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Scripture Reading: Heb. 10:25; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15
After we join the Lord’s army, we must know how to serve in order to be for the Lord’s interest. We must not forget the three crucial matters for the increase and building up of the church, namely, begetting, nourishing, and teaching. The gospel is for begetting, the home meetings are for nourishing, and Truth Lessons is for teaching.
Last year the church in Taipei was successful in spreading the gospel. However, we must improve, just as the methods of transportation are constantly being improved. There was a time when ox carts were used for transportation. Now we have jumbo jets that can fly directly from Los Angeles to Taipei in only thirteen hours. Moreover, a person flying in an airplane can move around freely because airplanes are very stable. This is an improvement in transportation. Likewise, we should not cling to and continue to meet in our old ways.
In the past we had only four kinds of meetings. There was the big meeting on Lord’s Day morning that was mainly for listening to “famous” speakers. When a “well-known” brother spoke, more people attended the meeting. The next kind of meeting was the gospel meeting. The third kind of meeting was the table meeting to remember the Lord. The fourth kind of meeting was the prayer meeting. The church, however, is a home, and homes are for begetting and nourishing. These four kinds of meetings are not related to the functions of begetting and nourishing in a home.
Even though we did not preach the gospel much in the past, some people were saved, but not many of them remained in the church. When I left Taipei in 1961, there were more than twenty thousand people in our records. When I returned in 1984, there were only eleven thousand people in our records. The church baptized many people during the past twenty-three years, but when we subtract the number of saints who moved abroad, those who went to be with the Lord, those who became cold and backslidden, and those with whom we lost contact, we find that our numbers have decreased, not increased. This is because the church lacks nourishing. It is easy for a mother to give birth to a child, but it is not so easy for her to nourish that child. In nourishing the child, a mother needs to feed it, change its diaper at night, and even endure its crying. Without nourishing, however, the child will not grow up to become a healthy member of society.
When we preach the gospel, we beget many children, but if we do not nourish and teach them, they will not be useful. In Taiwan today every family pays much attention to raising and educating their children; they even give their children a high level of education. It is no wonder that Taiwan is improving. The church is not a society, but it is a corporate group. If we desire those who are gained through our preaching of the gospel to remain in the church, we must nourish and teach them. Many brothers and sisters have been saved for many years and have listened to messages week after week, but they cannot clearly explain the basic truths, such as justification by faith, sanctification, and redemption. However, some of the young brothers and sisters can explain these truths. This shows that there is potential with the young people.
There is an enormous need today. Those who are able to speak many languages can travel all over the world to preach the gospel and expound the truth in every place. Brother John Nelson Darby is a good example. He was fluent in five languages—English, French, German, Greek, and Hebrew. Therefore, the Lord was able to use him to translate the entire Bible into English, French, and German.
A normal church must have begetting, nourishing, and teaching. A church that can only beget but cannot nourish or teach has no future. We should not look to our past success or simply give messages on being spiritual, loving the Lord, bearing the cross, and resurrection. We have been preaching these things for more than ten years, but the brothers and sisters are still not sufficiently nourished or educated. Whenever the church lacks nourishing and teaching, it has no way to spread.
Our goals today are spreading the gospel, building up home meetings, and teaching the truth with Truth Lessons. In other words, our goals are begetting, nourishing, and teaching. We need to speak this to the saints until they are impressed. The elders, co-workers, and full-timers need to learn how to speak these three goals in a clear and strong way.
We cannot deny that out of thousands of Christians the Lord has blessed us with a thorough knowledge of salvation and a clear understanding of the truth. People praise us because our exposition of the Bible has influenced Christians in the Far East for the past forty years. This means that Christianity in the Far East openly admits that we have influenced their knowledge and exposition of the Bible. We have received the Lord’s particular blessing. We love the Lord, and we know the truth, but we must not stop here. We should spread the gospel to every part of Taiwan, and we should release the truth.
In the past Western missionaries came from Europe and America to preach the gospel in the provinces of interior China. Even though the economy in Taiwan is developed, education is available, and transportation is convenient, we still have not spread the gospel to every part of this island. We have wasted the Lord’s grace, especially during the past twenty years when very few full-timers were produced. If we had produced two full-timers every year for twenty years, we would have forty full-timers. There are approximately twenty thousand saints in Taiwan, but we have produced an insignificant number of full-timers. In addition, an insufficient number of people go out to preach the gospel. We are indebted to the Lord.
There are more than six hundred churches around the globe, and three hundred of them were raised up in the last twenty-three years, after I went to America. The Lord is spreading in the West, but His spread in Taiwan is very weak. The world today has become smaller; hence, if the Lord is unable to spread in Taiwan, eventually the churches in America will be affected. This is the reason I felt to return to Taiwan in order to change things at the “roots.” We must wake up. If we continue to ignore the Lord’s leading and teaching, sooner or later we will force Him to raise up another group of people.
Many among us came from mainland China and have experienced the sweetness and the bitterness of human life. I was born into a poor family, and over the past eighty years I have seen everything there is in human life. According to my experience of human life, last year I wrote a hymn in Chinese that says, “The human life without Christ / Is all vain and all empty; / A meaningless human life / Without hope and without goal” (Appendix #4, stanza 4). Stanza 5 shows the change that occurs in a person’s human life when he has Christ: “When we receive Christ as life, / In our spirit we’re reborn; / We live by Him every moment, / And our life is turned to song.” As believers who thank the Lord for His salvation and want to live by Him, we should not think that we must drop our jobs in order to serve Him full time. The sisters who are at home raising their children and caring for their husbands can be full-timers. A brother making money at a job can also be full time for the Lord. Everything depends on our heart. If our heart is toward the Lord, we are full-timers.
It is difficult to set a standard for human life. No matter how many items of clothing a person has, he has only one body, and no matter how much he eats, he has only one stomach. All the good food in the world cannot fit in his stomach. Therefore, we should not consider how much money we can make in order to raise our standard of living. Extravagant living causes us to be overweight. This is a slow kind of suicide. If our house is too large, we are unable to clean it by ourselves, and we need someone to help us. It is better to have a smaller house that we can clean by ourselves. There are presently more than twenty thousand brothers and sisters in Taiwan. If every household slightly decreases its living expenditures by one dollar a day, on the average every brother and sister would save three hundred sixty dollars a year. In one year we would save a total of $7.2 million. This money could be used for the spread of the church.
The saints may not know the great financial need that there is overseas. During the last three months we received a letter in America from a brother who is a pastor in Guatemala. In the letter he said that he became clear about the truth by reading our publications. He is planning to hold trainings in seventeen places this year to train approximately eight hundred to one thousand pastors, and he asked us to send brothers to help with the trainings. Two co-workers went there and telephoned us to say that the situation is very good. The work in Guatemala is proceeding in different provinces, and they desperately need books in Spanish. We sent them video players and videotapes of the ministry because we do not have many books in Spanish. The two brothers who went spent one week in Guatemala and then went to Colombia and Costa Rica.
America is not the only continent with this situation. Europe has a similar situation. The recovery has spread to Finland, which can be called the neighbor of the Soviet Union. There is also a great need in Africa. A few days ago the Living Stream Ministry office called me to say that they sent a container of books to Accra, the capital of Ghana in Africa. They sent one thousand copies of the New Testament Recovery Version in English, worth approximately fifty thousand to sixty thousand dollars. Most of these books were sent free of charge.
The spread of the Lord’s recovery overseas began from Taiwan. When I brought my family of twelve to Taiwan, I only had three hundred dollars, which was enough to support us for only three months. Since then the Lord has blessed us, and we cannot forget His grace. We need to spread the gospel and not keep our money in our hands. It does not matter whether our homes are large or small. It would be wonderful if by reducing the size of his home, a person could offer one thousand five hundred dollars for the spread of the gospel and the support of full-timers. If five souls can be saved through this offering, it is worthwhile. In Luke 16:9 the Lord said, “Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” The Lord is keeping an account for us in the heavens. When we enter into the eternal tabernacles, the people who are saved through our giving will greet us. This is what the Lord Himself taught.
First Timothy 6:8 says, “Having food and covering, with these we will be content.” Many brothers and sisters, however, earn three or four times more than what they need for food and covering. What is the purpose of keeping the extra money? We do not want the full-timers to experience a lack in their living, nor do we agree that the saints should continue increasing their standard of living without restriction. The saints are wasting money on food, drink, and clothing. If everyone saved one dollar for the Lord every day, in one month they would have thirty dollars, and in one year, three hundred sixty dollars. We are fellowshipping these things so that our fellowship concerning gospelizing Taiwan and begetting, nourishing, and teaching would not be empty words. Begetting new ones costs money. The new ones need to be nourished, and nourishing also costs money. Teaching is even more expensive. The emphasis of our burden is not the full-timers going out to spread the gospel but every brother and sister bearing the burden to gospelize Taiwan.
We have four directions in the gospel: the campuses, the neighborhoods, every level of society, and every town and village. We may not be able to go to the towns and villages to preach the gospel, but we cannot say that we do not have neighbors. Most people today live in high-rise apartments and have neighbors who live above, below, to the left, and to the right of them; hence, it is easy to preach the gospel to people. But since our concept and our taste have not changed, we still emphasize the big meetings. We must understand that the big meetings are for the occasional worshippers who have not been completely gained by the Lord. We should continue the big meetings for such people. These meetings are not for us. We should each have a home meeting in our home.
I believe that we have all tasted the benefits of the home meetings that cannot be found in the big meetings. After seven or eight people meet together three to five times in a home meeting, the saints will know each other. They will then be able to help each other. This is a strong point of the home meetings. There are no famous people giving messages in the home meetings, and the co-workers or elders do not need to prepare a long message. Every meeting needs only a short portion of the ministry as the material for the home meeting. For example, the book The Living Needed for Building Up the Small Group Meetings is very good material. The first chapter speaks of “A Living That Is out of the Holy Spirit and through the Human Spirit.” The elders can choose four or five pages as the content for the home meetings and ask the brothers and sisters to read the material on their own before the meeting. They can then read it together in the meeting. The saints do not come to the home meetings to listen to a message; they come to read a message together. When we read, we should not be formal. We must all exercise our spirit. Then we will absorb all the nutrients in the message.
The elders and co-workers in the localities cannot merely speak about the home meetings without giving the saints material to read in the meeting. In a meeting hall of three hundred people two or three full-time brothers can spend time to pray and seek the Lord in order to prepare material for the home meetings. We have many books that can be used. Inviting a famous person to speak does not necessarily make the meetings richer or more enlightening than reading material from our publications. Why should we give up the supply that we have? Why do we not use the material that is already prepared? Our problem is that the brothers and sisters are used to the big meetings, not the home meetings, and the elders and co-workers are not used to leading the home meetings. The best material for the home meetings is the Life-studies. The elders and co-workers must learn how to prepare simple, home-cooked, healthy “meals” for the home meetings, not big “feasts.” If we can prepare material for three hundred sixty-five days and distribute it to the saints, they will have nourishing food to eat when they gather in their meetings. The result will be that everyone will have a good appetite, and they will be nourished.
The Lord’s table meetings should not be longer than one hour. The remaining half hour can be used to read a life-nourishing message. According to my observation, even though we spend the time after remembering the Lord to share our testimonies, there is not much enjoyment. Many people do not speak in the meetings because they are afraid that if they speak, they will expose their condition. This gives those who do not care about being exposed the opportunity to speak in every meeting. However, their speaking is not short; they speak for a long time and ruin everyone’s appetite for the meeting. The responsible brothers are afraid of offending those who speak long and do not say anything to them; thus, everyone must endure their speaking. From now on, after breaking bread, those who have something of content should share it. After their sharing, we will read a life-nourishing message together. No one should speak carelessly on matters that are unrelated to the topic of the message. We must ensure that every time the brothers and sisters come to the meeting, they enjoy fellowship with the Lord and are supplied with life.
Furthermore, we must encourage the brothers and sisters to attend the prayer meetings. After the prayer meetings we can spend half an hour to fellowship about the spiritual principles of serving, how to follow the Lord’s leading, how to serve people, or how to take care of the meetings. There will then be three meetings every week in which we read messages—home meetings, bread-breaking meetings, and prayer meetings. In one year we will read more than one hundred fifty messages. In this way we will have nourishing and teaching. We must not emphasize the big meetings any longer. On the contrary, we must emphasize the home meetings. Then the function of the home meetings will be manifested, and people will be successfully brought to salvation, cared for, and supported. Furthermore, on the Lord’s Day morning we should go over Truth Lessons in separate classes. The classes can be divided according to the level of the spiritual education of the saints. In this way every person in this large family will be healthy and strong.
Preaching the gospel in the home meetings is very powerful. There are more than four hundred home meetings in Taipei. If each home meeting brings one person to salvation every week, one thousand six hundred people will be saved in one month, and approximately twenty thousand will be saved in one year. Since those saved in the home meetings are the relatives, friends, neighbors, or classmates of the brothers and sisters, they will be stable, and it will be easy for them to remain.
We have information cards for more than eleven thousand people, but only about four thousand people meet regularly. We need to visit and take care of the remaining six or seven thousand people. We can assign them to the saints based on where they live. The saints can then invite them for a meal, fellowship with them, and bring them to the home meetings. We cannot rely merely on the elders to do this. We should rely on the home meetings to carry this out if we want to be successful.
For the future of the church and for our spiritual growth and function before the Lord, we need to receive this burden. When the Lord returns, we will settle accounts with Him. This is not a small thing. We cannot treasure only John 3:16, which says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.” We must also remember Matthew 25:19, which says, “After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.” When the Lord returns, the good and faithful slaves will be rewarded, but the evil and slothful slaves will be punished. Even if the Lord tarries, who among us dares to say that he will still be alive tomorrow? Before we go to see the Lord, we must seize the opportunity to love Him, serve Him, please Him, and be ready to settle accounts with Him.
Truth Lessons is according to the Lord’s move among us. For this reason we must attend the home meetings, and we must receive the education from Truth Lessons. In order to use Truth Lessons, we must first produce teachers of the truth. We should not think that it is so difficult to be a teacher of the truth and that only a few people can be teachers. Everyone can be a teacher of the truth. For example, an elderly brother, who has been exercising in the church for many years, can teach the truth. He can read the title and outline of a lesson and then ask everyone to read the title and outline. Anyone can lead a class by reading in this way and by having everyone ask questions. It is like teaching mathematics in elementary school. A person simply needs to clearly state that one plus one equals two, write the equation on the blackboard, and ask the students to copy the equation and repeat it.
After reading the outline, the teacher should give an overview of the lesson, and the saints should read the lesson together. Each lesson has more than seven pages, and it takes about five minutes to read each page. It is unwise for a teacher to speak too much or use his own words and expressions. The teachers do not need to add anything, because there are sufficient nutrients in the teaching material. The best way to teach Truth Lessons is to lead the saints to read the text and to speak according to the text. We should speak and read the truth that is written in the text and not use our own words. It is more supplying for the saints to read in this way than to listen to the speech of a famous person. May we enter into this practice.
