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The work of the full-time serving ones is mainly with the small groups in their respective localities. All full-timers must know how to help the small groups. We have already seen that the small group meeting is a fellowship meeting. A fellowship meeting is all-inclusive in nature. When a full-timer goes to a small group, he should not assume the status of a full-timer or display the air of a full-timer. In order to help the fellowship in a small group, he should first help the saints learn how to read the Word of God. The best materials for this are the Life-studies and the Recovery Version. Second, he should help them to gradually build up a proper bread-breaking meeting. Third, he should help them to attend the prayer meeting and learn to pray.
The full-timers do not hold a secular job. If possible, they should not be concerned about their food, their clothes, or their sleep. This is the spirit I had when I began to serve full time. I desired to use all my time to read the Bible, pray, fellowship with the Lord, pursue the Lord, serve the Lord, fellowship with the brothers and sisters, and preach the gospel. All the full-timers should have a spirit to consider the truth twenty-four hours a day. Often when I wake up in the morning, I immediately begin to consider the message that I gave the night before. I encourage the full-time serving ones to have such a mentality.
Although you brothers and sisters should not regard yourselves as full-timers or display the air of full-timers, the fact remains that this is your occupation. We have given up our education and jobs. We do not make money or seek prosperity in the world; we have given up all these things. Since this is our occupation, we should do an outstanding job. Of course, we should not be proud, but neither should we be without a backbone. Especially the young ones should never be careless about their food, clothing, or sleep.
In 1932 a denomination in Chefoo invited Brother Nee to give a message. I went along with him and stayed in a dormitory. The room I stayed in was so filthy that it was not suitable for sleeping; therefore, I spent a whole day cleaning the room. When others saw that the dormitory room was clean, they had a positive impression of the person who cleaned it. We should be such persons. If we are put in a place that is dirty, we should not merely accept it; rather, we should rise up to make the place clean and respectable. Hence, you must not be careless so that others do not despise your youth.
In a small group we will always encounter people who ask questions concerning the truth. Hence, we must have a thorough understanding of the truth so that we may be able to help them. In Christianity there is the Bible and there is theology. The Bible is God’s revelation, but theology is the knowledge that men have gained from studying the Bible. The study of the Bible began in the second century after the apostles had died by the end of the first century. In the second century many lovers of the Lord and scholarly men were raised up by the Lord, and they began to study the Bible. The church fathers were produced from this group of people. For the past nineteen centuries the study of the Bible has never stopped. The results of these studies have been published and are the content of Christian theology.
The situation in Christianity today is pitiful because people pay more attention to theology than to the Bible. The truths that they accept are according to theology but are not necessarily according to the Bible. There are even several categories of theology. Catholicism has Catholic theology, and Protestant denominations have their own theological views. There is also the theology of modernists, who do not even believe that the Bible is God’s revelation, that there are signs and wonders, or that the Lord Jesus is God possessing divinity.
After the Brethren in England were raised up by the Lord in 1827, they began to study the Bible thoroughly instead of remaining in traditional theology. This was a great thing in church history. It was at that time that God used them to unfold many truths in the Bible. Within seventy-five years, in less than a century, they received much light from the Bible. During that period of time, a great amount of light came forth.
The truths taught by the Brethren were accepted by Christianity in America, mainly through two persons. The first was D. L. Moody, who was a great evangelist in America in the nineteenth century. His teachings were all taken from the Brethren. Hence, the theology taught by Moody Bible Institute is based on the truths from the Brethren. The second person was Dr. C. I. Scofield. He was a well-known pastor in America who compiled and edited a reference Bible in which he adopted the teaching of the Brethren in almost ninety percent of the notes. Some of Scofield’s contemporaries founded a seminary in Dallas, Texas, and its teaching of theology is based on Scofield’s views. Hence, these two influential seminaries in America teach the Brethren theology.
From the second century until the nineteenth century, the study of theology was traditional. When the Brethren were raised up, however, they studied the Bible, consulting traditional theology, but they were not bound by tradition. As a result they received much light. It is regrettable that from the end of the nineteenth century until today, nearly a hundred years, the receiving of light has ceased, and the theology of the Brethren has become traditional. What does it mean to be traditional? To be traditional is to receive what has been passed down from our predecessors without seeing any new light from the Bible.
In China, however, the Lord raised up a person to receive new light. In 1920 Brother Watchman Nee was saved, and in 1922 a small gathering was raised up in his hometown. That was the first church in the Lord’s recovery in China. For the past sixty years our attitude has been to receive the help from our predecessors and to try our best to diligently research and study God’s Word. In these sixty years the Lord has continually given us new light. For instance, the Western missionaries used the vague expression three persons, one body in reference to the Trinity, but no one explained what this meant. There is even a picture in the Eastern Orthodox Church portraying a person with one body and three heads. Later we discovered that this understanding was not according to the Bible, and we labored to study all the explanations and expositions concerning the Triune God in the Old and New Testaments.
In 1962 I arrived in America and began to release the results of the forty years of our studies. My intention was to lead the believers to experience the Triune God and to enjoy all the riches of Christ. I quoted Colossians 2:16-17: “Let no one therefore judge you in eating and in drinking or in respect of a feast or of a new moon or of the Sabbath, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is of Christ.” Eating, drinking, feasting, and new moons are but shadows; the body is of Christ. I said that Christ is the reality of all the positive things in the universe; He is our real food, our real drink, our real clothing, our real feast, our real new moon, and our real rest. He is also our real air and real abode. I was opposed and condemned as being a pantheist because I said that Christ is all things. Since I also taught the saints to follow the inner sense of life in all matters, some condemned me and said that I was a mystic from the Far East. Their arbitrary view and criticism were based on their theology.
What the missionaries from the West expounded influenced the truths that we initially released in the local churches. Gradually, we traced the truths back to the Bible. We read the Bible and studied the original Greek text. I used an interlinear Bible of Greek and English, purchased various reference books on the Greek text, and studied in depth the meaning of the Greek words in the Scriptures. In my home there are close to one hundred sets of books by different writers who are authorities on the Bible. For instance, there is a German writer named Gerhard Kittel whose work, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, specializes in New Testament word studies. He expounded, word for word, the Greek words used in the New Testament. There are ten volumes in this set. One Greek word can have eight to ten pages of explanation, expounding in detail the classic usage of the Greek word, how it was used during the time of the Lord Jesus on the earth, its fundamental usage in the Bible, and its common usage by the Greeks. We examined this detailed information in light of the divine revelation. The footnotes in the Recovery Version were written according to this principle. We first studied the text of the Bible, and then based on our spiritual experience of the past decades, we produced footnotes and the Life-studies.
The truths that we heard and preached, from the beginning until today, are not bound by tradition. Instead, these truths have been identified according to the standard of the Bible. Not only so, we have studied the Bible thoroughly for decades. I dare not say that I have studied every word in the Old Testament, but I can say that I have studied every word in the New Testament. I wrote books that contain what I have gained from my studies according to a scholarly standard in which every finding is grounded with evidence. Although neither Brother Nee nor I studied in a seminary, no one can say that we do not know theology. We both advanced by standing on the shoulders of our predecessors. I share these things with you so that we may know the history of the truths among us.
The saints in the Lord’s recovery should learn the truths concerning the essential and economical aspects of the Trinity. Essential refers to the constitution and the existence of God, which is God Himself. A person’s constitution and existence are himself. The essential aspect of the Trinity speaks of the person of the Triune God. The term economical refers to an intention, a plan, or an arrangement. Undoubtedly, this refers to God’s move, acts, and work. Whereas the essential aspect of the Trinity refers to God’s constitution, God’s existence, and God Himself, the economical aspect of the Trinity refers to God’s plan, God’s intention, God’s arrangement, God’s move, God’s acts, and God’s work.
To put it simply, essence refers to God Himself, and economy refers to His work. God the Father had a plan in eternity past. According to this plan, He chose us and predestinated us (Eph. 1:3-6). Not only so, in eternity past God the Father ordained that His Son would become a man, die on behalf of men, and accomplish God’s redemption (vv. 7-12). God also ordained that the Spirit would apply to us what God the Father planned and what God the Son accomplished (vv. 13-14). This is God’s economy; it is God’s plan, God’s work, and God’s move.
When the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, came to be a man on the earth, everything He did was economical. When He was baptized in the river Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, and God the Father spoke from the heavens (Matt. 3:16-17); this was economical. With regard to His economy, there is the aspect of the move of the three of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Furthermore, the Triune God works in three stages. The Father planned before the foundation of the world. The Son accomplished what the Father planned in the four Gospels. The Spirit’s application takes place in Acts and the Epistles. We can clearly see three consecutive steps. The first step is the Father’s plan, the second step is the Son’s accomplishment of the Father’s plan, and the third step is the Spirit’s application of the Son’s accomplishment of the Father’s plan. These three steps are not related to God’s essence but to His economy.
When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He often prayed to God the Father. In Matthew 11:25-26 He prayed, “I extol You, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for thus it has been well-pleasing in Your sight.” Then in 27:46 when He was on the cross, He prayed, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The Son prayed to the Father; this indicates that the Son and the Father are distinct. This is the economical aspect.
The truths in the Bible are of two sides; anything that exists in the universe has two sides. Even a thin sheet of paper has two sides: the front and the back. Our head also has two sides: the front has seven holes, and the back has none. We could never come to a conclusion as to what a person looks like if we see him only from the front or the back. Hence, on the one hand, the Lord Jesus stood in the water, and the Father spoke from heaven (3:16-17). On the other hand, Isaiah 9:6 says, “A Son is given to us; / ...And His name will be called / ...Eternal Father.” The Son is called the Father, indicating that the Son is the Father. This shows the twofoldness of the truth.
When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, His disciple Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us” (John 14:8). Philip seemed to be saying, “We understand that You are the Son. We see You every day, but we are not satisfied. We want to see the Father. If You could show us the Father, we would be content.” After hearing this, the Lord Jesus said, “Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how is it that you say, Show us the Father?” (v. 9). The Lord seemed to be saying, “You have seen Me for more than three years. How can you say that you have not seen the Father? Why is it you still do not know that when you see Me, you see the Father? Why do you still ask Me to show you the Father? Why do you still not know that I am in the Father?” The Lord then said, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” (v. 10). Hence, we can say that when the Lord Jesus was praying on the earth to the Father in heaven, He was in the Father, and when the Father in heaven listened to Him praying on earth, the Father was in the Son. The Lord said, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). Isaiah 9:6 says that the Son is called the Father. Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” Therefore, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one. This is the word in the Bible.
The Bible also speaks of “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45b). The last Adam is the incarnated Lord, who passed through death and resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit. If we say that the life-giving Spirit is not the Holy Spirit, then is there a second Spirit who came to give life besides the Holy Spirit? This is heresy. The life-giving Spirit is definitely the Holy Spirit.
The Bible has two sides. On the one hand, it speaks of the economical aspect of the Trinity in relation to God’s move, God’s work. On the other hand, it speaks of the essential aspect of the Trinity in relation to God Himself, God’s existence. When the Lord Jesus came to the earth to accomplish God’s work, He stood in the water; this was part of His move. When the Spirit descended like a dove, this was also part of His move, and when the Father spoke from the heavens, this was part of His move. The Lord praying to the Father in heaven was also a move, a work. All these are related to God’s economical aspect. In God’s economy and in His essence, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct but not separate. The three are one.
