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Let us enumerate all the meetings which the Lord Jesus had with His disciples after His resurrection. On the day of His resurrection, He first appeared to one sister, Mary the Magdalene (John 20:11-18; Mark 16:9-11); then the second time, also in the morning, He appeared to a few sisters (Matt. 28:8-10; Luke 24:9-11). Later in the day He appeared to Peter (v. 34; 1 Cor. 15:5). Then in the afternoon or evening, He appeared to two disciples as they walked to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35; Mark 16:12-13). At night, when all the disciples were gathered together, Jesus met with them — that was the first meeting He had with a good number of His disciples after the resurrection (John 20:19-23; Luke 24:36-49). Then, on the next Lord’s Day, a week later, He appeared again to have the second meeting with them. In the first meeting Thomas was missing, but in the second meeting he was there (John 20:24-29). After these two meetings, which were held behind closed doors in Jerusalem, the disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain appointed by Him. There He met with them (Matt. 28:10, 16-20). Another time He met with them on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:1-24). Then, according to 1 Corinthians 15:6, the Lord appeared to five hundred brothers at once. He even appeared to James, His brother in the flesh (v. 7). Then, eventually, He met with them back in Judea on the Mount of Olives, quite near to Jerusalem, where, in full view of His disciples, He was taken up into heaven (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-52; Acts 1:6-13). From the Mount of Olives, they returned to Jerusalem and went up into an upper room, where they met together for continual prayer. There they stayed, as they were commanded by the Lord, until they put on power from on high (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5).
Of all these meetings we can discern two kinds: the first is the meetings with the resurrected Christ; the second is the meetings for the ascended Christ. What kind of meetings are we having today? Today people say that they are having Bible study meetings, prayer meetings, fellowship meetings, gospel meetings, etc. I would not say it is wrong to arrange things in this way, but we must realize that whenever we meet, we meet first with the resurrected Christ and then for the ascended Christ.
Have you ever noticed a change, or we may say a contradiction, in the last chapters of the four Gospels and the opening chapter of the book of Acts? In both Matthew and John there is no record of the Lord Jesus having ascended. According to these Gospels, He is still here. Matthew says, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age” (28:20). Accordingly, the Lord Jesus is still on this earth; He has never left us. We may have full assurance that the Lord Jesus is among us at this very moment. Hallelujah! John also did not tell us anything regarding the Lord’s ascension. Why? Because John’s message is that the Lord is the life within us forever. He could never leave us, for He is our very life. Matthew tells us that the Lord Jesus met with the disciples on the mountain. John tells us that He met with His disciples on the one hand in a room shut up, secretly, and on the other hand by the seashore. That is all. Neither Matthew nor John tells us that after this, the disciples saw Jesus ascend into the heavens. According to the record of Matthew and John, the meetings which the Lord Jesus held with His disciples were of the first kind, the meetings with the resurrected Christ.
Then we come to the Gospels of Mark and Luke and the book of Acts. These three books tell us clearly that this resurrected Christ who met with His disciples after His resurrection ascended to the heavens. While He was holding one of the meetings with His own, He ascended up before them. The worldly people did not see Him, but His disciples steadfastly beheld Him received into heaven. Who could take away such an impression from them? This was not something of doctrine or information — this was the greatest sightseeing! They all saw the ascension. Once you have seen something, you can never say that you have not seen it. In a sense, they did not see His resurrection. They saw the empty tomb, but they did not see Jesus in the act of being resurrected. But they saw His ascension. They not only saw the ascended Christ, but the ascension itself. If I were there, I would jump in excitement. This is the reason Peter became so bold and probably determined he would never go back to fishing. “For this,” he said in effect, “it is worthwhile to sacrifice my life.” Suppose that today, before your very eyes, you saw the Lord ascending. Could you sleep? I am afraid that if I saw the Lord’s ascension, I could not sleep for three days! I would be beside myself. I would shout, “Hallelujah! I saw Jesus ascending!”
I say again, this is not a kind of teaching or information; this is a kind of sightseeing. So many people went to Cape Kennedy to see Apollo 13 leave for the moon. But the disciples on that day saw Jesus ascend not to the moon but to the heavens. It is marvelous! Immediately their meetings were changed into another category. Before they met with Christ; now they began to meet for Christ. Before they met with the resurrected Christ; now they met for the ascended Christ. Let us look into these two kinds of meetings.
We all must learn to meet with the resurrected Christ, not just with the Bible, not just with the hymn book, not just with some chairs and a piano, and not just with the saints.
What kind of Christ is the resurrected Christ? It is so clear that He is the very Christ who is living in the Spirit. The resurrected Christ is the living Christ in the Spirit; in fact, He is just the life-giving Spirit. The main thing that this resurrected Christ did in this kind of meeting was to breathe into His disciples and say to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). It is also in this kind of meeting that Christ speaks and asks of us something to eat and offers us something to eat. This is the first kind of meeting, the meeting with the resurrected Christ, the life-giving Christ, the Christ who is so living in the Spirit.
Where is this Christ today? Yes, in our spirit. We all have to say, Hallelujah! This Christ is within us! This is the resurrected Christ, not the ascended Christ. This is the Christ who is so living as the Spirit within us, not the One who is so powerful in the heavens.
By what way do we meet with this Christ? Be sure that with this Christ we meet without any forms. We may meet Him with all the doors shut, or we may meet Him on the mountain top. It is interesting that there is no name given to this mountain. Any mountain will do to meet the resurrected Christ — as long as there is a mountain, that is sufficient. While we are backslidden at the seashore, we may still meet Him there. When we are in the room, He is there; when we get to the mountain top, He is there; when we are backslidden at the sea, He is also there. You may say, “It is rather difficult to remain here for the Lord’s testimony; let us go back to the world.” Even so, when you go, He goes with you. You can never get rid of Christ; you have really gotten involved. Jesus is the resurrected One, and now He is in you. He is the life-giving Spirit; He is the Spirit who gives life within you all the time. So what kind of forms can we have? My heart is bursting to tell you that if we set up any kind of forms, it is a sinful offense to the Lord. We cannot possibly have any forms when we meet with the resurrected Christ.
The disciples were meeting in fear, the doors were shut, and suddenly there was Jesus standing in their midst, saying, “Peace be to you.” “Who is this?” they might have exclaimed. Then they realized that it was the Lord, and they were all so glad. Jesus breathed upon them, and after breathing, He just gave them a short message, a very short message (vv. 19-23). I believe that if we were there, we would say, “Lord Jesus, please sit down and give us a long message just as You did in the Sermon on the Mount — three chapters, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Or speak to us as You did on the night before You were betrayed in John 14, 15, and 16, followed by a long prayer as in John 17.” But the Lord just spoke a few words. Then do you think He said, “Now the meeting is dismissed. You go home, and I’ll go back to heaven”? No, it was not like this. Read the record: the Lord Jesus, just as He came, suddenly disappeared. He did not come in by knocking; He did not enter in a formal way. He did not give them a long message. He did something very extraordinary — He breathed into them. Then He disappeared. There was no time limit — I doubt if they had a clock there. I doubt if they had any special arrangement for their seats. There was absolutely no form. But, I tell you, just from that short time of meeting with the Lord Jesus and being breathed upon by Him, everyone was satisfied. There was just a short visitation, just a little doing, a little breathing, a short message of two or three sentences, and complete satisfaction. They did not call a hymn, nor did they ask Brother So-and-so to offer a prayer, etc. It was a living meeting with a living Christ.
We are still very much under the influence of degraded Christianity. We just need the resurrected Christ, the living Christ, the Christ whom nothing can hold. Even death, the most powerful force in this universe, cannot hold Him. He is the resurrected Christ with the resurrection life. He is meeting now with us, and this is the best way for us to meet. How should we meet? We should meet with the Christ who is the living Spirit; we should meet with the living Christ without any forms.
In the next meeting of the disciples, Jesus suddenly appeared again (vv. 26-29). There is no record telling us how He came in — He was just there. Do not think that before that time He was not there. He was there all the time. The only difference was that sometimes He appeared and sometimes He disappeared. But whether He appeared or disappeared, He was always with them. Our physical eyes today cannot see Jesus, but we must believe that the Lord Jesus is right here with us. He is within us. We are not meeting with an ascended Christ; we are meeting with a resurrected Christ. When they arrived at the mountain in Galilee, Jesus was there. When they backslid to the sea to fish, Jesus was there. Before they reached the mountain, where do you suppose Jesus was? Yes, He was within them. Before He appeared to them on the seashore, where was He? He was within them. You see, all the time the Lord Jesus was within them.
We all must realize that whenever we as the disciples of Christ come together, we come with Jesus, we bring Him with us. We come to meet with Him — not just with a Bible, a hymn book, or the brothers and sisters, but with the living Christ, the resurrected One, the life-giving Spirit. We all must pray that no one would come to our meetings anymore just with a Bible and hymn book. All those who come must come with a full realization that they are coming with the living Christ. We are coming to meet with Christ, the very Christ who breathes Himself into us in all our meetings and the very Christ who speaks to us, even today. We meet to breathe Him in, to speak for Him and let Him speak through us, and to offer Him something for His satisfaction and take something from Him for our satisfaction. It may be just a short meeting, but we will be fully satisfied.
Never forget that these meetings with His disciples after His resurrection were Christ’s first meetings with the whole Christian church. This must be the example, and we must heed the principles from these meetings, the first Christian meetings mentioned in the Bible.
In the past years in the local churches we have seen some behavior in the meetings which has not been so becoming. But we dare not do anything. Why? Because we are aware of the background, the dead religion, and we shrink from regulating things and forming another kind of meeting. We would rather tolerate some confusion than any kind of religion. The Lord be merciful to us. He is going to recover all things. He did not go to the temple to meet His disciples; He went to a shut-up room, and He went to a mountain in Galilee. He did not even notify His disciples that He would be waiting on the seashore for them — He just went. All the meetings with the resurrected Christ were absolutely outside of religion.
To meet with Christ, we need to breathe in Christ as life, but to meet for Christ, we need the rushing violent wind to blow upon us (Acts 2:1-2). To meet for the ascended Christ, we need power to demonstrate that the One whom we serve is now in the heavens and has been made Lord and Christ (vv. 33-36). We need to declare this to the whole universe. This is the second kind of Christian meeting. Our meetings sometimes need to be like this. We meet not only with the resurrected Christ but also for the ascended Christ. Our gospel meeting must be a meeting for the ascended Christ, declaring to the universe that the very Jesus whom the world has rejected has been made Lord and Christ. He is with us, and He is within us, but for the unbelievers He is in the heavens. Matthew and John tell us to meet with Christ; Mark, Luke, and Acts tell us to meet for Christ. We need the breathing, and we also need the blowing. We need the breathing of the air for life and the blowing of the violent wind for power.
For these two kinds of meetings we must pay a price. After the resurrection the disciples were in Jerusalem: they were frightened; they were under threatening and persecution. That was the price they had to pay. They were Galileans, yet they stayed in Jerusalem in an atmosphere of fierce opposition. They paid a price.
Then at a certain time the Lord Jesus told them to go to a mountain in Galilee. If I were Peter, I would have asked, “Lord, why must You ask us to go to a mountain in Galilee? I have a large guest room. If You could meet with us here with all the doors shut, why could You not do the same there in Galilee? Why must we go to a mountain?” But it is not up to us. If He says to go up to the mountain, what should we do? We should say Amen. To say this, however, is easy, but to go up is not so easy. If I decided that we should all go up to the mountain tomorrow, I think that all the sisters would leave me first, saying that I do not care for the children. But the Lord Jesus said, “Go to the mountain,” and they did.
Then the Lord Jesus again took the lead and went back to Jerusalem. Why did He not ascend into the heavens from the mountain in Galilee? Why must He go back to the Mount of Olives for His ascension? It is quite interesting. This involves much of the Scriptures. First, it involves His second coming. Two angels told the disciples, “Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you beheld Him going into heaven” (1:11). Zechariah 14:4 tells us that Jesus will come the second time upon the Mount of Olives. So His ascension from this mount has to do with His coming back and His administration in the whole universe. This is not a secret matter but something official, something governmental. He had to ascend from the Mount of Olives; therefore, He asked all His disciples to go from Galilee to Jerusalem to see Him off.
After they should do this, He requested them to stay in Jerusalem, informing them that something would happen on this earth for His administration, for God’s economy, for God’s governmental activity. This could never be done in Galilee; it must be done in Jerusalem. We must realize that Peter and all the others were not men of wealth but poor fishers. How could they afford to go so far and stay so long in addition to being in a situation of threatening and persecution? But that was the price they were called upon to pay.
Concerning the meetings after the resurrection or ascension, we can never discover any sense of lightness. Every meeting was so weighty, quite unlike the meetings of today’s Christianity. People say today, “Let us go to the eleven o’clock Sunday service. We have been working so hard during the week — Sunday morning is the best time for us to sleep in.” What I mean is this: if we take the Lord’s way to meet, we must meet at a cost, we must pay a price. I am so happy to tell the universe that here in Los Angeles there are many dear ones who have come from a distance just for the purpose of meeting. So many have settled here and gotten jobs, but their main purpose is not to get settled and find jobs but to attend the meetings. This is really good. There is a reason why we enjoy the Lord’s presence so richly here. So many have really paid the price to attend the meetings. I have full assurance that many migrating from here to spread the church life to other cities will be greatly blessed with the Lord’s abundant presence. They are willing to sell their homes, give up their jobs, forget about their future and social welfare, and go at a cost to spread the church life. Praise the Lord!
Brothers and sisters, we must be here not for our business, not for our schooling, not for our families, but for the meetings. We are the meeting people. We would like to pay any price to keep up the standard of the meeting. We would rather lose our jobs than lose the meetings. Some say that our meetings are too frequent and ask how the mothers can properly care for their children. But I have no word to say. It all depends upon what is more precious and worthwhile in your lives. If the church is more precious than your children, you know what to do. If your children are more precious than the Lord Jesus and His church, you also know what to do. There is no need for me to say anything. If we really mean business for the church, we must realize that the church is in the meeting. To be here for the church means to be here for the meeting. We do not care for the passing things of today; we care for eternity. Hallelujah! We are looking for the eternal consummation.
Our certified public Accountant is in the heavens working out our account for eternity. Whatever we make in this world as a profit means nothing — eventually that will be a loss. The heavenly, eternal C.P.A. will say, “Sorry, your account shows a loss. You feel that you’ve done well; you have been making a lot of money, but you lose.”
What are we here for? Look at Jesus and all His disciples. Consider the way they met and how they were willing to pay any price to maintain good meetings. We all have to meet with the resurrected Christ and for the ascended Christ, and we must be willing to pay the price to keep these kinds of meetings.
