As we began to change the system, we came back to the Bible and studied and researched the way to meet as it was in the beginning. In a sense, we entered a laboratory where we learned while we experimented. At that time we even increased the number of elders in the church in Taipei from six or seven to over eighty, hoping that the young elders who were in their thirties could help in our study. From the second half of 1986 to this fall, we have had three terms of formal training. About eight to nine hundred saints have joined the training, including saints from Europe, Africa, South America, Central America, North America, and Australia. Including the local trainees, the total number of trainees exceeds five thousand.
In the training the most successful experiment, which succeeded beyond what we had asked or thought, was the preaching of the gospel through door-knocking, bringing people to believe in the Lord and to be baptized. There are currently already over twenty-eight thousand who have been baptized through our door-knocking. This practice has been brought back by the trainees to various places including Europe, Africa, South America, Central America, North America, and Australia and has been very successful. The summer training in the United States last June was changed to a training for the carrying out of the new way with fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred saints in attendance. They were trained in the morning, went door-knocking in the evening, then came back for evaluations and corrections the afternoon of the next day. It was in this way that they baptized thirty-seven hundred people in ten days. This surprised the churches in the United States and Canada, because there were some who had criticized preaching the gospel through door-knocking, saying that although it might have worked in Taiwan, it probably would not work among the Caucasians and people of other colors in the West. No one ever thought that the number of people brought to salvation through the practice of door-knocking in the United States would be comparatively higher than the number in Taiwan.
After the summer training, about five hundred saints from the eastern and western coasts of the United States joined the “door-knocking feast” and eventually baptized 1,019 people. Then we received a letter from Brazil saying that since they have been practicing the new way, the number of churches has increased from 100 to 168. At the same time, about ten churches outside of Brazil, in countries such as Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile, have been practicing door-knocking from January to September, and the number of baptisms has already exceeded ten thousand. Moreover, we also received a letter from Ghana, Africa saying that some of the saints went to the new cities to preach the gospel by door-knocking and have gained around five hundred people in a short time. Liberia also sent us a cable telling us that they had knocked on 218 doors, and as a result 146 people were baptized.
The first step of preaching the gospel through door-knocking was successful in Taiwan, and the following steps in America and Africa were also successful. But some people still hold a “wait-and-see” attitude, saying that door-knocking will not work in Europe, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark. Actually, there was a door-knocking feast in Neuchatel, Switzerland about three weeks ago. Not many went out, but they baptized over a hundred people in two to three days. It did not matter what the race or nationality of the saints was. When we heard the situation of the saints in over nine hundred churches on the six continents of the globe, we truly felt joyful and comforted. The Lord loves His recovery very much.
The greatest difference between the old and the new systems is that the old system focuses on one person speaking and everyone else listening in the big meeting on Lord’s Day morning. This matter is obviously not scriptural. In practicality and in the long run, it has not fed the Lord’s Body. The purpose of the change of system is to put aside the aspects of the old system completely. The first one in our midst who took this way and brought this recovery and the light of this recovery to us was Brother Watchman Nee. In 1922 when he was in Foochow, Fukien in China, he first began the church meetings. It was in 1932 when Brother Nee came to visit Chefoo that we began the first church meeting in north China in my house. In 1933 I was called to drop my career, and Brother Nee arranged for me to go to Shanghai.
One day he said to me that there was one matter that we should change but that it would be very hard to change. That matter was our way of meeting. He said that all of Christianity focuses on the big meeting on the Lord’s Day in which one person speaks and everyone else listens. Brother Nee said that this practice is not biblical and causes many troubles. Thus, it should be changed. Then four years later Brother Nee summoned an urgent co-workers’ meeting in Shanghai, mentioning that the system of having a big meeting on the Lord’s Day should be changed. The content of the messages of that meeting was published in The Normal Christian Church Life. Then eleven years later, when he led the summer training in Kuling Mountain, Fukien, he spoke about this matter twice, and those messages were collected in the book Church Affairs.
The change of system has already progressed from the stage of study to the stage of practice. We feel that we have the responsibility to give the saints a clear explanation. When we read The Normal Christian Church Life and Church Affairs, we felt that we were not worthy to be Brother Nee’s co-workers, because his speaking was stronger and more serious than ours. He told us that the Lord’s Day message meeting had to be abolished. His speaking was absolute whereas our speaking was general and compromising (The Normal Christian Church Life, pp. 175-178).
Brother Nee said that there were two reasons why it would be difficult to abolish the Lord’s Day message meeting—because we tend to follow what the nations do (Lev. 20:23; 2 Kings 17:7-8) and because we have nothing to replace it. The outward problem related to abolishing the Lord’s Day message meeting is that the brothers and sisters desire to listen to messages, and the inward problem is that the brothers and sisters have a habit of listening to messages (Church Affairs, pp. 61-64, 74-77).
The church in Taipei will have a big gospel feast. This time our focus will not be on getting a number of people saved but on kindling all the saints in Taipei so that in the new system all the saints in Taipei would be revived and would speak for the Lord in the meetings. In order for the saints to be revived, they need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is not too difficult to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Once we get up in the morning, we should call on the Lord’s name, talk to Him, and read two verses of the Bible. Then we will live Christ every day. In this way we will be filled with the Holy Spirit. Because we will be living in our spirit throughout the day, surely we will want to meet with our family and have small group meetings with the saints nearby in the evening. Because we will be filled with the Holy Spirit, we will definitely open our mouths in the meeting, and living water will flow out from us. If everyone speaks in the meeting, if I live this kind of living, and if you also live this kind of living, then the meetings will spontaneously be living and rich.