The big gospel preaching meeting has defects. I do admit that the big preaching meeting did fulfill and still fulfills the purpose of saving sinners. It fulfills the purpose of soul-winning, but it does not fulfill the purpose of God’s economy. Many souls may be saved in a big gospel preaching meeting, but where are they after their salvation? They make little progress in God’s economy, and they know very little concerning God’s economy. Because of this they cannot fulfill God’s purpose in His New Testament economy.
Many real Christians were gained through big gospel preaching meetings. The big gospel preaching meeting fulfills the purpose of saving sinners, but it fosters the building up of the evangelists as a hierarchy of clergy. If we only practice having big gospel preaching meetings for ten years, most of the saints will not know how to preach the gospel. Only the evangelists among us will know how. The more big gospel preaching meetings we have, the more these gifted evangelists get fostered to be the clergy. The big gospel preaching meetings do not develop the believers’ function of preaching the gospel, but they annul it, making the majority of the believers laity. We may hate any kind of hierarchy and the clergy-laity system, but innocently and unconsciously we are fostering and building them up when we practice having only big gospel preaching meetings.
The evangelists should perfect the saints to preach the gospel as they do. We need the perfecting of the saints by the gifts. Ephesians 4 tells us that the Lord gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints. This means that these gifted persons equip the saints to do the same work that they do. There have been some big evangelists preaching the gospel for many years, but they did not perfect others to preach the gospel. There are millions of Christians in Christianity who do not and who have not been enabled and equipped to preach the gospel. All the believers need to practice the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament.
On the one hand, the big gospel preaching meeting saves sinners, but on the other hand, it annuls the function of the believers in preaching the gospel. This is the subtlety of the enemy. We have been saved by the Lord, and we have the divine life. This divine life has organic functions, and the preaching of the gospel is one of these functions, but we have to ask where this function of preaching the gospel is among us today. This function in many of us has been annulled by the improper practice of preaching the gospel. This improper practice has cheated us.
In the past, the church would announce that there would be a gospel meeting, and the brothers would encourage us to invite people, to bring people, and to prepare a love feast. According to the Old Testament typology, this is not the work of the priests but the work of the Levites. To arrange the chairs, to clean the hall, to sit with the new ones, and to help them find certain things in the Bible are all Levitical services. This is not the priestly preaching of the gospel. Instead of preaching the gospel directly, the saints brought their contacts to the big gospel preaching meeting to hear someone else preach the gospel. Who was preaching the gospel among us? Only a few brothers. That practice fostered the building up of the clergy, and at the same time it killed the organic preaching function of each member. This is why we do not have many real priests of the New Testament gospel among us today. This is the defect of having only big gospel preaching meetings. This is not a deficiency. To be deficient means to be short of something. To practice having only big gospel preaching meetings is defective. To be defective is to be wrong in something.
Most of the members in the major denominations do not preach the gospel and cannot preach the gospel. All of us need to be perfected to preach the gospel, not just a few. I am not against having big meetings for the preaching of the gospel. Sometimes the Lord will use this kind of meeting. The first preaching of the gospel in the New Testament on the day of Pentecost was to a big congregation, but that congregation was not brought together by advertisement, propaganda, or brochures. That congregation was sovereignly prepared by God. Peter took this opportunity to speak the gospel to these people. According to the record of the book of Acts, however, that is not the regular and ordinary preaching of the gospel. The regular and ordinary preaching is in the homes of the believers (Acts 5:42) and is by each of the believers. The common practice of the preaching of the gospel today is not like this. Most conduct big preaching meetings on a regular basis. As a result, the saints do not preach the gospel themselves daily and weekly. Such a practice of having only big gospel preaching meetings regularly annuls the preaching function within all the saints.
According to the Bible, all the believers should preach the gospel because every believer is a priest. The New Testament priests are the priests of the gospel of God. Because we are the priests of the gospel we have the capacity and the obligation to speak the gospel. According to Paul’s thought, he owed people the gospel (Rom. 1:14-15). We owe our relatives, our classmates, our neighbors, and our friends the gospel. We owe the gospel to the people in the town where we live. Every dear saint should be stirred up to preach the gospel. We have the capacity to speak the gospel. The more that we speak, the more we will be able to speak.
I learned the English language when I was very young in China, but the environment did not permit me to practice speaking English. I basically learned the English language by reading and writing, not by speaking. I came to the United States when I was about sixty years old, and then I began to speak English. That was very awkward for me, but after twenty-five years of practicing, I can speak much better. I learned that the more I spoke English, the more I was able to speak.
Many dear saints among us have been in the church life for over ten years, but they have never been stirred up to preach the gospel. After ten years of not practicing to preach the gospel, they have become dumb in speaking the gospel. They can only invite people to come to a big gospel meeting. They can prepare a love feast, arrange the chairs, sit by their guests in the meeting, and help them to find the right passage of the Bible and the right hymn in the hymnal. They can take down the names and addresses of the new ones for contacting them in the future, but they do not feel that they can talk to them directly concerning the gospel. Instead of preaching the gospel, they feel that they can only bring their contacts to certain brothers who can explain the gospel in a proper way.
In the past, we thought that preaching the gospel was a church activity in which the whole church was engaged. Actually, however, most of the saints did the Levitical service, not the priestly service. To arrange the chairs for the gospel meeting, to invite people to come, and to give them a ride to the meeting are all part of the Levitical service. That is not the priestly service. A priest of the gospel gets the sinners saved and baptizes them to offer them as sacrifices to God. Our preaching of the gospel has not been prevailing because we have been cheated by the enemy. Our practice has annulled the preaching ability, the preaching capacity, the preaching function, of the saints. We are responsible for this before the Lord. One day we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The Lord may check with us concerning the fellowship that we have received in this book. The capacity to speak Christ is in the divine life, so we need to enjoy this divine life. This capacity is developed by the growth of life, and this development will be unto an ability. Then the capacity will have become an ability. All of us need to be developed to preach the gospel, to speak the gospel into people’s spirits.
Because the Lord has given us the divine life with such a capacity, we are obligated to speak Christ. We are obliged to preach the gospel to our relatives and to our neighbors. We are obliged to preach the gospel to all the people that we know. The more people we know, the more we are obligated. All of us will be checked by the Lord Jesus at the judgment seat. We will not be able to make excuses at the judgment seat of Christ. The Lord will hold us accountable for what we have heard and seen in the New Testament.
It may be all right to practice preaching the gospel with big gospel meetings, but this depends upon whether our practice of preaching in this way annuls or develops the saints’ ability in preaching the gospel. We have to bear the responsibility for the annulling or for the developing of the saints’ functions. If we do practice preaching the gospel by big gospel meetings, this should not replace the saints’ preaching. Instead it should set up a pattern to develop the saints’ capacity of preaching the gospel. To tell the saints that we do not need to go out to preach the gospel and that all we need to do is bring all our new contacts together for a big gospel meeting is wrong because it annuls the saints’ function in preaching the gospel. What we do and what we say will be checked at the judgment seat of Christ.
The obligation to speak Christ is the fulfillment of our spiritual service in which we are indebted to God’s salvation. God might check with us in this way: “Didn’t I give My divine life to you? Have you not been enjoying My life for years? Is not My salvation with My divine life dynamic? Then why would you not fulfill your obligation? You owe Me and My dynamic salvation.” How many people we bring to the Lord depends upon how many people God has allowed us to meet. If we have more cousins, we are more obligated. The Lord will check with us concerning how many people we brought to salvation. We cannot tell the Lord that we did not know anyone. The Lord has given us relatives, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and classmates.
It would be good if all of us could take thirty minutes to write down everyone that we know, beginning from our nearest relatives. In Acts 1:8 the Lord told the disciples that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit had come upon them and that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the remotest part of the earth. In preaching the gospel, our “Jerusalem” is our parents, our brothers and sisters, and our relatives. I believe that if we write down the names of those we know, beginning from our “Jerusalem,” we will have at least one hundred names. Then we need to check which ones among these one hundred have been saved. We owe the gospel to the ones who have not been saved.
I am concerned about our understanding of the fellowship in this book concerning the New Testament priests of the gospel of God. We should not understand this fellowship in a common way or think that we have heard this before. We may think that we know already that we all have to preach the gospel. I hope that we would not understand the fellowship concerning the priesthood of the gospel in this way. The way that I have presented is particular and unique. It is not the common preaching of the gospel but the preaching of the priests. When we preach the gospel, we are preaching the gospel as the New Testament priests. Our preaching is our priestly service, and we have to make it our daily work and our daily life. We have to make it a part of our being.
To be priests of God without offering sacrifices to God daily is uncomely. We should not preach the gospel merely as Christians. The New Testament tells us that we should preach the gospel as priests doing our priestly service. In Romans 1:9 Paul said that he served God in his spirit in the gospel. Whatever Paul did as service to God was a part of his preaching of the gospel. Paul set up many local churches. His setting up of the churches was a part of his gospelizing as a priest. Because we did not have this enlightenment in the past, we preached the gospel ignorantly.
In presenting this fellowship to you, I appeal to your love of the Lord, to your enlightened conscience, and to your love of the truth. Please reconsider the fellowship in this chapter and the previous chapter. Consider before the Lord all the verses that I have presented regarding the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament. I believe that as you consider before the Lord, the Lord will show you the same vision that I have seen.