In this chapter I would like to say something further concerning our experiences from the past years until today. We surely have learned much from our past history. I was with the Brethren Assembly for seven and a half years and I was a very faithful attendant of their meetings. They always centered on typology, prophecy, dispensation, and exhortations to good conduct. I took down notes and studied all their publications. I also put many points into my old Chinese Bibles which are full of notes. Undoubtedly, I received something from them.
Then the Lord brought me from that Brethren situation into the Lord’s recovery. At that time our church life was wholly dependent upon Brother Nee’s messages. He first published twenty-four volumes of his paper which was called The Christian. That became a great help for us—the honest and sincere learners. We all treasured those twenty-four volumes and to some extent the messages conveyed in those twenty-four volumes got into our being. I can testify that this was so with me. I was able to present these messages in a doctrinal way in any place, at any time, and to any person who needed the truth. I could present them, not in a common way, but in a way of teaching them to pass on to others.
Brother Nee was very busy in those days and he was not so healthy. He always needed some kind of rest year round because he had a heart problem. It was very hard for him to give us conferences often. From 1932 through 1949 in the eighteen years I was with him, he gave not more than ten conferences. It was from 1940 through 1942 that Brother Nee carried out his burden to have a long training. He did his best to hold conferences during those two to three years mainly for the trainees’ sake. Those conferences were part of his training given to us. During those two or three years he would have a few days for a conference about every two months, but most of those messages were not printed.
Also, the atmosphere among the saints in the Lord’s recovery in those days was that the general attendants merely came to listen to messages to get inspiration. Very few of the saints took notes. The messages which Brother Nee gave were good messages and were very touching, rich, uplifting, living, and refreshing. Of course, there was much inspiration in these messages, so all who attended these meetings were excited. They received the help and they were happy, but they only retained inspiration. When there was a need to present the truths in Brother Nee’s messages to others, very few were capable of doing this. This has caused me to consider our situation very much. I realize the need to release the truth for the producing of the churches, for the bringing up, for the edifying, and for the building up of the churches. I surely have been cautioned by the situation in Brother Nee’s time. As far as the attendants of his meetings were concerned, his messages were good for inspiration and the ministry of life to help the saints to grow in life, but the saints did not have the view of being built up in the truth so they could continue to present the same truths to the needy ones.
Even among the co-workers at that time, only a few out of five hundred co-workers could present a truth in a doctrinal way. For example, Brother Nee shared a number of times on the truth of sanctification, and he made this truth very doctrinally clear. We all received the help in life through the inspiration of these particular messages. After we received the help in life, however, we did not retain much of the truth in our memory. Actually, we were not trained to present this truth to others, so most of the co-workers were not capable of teaching others by presenting the truth in an adequate way. This was the reason that, among us, only the works of three brothers were printed: Brother Nee’s books, Dr. Yu’s translations of the mystical books such as the autobiography of Madame Guyon, and a small portion of my books. This was the extent of the publishing work in China. Of course, I always preached what Brother Nee preached and taught. I was also very much occupied with the churches, so I had no thought of publishing books. I was fully occupied with the work, with the burden to take care of the churches.
When we came to Taiwan this afforded us a new environment to reconsider how to meet the need. First, I had a series of messages which I called “The Principle Truths of the Scriptures” within the year of 1949. That laid a very good foundation for the work in Taiwan. Some of you are still using these lessons. Through that I learned that to give messages for conferences could help the saints to grow in life very much, but that would not help the saints to be built up in the full knowledge of the truth. In 1 Timothy 2:4 Paul tells Timothy that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth. I realized that to have conferences or messages given on the Lord’s Day would surely not be adequate enough to build up the saints in the full knowledge of the truth.
From 1950 through 1961 we had three to four months of training every year. In every period of training there was always an item of the study of the Bible. The first book that we studied in this kind of training was Ephesians. In 1953 a book in Chinese was published with these messages on the book of Ephesians. Since 1954 I began to use the term Life-study. I used this word the first time for a general study of the entire Bible. We had a long period of training for about six months in which we received a general view of the New Testament and also a part of the Old Testament. Many saints became excited about this. These messages laid a very good foundation on the island of Taiwan.
I still discovered that even by that way not many saints in Taiwan could present the truth as it should be presented. I left Taiwan at the end of 1961 and I stayed in the United States for four years. From 1965 I went back to Taiwan about once every two years to hold a conference. Since 1961 in Taiwan there has not been this kind of training based upon the biblical truths, so this has left a situation of a lack of training in Taiwan.
During my first ten years in the United States I only held conferences plus summer trainings. I did not have the time to train the saints in the biblical knowledge. Then I realized that this was not adequate. The conferences mainly were to pick up a certain burden or an item and give anywhere from seven to ten messages. The messages in the conferences mainly impressed people with the point of life and rendered them some inspiration. However, this never performed an adequate job of building up the saints in the biblical education concerning Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. Due to this I began to consider that we needed annual trainings to go through the entire New Testament. Eventually, I intended not only to go through the New Testament, but also in the mean time to go through the Old Testament. As a result, we began with the two lines of the Old and New Testaments.