The situation in Christianity today is that all the believers have been divided by all kinds of concepts, all kinds of understandings of the same Bible. The Bible is one book, but there are thousands of differences in the interpretation of this one book. When any two believers have differing interpretations of the Bible, each will feel that he or she is being scriptural and the other is not. As a result, they will fight against one another and condemn one another. However, the Bible consummates not in any believer’s concept or interpretation but in God’s building.
I speak from experience. When I was a young believer, the time of the rapture was my favorite subject. I was addicted to it. Wherever I went, I liked to talk about this subject. Pursuing this subject caused me to feel that I was scriptural, and it caused me also to be divisive. One day the Lord opened my eyes to see that He does not care for our being scriptural. Rather, the Lord cares for a proper building; He is seeking a proper church life. After I saw what the Lord truly desires, the veil of seeking to be scriptural was peeled from my eyes. Afterward, whenever a believer came to me to discuss this kind of subject, I had no answer. I would only say, “Praise the Lord! You have been saved, and I also have been saved. You have the Lord’s life, and I also have His life. Eventually, you will be in the New Jerusalem, and I also will be there. Hallelujah! You love the Lord, and I love Him too. You and I are truly one. Regardless of the time of rapture, we all will eventually be raptured. We are one.”
At that time a local church was raised up in my town. We began to meet not on the ground of going to heaven, the ground of spirituality, the ground of holiness, the ground of the second blessing, or the ground of being scriptural, but on the ground of the unique oneness of all the saints. When we began to have the Lord’s table, there were eleven brothers, and these eleven brothers held many different concepts. If someone had stirred up our minds with our different concepts, we eleven brothers would have immediately begun to fight. However, by the Lord’s mercy we dropped all our different concepts. Previously, I had strongly advocated baptism by immersion, insisting that we needed to do everything according to the Scriptures. Three or four others did not like this way of baptism. They thought that sprinkling was a more convenient way and that immersing people was too difficult for the sick and the elderly. They also felt that there was no difference between the outward forms of immersion and sprinkling. However, when we began to take the Lord’s table as the local church, we all agreed not to fight. We were only for the oneness. We no longer insisted on baptism by immersion or by sprinkling. Thus, we began to have the Lord’s table in a joyful way. At that time we still held our different concepts, but by the Lord’s mercy we did not insist on anything. In this way we began to have the church life.
We all need to see what the Lord desires. His goal is not a certain method of baptism. He is seeking the proper church life, where His lovers and seekers are one in Him, with Him, and for Him. The proper church life does not depend on any kind of concept or teaching; it is simply in Christ, with Christ, and for Christ. This is what the Lord desires today.
Since the Lord’s recovery came to the United States, many Christian groups have risen up to oppose the recovery. This opposition occurs because in the Lord’s recovery we preach that believers should forget about their practices and their concepts in order to come to the genuine ground of oneness. This is not a small matter. A pastor may have worked hard for many years to establish a denomination based on the teaching of holiness. If such a one hears that those in the Lord’s recovery teach that believers should forget about holiness and come to the unique ground of oneness, he will surely do everything he can to fight against the recovery. This is why the Lord’s recovery is suffering by being attacked from every side.
The Lord’s recovery is being attacked from every side, but it is also prevailing on every side because the truth is with the recovery. No one can claim that holiness is the unique ground of oneness. Holiness may be used by Satan as a divisive factor, but it could never be the uniting factor. Sooner or later many seekers and lovers of the Lord will realize, “I must be for the Lord’s Body. I should not care for spirituality, holiness, or the second blessing.” When their eyes are opened, many will drop their denominations. When they leave their denominations, it will stir up the pastors to fight against the Lord’s recovery. Nevertheless, we declare that we are not here for holiness, spirituality, the second blessing, or being scriptural. Rather, we are here for the genuine oneness on the unique ground of oneness so that the Lord can build us all together.
We need to see what the genuine oneness and the unique ground of oneness are. Before the children of Israel crossed the river Jordan, the Lord showed Moses the good land, and then Moses died according to the Lord’s word (Num. 27:12-14; Deut. 34:1-5). However, before Moses died, he was greatly concerned for the children of Israel. He told them that they had no right to choose the place for their public worship of God. They could worship God privately anywhere, but they had no right to choose the place to come together to worship God corporately. God would choose the unique place among the twelve tribes where He would cause His name to dwell and where He would set up His habitation (12:11-14, 17-18). Regardless of how far from that place any of the children of Israel lived, they all had to go there three times a year for the public worship of God (16:16). They had no right to offer their burnt offerings, their vows, their firstfruits, or any of the things that belonged to God in any other place. They were all required to go to the one unique place chosen by God where God’s name and His habitation were established.
Many Bible readers do not know the significance of this point; they do not know why God commanded His people to worship Him publicly only in the place of His choosing. God commanded this so that His people would be kept in oneness. If the children of Israel had been given the freedom to set up centers of worship wherever they chose, many centers of worship would have been set up not long after they entered into the good land, and they would have been immediately divided. The tribe of Dan might have said, “We are far to the north. It is not convenient for us to go down to Jerusalem to worship. God is omnipresent. If God is with those in Jerusalem, why would God not be here with us in Dan? Let us set up a center of worship here in Dan.” However, God had the foresight and the wisdom to warn them and charge them not to set up other centers of worship but to go to the place He would choose to establish His name and set up His habitation. By doing this, the oneness among them would spontaneously be kept. Based on this charge, even today no Jew dares to build a temple because the Jews know that God has chosen Mount Moriah as the unique place for His people to build the temple that bears His name and is for His worship (2 Chron. 3:1). They can build synagogues elsewhere, but they dare not build the temple, because there is only one unique ground on which God’s house can be built. Today they are still waiting for that ground to be returned to them.