The four Gospels were written by the early disciples based on what they had read of Christ as the living Word. First they read something of the Lord, and then they put what they had read into writing for us to read. Before John wrote chapters fourteen through seventeen of his Gospel, he “read” the Word by hearing the Lord. Some of what the disciples read of the Lord was His spoken words, but some of what they read were the living, walk, and acts of the Lord Jesus. They saw how Jesus acted, behaved, and dealt with people. Then after they saw all these things, they put them into writing for us to read. They were the first ones who received the Word; we are the next generation of those who receive it.
The four Gospels reveal Christ as the living Word, whom the disciples read day by day for three and a half years. At that time the Lord Jesus was the Word, but He was not the Spirit. In the Acts and the Epistles, however, the Lord Jesus was no longer only the Word to the disciples. By that time the disciples were dealing with Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). It was through crucifixion and resurrection that this Jesus, who is the Word, was transferred into the Spirit.
In our own experience, however, we need to see how we can practically enjoy Christ as the Word transferred into the Spirit. It is hard to say whether today we are dealing with and enjoying the Lord as the Word or as the Spirit. If we simply study the word in the way taught by seminaries, for example, we will enjoy the Lord mainly as knowledge in the mind, although by His mercy we may unconsciously enjoy Him a little as the Spirit. Today, however, we are enjoying the Lord as the Word more in our spirit than in our mind. Eventually we will enjoy Him entirely as the Spirit in our spirit. All that we know of Him as the Word must be transferred into the Spirit. Then eventually we will enjoy the Lord not only as the Word but also as the life-giving Spirit.
The way to transfer Christ as the Word into the Spirit is to open our heart, open our spirit, and exercise our spirit to pray. In the four Gospels there is the Word who was “read” by the early disciples, and in the Acts there is the Spirit. Between the record of the four Gospels and the first part of Acts, the disciples prayed for ten days. It was by prayer that the Word was transferred into the Spirit. From that time on Peter became a praying person. This is why in chapter six Peter said, “We will continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the word” (v. 4). Prayer comes first, then the ministry of the word. To “continue steadfastly in prayer” means that their prayer never ceased. Acts 2:42 confirms that all the disciples continued steadfastly in prayer.
In Acts 10 Cornelius sent his servants to call Peter. At that time what was Peter doing? He was on the housetop praying (v. 9). In the four Gospels we see a talking Peter, not a praying Peter. Today too many of the brothers are talking brothers. Sometimes they talk about the messages, but sometimes they just gossip. There is not much praying. In Acts, however, the talking Peter became a praying person. The disciples had already read Christ as the Word in the four Gospels. They already knew the Word clearly. Now what they needed was to transfer the Word into the Spirit by praying.
Consider what the one hundred and twenty disciples prayed for during those ten days before Pentecost. Someone may think that Peter prayed for his wife, that John and James prayed for their father’s fishing business; that Andrew prayed for his home in Galilee, and that Mary and Martha prayed for Lazarus. However, this is not so. The Lord Jesus had told them to wait for the promise of the Father. He said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (1:8). In verse 22 Peter said concerning the selection of Matthias, “One of these should become a witness of His resurrection with us.” They needed to select one to make up the number twelve, so they could adequately bear witness of Jesus. The disciples must have realized that for them to be the Lord’s witnesses required that Christ be wrought into them.
By these two passages we can realize what the disciples must have been praying during those ten days. They must have said, “Lord, we have given up everything other than You. We were Galileans, but we have given up our home and our country. Now we are here simply as empty vessels. This little upper room is just like an altar, and we are lying on the altar waiting to be filled by You, possessed by You, taken over by You, and mingled with You. Lord, we have been reading all that You are for three and a half years. Now You have gone to the heavens, but You told us we must be Your witnesses on the earth. How can we do this? Lord, we are here open to You. Come to fill us. Come to take us over. Come to possess us, occupy us, and saturate us.”
The disciples did not pray in a superficial way. Their prayer must have been a deep one. The one hundred and twenty had given up their homes, their relatives, their jobs, their goals, their fame, and their everything. The Lord had told them that they would be His witnesses, but they could not be His witnesses without being filled with Him. They needed the Lord to take them over and possess, occupy, fill, saturate, empower, and equip them. This must have been the content of their prayer. It was by this prayer, praying what they had been reading of Christ as the Word, that what they read was transferred into the Spirit. Therefore, from the day of Pentecost they were truly one with the Lord in spirit, and the Lord was one with them.
This is why when Saul of Tarsus persecuted Stephen and the other disciples, the Lord Jesus said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (9:4). When Saul asked, “Who are You, Lord?,” the Lord answered, “I am Jesus, whom you persecute.” (v. 5). Saul may have thought, “I persecuted Peter, James, John, and Stephen, but I never persecuted Jesus.” However, by speaking to Saul in this way, the Lord revealed that to persecute His disciples was to persecute Him. Jesus was one with Peter, John, James, and all the disciples, because He was not only the Word but also the Spirit. From the day of Pentecost, the Word had been transferred into the Spirit. From that day the early disciples dealt not only with the Lord as the Word but also with Christ as the Spirit.
The principle here is that whenever we read, hear, or know something of the Lord, we have to pray. We must keep this principle not only as individuals but also in our corporate life. The proper way to have a message meeting is that after the message we leave time for all the brothers and sisters to pray together. We should not simply give them a message and close the meeting. We have to pray to transfer the Word we hear into the Spirit. In the Spring of 1961 I was with the young people in Manila. During all those days, they spent more time praying than listening to the messages. For about two weeks, morning and night, those young people prayed. They prayed before coming to the meeting, and they prayed in the meeting. There was no real start to the meetings. Everyone simply prayed when they came. The prayer lasted for a long time, sometimes almost an hour before the message began. The message was finished in thirty or forty minutes, and then they prayed for about another hour. There were about one hundred young people, and all of them prayed, sometimes fifty or sixty in each meeting. That was a real move of the Lord in Manila that prepared them for some persecution that was to come. The prayer in that conference strengthened the whole church there. It also laid a good foundation for the church in Manila so that even today two-thirds of the members in the church are young people.
I do not mean that we should change the form of our meetings. Rather, we need to change our attitude, realization, and way of life. In the poor situation today, many people do not pray. They merely “come to church” at 11:00 A.M. on the Lord’s Day to sit and listen to a message. We have to turn this situation around. We must be revolutionary to have a new kind of situation. The brothers and the sisters must be helped to learn how to pray and to have a prayer life. Then when they come to the meeting, they will come to pray. Isaiah 56:7 says, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.” All the brothers and sisters should come to the meeting to pray. We should not have too much singing; rather, we need more prayer to dig our heart, prepare our heart, and open our spirit. Then we can have a time for the ministry of the word, and when we speak the word, it will be living and will strike the spirit of the hearers. After the word is given, we still should have an additional time for prayer.
We should allow all of the attendants in the meeting to pray. At certain times in Taipei, there was not enough time for everyone to pray one by one, so the brothers and sisters began to pray at the same time, two or three thousand people all opening their mouths to pray. It was not that we encouraged them to do this; they did it spontaneously because everyone wanted to pray. At the beginning of 1961 we had a conference on the building of God. This conference was wonderful simply due to the fact that all the attendants spent much time in prayer. We must transfer the Word into the Spirit by our prayer.
In the four Gospels the early disciples had the Word for three and a half years, but they did not yet have the Spirit. At that time Christ was only the Word to them. It was through their prayer for ten days that Christ was transferred to them in their experience as the Spirit. From that time on they became a praying people, dealing not only with the Word but also with Christ as the life-giving Spirit. We all must keep the principle of transferring the word we have heard into the Spirit by our prayer.