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Since October of 1984, at the time when I finished writing the footnotes in the Recovery Version of the New Testament, I began to have the burden to reconsider the practice of the Lord’s recovery. We are here in the Lord’s recovery, and we do not like to go on blindly or do anything in a contented way. We like to be on the alert as to what the Lord is doing, what He wants today, and what He wants to do among His children. Over the past sixty years, under the Lord’s mercy, I have been watching over the Lord’s recovery and the situation of today’s Christianity. I also did my best to observe the world situation. Based upon my observation, I would like to fellowship in this chapter concerning three things: the need of the present world, the divine truths that the Lord has shown us throughout the years, and all the blessings we have been receiving from the Lord through these many years.
First, we need to see what the need of the present world is. During the past sixty years I have studied the world situation. Soon after I got saved, I began to study the Bible, others’ writings concerning the Bible, the history of the church, and many biographies of the spiritual giants throughout church history. Also, by His mercy and under His grace, I had the opportunity to read the central messages of the great Bible preachers and teachers in the past twenty centuries.
I began to study the world situation soon after the First World War. Before that time, the so-called Reformed theology was very prevailing in Europe. Reformed theology does not believe that Christ will come before the one thousand years of the millennium. Reformed teachers preach and teach postmillennialism, which means that Christ will come after the millennium. According to their thought, mankind could be improved in society and adjusted by culture, by education, and by the teaching of the Bible. They probably did not believe that a Christian has two natures—a new divine nature plus the old human nature. They thought the old human nature could be improved and adjusted. This kind of teaching annuls regeneration. Even though they might not say this, what they taught implied this. Suddenly to their surprise, Germany began the First World War in Europe, and that war nullified the Reformed theological concept that human society could be improved by culture, education, and Bible teaching. Even though the Bible was taught so much in Europe, World War I still broke out. After that war, Reformed theology decreased in popularity. Then many of the Bible teachers began to write something concerning prophecy, Christ’s second coming, and the millennium.
When we were being raised up by the Lord in those days, we studied the writings of the great Brethren teachers who saw many prophetic truths concerning Christ’s second coming. The Brethren were raised up by the Lord in the early 1800s. In the next approximately one hundred years the Brethren teachers put out many teachings. The visions, the revelations, they received of the Lord were like a flood coming to them all the time. We received great help from their writings. Besides the Brethren, we also received much help from the inner-life people, among whom were William Law, Andrew Murray, Jessie Penn-Lewis, and the speakers of the Keswick Convention. The Keswick Convention speakers and the inner-life teachers were quite prevailing and wrote a number of good books. However, since the end of the Second World War in 1945, nearly no valuable spiritual life book has been written.
When I came to the United States in the early sixties, I subscribed to some of the top Christian publications. I looked at these publications for about four or five years, and I saw nearly no spiritual study of the Bible or nearly no spiritual teaching from the books of the Bible, nearly no divine revelation, and nearly nothing concerning the inner life. At the end of the seventies, I noticed that many seeking Christians began to love to study the Bible. Also, a number of Christian publishers began to reprint the old expositions of the Bible. Some even reprinted Henry Alford’s New Testament. Although some of these good and older expositions have been reprinted, it is difficult to find some new writing on the Bible or on the inner life that is valuable and spiritual today. In the last century England was so rich in producing good, spiritual, Christian, and scriptural writers. During the last century and up to the first third of this century, many spiritual books came out by many good writers and speakers, among whom were D. L. Moody, A. B. Simpson, Charles Trumbull, Mary E. McDonough, and Ruth Paxson in the United States. Today, however, it is hard to find Christian literature that is purely in life, truth, and light.
The thoughtful people of today realize that they need a proper life, a philosophical, logical life. They do not want a religious or superstitious life but a practical life. They do not want to live merely in a scientific or material way, but they are seeking something very logical and even philosophical. Today’s students in the universities and colleges are very logical, philosophical, rational, and practical, seeking something real in their human life. If you would go to the campuses today, you could see that so many young people are seeking something. In other words, they are seeking the truth, the true meaning of human life, the reality of human life.
The world situation today is that all the philosophical and logical young people are seeking something practical, real, and meaningful to their human life. They may be very much involved in their university studies, yet deep within they are seeking the reality of human life. They do not like being nonsensical, superstitious, or religious. They want to be practical and real. Furthermore, the seeking Christians are seeking after the proper Bible knowledge. The ones who serve in the bookroom in Taiwan told us that the ones who do not meet with us come to buy our Recovery Version and our Life-study of the Bible. They care for the books on the knowledge of spiritual things. All this indicates that deep in the human heart and the Christian heart there is a need, a thirst, and a hunger after the truth. We have to believe that this is the Lord’s doing.
Our brothers who formed the gospel team went purposely to speak the truth on the college campuses. They discovered that there are many young students who are hungry for the truth. Because of the hunger they saw, they were encouraged and stirred up to have a burden to visit, if possible, all the campuses in the United States. They do not have the burden to preach the superficial, religious things, nor even to preach the shallow gospel. Their burden is to preach the deeper truths. The first message in their gospel preaching was concerning the Triune God. That message attracted a good number of thoughtful young people. They were attracted by the subject of the Triune God.
The present need of the present world is the truth. Some brothers from the United States went to Taiwan to visit the college campuses there. They discovered that all the students were open not to the superficial things but to the deeper truths. They want to hear the deeper truths from the Bible. When some of them see our Recovery Version of the New Testament, they want to get a copy for themselves. Our God who is the moving and working God is really moving and working in the human heart in these last days, turning human intention toward the seeking after Himself. Many people cannot express exactly what they are seeking after, yet we know that what they are seeking after is the reality of the Triune God. The reality of the Triune God is the real meaning of our human life. The reality of the processed Triune God is what today’s world needs.
We also need to realize the extent to which the Lord has shown us the divine truths throughout the years. From the 1930s until this present day, very few spiritual books have been published outside of the Lord’s recovery that are full of life, truth, and light. This is why Brother Nee’s books have become so prevailing. In 1950 we began to publish The Ministry of the Word in Chinese. Soon after I came to the United States, we began to publish The Stream magazine in 1963. The first spiritual book we published in the United States was The All-inclusive Christ. Since 1974 I have realized that the most needed thing for the Lord’s move on this earth is the release of the truths from the entire New Testament. I began to have two annual trainings to have the life-study on all the books of the New Testament. Thank the Lord that at the end of 1984, with twelve years of labor, we finished the life-study of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. I had a further realization that we needed to put out something as an index, which I called The Conclusion of the New Testament, on seven great persons: God, Christ, the Spirit, the believers, the church, the kingdom, and the New Jerusalem. This conclusion may be considered as a kind of index. If you want to know anything concerning God in the New Testament, you can come to the section on God and find all the verses concerning Him in His many different aspects.
Due to the need, I also began to compose the Truth Lessons. The Truth Lessons are arranged to be covered in four years. Each year has four volumes and each volume contains twelve lessons. Thus, forty-eight lessons can be taught in one year. The purpose of these volumes is to provide a person with a general knowledge of the Bible according to the divine truth with the spiritual principles and also to bring one into a full enjoyment of God’s full salvation. Now all the saints in all the churches will have the Truth Lessons, a Recovery Version of the New Testament, Life-study messages covering every book of the New Testament, and The Conclusion of the New Testament as an index for our study.
Since the recovery came to the United States in the early sixties, we began the publication work on a very small scale. Every year the publications have been increasing. Now we have sixty full-timers laboring in the publication work: fifteen in Anaheim, California, fifteen in Irving, Texas, and thirty in Taipei, Taiwan. Now we are going to open up a Spanish office in Monterrey, Mexico, to publish the Spanish translations.
Especially over the last three years, the Lord has shown us the New Testament economy of God. A book published by us containing forty-four chapters and entitled God’s New Testament Economy could be considered as a consummation of what the Lord has shown us in His recovery. The highest revelation that we have received from the Lord is God’s New Testament economy.
In one recent message we called the Spirit the processed, compound, all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling, sevenfold intensified, and consummated Spirit. We have put out many messages with many verses from the Bible to reveal such a Spirit. Again, this shows us how the Lord has given His truth to us more and more over the years. The standard of the truth in the Lord’s recovery is very high today.
On the one hand, I have pointed out my concern that there are very few among us who have really gotten into all these truths. On the other hand, I can assuredly say that many of you who have been sitting under this ministry for ten years have received many riches. When some brothers among us went out and began to teach others, they were surprised at how much they did know and have retained over the years. By being under this ministry, you have been saturated and soaked in the truth day after day. You have received something unconsciously and could never be the same. Even the dear brothers who were with us for some time and left still recognize the worth of what they received in the recovery. As long as you have been in the recovery for some time, you cannot wash away what you have received, because all the truths have been constituted into you.
I would like to relate a few incidents that show how the truths we have received from the Lord have touched some of the Lord’s children. Recently, a certain sister among us went with some others to the airport to meet some other brothers and sisters. While they were waiting, they met four American missionaries, among whom was a couple. The wife of that couple saw this sister’s Recovery Version of the New Testament and asked if she could look at it. While this sister was talking to the wife’s husband and to others, the wife could not stop reading the footnotes on the text of the New Testament. Finally, she asked this sister where she could get a copy of the Recovery Version, saying that the writer of the footnotes surely is a great scholar.
A sister in Taiwan gave a testimony that she met a seeking and learned Southern Baptist sister who had heard some negative speaking concerning us and who was influenced by it. When this seeking sister looked at a copy of the other sister’s Recovery Version of Matthew and read the first footnote on the first verse of Matthew, she asked the other sister to get her a copy. She was caught by that one footnote and was eventually brought into the church life. Another older sister in Southern California who did not meet with us got a copy of the Matthew Recovery Version, and when she read the first footnote in Matthew, she began to weep. This footnote captured her heart.
We have to see the need of today’s world, and we have to realize what the Lord has given us and how much we have today. These truths concerning God’s New Testament economy should not be just for ourselves but for the entire earth and especially for all the children of God.
A good number of saints have been very faithful in the recovery to learn the truths, attend the meetings, and keep a good testimony. Most all the dear saints in the recovery bear a living, positive testimony in their work place, in their schools, in their neighborhoods, and among their relatives. Some of the saints may wonder, though, why we are seemingly so small with very little increase in the churches. Our eyes must be opened to see the positive side of our situation.
Before I came to this country in 1961, there were very few churches in the Lord’s recovery in the Western world. At that time in the Far East, there were a little over two hundred twenty churches. Among these two hundred twenty churches, over one hundred were in the Philippines. Those one hundred churches were raised up by one brother who studied the sixty lessons of the basic truths published by our bookroom in The Ministry of the Word. By using these lessons, he established over one hundred churches. These one hundred churches were all raised up and established by these lessons. In 1985 I went to the Philippines and saw this brother. He told me that the church there had passed through the sixty lessons of basic truths and was now in the stage of the Life-studies. Today there are three hundred twenty-five churches in the Far East.
Since 1962 two hundred eighty churches have been produced in the Western world, which includes Africa, Australasia, Europe, North America, and South America. There are some saints in Zimbabwe, Africa, who are meeting as the church. I also received a report that on the island of Tasmania, which is south of Australia, there are some saints meeting as the church. These statistics show us the Lord’s blessing on His recovery over the last twenty-four years.
In Central America and in South America the people’s hearts are open to the truth. Latin America has been dominated by the Catholic Church for centuries. Then the Pentecostal movement went there. Generally speaking, Latin America is devoid of the truth, and many people are tired of Catholicism and Pentecostalism. They are seeking the truth. When you present the truths that we have seen to them, they eagerly receive them. This again shows the Lord’s blessing on His recovery.
We have passed through so many attacks, disturbances, tests, and trials, yet the Lord has brought us through. The Lord’s recovery has been firmly founded on a rock, which is a standing of the divine truth and the divine life. Everything in the Lord’s recovery is firmly founded, and now is the time for us to go on. Thank the Lord that He has cleared up so many things, and He has founded us upon a firm foundation. We are built upon a foundation, a rock, of the divine truth and the divine life. Now that we have seen what the need of the present world is, the divine truths the Lord has shown us, and the blessing upon the Lord’s recovery, we must go on to see what our responsibility is. In the next chapter we will fellowship concerning our need to bear some responsibility.
