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In this fellowship I would like to share with you the intrinsic problems among us.
At this point I am burdened to share something with you concerning the real history among us in the Lord’s recovery. Our God is a working God. After He worked to create the universe, He continued to work through different ages. Every age is a dispensation. In each age God’s way to work is different. For instance, with Abraham God worked according to His promise. Then in the age of Moses, the age of law, God worked according to the law. God is still working today in this age. We do not believe that we are in an age of silence without God’s work. Today we are in an age at the end of God’s old creation, and God is surely working.
According to the whole Bible, God works mainly by and with His word. God’s working is by His speaking. God created the universe by speaking things into being. He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it stood (Psa. 33:9). Whatever God spoke, that was it. God’s work is God’s speaking.
In the recent training on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, I pointed out that just as there were the twelve tribes of Israel, there have also been twelve tribes among God’s New Testament elect, the real “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). Throughout the New Testament age God has spoken to His elect. No doubt, God spoke to the early apostles. Then God spoke to the church fathers, to the martyrs under the Roman Empire, and to the individual reformers from the Roman Empire to the Reformation. Then especially in the Reformation, God spoke to Martin Luther. He continued to speak to the mystics, the Moravian brothers, the British Brethren, the inner-life Christians, the evangelical Christians, and the Pentecostal Christians. Today He is speaking to the twelfth tribe, the Lord’s recovery, which has recovered the New Testament revelation back to the early apostles. The Lord’s recovery may be considered as the tribe of Levi, the tribe that enjoys all the top, special, and particular portions of the other eleven tribes. We are enjoying all the experiences of Christ in the other eleven tribes, including the early apostles, the church fathers, the martyrs, the reformers, the Protestants, the mystics, the Moravians, the Brethren, the inner-life Christians, the evangelicals, and the Pentecostals.
The Lord’s recovery with us began with Brother Watchman Nee. God raised up such a young man in a heathen, pagan, old, conservative country with the largest race on earth. His speaking shocked all the missionaries. They were amazed that a young Chinese native could speak the word of God in such an extraordinary way. God used him to speak among us for thirty years, from 1922 to 1952, the year in which he was imprisoned.
The first of the problems among us today is concerning the recognition of God’s speaking. I never told others not to speak and that I am the only speaker. I never said that my ministry is unique. I made it clear repeatedly by my writings that when we say “the ministry,” we are referring to the New Testament ministry, not just my ministry. If my ministry is a part of that ministry, thank God for this. The problems among us are first because of a neglect of God’s speaking.
There is also the problem among us of not recognizing the leadership. In every age of the work of God through His speaking, there has been a leader. At the time of the law, Moses was the leader. After Moses, Joshua became the leader. Actually, the leadership is not the person. The leadership is God’s speaking. All the people in the age of the law did not actually follow Moses. Practically speaking, they followed the word of God spoken by Moses. I was there with Brother Nee. We always took him as the authority because God’s word came to us through him. Thus, it was not he who took the lead but God’s speaking. The word of God is the leadership.
About fifteen years ago, all the churches on this earth respected the leadership of God’s speaking. But there was a rebellion that put the leadership under a question mark. The ones who took the lead in this recent rebellion not only put a question mark on the leadership; they have also done their best and are still doing their best to overthrow the leadership.
When I was in mainland China, Brother Nee was the target of all the attacks. Today it is difficult for me to speak, because I am the target. The leadership among us has been neglected, and some even desire to overthrow it.
The third problem began from Brother Nee’s time. A number of saints accept the recovery and come into the recovery, but they try to do their own work in the recovery. One co-worker tried to promote, to push, his ministry, but the churches around him would not take it. The leading ones said that apparently the churches there were built up by that co-worker, but actually they were built up by the element of Brother Lee’s ministry. I called a number of urgent elders’ trainings because I realized that there was the tendency of division among us due to some who had the desire to do their own work within the recovery. They use the “good will,” the advantages, of the recovery to do their own work.
Another problem among us is that our practice of the Lord’s recovery was not that strong. In our practice of the church life, we neglected the basic truths of the recovery. We care for the condition but not for the foundation. We do not stress and practice the crucial points of the basic truths in the Lord’s recovery, such as the experience of the processed Divine Trinity, the enjoyment of the all-inclusive and all-extensive Christ, the full and adequate application of the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit, the strict attention to the unique oneness of the Body of Christ, the proper practice of the local churches on the proper local ground, etc. This is the fatal weakness in our practice of the Lord’s recovery. We should be more than strong and strict in the above-listed items of the basic truths in carrying out the Lord’s recovery.
The fifth problem is that we do not care for the discipline. The discipline is to turn away from the troublemakers. Besides the opposition outside of us, there has been turmoil within. Since certain ones are trying to make divisions among us and trying to cause others to stumble, what shall we do? We should, according to the apostles’ teaching, turn away from them and not tolerate them. This was the reason I was forced to put out The Fermentation of the Present Rebellion.
In the Old Testament there is the type of leprosy. Moses and Aaron’s sister became leprous, and she was quarantined (Num. 12:9-16). Moses and Aaron had to reject their natural relationship and affection in order to follow God’s speaking to deal with Miriam. According to the type of the Old Testament, who is leprous depends upon the decision of the priest, the one who knows the law, the written word, and who also has the present word according to the Urim and Thummim (Lev. 13). For the priest to discern whether or not someone had leprosy was not an easy thing. Someone may have leprosy, and others cannot discern it. Another one may have what looks like leprosy, when actually it is not. The proper one who has the written word and the living word has the discernment to judge whether or not someone has leprosy.
In The Fermentation of the Present Rebellion I mentioned only four names of ones who should be quarantined. The churches in California, West Malaysia, and Taiwan also sent out an open letter to quarantine these ones. In this matter we are touching a great truth, the truth of the Body. Do we honor the Body? The churches in California, West Malaysia, and Taiwan are parts of the Body. Should we not honor them and respect their feeling? But some were not clear and strong to keep the truth to maintain the feeling of the Body, which comprises all the churches.
We must be clear and strong in the truth, and we have to practice the truth. We must practice the truth in Romans 16:17 and Titus 3:10. Whatever we do involves the Body, so we have to keep the truth. The only remedy to the situation is for the faithful ones to come back to the truth. We must be the overcomers, the ones who overcome all these situations. We must come back to the truth to practice the recovery in the way of the recovery according to the Lord’s word, not according to what we think or how we feel.
