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Prayer: We worship You that You have brought us all here tonight. How we treasure this time. Lord, grant that we may open to You. Again we need Your anointing; we need the utterance to fellowship about the church. We like to be one with You in this moment. Lord, we believe it is of You that we are here. O Lord Jesus, speak from Your heart to us, what You want us to do, the way You want us to take. Lord, we would like to take Your way. Thank You for Your cleansing blood. Thank You for Your presence all the time. Thank You for all the churches. Thank You for Your move among us. Thank You for the Spirit and the Word. Thank You, Lord, for Your forgiveness. How we thank You that we may take You as our sin offering and as our trespass offering, even as all the offerings. O Lord Jesus, we do enter into You, enjoy You, participate in You. Lord, tonight impart Yourself into us again; dispense more and more of Yourself into each one of us. Thank You, Lord.
My burden these days is that we should realize the danger there is that we may fall into those perils we talked about last time.
If we fall into emptiness, this emptiness always leads to division. It may not sound logical, but this emptiness actually works to bring forth the divisions. If we study church history, we can see that first indifference came in, then divisions.
From the whole Bible we can see that God wants His chosen ones to be eagerly seeking Him. Among the sixty-six books there is one book of seeking, that is, the Song of Songs. No seeking is as strong as that between the female and the male. The Song of Songs illustrates how the Lord wants His chosen ones to seek after Him. The basic negative scene in the Old Testament is the indifference of the Lord’s people to Him.
In the New Testament there is the same thing. When God became incarnate and lived on this earth, actually He did not do that much work. What He did was to attract His chosen ones. In the four Gospels we can see how the Lord Jesus was like a magnet, attracting people to Himself. The Gospels show that the story between the Lord Jesus and His disciples was one of love. The Lord did not tell His disciples much concerning what they should do for Him; He just kept attracting them to love Him. When the time of His death came, it was a test of the disciples’ love toward the Lord.
In the seven epistles in Revelation, when the Lord rebuked the churches, the first one rebuked was Ephesus, and that rebuke was due to the loss of the first love (2:4). The last one that was rebuked was Laodicea (3:16). When we lose love, the result is lukewarmness. The lukewarmness is the product of indifference.
Indifference apparently is not important. If you go back to the world, or if you leave the church, everyone sees it. But you still remain in the church serving the Lord, taking care of the church. Nonetheless, you may have lost the first love and become indifferent. There is the danger.
The impact of the work for the Lord should be the zeal. If we lose our zeal, we do not have the impact. We may still do the same work, but there is emptiness because indifference has come in. The way we take care of the church, the way we work for the Lord, really does not mean much. The impact depends upon zeal. Without eagerness, we are through.
To the first church in Revelation the Lord’s warning was that He would remove the lampstand (2:5). To take away the lampstand means that the testimony will be gone. The warning to the last church was that He would spew them out of His mouth (3:16). Not only will the testimony be taken away; even you yourself will be given up by the Lord. He will spit you out; He will not keep you.
In between these two churches we can see all the evils mentioned. These evils came in because of this indifference, lukewarmness. None of us can have the assurance that we will escape this peril. It is very easy to fall into this situation. In fact, there is no need to fall into it; we may just be in it. Here we are in Southern California. Probably all the churches are in a similar situation. Five years have gone by; the churches are established, the problems solved. Things are peaceful. We just go on according to our regular schedule. This kind of situation is dangerous because we may unknowingly get into a state of indifference.
According to history, quite often the Lord does something or allows something to stir things up. At present we have no trouble and no goal. Suppose we were in an atmosphere for migration. Migration might become the motivation for us to stop being indifferent.
While things are quiet, there is a danger of losing the testimony. Even our own history in the past years has shown this. Some left—they fell away or were stumbled—but the ones who have remained have gradually become indifferent.
There is the same problem in the Far East. The work, the testimony, started on the China mainland with much zeal. It was spread by the same zeal. But today from my observation of the situation in the Far East, it seems the zeal is diminished. As I told the brothers there, I am very much concerned about this.
The churches of the Lord’s recovery in the United States, even though they are much younger, are also in this danger. With the new churches the problem is not that great, but with the established churches, the danger is surely here.
This lukewarmness will no doubt issue in emptiness. By emptiness we mean a shortage of the experience of Christ. When we are devoid of Christ, we are short of the Spirit and short of life. Actually, these three are one, yet we have to make them three items. Without the Spirit, we do not have the experience of Christ; if we do not have the experience of Christ, we do not have much life.
I feel very burdened about the present condition of the Lord’s recovery on this earth. To my observation it seems that not many churches still have zeal. When some of you brothers came into the recovery, you came in with a zeal that was burning. Now your knowledge has increased, your experience has become more than in the past, but your zeal is less than it was when you first came in.
We may have more knowledge, but this does not mean that we have more truth. According to the New Testament revelation, truth is the issue of light. What is doctrine? What is truth? Knowledge without light is doctrine. Knowledge full of light is truth. Doctors of theology may have much knowledge of the Bible, but they may not have much light. The Life-studies may be just doctrine to you, or they may be truth. The difference is that when you have the knowledge with light, it is truth. Without the light it is only doctrine. You can get doctrines without loving the Lord. You may go to a seminary or to a Bible college and gain a lot of knowledge, but you may not receive light, because light is the Lord Himself. He never tells us that He is knowledge; He says that He is the light (John 8:12) and the truth (14:6). If we do not love the Lord, we may come to the Bible, we may have morning watch, but what we read may be just knowledge without light. If we have the Lord’s presence mingled in our knowledge, then that knowledge is the truth because the Lord’s presence is the light. So you see, we may even lose the truth. No Christ, no light, no spirit, no truth (reality). Then what is there? Emptiness, just emptiness.
We must have a zeal to seek after the Lord. Then the Bible helps, the Life-studies help—help to get not doctrines but the truth, the real knowledge with light. Then we have the truth, the reality. We, the leading ones, should not put too many requirements on the saints. We ourselves have to take the lead. If we do not take the lead to be zealous after the Lord but expect others to be zealous, whatever we say becomes a doctrine, or a teaching, all with no impact.
Even in the Old Testament we have this verse: “The zeal of Your house has devoured me” (Psa. 69:9). The Old Testament prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, were all zealots. If they lost their zeal, they would be no longer prophets; the word would not come to them. The word that came to the Old Testament prophets was truth. The fresh word out of their mouths was full of light. The speakings of the prophets were not doctrines without light; their word was full of light. Thus, it became truth.
Most Christians do not differentiate knowledge and doctrine from truth. From the second third of the last century to the first third of this century, many Christian books came out with many truths, full of light. It has not been so in the past fifty years. Instead of truth, emptiness has filled the scene. This might possibly be the peril we may fall into.
Why does emptiness bring in division? It is because, on the one hand, you are empty, and on the other hand, you will not give up.
You are taking care of a church, and the church has become empty, and you have become empty. The reason the church has become empty is because you have taken the lead to be empty. Yet you will not give up. You still want to keep the church and keep things as they are. This desire to keep the church and to keep things as they are offers a chance for the ambitious ones to step in. In every age, in every stage, there have been ambitious ones. On the one hand, the churches have become empty, and on the other hand, they would not let go of what was in their hand; this situation has opened the door for the ambitious ones to step in.
The gifted ones at first are not that ambitious. But, because of your ability, you have accomplished something, and what you have done tempts you to be ambitious. If you had not succeeded in anything you did, you would not have thought about becoming great. Your successful work becomes a temptation. Then you will go on to do more, and the more successful you are, the more you will be tempted by ambition. Then a division will come out. If all the churches are full of Christ, full of life, full of spirit, and full of truth with light, I tell you there will be no opening for any ambitious ones to do anything.
There is a history of this. If the Christians in England two centuries ago had not been empty, I do not think John Wesley would have had that much opportunity to become great. A revivalist is raised up because of the lukewarmness of God’s people. Their indifference offers an opportunity to the outstanding ones to take some action. Such action issues in division.
Along with this point, you must be aware that the more you are full, the broader your heart and mind are. The more you become empty or poor, the more narrow you are in your heart, in your concept. You will be exclusive, especially in your locality. Then you will take the position of assuming more authority. You will say, “We are the elders. We don’t agree with this brother or with that thing. We don’t agree with that brother doing what he is doing.” Thus, you are not open to all the saints.
Such an attitude, you must know, will shut out much of the Lord’s riches. When you are rich, full, you become great-hearted; you are open to take others in. Some of the elders—forgive me for saying this—are to my observation very narrow. You are open only to yourself. You do not give others a chance. You care only for your own concepts, your own ways, your own doings. On the one hand, you may be excluding some saints who are there from participating; on the other hand, you may be shutting the door for more to come in. Do you know what the result will be? You will be dried up.
Of course, to embrace everyone blindly is foolish. But to take this as an excuse in order to carry out your narrow kind of practice will dry up and even kill the church life. There is such a danger.
From our experience and observation, this danger arises when the elders are in one locality too long. I hope I have the proper utterance to express myself rightly and not to damage you. For an elder to be in one locality for too long a time raises this danger. You will become indifferent. You will become narrow. You will not embrace others. If you are zealous, you will not be like this. It is only when you become indifferent, lukewarm, and therefore poor, that you become narrow. You are not rich, yet you still want to keep your position; you want to keep things in the church just as they are. In order to do this, you become exclusive.
The result is that the water will not flow to your place. The water means the blessing. The blessing will take another way. To have the blessing, you must be humble. Your elevation must be leveled. Why does the blessing not come? Why does the water not flow? It is because your place is too elevated. You have to lower yourself. You must cut down the elevation.
In the Old Testament high place is a negative term. The high places were where idols were worshipped. Lukewarmness and indifference create the high places. You become dry. Even if the water would like to re-enrich you, it cannot stay. You have no reservoir to preserve even the rain water; there is no need to say that the river cannot flow up to your high place. All these troubles are of one source: the loss of zeal.
To my observation, some of the churches have become narrow already. The eldership cannot embrace in an inclusive way. You may say, “I don’t control things.” But I do not mean that you control things. To control is one thing; to be narrow is another. Simply not to control is not sufficient. You need to include others. But a poor man cannot embrace others. To do so, you must be rich in Christ. You must be full of grace. It is not easy for the eldership not to control. It is even harder for the eldership not to be narrow. These are cause and effect, and cause and effect create a cycle. This is a serious danger.
The high places not only represent indifference. Every high place is a division. The people were all to go to Jerusalem, the center of oneness. The high places were divisions with idolatry. Do not think this is just the Old Testament history. It is also the New Testament story. Among Christians, the story is the same. The earth is full of high places. These places are dried up, full of narrowness because they are poor.
Zeal will kill the source of the indifference. Thus, regardless of how long you have been an elder in a local church, as long as you are zealous, there is no danger. When your zeal is gone, the danger is present.
