Now we need to go on to see the function of the prophets. The prophets speak for the Lord, speak forth the Lord, to dispense, impart, and minister Christ to others. To prophesy is not mainly to foretell or to predict as they do in the Pentecostal movement. In 1963 and 1964 some in the Pentecostal movement said that there would be a great earthquake and that the whole city of Los Angeles would fall into the ocean. These so-called prophecies were even published in major newspapers. Eventually, nothing happened. The prophets listed in Ephesians 4 and the prophecy that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 14 are not like this. To prophesy is to speak for God, to speak forth God, and to speak God into others. According to 1 Corinthians 14:3, to prophesy is to speak building up, encouragement, and consolation. According to verses 24 and 25, when we prophesy, our speaking convicts others, judges others, and manifests the secrets of their heart. The practice of prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14 has to be recovered. We all need to be perfected to prophesy, to speak for the Lord, to speak forth the Lord, and to speak the Lord into others.
The prophets should bear the responsibility to perfect all the saints to do the work of a prophet. This is the biblical way, but this is not the common practice today. Instead, prophesying is a particular gift given to a small number of the saints, and this small number become the clergy to build up a hierarchy. Because the rest of the saints do not know how to prophesy, they become “laymen” in the matter of prophesying. Concerning prophesying, most of the Christians are laymen. Just a few are the direct prophets. Therefore, there is a clergy and a laity. As long as there is the distinction between clergy and laity, hierarchy is here.
According to God’s economy, He wants all of His believers to prophesy, to speak Him and to speak Him forth. He does not want only a minority of His children to speak for Him to large congregations of passive believers. Whenever the Lord’s children come together in the congregational way, only one person speaks for the Lord time after time. Among the congregation that is listening to him, there may be a number who are very gifted according to their natural birth. The spiritual gifts are always maintained and supported by the natural talents. Some saints are very talented, and because they love the Lord and the Lord is filling them, they have the Spirit richly. If we give these saints the opportunity to develop their capacity, they will have the top ability in speaking. The traditional system of one man speaking and the rest listening annuls, or at least conceals, many gifts. This kind of practice covers and conceals the riches of the Body of Christ.
In a congregation there may be one hundred living and real members of the Body of Christ. Christ’s Body is rich in these members, and they have the capacity to speak for the Lord, but this capacity is annulled by the traditional practice. Even the pastors suffer under this practice. They may give marvelous messages to their congregations at the beginning, but after a period of years, their supply is limited. It is a real labor for these pastors to come up with a new message every Lord’s Day. Most pastors take a position with another congregation after a period of years, and this cycle repeats itself. We need to see the deficiency in the practice of Christianity, by which we have been influenced.
God’s intention is for all the saints in the local churches to be enabled to prophesy, to speak for the Lord. In 1 Corinthians14 Paul tells the saints that they all can prophesy one by one (v. 31). Traditional Christianity says that not all can prophesy but that only a few can. In the system of Christianity, the clergy is built up to be a hierarchy, leaving the rest of the believers robbed, annulled, killed, and disabled. This shows that we all have to learn to be perfected by the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherds and teachers. We may not be these gifted persons, but we can be perfected to do the same work that these gifted persons do. We are not prophets, but we can do the work of the prophets. We are not apostles, but we can do the work of the apostles.
The evangelists not only preach the gospel to save sinners, to bring people to Christ, but also perfect others to preach the gospel as they do. This is similar to what the professors in a teachers’ college do. They teach their students in order to make their students teachers. If a person is an evangelist, he should ask himself how many saints he has perfected to do the same work as he does. The evangelists listed in Ephesians 4:11 are those who preach the gospel to sinners to make them saints and who also perfect others to preach the gospel as they do.
After I got saved, I loved the Lord, and I liked to preach the gospel. No one charged me to preach the gospel, but I spontaneously did it. I even wrote a long gospel tract. I must honestly confess, however, that I did not know how to preach the gospel at that time. Eventually, someone did perfect me to preach the gospel. I was taught the truths concerning God’s salvation, and I was also taught how to discern people. We need to discern people and preach the gospel to them according to the kind of person that they are. If someone is a lover of money, we need to preach the gospel to him in a particular way according to the kind of person he is. Acts 24 records that Paul preached the gospel to a Roman governor. This governor was a man of lust and corruption, so Paul preached the gospel, reasoning with him concerning righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment (v. 25). As a result, this Roman governor became afraid. We should not preach the gospel to a banker in the same way that we would to a fisherman. We cannot preach the gospel properly if we do not discern the people to whom we are preaching. This is why we need to be perfected to preach the gospel.
D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, was speaking to a certain lady after his preaching of the gospel to a large audience. At a certain critical point in D. L. Moody’s talk with her, there was a distracting disturbance. That critical point of time was the right time for her to pray. After that disturbance, however, she would not pray to receive the Lord. From this story I was perfected to realize that when we are preaching the gospel to someone, we must be exercised to discern the right time to bring this person into prayer. If we do not pray with this person at that time, we will lose our case. The best salesmen do not talk too much. They talk just enough to close the deal. If they keep talking after a certain point when the deal can be closed, they will not be able to make the deal. We need the perfecting in order to preach the gospel properly.
There are many secrets to preaching the gospel successfully. We need to be perfected in certain skills in the preaching of the gospel. We need to learn how to begin our talk with people so that we can open up their heart quickly. It may be that the more we talk to people, the more we close their hearts. We need to be perfected to have the skill to open up people’s hearts. If we receive the proper perfecting in the preaching of the gospel, we will become excellent preachers. This will enable us to speak to all our relatives and to get them saved.
In order to be perfected to do the work of the evangelists, we also have to know the crucial verses in the Bible for the preaching of the gospel. The Jehovah’s Witnesses train their people with hundreds of verses before they go out to visit people. They do not believe that Christ is God, so they train their people to twist certain verses. If a person does not have a knowledge of the basic truths, he can be affected by the speaking of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a heretical group, but they train and equip their people to preach their “gospel.” Since they practice this way, how much more should we be trained and equipped to preach the truth of the gospel?
It is not that simple to preach the gospel. We are fruitless because we neglected the preaching of the gospel. According to our concept, anybody can preach the gospel. Actually, however, we need to be perfected to preach the gospel. We cannot say that everyone knows mathematics. A person cannot know mathematics until he is taught. We all need to be perfected to do the work of the evangelists. In Christianity there is not such a practice. We may have had the concept that evangelists should merely preach the gospel to others. We did not think that the evangelists had another important work, that is, to perfect others and make them able to preach as the evangelists do. We have to reconsider our practice. We cannot take the old, traditional way of service in Christianity. Some dear saints in the denominations attend Lord’s Day morning services their entire life, and yet they do not know how to pray or preach the gospel.
We have to be perfected to preach the gospel as energizing priests who offer saved sinners to God as sacrifices. There is the expectation, the possibility, and even the capacity within every saint for them to be such priests. This capacity is in the divine life which the saints possess and enjoy. The very divine life which we enjoy today has a great capacity, but this capacity has been annulled by the traditional practice of Christianity. We have seen that the big gospel preaching meeting fulfills the purpose of saving sinners, but at the same time it annuls the believers’ capacity of preaching the gospel organically. This is because the practice of having only big gospel preaching meetings does not give the saints the chance to practice and to develop their organic function of preaching the gospel. On the other hand, the way of everyone preaching the gospel as New Testament priests develops the saints’ preaching function to the uttermost. According to the New Testament way, all of us have to visit the sinners with the gospel continually. We all have to practice the direct and personal preaching of the gospel.
Most people are born with the capacity of being able to speak, but if they are not allowed to speak for many years, they will become dumb. The restriction of not being allowed to speak will annul their speaking function. Every mother expects her little babe to speak, and all the families encourage their little ones to speak, but does the church practice the preaching of the gospel in this way?
In the past, we had big gospel preaching meetings at certain intervals. In these meetings, one brother was appointed to give a gospel message. The leading brothers announced that the church was going to have a big gospel preaching meeting and that all should cooperate with the church in the preaching of the gospel. The saints may have been charged to invite people, to prepare the hall by cleaning it and arranging the chairs, to do the service of ushering, and to help the guests find certain passages in the Bible during the message. After the meeting ended, the saints could get the addresses and telephone numbers of their guests, but they did not directly preach the gospel to them. Instead, they only brought their guests to hear a certain brother preaching the gospel. As a result, the saints performed only a Levitical service, not the service of the priesthood. The brothers who preached in the big gospel preaching meeting spontaneously were built up as a hierarchy of clergy, while the rest of the saints were the laity in the preaching of the gospel.
Most of the saints were not able to speak to people concerning basic matters like justification by faith and regeneration. Only a few brothers were able to do this. The practice of having only big gospel preaching meetings annuls the preaching ability of the saints, the organic function of the saints that they received in their divine birth. This organic function is in the divine life that we possess and enjoy today, but the traditional, unscriptural practice of Christianity does not allow this function to be developed. On the one hand, the big gospel preaching meeting fulfills the New Testament ministry in the matter of saving sinners, but at the same time it kills the ability, the capacity, and the organic function of all the believers which is in the divine life. Therefore, all of us need the universal perfection to enable us to do the work of the ministry.
Have we ever seen an evangelist not only going out to preach the gospel but also staying in a locality to perfect the saints to do the preaching work as he does? There has not been such a thing on this earth. Therefore, there are thousands of believers on this earth, and not many know how to preach the gospel. The preaching of the gospel by the big evangelists without their perfecting of the saints will kill the preaching ability of the common saints. If during the past forty years there had been a strong perfecting of the common saints to do the preaching of the gospel, there would have been a marvelous result. Instead, most Christians are not able to preach the gospel because of the wrong, traditional practice of Christianity. The evangelists should not only preach but also perfect others to preach. God did not give the evangelists just for the preaching of the gospel but for the perfecting of the saints.