Our God is moving on; He is still working today. On one hand, the revelation of the proper church life in the Lord’s recovery is new; on the other hand, it is old, for the apostle Paul saw this revelation. However, over the generations this revelation was lost by Christianity. In this century God began to recover His original revelation. In the Western world, which has been saturated with traditional Christianity for centuries, God could not find the virgin land He needed for the recovery of His original revelation. For this reason, He was forced to go to poor China, where He gained a few of us and opened our eyes.
What the almighty God is doing in this age is to set up local churches to establish the proper church life. In a sense, this is to build up the ark in this age. This will terminate the crooked and perverted generation (Phil. 2:15) and usher in the kingdom age. In Matthew 24:37 and Luke 17:26 the Lord Jesus likened the situation of the present generation to that in the days of Noah. He said, “Just as the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as they were in those days before the flood, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day in which Noah entered into the ark, and they did not know that judgment was coming until the flood came and took all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matt. 24:37-39). Today people are busy working so that they can eat better food, drive better cars, own bigger homes, and find better marriages. If their marriage does not satisfy them, they feel that they can divorce their spouse and go on to another marriage. This age is an age of eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage. Nearly no one cares for God’s eternal purpose. Even among the believers, it is difficult to find some who care for God’s eternal purpose. Many have been Christians for decades, yet they have never even heard the term the eternal purpose of God. They have heard only of hell and heaven, things related to their own welfare, but they have never heard anything related to God’s eternal purpose.
About fifty years ago the moving God was forced by the hopeless situation of Christianity in the Western world to go to the heathen land of China, where He gained a few of us and opened our eyes. There we began to see a revelation of the proper church life. Although I was a young believer, the Lord opened my eyes to see this revelation for His recovery. In 1933 I was invited by a brother to have dinner at his home with a respected pastor. During dinner the pastor said to me, “Mr. Lee, if you will forget about the testimony of the local church, all the churches in our city will invite you to speak. Each Sunday a different church will invite you to give a message, and all our members will come to listen to you. Many doors will be open to you if you will simply close the door of your meeting place for the local church.” I replied, “Thank you, but I have a burden, and I already have enough to do.” Some missionaries warned me not to touch the matter of the church but only to preach the gospel. In my heart I said, “If you dropped me into the Pacific Ocean, I would still speak concerning the church to the fish.”
I have a burden because I have seen a revelation. Once we have seen something, we can never deny that we have seen it. When we see someone standing before us, we cannot say that we do not see that person. I was invited to Denmark in 1958 and was warmly welcomed, but the leaders there advised me not to speak anymore concerning the church. Because I did not take their friendly advice, I lost their friendship, but I gained more genuine fellowship. If I had taken their advice, I would not be with all the saints here today. I rejoice that my relationship with the saints in the Lord’s recovery is not a friendship but a genuine fellowship.
We are in an age in which God has a definite purpose. God is waiting for a group of people to terminate this age and usher in the coming kingdom age by being faithful to His revelation. I have no doubt that we will meet the Lord on the way of recovery. We are going on. The Lord is on the way to meet us, and we are on the way to meet Him. We are on the way of His recovery, the way of the proper church life. The way to have the proper church life is not only to meet on the proper ground of the church, nor is it merely to practice pray-reading, calling on the name of the Lord, or saying, “Amen. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!” The way to have the proper church life is to be in spirit to build the church.
In order to build the church, we need Christ, the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 7:14). Without Christ, there is no way to build the church. We can build the church only with the unsearchable riches of Christ. The purpose of every meeting, conference, and training is to minister the all-inclusive, unsearchable riches of Christ into the saints. The church is produced with Christ as the unique constituent. It is composed of the riches of Christ and constituted of all the elements and factors of Christ. The church is the enlargement and the expansion of Christ. In this expansion, which is the new man, there is no Greek or Jew; there is no human element (Col. 3:10-11). There is no Westerner, no Easterner, no British, no German, no French, no American, no Chinese, and no Japanese. In the church there is only Christ.
We need to see who Christ is. Christ is wonderful. We would need thousands of pages to describe who Christ is. Colossians 2:9 says that in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. Because the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, He is all-inclusive, and His riches are unsearchable (Eph. 3:8). Christ is rich in mercy, grace, love, joy, peace, humility, kindness, light, power, spirituality, and holiness. In order to be holy, we must have Christ. Holiness without Christ is vanity. Likewise, spirituality without Christ is empty. God made Christ everything to us. God made Him our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). Christ is truly rich. He is rich in wisdom, rich in righteousness for our justification, rich in sanctification for our holiness, and rich in redemption for the transfiguration of our body. For our past He was made our righteousness, for our present He was made our sanctification, and for our future He was made our redemption.