I have considered before God many times for many years, and I deeply believe that the help rendered to people by the Lord’s Day morning preaching cannot match what God desires to do. Frankly speaking, if we are not careful, the Lord’s Day preaching will become a waste and a loss. It is best to turn that message into gospel work. The Lord’s Day is the time for everyone to be mobilized to go out to save people. Thursday is the time for all the new believers to be edified, and perhaps Saturday is the time for the brothers and sisters to be gathered together to be mutually edified. On special occasions in a locality, an apostle may have a three to five-day conference. After finishing, he may go to another place to have a three to five-day conference. In this way you will see that the church will be very balanced in the matter of the supply of the word, and her way will be straight.
Today we are not talking about the locality which is the center of the work, but the localities outside the center of the work. They cannot bear the burden of a Lord’s Day message meeting. Once this burden is present, you almost have to place a worker there. Once you do this, you have quite a problem. This is the time every brother should rise up to serve God. We cannot have a system of workers.
The pressure of tradition is very strong. When we first begin to push against it, it is very heavy. The pressure on my spirit is heavy. We need to push against it day after day. After two or three years the situation will change. Then all the brothers and sisters will desire to have the gospel preaching work on the Lord’s Day. If you say, “Let us preach a message to you,” no one will want to listen to your message. They will see immediately that this is not the church. If, after two years, you send these brothers and sisters to another place or another church and ask them to listen to messages, they will not be able to sit still. They will sense that they should not be there, that their being there makes them just like members of Catholicism, where everything is done by a priest and where they could not have a portion.
The situation of the church today is altogether not according to the New Testament! Therefore, we need to reverse it. God wants to take the way of recovery; we also need to take the way of recovery. We should always lead the brothers and sisters to the point where they are the ones working and serving. There is service toward the sinners, and there is also service toward the new believers. Among them there is also the mutual edifying as in 1 Corinthians 14, that is, help rendered mutually by the saints from the word before God.
If you live in a locality for a while, you can add your portion of the word to the Saturday meetings. Even if you are not a worker, you can still add your portion of the word to the Saturday meetings.
If there is a need for further spiritual supply, we can immediately release many workers to go out and travel from place to place. Formerly, you fixed them one by one in a single place, but today it should not be so. They must be mobile, going from one place to another. They should go out, being in one place for three to five days and in another place for three to five days.
If we work in this way, I believe that the situation in every locality will be very balanced, and we do not know how many times the increase in numbers will be multiplied. It is a great thing, a most wonderful thing, for the church to preach the gospel! For the church to preach the gospel in the Lord’s Day meeting is the most glorious work! If we can have a breakthrough in the way of the Lord’s recovery at this time, if the church can rise up to preach the gospel, there will be the dawning of a new day everywhere. This does not mean that there must be a few highly gifted persons in the church, such as Philip or Charles Stanley, Whitefield, or Wesley. The power of the church’s gospel preaching is much greater than their power!
If we want a five-talented member to be manifested, it may take twenty or even fifty years to produce one. How difficult that would be! But if we take the five worst brothers here in Kuling and put them together, there will be five talents. If we put the five least spiritual ones together, there will also be five talents. If we expect to see a five-talented member rise up, we will realize that there are not very many in the church. But if the church preaches the gospel, then the effect will not be that of only five five-talented members, but that of ten, one hundred, one thousand, or ten thousand five-talented members. Moreover, we will continue to see this effect everywhere. Whether or not the gospel can get through is not a matter of preaching by the workers, it is a matter of preaching by the church. The church will overturn the world.
Therefore, today before God you must see this vision accurately. Your view must be accurate, and you must thoroughly see the Lord’s spiritual revelation. “O Lord, You place the work on the church.” The Head directs the Body, not individual members. It is necessary that the entire Body develop all of its strength. Therefore, I desire that there would be the local representations of the Body in China. Do not think that the Body of Christ is something in the heavens. Looking for a local church in the heavens would be idealistic. You must see that the Body of Christ is manifested on the earth. The Body of Christ is spiritual to the point that it can be manifested on the earth.