I do not know if you have seen this vision. Let me tell you how wonderful it would be if one day in the mind of God’s children there was no thought of attending worship services. We could eliminate this manner of listening to messages and, instead, have the entire church serve according to God’s word in the Bible. The Lord’s Day mornings would be for all the priests to serve man, and the Lord’s Day evenings would be for all the priests to serve God. On the Lord’s Day mornings whether or not you go to a meeting would not matter. It would also be acceptable to change the day of the gospel meeting to another day. The Lord’s Day mornings should always be for the priests to go and serve man; everyone must serve man. On the Lord’s Day evening everyone should serve God, offering up sacrifices. When you see such a people, then the church will be as it should be. When you can see that all the believers, once they are saved, are for the Lord, have the thought of saving others, and are working and caring for people, then you can really see the church.
Once a person is saved, he should always consider whom he should bring to salvation. Once a person is saved, he should be one who works; once a person is saved, he should be one who testifies. I do not know whether or not you have seen this. We must lead people to the point that the church is as it should be before God. I want to speak a very frank word. Today in the church the persons are right, but the situation is indeed wrong. The persons belong to God, the persons are right, but the situation is completely wrong. The situation is passive.
Therefore, when you go down from this mountain, you need to change not only the way of the work, so that now you have a definite center, but also the nature of the work. What is the nature of the work? It is to lead people to begin to work from the moment they are saved. The workers must lead the brothers to work and must not replace them by doing the work.
From now on there should not be much difference between the workers and the brothers, except that your spiritual condition before the Lord is strong, while theirs perhaps is weaker. In the matter of the work there is no difference, because they also are co-workers. It is only when you reach this point that you can understand the New Testament. The entire New Testament regards all of God’s children as co-workers, because they all are working. The only difference is that you have been sent to work, you have presented all of your time and energy, and you have been sent to different places to work. I especially want you to see this matter.
If within you are capable and strong enough, you will always push and always work, and you will be able to tear down our entire tradition.
The weight of tradition is very heavy. This tradition is oppressing. If you want to overthrow it, you must use considerable strength. This is not something quick. It will take a year or two before you can produce a new situation.
Let us first speak concerning the supply of the word. Then we will come back and talk about the way of the church.
Regarding the ministry of the word, for now we will use the following arrangement: We will have fifty-two topics for the regular year. In addition, we will have one or two topics on the side for use in the leap years. Please remember, when we are strong in the matter of preaching the gospel, many will be saved. Once many have been saved, there will be more trouble for the church because all kinds of people will come in. All kinds of fish will be pulled into the boat; therefore, we will need to take good care of them, providing the new believers with edification once a week.
We do not plan to change the topics for the meeting for edifying new believers. Every local church in every locality will speak the same topic on every Thursday or Friday. Tsingtao will do this; Shanghai will do this; Foochow will also do this. Every locality will be working in the same steps. From now on we do not plan to modify the topics used in the meeting for edifying new believers. It will not be one way this year and another way next year. We desire that every group of new believers that comes in would receive the same edification by being brought together in each locality every Thursday or Friday. We need to spend an entire year to touch all the main matters in the Word of God and the way to be a Christian. In this way there will be no lack with respect to the supply of the word for the new believers. Do not be afraid that something might be lacking if there is no Lord’s Day message meeting. At least with respect to the new believers, there will be no lack; the supply will still be there.
I hope that the brothers who go out to work will not change these topics, but simply work accordingly. If you want to change, let us wait until our next gathering to discuss how to make adjustments. Today I believe the topics which we have selected are already prevailing enough and sufficient to supply them.
Once we have the work related to the gospel, plus the fifty-two topics for the edification of the new believers, I believe it will be very easy to meet the need of a local church regarding the matters of the faith and our conduct. In this way the brothers will not need to search everywhere for food.