Search
In this chapter, first we will speak about research and then about improvement. In your most recent going out to visit people by door-knocking, you baptized more than one hundred persons, and some of the teams even baptized more than ten. This rate is amazing, and it proves that you have become very proficient through practice. This reminds me of the time when I first came to Taiwan. Taiwan did not produce pears and grapes, so the Americans came to help by forming the Agricultural Restoration Committee solely for the purpose of researching the cultivation and improvement of the various kinds of fruit trees. Their practice was to first find the good seeds and then find the most suitable way to grow them. Consequently, today Taiwan produces delicious pears and grapes. This shows us that regardless of what we do, we need to research and improve.
Now no doubt in the Lord’s recovery we have the best “seeds,” The Mystery of Human Life being one of them. It is likely that we still can produce even better booklets. This requires our research and improvement.
Seventy years ago when I was just beginning to learn things, due to the high infant-mortality rate, the average life expectancy of the Chinese was only about fifty. Now the average life expectancy of the Chinese is over seventy; the reason is that the child-mortality rate now is very low due to the advancement in medicine and diet. Although the United States is rich, the people there are negligent in the matter of diet; it is as if they are committing a slow suicide. I am not a physician, but I was sick with tuberculosis forty years ago and spent two and a half years recuperating before I completely recovered. Hence, I also learned some medical knowledge. Actually, there are three things that the Americans should not consume. The first thing is tobacco. Even the United States government requires tobacco companies to place a label on cigarette cartons warning that “smoking may cause cancer.” Now it further requires that the label be changed to say that “smoking will cause cancer.” The Americans, however, are not afraid to die, and a great number of them are still smoking.
The second thing that people should not consume is cured pork; this is according to the research of the United States government. Twenty years ago, the medical profession, based on the autopsy of soldiers killed in the Vietnam war, discovered that many of these young soldiers had about two-thirds of their blood vessels blocked. This indicates that the majority of young Americans have this condition. Accordingly, we may infer that they may die before the age of fifty due to blockage of the blood flow. The third thing is desserts. Young people in America may listen to their parents when they are still very young, but as they grow up, they do not eat a good breakfast but rather eat doughnuts and other sweet things. The more they eat sweets, the sooner they die. These are statistics from the medical field, which we cannot help but believe.
In the Lord’s recovery our seeds are all good; we have neither “cured pork” nor “desserts.” In 1954 I had a summer training in Hong Kong, and I told the saints clearly that there is nothing in Christianity today. When you go to the Christian bookstores, you cannot buy any “food”; even if there is some “food,” it is just “small candies.” But the truths that I have received from the Lord and the messages that I have released do not contain any “sugar”; they are like authentic Shangtung steamed bread. When the southerners make steamed bread, they always add sugar to it. But the really tasty steamed bread does not need anything added to it; it is made in such a way that the fragrance of the wheat comes out. Today’s so-called Peking cuisine, which previously was the imperial cuisine, is actually the Shangtung cuisine, which is the highest art of cooking in China. The reason that the Shangtung cuisine is so good is that it does not have added ingredients; rather, it brings out the original flavor of the things created by God. Like the Shangtung cuisine, the messages I give are of the real natural flavor, without other things added and without eloquence. I simply serve the original flavor of the revelations given to me by the Lord.
Why is your visitation by door-knocking so speedy and effective? It is because the materials we gave you are good seeds. To use The Mystery of Human Life as the seed is right, but I hope that we can still improve it. I would like to see The Mystery of Human Life enriched with a small amount of “protein” and “aged ginseng.” Protein is very nutritious and can make one restful; aged ginseng can strengthen and sustain one’s life. I have been told that when someone is about to die, if he eats a slice of aged ginseng, he will be sustained for five days; hence, it is precious. If The Mystery of Human Life contains these two “ingredients,” then your door-knocking surely will be even more effective.
Not only should we have the right seeds, but we should also have the right techniques. When we visit people by door-knocking, we should not say too much, nor should we speak our own words. We should just bring out our “merchandise.” When we speak to people, we must seize the opportunity to show them the treasure. Like those who sell diamonds or jade, we simply show people our merchandise. We deal with them as our “target” and try to “sell” them our treasures.
But we must improve the techniques we use. When you knock on a door and realize that the husband and wife in that home have just finished quarreling and are still angry, then you must quickly depart because you perceive that the atmosphere is not right. If you try to sell your goods, I am afraid that not only will they refuse to listen, but they will even vent their anger on you. When you encounter this kind of situation, do not waste your time. Instead, just say that you will come back another time, and then quickly depart to knock on another door. You are sent to gain the “sons of peace.” If you knock on eighteen doors a day, three or five of those who open the doors may be sons of peace. If they are not sons of peace, do not waste your energy. This is something that you must remember.
The recent reports I received greatly encouraged me. Some teams went out and immediately had eight to ten baptisms; obviously the result has increased. But after we have improved our techniques, there is still the need to promote this matter to the whole church. Formerly, we could not get people saved very quickly. We had to bring them to gospel meetings again and again, and then we had to visit and teach them before we could give them an interview for baptism. If they did not pass the baptismal interview, they had to come back again. Sometimes it took two to three months to lead someone to salvation. Now it takes only fifteen minutes to lead a person to be saved and baptized. In general, the saints may have some doubt, but doubting is unnecessary. We must get rid of this kind of prejudice and continue to improve our techniques. We can use transportation as an illustration. Fifty years ago it took forty-eight hours by boat to go from Chefoo to Shanghai. Now it takes only twelve hours to go from California to Taiwan. In the same principle, previously we often used the love feast as a way of preaching the gospel, but now the method has advanced and improved. It is true that the saints fervently loved the Lord and also loved human souls, but they did not have the right way to love, so they wasted their time, money, and energy. Now, because we have discovered a more economical way, we hope to save everyone from further suffering. However, the saints need our help because it is not easy for them to change their concept.
Many of you can testify that when you coordinated with the local saints to visit people by door-knocking, at the beginning they were not convinced at all. They considered that they had twenty or thirty years’ experience of preaching the gospel and that you were just saved not long ago, so they wondered how much you could possibly know. Eventually, your way has become effective, and you can get people saved immediately. Even though the saints know a great deal, their result is not as good as yours. In the last elders’ meeting, one of the elders testified that he brought several saints with him and went out in coordination with the full-timers to knock on doors to visit people. He preached the gospel to an old man, but after he talked for a long time, the old gentleman still was not saved. Then a full-time sister said, “Don’t talk anymore. Let us speak about baptism now.” At that moment the wife of the older man came in, and the elder told the full-time sister to preach the gospel to the old woman, and he himself continued to talk to the old man. Not long afterward, the old woman wanted to be baptized, so the sister asked the elder to baptize the woman, while she herself continued to speak to the old man. After the old woman was baptized, the old man also wanted to be baptized. When the elder saw this, he could not help but be convinced.
My intention in speaking to you repeatedly about all these things is to change your concept. I feel that you are still neither pure nor poor within. In particular, most of the brothers who are over thirty years old still trust in their old natural ways. This training has clearly taught you not to speak many words and not even to take out the booklets but just focus on the person and subdue him with one sentence. I believe that you young sisters have the faith. The brothers have a “big head,” so most of them waver between doubt and belief and still prefer to speak more. Actually, to speak more or to speak less is not the important point; what is important is whether or not we touch the person. This is the same as the principle of blessing others.
If our preaching the gospel by door-knocking can be as effective and as rich in content as injecting someone with a vaccine, then we can consider this step a success. Recently, a brother testified that while he was riding in a taxicab, the driver told him that he had just been saved and that now he cannot drive recklessly as he did before, because he felt that God was forbidding him within. This proves that our injection is working in him. It is useless to merely teach people. Our way is to inject Christ into people as their life supply. Then spontaneously there will be a reaction in them.
Therefore, our training here is a research. We are studying how to improve the product, how to strengthen the word used for injection, and also how to improve our techniques. I believe that you all can confirm that the way given to you in this training is a refined and excellent way; furthermore, it is being continually improved. Please recall that at the beginning of this training, when you first went out to knock on doors to visit people, the result was not good, because you were not yet skillful. Now you have become experienced, and the result is manifested. Therefore, what you need is to be poor in spirit and pure in heart and go out to knock on doors according to the instructions you have received in the training. This will bring in the best result.
Of course, both the seeds and the techniques are important, but the person is even more important. The seeds have to be right, the techniques have to be right, and even the more we the laboring ones have to be right. Do you pray enough? Is your confession of sins thorough? Is your fellowship with the Lord transparent? Are you strong in your spirit? These matters will all affect the result of your labor. The seed is the same and the technique is also the same, but the laboring of one who is right will yield a richer harvest, whereas the laboring of one who is not right will not get good results. We also need to study the matter of how to be a right person. However, at most this training can give you some basic instructions. What you need most is to continually practice on your own until you yourselves feel that you are right. The seeds in the Lord’s recovery are right and the techniques the training gives you are also right, but if your person is not right, then it is not workable. We must have the right seeds, the right techniques, and the right persons.
Up to the present moment, we have already knocked on the doors of more than 38,000 homes, of which more than 1,200 homes opened their doors, while the others either did not open or had no one at home. There were 1,034 persons who were baptized and 2,397 homes that want to be visited again. These ratios are quite high; they exceed the ten percent that I expected. But there are three matters that require our careful study. These are also three burdens that I wish to mention.
First, we need to make a slight change of direction in our practice; that is, instead of paying attention to individuals, we should focus on the entire family. This means that in our gospel preaching we must take the family as a unit. To do this, the best way is to gain the parents first. If the parents are not saved yet and the children are still in the custody of the parents, then when you baptize the children, problems may occur and lead to the parents’ opposition. But if you lead the parents to salvation first, then it is easier to gain the next generation. Therefore, we have to study how to lead the parents to baptism first and then gain the entire family.
Of course, you should not do this in a rigid way. Sometimes when you visit a home, the parents avoid you. Then you should not refrain from preaching the gospel to the children just because the parents avoid you. However, we hope to work on the parents first; then it will be easier to lead the children afterward. We want to avoid problems that may arise by neglecting the parents and working on the children first. We have to study this point carefully so that we may avoid this kind of problem.
Second, in the training we also want to study how to help you manage your time. In other words, we need to study how much time you should spend from now on when you go to visit and take care of the baptized saints. After you lead someone to be saved and baptized, it may be all right if you do not revisit him in a week, but it is not so good if you do not visit him again for two weeks, and you may lose him if you do not revisit him for three weeks. Not only so, you still have to set aside a part of your time to continue knocking on new doors. You may not be able to knock on as many doors as before, but you must not stop altogether. Therefore, now we have to study how, after baptizing people, we should use our time to continue visiting them and establishing meetings in their homes and how we should allocate our time for revisiting and for knocking on new doors. This needs much research.
After a person is baptized, we still need to continue to revisit, to take care of him, and to establish a meeting in his home. But what should we do in this meeting? And how should we do it? This matter requires our study in depth. After we have led a person to salvation, we must then lead him to grow in life. To lead someone to grow in life, we cannot stay away from the truth; without the truth it is very difficult for him to grow. Therefore, you need to probe for a way to teach the truth to lead people to grow in life. Of course, in the Lord’s recovery there is a great deal of material on the truth. However, we need to draw up a plan concerning which materials to use and how to compile them properly. This may be likened to holding the rudder steady when sailing the boat; otherwise, the boat cannot proceed in a straight course, and time will be wasted.
When you lead others to grow in life and to get into the truth, eventually you will be able to lead them into the church life. When people are saved and baptized, immediately they are in the church, but they are not living in the church life yet. Our basic goal is to bring them into the church life. I am not referring to bringing them to our big meetings. Our big meetings at present are a mixture of the old and the new; they are just like the water at the mouth of the Yangtze River, which is partly salty and partly fresh. I am concerned that if the newly saved ones come to the big meetings and see the old situation, a situation of the so-called worship, they may receive some bad influence. Therefore, temporarily, I would rather not have them attend the big meetings so that not only will they avoid the bad influence, but they will also receive a good impression of the church life in the homes. However, this is not an easy thing to do.
There are less than three months left in this term of training. I hope that you can thoroughly research these points and carefully experiment with them; thus, when you go back to the locality you came from, you may be able to present the results of the training and what you have learned here. Prior to that time I do not wish to let the churches in the various localities know too much because of the fact that our present practice is not so accurate yet. If they should know about what we are doing here and immediately try to do the same thing and they do not get the ripe fruit, then that will not be so good. Hence, this matter cannot be rushed. It is not until this training has researched enough and has practiced thoroughly that we can present all these things to all the saints. Then you all can be teachers and coaches. In other words, I hope that this training can be like a teachers’ college that specializes in producing teachers and coaches to promote the practice of the Lord’s new way.
Concerning the practice of the new way, at present we already have some very definite steps. The first step is to knock on doors and to baptize people. There are some distinctions between door-knocking and visitation. The goal of door-knocking is to preach the gospel to people, leading them to be saved and baptized, whereas visitation is to visit and take care of those who have already been saved and baptized. These ones are not only familiar to us, but they have also become our kinsfolk, our brothers and sisters, in the Lord. Hence, when we go, it is to visit them. Therefore, door-knocking is to contact new ones, the unsaved ones, for the preaching of the gospel, whereas visitation is to revisit someone who has already been saved and baptized.
The second step is to visit the newly baptized ones and establish a meeting in their homes. In the home meetings we need to do the following three things: First, we need to help people get into life and grow in life; second, we need to help them get into the truth for their advancement in life; and third, we need to carry out our basic goal, which is to lead them into the church life. Primarily and for most of the time, this church life should take place in the homes.
The third step, which is still being experimented on, is to set up the small group meetings. After you have baptized a person and have continued to visit and take care of him three to five times, you must fellowship with him about gathering the new ones in his neighborhood and taking turns having small group meetings in each other’s homes. In this way you will not only economize the time in visiting and taking care of them, but you will also be able to perfect them together corporately. Especially in helping them to know the truth, if you are speaking to just one or two persons, the taste will not be so rich. But if three or five families can come together, with perhaps eight or ten persons there, the taste will be much richer when you teach them the truth. At the same time you can teach them how to meet by singing, praying, reading the Scriptures, and testifying.
At present we already have good seeds and good techniques for the preaching of the gospel by door-knocking to lead people to salvation. However, concerning how to lead them to grow in life, learn the truth properly, and enter into the church life, we still need to find the “good seeds.” We do not need to write new teaching materials; we just need to find the suitable materials from the existing publications, and with a little amount of editing we can compile them into messages for edification, such as how to pray, how to read the Bible, and how to offer money or material things.
Concerning door-knocking and visitation, you must draw up a plan in principle. You must clearly plan from now on how much time you will spend on door-knocking to preach the gospel and how much time to visit those who have already been baptized. On the other hand, due to the different situations of the different districts, you cannot be too rigid and inflexible. You need to observe the local situation and the conditions of the people and earnestly look to the Lord in prayer for His leading concerning the allocation of your time. If you make decisions without allowing any room for minor modifications, that will annul the Lord’s leading.
Since one of the goals of this training is to evangelize the whole island of Taiwan, in the future you will all be going to the villages. Then you may have to speak Taiwanese instead of Mandarin. For this reason, if you meet some native Taiwanese during your door-knocking and visitations, it is best if you practice speaking in Taiwanese. Those of you who do not speak Taiwanese must try your best to learn to speak it, and during the door-knocking and visitation, you should let those who can speak Taiwanese demonstrate it first.
Another point to which you must pay attention in door-knocking is that you must not do it only once. I already said that in some of the homes there may not be sons of peace today, but tomorrow there may be some. Furthermore, in some of the homes that you knock on today, only the children are home and the parents are not there, or nobody may be home. You need to keep a record, with remarks concerning all these situations, and find time to knock on these doors again. You need some practice in this matter.
According to my personal observations and considerations, after leading a person to salvation, we must consider the care for the new one as our primary responsibility; otherwise, all our previous efforts will be nullified. We may not be able to spend all our time on this aspect, but this must have the priority. This matter requires your careful study and practice to find out its relative weight.
We also have to pay attention to another matter; that is, the newly saved ones always have some questions about ordinary matters, such as the worship of ancestors and the eating of the foods offered to idols, and also some questions about particular matters such as Catholicism and Mormonism. We have to write several kinds of booklets so that when asked by someone about any of these questions, we can give him a booklet to solve his problem.
All the things mentioned above not only should become the rules of our practical training, but in the future they will also be passed on to all the churches. We may not be able to thoroughly research all these points during this term, but they must be the goals toward which we strive. I hope that you may all see this matter clearly.
We have to see clearly the goal of the new way. The failure of Christianity is due to the forsaking of the homes and relying on big meetings. This is the biggest reason for the failure in Christianity. We must take the way of recovery by leaving the big meetings and coming back to the homes. The results of the new way will be gospel preaching in the homes, leading people to grow in life in the homes, leading people to know the truth in the homes, and having the church life in the homes. The home, not the individual, is the unit.
Let me use the Chinese people as an illustration. About a hundred years ago, China was technologically underdeveloped and remained in a very conservative condition, so Japan went ahead of us. Then, being ambitious to conquer China, Japan used all its efforts to invade China. Although the Chinese have a bad character in being indecisive and sloppy, they responded all over the country to resist the Japanese, and the whole nation entered into the conflict. I saw with my own eyes that when the Chinese government sent out a call, all the people rose up by families, and the whole nation went into resistance. They came from everywhere—from the east, the west, the south, and the north—and they included everyone, the young, the old, the males, and the females. Consequently, Japan had no way. By sending two to three million strong soldiers to China, they thought that in a year or two they could conquer China, but in the end they surrendered in defeat. From 1895 to 1945, after fifty years of war, the Chinese eventually won the war. The reason for the victory was the Chinese family. The Chinese culture and the foundation of China as a country are built upon the family. Neither the Mongols nor the Manchus were successful in conquering China; in the end they were all assimilated and blended with the Han people. The reason still lies with the family. For thousands of years the Chinese family has been the base upon which the country was built. Regardless of the change of governments, no one can defeat the family.
I give you this illustration so that you may see that the failure of Christianity is due to their having only big meetings and thus not having a foundation. Moreover, what they do is one-sided. The triumph of the Chinese culture lies with the family. Therefore, you all have to see clearly that the Lord’s way among us today is to build up all the spiritual things, including the truth, life, and the church, in the homes. When the homes rise up to function, the result will be tremendous.
When I was young, transportation in China was not convenient; there was quite a distance from the north to the south. When I began to work for the Lord, I was sent out to many places from the north to the south. I observed that although in China the dialects were different in various places, the culture was the same. The ethical and moral culture of China was passed down from generation to generation and was established in the homes. This resulted in the preservation of the Chinese culture, which is the foundation of China. Therefore, today we also want to adopt this way, that is, the building up of all the spiritual things in the homes. Only this will be powerful, universal, and far-reaching. Consider this: If we can raise up ten thousand homes in Taipei, that will be a tremendous matter; if we can raise up thirty thousand homes in Taiwan, then Taiwan will really be evangelized. Therefore, this is worthy of our research and practice.
Having meetings is like going to classes; if you do not go to school, you do not learn anything. But if you attend a poor school, then the English you learn there will have the wrong pronunciation and the wrong grammar. As a result, it may be helpful temporarily, but eventually it is harmful for you. The big meeting is not a “good school.” The things taught there may help people temporarily, but ultimately they will hurt them. However, because we are in the stage of changing the system, we cannot “quarantine” the big meetings immediately; rather, we will still use them temporarily as a substitute in consideration of the situation. However, I would rather that you use all your effort toward working on the homes, bringing all the people and all the matters into the homes. I hope that you all may strive and seize the time to practice and to study well, thereby paving the new way that the Lord’s recovery may proceed on a great highway!
