We should help the saints to build up a practice or a habit that every day they would spend a least thirty minutes in the Word. This can be done by taking ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the evening, and another ten minutes before going to bed. We all need to build up such a practice to spend at least thirty minutes a day to get into God’s Word. The best way is to charge the saints to study a book of the New Testament according to their choice. They should get into this book continually and every day. Some saints may decide to study the book of Romans or the book of Hebrews. They should study every day either three times of ten minutes each or one time of thirty minutes. We should charge them to pray-read two or three verses of this book every day. Then they have to study the accompanying message. We have messages on all the verses. The saints do not need to pray-read the Life-study messages, but they have to pray-read the biblical verses in order to get the help to enter into the truth conveyed in these few verses. They also need the help of the notes and the Life-study messages to enter into the truth. The saints need to take this way every day to get into the truth. After one year of studying the Bible in this way, there will be a solid change in the saints’ home life, private life, and church life. A few verses seems very slow but we must realize that breathing is a slow thing. We only breath a little at a time, but this continual practice accumulates and keeps us living. We may think this is too slow, but even if it took us ten years to finish the entire New Testament that would be wonderful. To pick up the truth contained in half of the New Testament after five years would be marvelous. We do not encourage the saints to be greedy and attempt to finish one book in one day. Then “their stomach will burst.” We should not encourage them in this way. Rather, we should slow them down. It is not a matter of quantity but a matter of endurance. You must endure this kind of Bible study. I think we need to remind them week after week, and sometimes the elders need to give the saints some direction, some encouragement, and some incentive.
Many of you leading ones have never encouraged the saints in the last five years to get into the truths in the way of using the Life-studies. You leave the matter of the saints’ getting into the Life-studies altogether up to them. You do not seem to care whether this is a dying matter or a living matter. This way of getting into the truth has become an orphan with no father and no mother, with no fostering. This has been the situation, and in some of the local churches, your problems all have been due to this one thing. As a family you did not feed your folks, your children, with the proper diet. How do you expect your family to be healthy? If your family does not have the proper diet, be prepared for disease, sickness, and trouble. Do not try to solve the problems by any other way. They will not work. The only way that works is to come back to the proper diet, to feed your family with the proper food.
Some of you had the feeling that the attendance to the meetings using the Life-study messages was reducing. Then you changed the content of the meeting to the so-called new beginners’ lessons. When I heard that this was your practice, I was anticipating that you would eventually have some trouble. I realized that the saints would starve. I was the first one who got charged to carry meetings with the new beginners’ lessons in 1948, and I tasted the real situation. It was absolutely not suitable to carry a meeting. Every time we practiced using the new beginners’ lessons for the meeting we failed. Since we have tasted failure time after time, why would we go back to this? When this report came to me I was really bothered, but I did not say a word.
The church in your locality is your family. Even if I am your grandfather that is still your family. I did not like to say anything, but I was waiting for news that you would come to me for help. I anticipated this, and now you have the trouble as a result of your diet. I cannot cure or heal you by just one visit. No visit can heal you. You must come back to the proper diet and charge your children to take the proper diet. Do not only ask them, but charge them. All the mothers in a family charge their little ones to eat properly. At every meal a proper mother charges her children to eat sufficiently and properly. In like manner, you should charge the saints to have a proper diet. You will see whether they will be healthy or not. We must realize that to shepherd a church is to take care of a big family with many folks who are young, old, and middle-aged. We must feed them properly, and we must consider what is the most nourishing, healing, and germ-killing diet. We have to make a choice.
Please do not think that I am “selling my cargo.” I beg you to forget this thought which comes from the Devil. I am not selling my cargo, but I am ministering the divine truth to God’s people. Therefore, as leading brothers try your best in your locality to stir up an atmosphere and to create a hunger and thirst in the saints after the Lord’s truth. Tell them that the truth is in the unique holy Word and that the best help to usher them into the Word is the Recovery Version with the notes and all the Life-studies. Of course, we should not practice anything legal. We should not make these things a legal matter that the saints are required to do. However, if the saints do love the Lord’s recovery, they must get themselves fed all the time with the healthy food that they may be strong. As a result of eating a proper, regular diet, the saints will be strong and the Lord will have a strong testimony.