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Scripture Reading: 2 Tim. 3:16-17; John 6:63; Matt. 4:4; Eph. 6:17-18; 1 Tim. 2:4
In this series of messages we will cover some important matters related to training teachers to serve with the young people in the Summer School of Truth. What we will consider here will be helpful not only to those who teach in our summer school but to all those who speak for the Lord.
We need to have the proper understanding of the words teacher, teaching, and school. Regarding these words we all may have our own “lexicons.” Let us drop the different lexicons and come to the Scriptures as the unique lexicon. The word teaching is found in 2 Timothy 3:16, where we are told that “all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching.” The only time the word school is used in the New Testament is in Acts 19:9. This verse tells us that when “some were hardened and would not be persuaded, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude,” Paul “withdrew from them and separated the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.” Tyrannus might have been a teacher, and Paul might have rented his school and used it as a meeting hall to preach and teach the word of the Lord to both Jews and Gentiles for two years (v. 10). Paul alluded to some kind of school when he told us that he was “trained at the feet of Gamaliel” (22:3), a teacher of the law (5:34).
The reason we need to set aside our personal lexicons and study the words of the Scriptures is that the Scriptures teach us the things of God and the things concerning God. We may even say that the Scriptures teach us God Himself. When some hear this they may ask, “Can we teach God? How can God be taught?” Today’s seminaries do not teach God; they merely teach about God. The Scriptures, on the contrary, teach us God and also teach us the things of God. There is a great difference between teaching about God and teaching God.
However, many Christians do not realize the significance of this difference. When they read the Bible, they read it in the same way as they read a secular book. This is absolutely wrong. The Bible, especially the New Testament, does not teach us to read the Scriptures in a common, secular way. Rather, Ephesians 6:17 and 18 tell us to receive the word of God by means of all prayer and petition. The reason we need to receive the word of God by prayer is that, according to 2 Timothy 3:16, the Scriptures are God-breathed. This indicates that the Scriptures are the breathing out of God. God has breathed Himself out in the Scriptures, and thus our reading of the Scriptures should be our receiving of God’s breath. When God breathes Himself out, He exhales Himself. When we read the Scriptures, or when we receive the Scriptures, we inhale God. Reading the Bible therefore involves both God’s exhaling and our inhaling. This is altogether different from reading a book in a secular way. Unfortunately, many believers read the Bible in the same way as they read a textbook or a newspaper. This is a serious mistake, and we must avoid it as we are taking care of the young people in the Summer School of Truth.
We should not conduct the Summer School of Truth in a secular way. Actually, I do not like the word school. Using this word may cause others to think that we intend to teach in a common, secular manner. Some may even have the concept that the ones who take care of the Summer School of Truth should be school teachers by profession. This concept is mistaken. Being a school teacher does not qualify one for serving in our summer school. Do not think that having been a school teacher for many years qualifies someone to teach in our summer school. Those who serve in the Summer School of Truth should not serve according to their natural ability or professional training. Our summer school does not deal with any secular matters, such as mathematics, history, geography, and science. Instead, our summer school is for the handling of the divine truth, that is, the reality of the Triune God. What we intend to teach our young people is the reality of the Triune God. Concerning this, our natural teaching ability does not avail.
My burden in this message is to point out what the nature of the Summer School of Truth is. Once we have a clear understanding of the nature of our summer school, we will know what to do and how to do it.
The nature of the Summer School of Truth actually is not a matter of teaching but of ministering or serving. The purpose of our summer school is to minister something to the young people. We may use a restaurant as an illustration. A restaurant is not for teaching about food but for serving food. Those who serve in a restaurant do not merely give people a menu and then teach them about food. Instead, the serving ones supply others with different courses of food for eating. The principle should be the same with what we call the Summer School of Truth. In a sense, our summer school is a kind of school, but actually it should be a “restaurant.” Our intention is not to give the young people a “menu” and then teach them about God. Our intention is to serve, to minister, God as different “dishes” for eating. Thus, the nature of the Summer School of Truth is a matter of ministering, of serving, the Triune God to the young people.
The situation of today’s seminaries is very different from this. Seminary instructors pay very little attention, if any, to ministering spiritual food to the students. Instead of ministering God, these instructors mainly teach theology, the mere knowledge about God. They do not minister God Himself to the students. We do not want our summer school to resemble a theological school or seminary. Our school should actually be a “restaurant” serving the Triune God to the young saints.
In the Summer School of Truth our textbook is the Bible, and all our lesson books are based on the Bible. Our goal is to bring the young people not to the lesson books but to bring them to the Triune God through the lesson books. Our lesson books should be a channel through which the young people are brought to the Triune God. If you realize this, then you will also realize that it is not sufficient merely to teach your class with the lesson book as if you were teaching in a secular school. Everyone in your class should gain the Triune God. Do not bring the young people to the lesson book—bring them to the Triune God through the lesson book. The lesson book is a channel for those whom you are serving to be brought to God and to gain God. This means that your aim is not to teach the lesson book but to bring the young people to God through the channel of the lesson book. This is the nature of the Summer School of Truth.
Through your teaching, your serving, in the Summer School of Truth, everyone in your class should be brought to God. You need to pray and endeavor concerning this. You need to labor to bring every young person in your class to the Triune God, so that by the time you have finished all the lessons, the students in your class will have gained the Triune God and will have been filled with God, not with mere knowledge about God in letters.
We have seen that our textbook is the Bible. Now we need to consider further what the Bible is. Apparently the Bible is the same as any other book—a composition of words. Whereas all secular books are the same in nature, the Bible is different from other books. The Bible is unique.
I would like to point out again that 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed.” The Scriptures are the breath of God, or the breathing out of God, God’s breathing out of Himself. The Bible, therefore, is God’s breath, and God’s breath is the Spirit of God, for God is Spirit (John 4:24). The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma, which is also the word for breath. Thus, we may say that the Holy Spirit is the holy breath (cf. 20:22). God is Spirit, and the Spirit is the holy breath. To say that all Scripture is God-breathed is to say that the Bible is the breath, the breathing out, of the very God who is Spirit. God has breathed Himself out, and this breathing out of God is the Bible. This is what 2 Timothy 3:16 is saying when it tells us that the Scriptures are God-breathed.
In John 6:63 the Lord Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus is spirit, pneuma. His words are the embodiment of the Spirit, who gives life. This indicates that the word which comes out of the Lord’s mouth is His breath, the breathing out of Himself. This is a further indication that the words of the Scriptures are God-breathed.
In Ephesians 6:17 Paul charges us to receive “the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God.” The antecedent of which is Spirit, not sword, indicating that the Spirit is the word of God. When we read the Bible, we must touch the word of God as the Spirit. Along with 2 Timothy 3:16 and John 6:63, this verse reveals that the Bible is God’s breathing out. Since God is Spirit, what He breathes out must also be Spirit. The words of the Bible, therefore, are the breathing out of God Himself as the Spirit.
Second Timothy 3:16 says not only that the Scriptures are God-breathed but also that the Scriptures are “profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” On God’s side the Bible is God’s breathing. On our side the Bible is for us to receive profit in four matters— teaching, conviction or reproof, correction, and instruction. The order here is significant. Why does teaching and not instruction come first? Why does correction come before instruction and reproof before correction? And why does teaching come first? The order is first teaching and then reproof, correction, and instruction.
What is teaching? How do you understand the word teaching? We need to know the denotation of this word as it is used by Paul.
If we have the proper and adequate spiritual experience, we will realize that in verse 16 teaching equals revelation. Teaching is actually nothing less than a divine revelation. Since teaching equals revelation, as you are teaching the young people in your class in the Summer School of Truth, you must present a revelation to them.
A revelation is the opening of a veil. As you are teaching the young people, you should be taking away a veil so that they may see something of the Triune God. A certain matter may be hidden from view, but by your teaching you should gradually open the veil. This is teaching.
When you are serving in the Summer School of Truth, you should not allow the veil to remain over the eyes of the young people. Rather, as they are listening to you, the veil should be rolled away little by little. To teach is to roll away the veil. Go to the summer school for the purpose of rolling away the veil.
Now we can see that for the Bible to be profitable for teaching means that it is profitable for unveiling, for rolling away the veil. A veil cannot be taken away suddenly; it cannot be rolled away all at once. On the contrary, the veil is rolled away a little at a time. Time after time and in session after session, you need gradually to roll away the veil. If you do this, your way of teaching will be an unveiling. This kind of teaching always presents a revelation to others. Those who are under such teaching will be able to see something concerning the Triune God.
This understanding of teaching applies not only to those who teach in the Summer School of Truth but to all those who speak for the Lord. When you speak something in the church meeting, your speaking should be the rolling away of the veil. This means that your speaking should present a revelation.
It is significant that in verse 16 teaching is followed by conviction, or reproof. The reason for this is that no one can see something of God without being reproved by what he sees. Those who are under your teaching will see something, and what they see will convict, reprove, them.
Whenever we see something of God, we realize our mistakes, wrongdoings, shortcomings, and our sins. The result is that we are reproved; we are rebuked. This reproof comes from the revelation we receive. However, often in our reading of the Scriptures, we read without receiving any revelation, and thus there is no reproof. But when in our reading of the Scriptures we receive a revelation, the revelation will reprove us and rebuke us.
Reproof is followed by correction. Teaching, or revelation, brings us reproof, and reproof produces correction. Correction is a matter of setting right what is wrong, turning someone to the right way, and restoring to an upright state.
After we have been corrected, we will receive the proper instruction—the instruction in righteousness. Whereas Paul here does not use any modifiers for teaching, reproof, and correction, he does use a modifier for instruction and speaks of the instruction in righteousness. Righteousness is a matter of being right. Hence, the instruction here is for us to be right.
The reason we are reproved and rebuked is that we are wrong in many different ways and aspects. We may be wrong with God, with Christ, and with the Spirit. We may be wrong with the church, with the brothers and sisters, with our husband or wife, with our parents, with our children, with our neighbors, and even with ourselves. We may be wrong in the way we spend our money, in the way we spend our time, in the way we dress, or in the way we style our hair. Because we may be wrong in so many different things, we are rebuked by the revelation we receive when we read the Scriptures.
From our experience we know that often we are rebuked immediately after receiving a revelation. I can testify that time after time I have been rebuked by a revelation that came from reading the Bible or from a teaching. Have you not had such an experience? Because we are sinful and unrighteous, we need the rebuking that comes through teaching.
We may memorize Bible verses and recite them without experiencing any rebuking. But when we receive a revelation from the Word, that revelation exposes our sinfulness and rebukes us. We are not rebuked by man nor are we rebuked directly by God—we are rebuked by the teaching of the Word. When we are rebuked in this way, we are spontaneously corrected, and when we are corrected we have the instruction in righteousness. The result is that we are adjusted.
We may be adjusted in a particular matter and become right in this matter. However, we may not be right in this matter once for all. For example, suppose a brother is wrong with his wife. Under the revelation from the Word, he is rebuked and adjusted. He repents and then apologizes to his wife, and as a result he is now right with her. But a few days later he may be wrong with her again, and once again he will need to be rebuked, corrected, and adjusted.
In verse 17 Paul goes on to say, “That the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” A man of God is a God-man, one who partakes of God’s life and nature (John 1:13; 2 Pet. 1:4), thus being one with God in His life and nature (1 Cor. 6:17) and thereby expressing Him. Such a God-man, such a man of God, is produced by God’s breathing out of Himself. God’s breathing produces God-men.
You may be a good man but not a God-man. This means that with you there is an extra o. You should have only one o, but instead of one you have two. The more you receive teaching, revelation, the more this extra o will be cut off. However, it is hard to get rid of the second o once for all, for it is like a man’s beard that appears again after it has been shaved or like the grass that grows again after the lawn has been mowed. From experience we know that the second o always comes back. Perhaps with you this extra o has only partially been cut off, and the part that has been shaved keeps coming back again. If this is our situation, then we are a man of God—a God-man—with an extra o. We need the teaching from the Scriptures to shave away this o again and again.
The word that at the beginning of 2 Timothy 3:17 indicates that this verse is an issue of the preceding verse. The issue of teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness is that the man of God becomes complete.
In the Summer School of Truth you should present a teaching that is an unveiling, the rolling away of the veil. Then the young people in your class will see something of God, and what they see will rebuke them, correct them, and afford them the proper instruction in righteousness to make them right both with God and with man. The issue, the outcome, will be that the man of God becomes complete and equipped for every good work.
The purpose of the Summer School of Truth is not to give mental knowledge to the young people. The goal of our summer school is to present teaching after teaching, revelation after revelation, so that the young ones may see God, see themselves, and be reproved, corrected, and instructed to be right with God and man that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work. Such a person will be a true man of God, a real God-man, continually inhaling the Triune God and thereby receiving revelation, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.
We have seen that in nature the Scripture, the holy Word, is God’s breath. The function of the Scripture is to unveil, to roll away the veil. Proper teaching is always a kind of unveiling. After the unveiling, we have reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness “that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work” (v. 17).
Let us now go on to consider further another important verse related to the nature of the Bible—John 6:63. Here the Lord Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” This indicates that the Lord’s words are the embodiment of the Spirit of life. When we receive His words by exercising our spirit, we get the Spirit, who gives life.
When we read the Bible, we should receive life; and when we teach others concerning the Bible, they should receive life. If we do not receive life when we read the Bible, something is wrong. In our reading of the Bible, there may be no spirit; and in our teaching of the Bible to others, there also may be no spirit. For there to be no spirit means that there is no life. We may read a portion of the Bible, several verses or a few chapters, without receiving the life supply. The reason for this lack of supply is that in our reading of the Word there is no spirit. If we do not sense the Spirit as we are reading the Bible, we should realize that something is wrong, and then we should adjust ourselves.
In the same principle, as we are teaching the young people in the Summer School of Truth, we need to check whether there is any spirit in our teaching. If there is no spirit, we should change our way of teaching. Teaching a class in the Summer School of Truth should not be the same as teaching a class in a secular school. In a secular school there is no need of spirit, but in our summer school there is the need of much spirit.
From experience we know that in order for there to be much spirit in our reading and teaching of the Bible, we need much prayer. We must be a person of prayer. In other words, we must be a person who is continually breathing the Lord, a person who is always inhaling God. Our reading of the Bible should be a kind of inhaling, and our teaching of the Bible should be a kind of exhaling. As you are teaching a class in the Summer School of Truth, you should be exhaling God into your students.
The Bible is God’s breath; this breath is the Spirit; and the Spirit gives life. When you breathe the Spirit you receive not only unveiling, rebuking, correcting, and instructing—you receive life. Whenever you touch the Spirit as you are reading the Bible, you receive life. Likewise, as you are teaching in the Summer School of Truth, you need to touch the Spirit. You should have the sense that you are touching not only the Spirit but also the spirits of your students. You should have the sense that you are exhaling God and that they are inhaling God. This means that there is a communication between your exhaling and their inhaling. This indicates that your way of teaching is right, for you are exercising to minister life to the young people.
In teaching the Bible to others, you must be very strict with yourself, adjusting yourself again and again. During one class session you may need to adjust yourself a number of times. If you experience failure the first few times you teach, you should go back to the Lord with much prayer. Pray yourself into the Lord, breathing God into you. Then, having become a praying person, a person who inhales God, go back to your class and exhale what you have received of God.
In Matthew 4:4 the Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.” Here we see that the word that proceeds out through the mouth of God is our real food. This indicates that the Bible is not only for life-imparting but also for nourishing. When you teach the Bible to others, you should nourish them. I hope that all the young ones in your class will have the sense that they are not only being taught but also being nourished. Whether or not they are nourished through your teaching depends on you.
The instructors in today’s seminaries may claim that they are teaching the Bible to their students. Yet most seminary students are being starved to death. They receive no nourishment, because their instructors teach the Bible in a wrong way. They teach the Bible in the same way as instructors in secular schools teach subjects such as geography, history, science, and mathematics. Thus, there is no nourishment. Our way of teaching must be different. When we teach the Scriptures to the young people in the Summer School of Truth, we must nourish the students with the life supply, with words that proceed out of God’s mouth.
We all need to be living persons, those who are living channels with the words of God proceeding out through us. God’s word proceeds out through God’s mouth, and we should let it proceed also out through us as a channel. When in the meetings a certain brother reads the Bible or teaches from the Bible, we do not receive any nourishment, but when another brother does the same thing, we are nourished. The reason for the difference is that the first brother read or spoke without any spirit, but the second brother read or spoke with much spirit. The principle is the same in your teaching a class in the Summer School of Truth. Your teaching must be in spirit and must be with spirit. As you are teaching, you need to be a living channel out through which the word of God is proceeding. If you are such a living channel, then the students in your class will receive spiritual food for their nourishment.
Let us now turn to Ephesians 6:17. Here Paul charges us to receive “the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God.” When I was a young Christian, I did not understand how the word of God could be a sword. I understood what it means to be enlightened by the Bible, for by reading the Bible I was enlightened. To some extent, by the Bible I was also rebuked, corrected, and instructed to be right with God and man. But I did not know how the Bible could become a sword, an offensive weapon to deal with the enemy. To understand this requires spiritual experience.
It is common for Christians to be enlightened, rebuked, corrected, and instructed by the Bible, but not many experience the word of the Bible as a sword that kills the enemy. The reason for this lack of experience is that we may receive the word of the Bible for teaching, rebuke, correction, and instruction without touching the Spirit. Even unbelievers may be enlightened by what they read in the Scriptures. Also, they may be rebuked, corrected, and instructed by what the Bible says concerning honor, love, humility, and honesty. However, in their reading of the Scriptures there is nothing of the Spirit. However, if we would take the word of the Bible as a sword for fighting the enemy, we must touch the Bible in a way that is full of the Spirit.
According to Paul’s word in Ephesians 6:17, the word of God is the sword not directly but indirectly. Paul speaks of “the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God.” Here we have indirectness. The sword is not the word directly. Rather, the sword is the Spirit directly, and then the Spirit is the word. This indicates that if we would deal with the enemy Satan, the Bible must become the Spirit. Without the Spirit it may be possible for us to teach from the Bible that the young people should honor their parents and ask for forgiveness for what they have done wrong. But if we would use the word of the Bible as a sword to kill the enemy, in our experience the word must be the Spirit.
At this juncture I would ask you to consider how, in a practical way, the word of the Bible can become the sword of the Spirit for fighting against the enemy. Can you give an illustration of this or a testimony concerning it? Ephesians 6:12 reveals that our enemies are the evil spirits, “the world-rulers of this darkness,” “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies.” Can you testify from your experience how you have slain these enemies by taking the word as the sword? In order to give such a testimony, we need to understand Ephesians 6:17 experientially by handling the Bible in the way of the Spirit and not merely in a mental way. I am concerned that in the Summer School of Truth you will teach the young people merely in a mental way, as if you were teaching in a secular school. We all have to learn to teach the Bible in the way of the Spirit.
Ephesians, a book on the church as the Body of Christ, talks about the Body life, the oneness of the Body (4:4), and the Body being the fullness of the One who fills all in all (1:23). We need to realize that things such as our opinion, thought, temper, emotion, natural life, and point of view are often used by the powers of darkness in the air to damage the Body life. As brothers and sisters in the church, we all have our emotion, thought, opinion, and natural life, and we all have our own point of view. Quite often we are offended, not due to the wrongdoings of others but simply due to our emotion or opinion. A chair cannot be offended, because it does not have feelings. No matter how you treat a chair, it will not be offended. However, it is easy for brothers and sisters in the church to be offended.
Due to their emotion, sisters are easily offended. Suppose an older brother speaks a word to a particular sister and she is offended because of her emotion. Then the evil power in the air comes in to take advantage of her emotion, and she determines not to forget that she has been offended. Apparently the problem is her emotion. Actually the problem is that her emotion has been taken over by the evil force in the air. This means that the real enemy is not this sister’s emotion but the evil spirit in the air that takes advantage of her emotion in order to damage the church life. Because of the enemy’s use of her emotion, this sister first has a negative effect on her husband, and then she goes on to have a negative effect on several others. As a result, part of the Body is poisoned. If the enemy is to be defeated in this situation, the sister must learn to receive the word as the Spirit, which becomes the sword to deal with the enemy.
This is something I have learned through many years of experience. I am not a “marble” person who cannot be offended. I have often been offended by others in the church life or in my family life. How have I been able to get through all the offenses? I get through by receiving the word as the Spirit. The word I receive as the Spirit then becomes the sword to slay the enemy. Apparently the sword of the Spirit kills my emotion; actually it kills the evil spirit in the air who takes advantage of my emotion. Whereas my emotion is killed directly, the evil spirit is killed indirectly. In this way I have been able to get through the offenses.
When some hear this they might say, “Brother Lee, show me a verse that can kill your emotion directly and kill the evil power in the air indirectly.” This is not a matter of a particular verse that touches our emotion but a matter of applying Ephesians 6:17 in an experiential way. Suppose in the evening I am offended by one of the elders. Because I fear the Lord, I do not dare to talk about this with others. The next morning I rise up to contact the Lord in the Word. I do not read any verses that touch the matter of my emotion. Instead, I simply begin to read the Bible with the exercise of the spirit. I may read Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” As I read this verse, I receive the word in a living way as the Spirit, and the Spirit, which is the word, becomes the sword that kills my emotion directly and kills the evil force indirectly. Spontaneously, the offense is gone, and no damage is done to the church. However, if the offense were allowed to remain, it would cause serious damage to the church life. I believe that many of us have experienced receiving the word of God in this way.
Without the word as the Spirit to be the killing sword, there would be no way for us to be kept in the church life over the years. For more than half a century, I have been traveling, visiting the churches, and contacting thousands of saints. Without the word as the Spirit to kill all the enemies, I would not still be here ministering. If I had allowed myself to remain offended with a certain church or saint, I would have been finished with the ministry. I have been kept in the church life and in the ministry through the killing of the word as the Spirit.
Suppose a particular brother is not happy with the church in his locality. He moves to another city, supposing that he will like the church there. However, after a short period of time, he becomes unhappy with this local church, so he moves to another place. But soon he is offended by something or someone in this church and he moves to yet another locality. Such a person cannot participate in the building up of the church. On the contrary, because there is no killing of the enemy within him, he causes the church to suffer damage.
According to Paul’s word toward the end of Ephesians, a book concerning the church, we need to receive the word of God in a living way, that is, receive the word as the Spirit. The Spirit will then become the killing sword. This sword first kills us directly and then kills the power of darkness in the air indirectly. We may compare this kind of killing to the effect of an antibiotic on the germs that cause illness in our body. In order for our body to be saved, the germs need to be killed by an antibiotic. The word that we receive in a living way as the Spirit is a spiritual antibiotic that kills the “germs” within us. When the germs are killed, the evil forces in the air have no way to take advantage of us. Then we can live a healthy Body life, a healthy church life.
This is the way I have been preserved in the church life and in my ministry for so many years. Apart from the killing through the word as the Spirit, my ministry would have been terminated. Once again I would emphasize that we need to receive the word of God in a living way, so that in our experience the Spirit becomes the killing sword. When the word becomes the Spirit, the Spirit becomes the sword—the sword of the Spirit that kills the germs in us and the evil spirits in the air. In this way the Body, the church life, and our ministry are saved. This will enable our ministry to have a long life. However, the ministry of certain brothers has not lasted long. In their situation it was their ministry and not the enemy that was killed.
Let us all receive the word of God in a living way! As long as in our experience the word becomes the Spirit, the word will not only heal us but also kill the enemy.
All those who teach in the Summer School of Truth should help the young ones not merely to receive the word for the learning of certain biblical truths but to receive the word as the living Spirit. When they receive the word as the living Spirit, in their experience the Spirit will become the sword. Receiving the word in this way requires much prayer. This is why we need to have the proper pray-reading. Through pray-reading the Bible, we receive the word in a living way as the Spirit.
In 1 Timothy 2:4 Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth.” Today it seems that most Christians bring others only into God’s salvation; they do not go further to bring them into the full knowledge of the truth. The purpose of the Summer School of Truth is to bring our young people not only into God’s salvation but also into the full knowledge of the truth. In this verse truth does not mean doctrine; it means reality and denotes all the real things revealed in God’s Word, which are mainly Christ as the embodiment of God and the church as the Body of Christ. Every saved person should have a full knowledge, a complete realization, of these things. In our summer school, we should endeavor to bring the young people into the experiential knowledge of the reality of the Triune God. In order to do this, we ourselves need to be persons who are in this reality. (Teachers’ Training, pp. 7-25)
