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The Lord Jesus came directly to the religious world. However, every time He went to Jerusalem, the center of the religious world, He encountered nothing but debating, fighting, and opposition. This forced Him to make a great change by giving up Jerusalem and going to Galilee, where He called some young fishermen and trained them for three and a half years. An apprenticeship to learn a trade normally lasts three or four years. The Lord trained His disciples not by sending them to a school but by bringing them with Him wherever He went, mainly around the Sea of Galilee. After the Lord resurrected, He appeared to the disciples and charged them to stay in Jerusalem for a number of days (Acts 1:4).
We may be familiar with these facts, but we need to be impressed with the real significance of this picture. First, the Lord Jesus was conceived in Nazareth, a city in Galilee. Just before the time of His birth, a census took place, which forced Mary and her husband, Joseph, to go to Bethlehem. While they were in Bethlehem, Jesus was born. Bethlehem, which is near Jerusalem, was the city of King David. Christ was conceived in the despised city of Nazareth, but He was delivered in Bethlehem, close to Jerusalem. After a short time His parents were forced to flee to Egypt, and later they returned to Nazareth. Thus, although Christ was born in Bethlehem, He was raised in Galilee. When He was twelve years of age, He was brought to Jerusalem for a feast (Luke 2:42). According to Deuteronomy 16:16, all the males of Israel were required to go to Jerusalem three times a year for the ordained feasts. Thus, from the age of twelve or younger, the Lord probably went three times a year to Jerusalem to keep the feasts. But after the feasts He went back to Galilee.
According to God’s ordination, a priest began his ministry when he was thirty years of age (Num. 4:3). The Lord Jesus began His ministry at that age (Luke 3:23), and John the Baptist also began his ministry at about thirty. John ministered in the wilderness of Judea, outside of Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem had fallen to become the center of a traditional religion, the Lord could not initiate the testimony of God there. When the Lord was about to begin His ministry, He first went not to Jerusalem but to John the Baptist in the wilderness (Matt. 3:13).
The first disciples were brought to Christ in the wilderness by the testimony of John the Baptist. When John saw Jesus coming, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36). Some of the disciples of John heard this and followed the Lord (v. 37). One of these disciples was Andrew, who then brought his brother Simon to the Lord (vv. 40-42). At that time the Lord immediately changed his name from Simon to Cephas, which is interpreted, Peter, meaning “a stone.” Peter was first brought to the Lord and had his name changed not in Jerusalem or Galilee but in the wilderness. Then Peter returned to Galilee. The Lord also returned to Galilee, and while He was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Peter fishing with his brother (Matt. 4:18). The Lord said, “Come after Me,” and Peter immediately followed (vv. 19-20). Thus, Peter was called not in Jerusalem or in the wilderness but in Galilee.
Galilee was a training center. The Lord trained His disciples mostly in Galilee, but when the feasts came, three times a year, the Lord and the disciples went to Jerusalem. Their time in Jerusalem was a training to the disciples because there they witnessed how the Lord handled opposition, argument, and attack from the Pharisees, scribes, chief priests, and elders.
After the Lord had trained His disciples for some time, He brought them to Caesarea Philippi, which is near the border of the Holy Land, at the foot of Mount Hermon (16:13). The Lord purposely brought them there, far from the religious atmosphere of Jerusalem, to give them the revelation of Christ and the church (vv. 16-18). Afterwards, the Lord brought three disciples up to Mount Hermon, where He was transfigured before them (17:1-2). When the Lord was transfigured, Moses and Elijah appeared (v. 3). Peter was excited and foolishly said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You are willing, I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (v. 4). Immediately, a voice from heaven stopped Peter (v. 5).
At that time the Lord began to tell His disciples that He had to go to Jerusalem to be crucified (16:21). Eventually, He went to Jerusalem at the time of the Feast of the Passover (John 12:1, 12). This shows that the Lord is the real Passover lamb. The Lord was in Jerusalem for the last six days of His life on the earth. In those days He was continually attacked and opposed. The disciples saw all of this because they were with the Lord.
The Lord went day after day to Jerusalem to fight the battle with the Jewish religionists, but in the night He left Jerusalem to lodge in Bethany (Matt. 21:17). It was in Bethany that the Lord spoke what is recorded in John 14—17, telling His followers that He was one with the Father (14:7-11) and that He was going to become the Spirit so that He could abide in them and they in Him (vv. 16-20). He prayed that all His believers would be one in the Triune God (17:6-24). This oneness is the church, and it is the living of the vine, the organism of God’s economy on the earth (15:1, 4-5). Through baptism we are put into the Triune God to be members of the organism of the divine economy on the earth. In John 18 the Lord went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where He prepared to hand Himself over to His opposers. He was judged, sentenced to death, and crucified. Peter and the other disciples followed and saw everything.
After the Feast of the Passover, on the first day of the week, when the firstfruits were offered to God, Christ was resurrected (20:1). That night the disciples did not go back to Galilee but stayed in Jerusalem. They had shut all the doors for fear of the Jews, but the resurrected Christ was suddenly in their midst (v. 19). We cannot comprehend how He could have entered with His physical body, but He was there. “He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22). At that time the Lord entered into His disciples. They returned to Galilee (21:1; cf. 6:1), but something had happened to make them different. Previously, the Lord had been among them outwardly, but now He was within them. From that point on, wherever the disciples went, the Lord was there. When they were in the house again, the Lord suddenly appeared (20:26). When they were fishing, the Lord suddenly appeared (21:3-4). They could not get away from the Lord. The Lord was always with them because He was in them. After His resurrection He trained His disciples for forty days (Acts 1:3).
After these forty days the Lord brought the disciples to the Mount of Olives and charged them to stay in Jerusalem (v. 4). Then He ascended (v. 9). While they were looking at this, two angels appeared, saying, “Men of Galilee, 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” (v. 11).
These one hundred twenty Galilean men and women stayed in Jerusalem, as the Lord had charged, and prayed for ten days (vv. 14-15; 2:1). Then the Holy Spirit was poured upon them. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was the promised coming of Christ (John 14:18). Christ came back to the disciples in another form—as the Holy Spirit. Christ had entered into them already, and now He was pouring Himself upon them. They were anointed with and baptized into the Holy Spirit. In this way they became the first expression of the church on the earth, the church in Jerusalem. Although the physical temple with the priests, scribes, and elders was still in Jerusalem, God was now dwelling in the church.
The Lord brought in a great change from the Old Testament economy to the New Testament economy. In this change He forsook the temple, the priests, the scribes, and the elders. Not even Nicodemus was among the one hundred twenty. Nicodemus was an old man and no doubt held many old opinions. Unlike Nicodemus, Peter was a blank slate, a simple fisherman. Therefore, the Lord was able to use Peter to have a new start. The Lord turned from the old generation and began something new—the church.
The Lord is sovereign. Among those in Jerusalem there were a number of young people. One of them was Saul of Tarsus, a leader of the young religionists. He took the lead to oppose Christ and to persecute the church. He made the decision one day to wipe out all the Christians in Damascus. While he was on the way from Jerusalem, the Lord appeared to him and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). Saul was knocked down, he had a turn, and he was converted. Thus, this young religious leader was caught and eventually became the apostle Paul. Only the Lord could do this, gaining a young one for His new move. When I was young, I thought that it would have been better for the Lord to convert Gamaliel, the great rabbi who had taught Saul, but the Lord chose young Saul.
Paul was bold to drop everything of Judaism. Judaism was built upon three pillars: circumcision, the Sabbath, and dietary regulations. Paul wrote in Galatians 6:15, “Neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters.” In Romans 14:5 he said, “One judges one day above another; another judges every day alike. Let each be fully persuaded in his own mind.” He also wrote, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself” (v. 14). How bold he was! According to Galatians 2, Peter and Barnabas continually ate with the Gentile believers, which was contrary to Jewish customary practice. However, when certain Jewish believers came, Peter withdrew from eating with the Gentiles, and Barnabas followed (vv. 12-13). When Paul saw this, he opposed Peter to his face (v. 11).
Although the Lord had a new start with the young Galilean fishermen and Saul of Tarsus, even these ones eventually became mixed with religion. The last time Paul was in Jerusalem, he went to James and told the elders what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry (Acts 21:18-19). The elders glorified God for this, but then they told Paul that thousands of Jews in Jerusalem had believed in the Lord and were still zealous for the law (v. 20). The elders convinced Paul that to avoid trouble with these Judaistic believers, he should take a vow of purification at the temple with four others and pay the fee for them (vv. 23-24). This was pitiful. Even Peter and John may have been at James’s home when this occurred. These ones whom the Lord had gained from Galilee had become people of Jerusalem; they were mixed with religion.
The Lord had called a group of young Galilean fishermen to be His disciples. Later, He made them apostles and appointed them as elders. Eventually, however, after they had been in Jerusalem for a period of time, perhaps ten or twenty years, they became people of Jerusalem, religious people under the influence of the old religion. They even convinced Paul to compromise with religion. It is difficult to comprehend how Paul could accept their word after having written the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. Perhaps because Paul had a good heart and did not want to make trouble, he agreed with the elders and paid the purification fee for himself and four others at the temple. Because the Lord would not tolerate this mixture, in His sovereignty He allowed Paul to be arrested and imprisoned (vv. 33-34). People tend to compromise and bring in mixture, but the Lord would never allow this.
The Lord gave up the old religion, Judaism. He forsook Jerusalem and went to Galilee, where He trained a group of young people to be the leaders of His new move with the church. However, these ones eventually compromised with religion. When a person first enters a room filled with garlic, he will be shocked by the odor, but anyone who remains for some time in such a room will eventually be “drugged” by the odor and lose the ability to smell the garlic. After the apostles and elders who had been trained by the Lord remained in Jerusalem for a certain period of time, they were affected by the heavy atmosphere of religion and lost their ability to sense it. As a young believer, I could not understand how Paul, who had written strongly against Judaistic mixture in Romans and Galatians and had rebuked Peter for compromising with the Judaizers, could be convinced by the elders in Jerusalem to do the same. They tolerated and even compromised with the Judaistic influence to try to keep the situation calm.
My burden is that we would see that religion is in our blood. The brothers in Jerusalem and the apostle Paul tolerated it. They were trying to calm the situation, but the Lord allowed a riot to rise up against Paul, which resulted in his arrest before he completed the purification (v. 27). The Lord did not allow him to be purified in that way, for that was not a purification but a contamination. Paul’s history was wonderful, but in this matter he was contaminated. He was weakened by the religious concept in Jerusalem, but the Lord did not tolerate it and sent him far away from Jerusalem to a prison in Rome. There Paul was truly purified and later wrote the Epistles to the Ephesians, Timothy, and Titus, Epistles of purification.
The church in Jerusalem became a mixture of the Old Testament economy and the New Testament economy, a mixture of the law and of grace. Because the Lord could not tolerate this mixture, He sent the Roman army under Titus to destroy Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The Christians as well as the Jews suffered persecution. This was another purification. Nevertheless, after the Lord purified the church through persecution, the church went back to mixture with religion. The religious element is still mixed with the church today.
We need to see the Lord’s way. The church in Jerusalem was built in a new way—with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and with the Triune God—but it eventually became a mixture with religion, with the law and Judaism. Throughout church history, mixture has come in again and again. In the 1500s Martin Luther was used by the Lord to recover the truth of justification by faith, but Luther did not help the condition of the church. Rather, it was through him that the state churches came into existence. Afterward, the private churches were formed. The recovery of the proper church life did not begin until the 1700s with Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren in Germany. A further recovery of the church life occurred a hundred years later, in the late 1820s, when the Lord raised up the British Brethren. This was a further step in the recovery of the church practice, but it was eventually damaged through division caused by doctrinal concepts. Then the Lord was forced to go to China. The first meeting of a local church in China took place in Foochow in 1922. Throughout the years the Lord has shown us more of the proper way to practice the church life. Because this present step of recovery stands on the shoulders of the previous steps, the light is clearer.
We must be watchful that mixture would not come into the Lord’s recovery. In 1962 I was commissioned by the Lord to sound the trumpet of His recovery in the United States. At that time I was advised by some co-workers not to teach concerning the local church, but I was burdened by the Lord to teach this truth. Now many years later, local church has become a popular term in the Christian market, appearing in radio broadcasts and printed materials. Various groups even claim to be local churches. First, some opposed our teaching concerning the practice of the church life; then others received it and mixed it with denominational practices. Even some among us have begun to compromise with religious mixture. If Peter and the other apostles could compromise, it is possible that we too could err in this way.
I am sorrowful to see the situation today of mixture, compromise, and toleration. However, the Lord will never change; rather, He will leave the old generation and have a fresh start with a group of young people, just as He did in Galilee. The Lord was not able to use the Pharisees, Sadducees, or even good ones like Nicodemus. The Lord left them in Jerusalem and spent three and a half years to train some young fishermen. Today the Lord will train a group of young people and send them out. The most crucial areas of the earth today are Europe and the United States. I believe that the United States is today’s Galilee, and Europe is today’s Jerusalem. The Lord will use the United States to train a group of young people and then send them to Europe, especially to the college campuses. The Lord will gain the United States and Europe by capturing and training a group of young people.
We must say no to mixture, compromise, and toleration. The United States and Europe are full of superstition, tradition, and organized religion. We need to see that the Lord has no way with today’s religion, just as He had no way with Judaism, the old religion. The Lord dropped Judaism, and He will also drop today’s religion.
I hope that many saints from the United States will migrate to Europe and Israel. Those who stay in the United States need to carry out three main functions: gain students on the college campuses, pray for those who migrate, and supply the sent ones materially. Those who migrate may go as students, enrolling in a master’s program to study the language of the country they are in. If some young ones have a burden for Europe, they may study French or German as an undergraduate in the United States and then enroll in a master’s program in France or Germany. While they are studying, they can contact their fellow students. They should not care for gaining a large number. In the years that it takes to earn a master’s degree, they may gain several of their classmates. That group will become a nucleus for the Lord to raise up a church in that place. In this way the Lord can raise up churches in every country in Europe.
Today the young people need to prepare themselves in three ways to go either to Europe or to a college campus in the United States. First, they need to learn languages. I encourage all the young people to learn foreign languages. At the present time European languages are the most useful. The young ones need to learn the languages thoroughly, learning the grammar, pronunciation, and composition until they are able to speak fluently, translate, and compose. When they migrate to a country, they should already be able to express themselves clearly. The young people also need to learn human history in order to understand the national disposition and character of the people whom they contact. I encourage the young people to go to Europe, not to work but to enroll in school to master the language. While studying, they can contact local young people. After three years they will have mastered the language and gained a number of young companions to form a nucleus of believers to gain the country.
Second, the young people need to gain the experiences in the church life to learn how to care for others. In this way they will be prepared to take the lead and be responsible ones in the churches that are raised up where they go.
Third, the young people need to learn all the truths—the truths concerning such matters as the gospel, the church, the kingdom, life, and grace. They need to read and study all the books that we publish in order to be fully instructed. Then, when they go out, they can teach the truth to others. The young people need to be prepared in these three ways—learning languages, gaining the church life experience, and learning the truth.
In this way the Lord will be able to prepare His bride. Soon every European country and every major campus in the United States will have a nucleus as a small army fighting the battle and raising up new churches. We all need to pray and stand with those who go out. Otherwise, it will be difficult to overcome the religious mixture. We must have a new start. The Lord needs a new current to flow Himself out. We must give the Lord a way to have this new current.
