah will be cut off (9:26a); this refers to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. Then Hosea 11:1 says, “Out of Egypt I called My son”; this also refers to Christ. Micah 5:2 says, “His goings forth are from ancient times, / From the days of eternity.” Then we find more prophecies in Zechariah: Christ is referred to as the wounded One (13:6), the One the Jews have pierced (12:10), and the smitten Shepherd (13:7). In Haggai He is referred to as the Desire of all the nations (2:7). Finally, Malachi 4:2 prophesies that He will arise as the Sun of righteousness. In addition, the book of Psalms also has many prophecies concerning Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement.
The second kind of prophecy in the Old Testament is concerning the world situation, the people of the world, the Jews, the Gentiles, and the church. Pember wrote four volumes on the interpretation of prophecies. The first volume deals with the prophecies concerning the world; the second, with the prophecies concerning the Jews; the third, with the prophecies concerning the Gentiles; and the fourth, with the prophecies concerning the church. These prophecies are recorded in Daniel and Revelation. Some can also be found in Matthew 24, Luke 21, and other books.
The Brethren told us that in order to interpret these prophecies, one must maintain two governing principles. First, in Daniel 2 there is a great image: the head of which is of fine gold; the breast and its arms, of silver; the abdomen and its thighs of bronze; the legs, of iron; and the feet, partly of iron and partly of clay. It also has ten toes. This image represents the history of the world. Babylon is represented by the golden head, Medo-Persia by the breast and the arms, Alexander’s Greece by the bronze abdomen and thighs, and the eastern and western Roman Empires by the two iron legs. With the passing of the Roman Empire, the idea of democracy began to spread. The French Revolution represents the coming of clay, when kings could no longer practice totalitarianism. Gold, silver, bronze, and iron are metals that signify emperors. Clay signifies the people, the common man. But clay contains iron, which is stronger than clay. This is today’s situation, partly of iron and partly of clay. Although democracy has been promoted, the practices of dictatorship and totalitarianism still prevail. This great image is the principle by which the Bible explains the world situation, and we cannot go beyond it.
The second principle is the matter of the seventy weeks in Daniel 9. One week represents seven years. Seventy weeks are four hundred ninety years. The first sixty-nine weeks, totaling four hundred eighty-three years, began from the day Artaxerxes the king commanded the rebuilding of Jerusalem and ended with the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. According to history, the day of the Lord Jesus’ crucifixion was exactly the last day of the four hundred eighty-three years. In summary, we must have the great image in Daniel 2 and the seventy weeks in Daniel 9 as two lines; then we can properly interpret the prophecies of the Bible.
In addition, there are also two theological schools. One is the Calvinist school of predestination, which I call the revelation of God’s predestination. Calvin saw that our salvation was not initiated by ourselves but rather that we have been selected and predestinated by God before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5). This predestination is eternal and unchangeable; therefore, the saved ones will never perish. On the other hand, those of the Arminian school believe that whether we are saved eternally or not depends upon ourselves, that is, that we are responsible for our salvation. Therefore, we must do our best to walk according to God’s will, or else we may still perish. I call this “elevator salvation”: when we are saved, we are up; when we sin, we are down. The Baptist Church accepts Calvin’s revelation of God’s predestination, and so do the Presbyterians. The Pentecostals, holiness groups, and the Assemblies of God are mostly Arminian in that they emphasize human responsibility and ignore God’s selection. This is heresy. Calvin saw the revelation of God’s predestination, and this is right.
These two schools are always in conflict with each other. The Arminian doctrine is mainly based upon the five warnings recorded in Hebrews and the warnings given by the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. For example, if we fail to be a faithful servant, when the Master comes back, we will be punished and cast into outer darkness, where there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth (Matt. 24:45-51; 25:14-30). Based upon these verses, they claim that even a saved one can perish.
Later, people like Govett, Panton, and Pember rose up. Their doctrine stands between the revelation of God’s predestination and the teaching of human responsibility. They saw the truth concerning the kingdom. They said that after being saved, we are saved forever and will never perish. But we must follow the Lord faithfully; then when the Lord comes back, we will receive the kingdom as a reward. If we are not faithful, we will not be able to enter the kingdom, and we will suffer loss. This is based on 1 Corinthians 3, which says that we should be careful about how we build (vv. 10-15). Are we building with gold, silver, and precious stones, or are we building with wood, grass, and stubble? If we build with gold, silver, and precious stones, when the Lord comes back, we will be rewarded in addition to our salvation. On the other hand, if we build with wood, grass, and stubble, our work will be burned by the fire of judgment, and we will suffer loss but not eternal perdition: “But he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire” (v. 15). Many proofs in the New Testament concerning the kingdom reward and punishment were initially seen by Govett and Panton.
What I have mentioned thus far is not my imagination. I am also a student of the Bible. I have studied this book for sixty years; this is why I am able to explain it to you. The Bible expositors of the past can be grouped into these several schools. We have studied them and would like to present them to you for your learning. When we began to expound the Bible, we profited a great deal from the saints before us. We have seen that the highest theology is that held by the Brethren. Once you have their theology, you can put aside all the others. What I have said is based on this high theology. Brothers and sisters, all that I have spoken to you describes the way of studying the Bible that we have learned during the past sixty years.
