On the day of Pentecost three thousand people were saved. After they were saved, they had meetings at various homes, and they all spoke. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they immediately began to speak. We all have had this kind of experience—the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit, the more we speak, and the more we speak, the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit. This kind of gathering builds up our spirit and the spirits of other people. Hence, in the Epistles Paul said that in the Christian meetings there should be mutuality (1 Cor. 14:26-27, 29). There should not be only one person speaking while everyone else listens. Rather, the meetings should be mutual. You build me up, and I build you up—this is the building up of the Body of Christ.
Today we cannot see the Body of Christ in Catholicism or Protestantism. Although the light among us is very strong, and we receive much speaking, when we look at the condition of our meetings, we cannot see much of the reality of the Body of Christ. Three hundred people gather here on the Lord’s Day, but only one speaking brother functions, and the rest of the people remain silent. There are even some saints who have been meeting with us for several decades, but they have never opened their mouths in the meeting or prayed publicly among us. In this kind of condition we neither have the reality of the Body of Christ nor do we see the Body of Christ. Instead, we only have a religious service.
We see from the history of the beginning of our work in Taiwan that the Lord is rich in mercy. When we first arrived in Taiwan, the brothers and sisters did not have much money, and the church also did not have much money. But in His sovereignty, the Lord sent two overseas Chinese brothers from the Philippines to Taipei to buy half of the land in front of the meeting hall for the church, about one thousand and eighty square feet. Later, the Lord opened the way for me to go to Southeast Asia, and a brother willingly received the burden to take care of the financial need for the work in Taiwan. He did this for a period of ten years. What the Lord did was truly His mercy. However, even though the Lord has blessed us like this, we still keep one thing that is not blessed by the Lord, that is, our Lord’s Day meeting in which one person speaks and everyone else listens.
We are fellowshipping this matter with you and particularly with the elderly saints because the elderly saints among us are not only our seniors in age but also have a long and precious history. Through all these years, the Lord has been releasing the truth and supplying life continuously in His recovery, taking care of the saints in life and somewhat perfecting them in the truth. The elderly saints have been in the midst of this precious history of the Lord’s recovery. We thank the Lord and treasure this history with the elderly saints.
Today we need to apologize to the elderly saints that in our service to the church we have not followed the light that Brother Nee saw several decades ago regarding changing the Lord’s Day message meeting. This was our negligence and mistake, and now we owe something to the Lord and to the elderly saints. Thus, we resolve to put the change into practice. However, we must consider the elderly saints who have been accustomed to meeting in this way now for several decades. If we change the Lord’s Day meeting too quickly, we are afraid that according to their feeling the change will not only be an inconvenience but also a cause for sorrow. Once there is no more Lord’s Day message meeting, they may have nowhere to go and may not know what to do. Moreover, if they want to bring new ones, they may not know the proper place to bring them to. We have to consider all these matters. When we look at a matter, we cannot and will not merely consider it from one side. So in these three years we have not made it a regulation to completely abolish the Lord’s Day message meeting. Rather, when we fellowshipped with the elders, we stressed that we should maintain this meeting in various meeting halls on the Lord’s Day morning.
On the other hand, we all have to be clear that many saints have joined the training ever since it began. After passing through the training, they went out door-knocking and brought over twenty-eight thousand people to salvation. Among these baptized ones, around five thousand were brought into the church life. These new ones who are being brought in are not meeting at the meeting halls but in the communities. From this perspective, these three years have not been a waste. This is an increase to the church in Taipei.
Now we have received the Lord’s leading to make a resolution with the elders and co-workers to stop the Lord’s Day message meetings, but please do not worry. Brother Nee said in the past that we could not abolish the Lord’s Day message meeting because we did not have something to replace it. But now after a few years of training and many experiments, we have found that we have a new way to meet, not only for our Lord’s Day meeting but even for our other regular meetings. I believe that the elderly brothers and sisters will all welcome the change of system with happiness and joy. With the change of system, our meetings will be based on two matters—first, the building up of the spirits of the saints, and second, the building up of the Body of Christ. These two matters must be implemented by the new way of meeting that we are implementing in changing the system. The meetings in the old system could not build up the church, but the meetings in the new system are directed toward building up the spirits of all the saints and building up the Body of Christ.
I hope that all the elderly saints would see that when we go forward, they will be the most useful people in the Lord’s Body. Never think that because you are old, do not have much physical strength, and cannot be very active, that you cannot follow the new system. You must realize that in the new system there are other matters besides door-knocking, which occupies only five percent of the new system. We elderly saints can pray, and we also have spiritual knowledge. We need only to change our habit of not speaking and begin to speak at home and also to our friends and relatives and in the meetings.
After the change in system, our meetings will not regulate who can speak and who cannot speak, and there will be no such thing as the preaching of messages. All the saints will be able to speak and pray in the meetings. If every one of us speaks and prays, the meetings will be living. The more we speak, the more our spirits will be built up, and at the same time, we will build up others. I really hope that we elderly saints would do three things—pray much at home, come to the meetings and pray, and open our mouths to speak at home, to our friends and relatives, and in the meetings. If all of us are willing to do this, the change in system will be successful, the Lord will be full of joy, and we also will be full of joy.