Luke 2:25-38 shows us how the elderly brother Simeon and the elderly sister Anna focused on Christ. Ezra 3:12 says that many of the priests, Levites, and the old men who had seen the first house “wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes,” and many others shouted aloud for joy. Everyone had mixed feelings of sorrow and joy. These instances in the Scriptures show us how the elderly saints in the church life should concentrate on the matter concerning the will of God. Today many of us elderly saints have the same feeling as those in Ezra. We feel that it is truly a blessing to see the Lord rebuilding His temple in His recovery.
Luke 2 does not speak concerning the building of the house but concerning the changing of a system. It talks about the change of system from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The elderly Simeon and Anna were faithful ones in the old system of the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit descended upon them, and they were full of grace, but they had not yet been baptized. Through the light in Luke 2, we see that these ones were pioneers of the change in system. In fact, Simeon and Anna came earlier than John the Baptist. Even before John the Baptist was born, the elderly Anna and Simeon were taking the lead to change the system.
Therefore, the first pair of people who took the lead to change the system from the Old Testament to the New Testament was actually the elderly Simeon and Anna. This is truly something remarkable because frequently old people are conservative and hard to change. However, Simeon was changed, and Anna was also changed. Their praises and blessings were delivered from the Mosaic law. They took Christ as the subject and center of their praises and blessings. Neither of them spoke about the Mosaic law or the messages of the Old Testament. Rather, they spoke on the message of the New Testament. We may say that they were up-to-date. I hope that all of the elderly brothers would be like Simeon and that all of the elderly sisters would be like Anna.
Fifty years ago Brother Nee gave some fellowship regarding changing the old system in the book called The Normal Christian Church Life. I am here to solemnly confess my mistake before you. On the one hand, my work here in Taiwan was begun by the Lord, while on the other hand, it was arranged by Brother Nee. Before the work began in Taiwan, the Lord’s recovery already had twenty-seven years of history in mainland China from 1922 to 1949. During that period of over twenty years, I was there and experienced many things. So when I came to Taiwan, I reconsidered all of our situations and methods. Like someone sifting the grain on a farm, I sifted out and eliminated all the impractical and unrealistic methods that we had used in mainland China. However, some time ago I began to have some regrets inwardly that when we started the work in Taiwan in 1949 we did not insist on abolishing the Lord’s Day message meeting and did not insist on carrying out what Brother Nee had seen in The Normal Christian Church Life.
There are three points in Brother Nee’s speaking that are ten times heavier than what I had previously thought. First, he said that there is no need to maintain the Lord’s Day message meeting (Church Affairs, p. 61). Second, he said that the Lord’s Day message meeting is a waste (p. 74). What kind of speaking could be heavier than this? Third, he said that to have the Lord’s Day message meeting is to follow the customs of the nations and to do what the nations do (p. 61). When Brother Nee spoke of the nations, he was referring to the various denominations. This was a quotation from the type in the Old Testament of the history of the children of Israel. Leviticus and 2 Kings tell us that God charged His people that when they entered the good land of Canaan and when God gave them the land, they should not walk in the customs of the nations, which He would send away before them (Lev. 20:23; 2 Kings 17:7-8).
Those who have a comprehensive view of the Old Testament know that these customs refer to the nations’ worship of idols in the land of Canaan, their free worship of the pillars, Asherahs, and the idols of their gods in high places as spoken of in Deuteronomy 12. However, God said to the children of Israel that they should not follow the customs of the land. Rather, “the place which Jehovah your God will choose out of all your tribes to put His name, to His habitation, shall you seek, and there shall you go” (v. 5). God wanted the children of Israel to go to the place that He chose to build a dwelling place, a temple, for His name and to worship Him there three times a year. Later the children of Israel fell, and they followed the customs of the nations to worship God not in the temple but in various high places. When they worshipped God, they did so in the same way the nations worshipped the demons. Thus, they followed the customs of the nations.
In the same way, when God raised up the church in the age of the New Testament, He indicated clearly in the New Testament that the church should be sanctified and should never follow any custom or become worldly. However, in the two thousand years of Christian history, because of the degradation of the church, the church has deviated in many matters, especially in the matter of the Lord’s Day service and worship. The church has deviated from what God ordained in the New Testament—to worship Him in a way that is not under the influence of the world. Once God’s people deviated from the God-ordained, unique way of worship, they fell into the Gentiles’ way of meeting. They gathered the related people at a certain time, and one person spoke while everyone else listened.
About sixty years ago in 1922 God raised up His recovery in China. Brother Nee was there leading the first meeting. At that time he had not yet seen the proper way to meet, so we naturally followed the way of Christianity. We practiced meeting in this way for as long as eleven years. In 1933 I was called by the Lord to leave my job and went to see Brother Nee in Shanghai. At that time as I was with Brother Nee, he mentioned to me this matter of the Lord’s Day service, feeling that it was neither biblical nor pleasing to God, but that it was actually following the custom of the denominations. More than fifty years ago the Lord showed us this mistake, but we have not begun to eliminate this mistake until now. Brother Nee said that it would not be easy to overthrow this tradition because it would require everyone to overthrow it together. Through the light in the book of Ezra, we see that to change the system is actually to recover the genuine building of the temple of the Lord.