Many saints came to Brother Watchman Nee and to me a number of times, inquiring why the Lord had given us so much light from the Scriptures. They confessed that they read the same Bible that we did, yet they were not able to receive light as we did. The answer is that if we go along with the Lord, the Lord’s Word will be opened to us; then we will have the light. The divine light, according to the typology of the Old Testament, is in the tabernacle (Exo. 25:31-40). If we are in the proper church life, we will realize the oneness, the building of God, and we will have the divine light. Then to be sure, the Bible will be opened to us. As we are practicing the church life and come to read His holy Word, we will be full of light; it will shine. Why are there so many Christians today who are spiritually blind? It is because they have given up the church life. They have forsaken the building of God’s house, the church, and have established something by themselves and of themselves. This truly offends the Lord.
If we are seeking the Lord’s mind and heart, we need to do our best by His grace to practice the oneness if at all possible. This will please the Lord very much and revolutionize our entire Christian life. We will be full of the Lord’s presence, blessing, authority, power, and strength. Even our gospel preaching will be powerful. The power and impact of our gospel preaching is related to the church life. The most powerful gospel preaching is the preaching of the church. When we as children of God practice the oneness of the Body and come together to serve the Lord, there will be an impact. Our gospel preaching as the church and through the church will bring thousands of people to the Lord. We have had this experience. As the church, it is easy to preach the gospel. A number of times when I talked with my missionary friends in the Far East, I said, “Brothers, you have given up your homes, your relatives, your country, and everything to come here. You have sacrificed all of these for the Lord’s sake and for the gospel’s sake. We admire what you have done, but regrettably, when you began your work of gospel preaching, you did not preach the gospel with the church life and church ground in view. As a result you have lost your impact. If you had come here to be one with the church, you would have realized the impact.”
The first record of the church’s preaching of the gospel was with the one hundred and twenty on the day of Pentecost. Acts 2:14 says that Peter stood up with the eleven, not by himself. Because the whole Body rose up to preach the gospel, there was the impact. In Taiwan today it is very easy to bring people to the Lord. Even now we have so many hundreds of baptized ones that we cannot adequately care for them. The church family has so many children that we are almost afraid to preach the gospel and gain more. This gospel preaching is being done not by a few individuals but by the church.
The church in Antioch sent out two workers in Acts 13, but their going out was in the Body. The Body was their support and backing. When Barnabas and Saul were sent out, the church laid hands on them. In this way the church was proclaiming that it was one with Barnabas and Saul. It is as if the church said, “If you go, we go with you.” They went out from the Body and with the Body. Not only so, their going out from the Body was to do the work of the Body, not the work of a sect. Therefore, if we intend to set up a meeting which is not open to all of the Lord’s children, and we maintain certain regulations and conditions for fellowship and particular revelations that separate us from other believers, we are in division and in danger of becoming a sect.
Although there are already a great number of divisions and sects in existence today, they are the doings of others. On our part we should not set up another sect, and neither should we go along with any sect. We need to be open to all the children of God regardless of their background. We should go along with the believers, but we should not go along with a sect or organization. Our standing and ground is one of openness to all the Lord’s children regardless of their particular backgrounds. As long as they are the Lord’s children, we are open to receive them and ready to join together with them. It is not a small matter to maintain the standing that we receive all genuine believers and stand on the ground that includes all the Lord’s children. Other believers may want to remain in their respective groups or organizations, but they bear the responsibility for this before the Lord. We have only one condition, regulation, and rule—we must be in Christ. Regardless of the minor matters such as whether or not they believe in speaking in tongues, baptism by immersion, or other matters, as long as they are believers in Christ, they are our brothers. We are ready to come together with them, and we are one hundred percent open to them.
We need to be very careful in touching the matter of doctrinal error. We cannot tolerate error in the doctrine concerning the person and work of Christ. For example, some people today profess that they are Christians, yet they say that the Lord Jesus is not God. They claim that He was not born of the virgin Mary, that He did not die on the cross for our sins, and that He did not resurrect bodily. These are antichrists (1 John 2:22), today’s modernists whom we cannot tolerate. However, there are some believers whose views are different from ours in doctrine or in practice. If some believe in baptism by sprinkling instead of by immersion, for example, we should be careful not to condemn this as an error in the category of heresy; rather, this is only a matter of different opinions. Although we do not insist on any doctrine or practice, we strongly defend the saving faith (Jude 3), the teachings concerning the person and work of Christ.
Receiving all real believers regardless of their doctrinal views and practices is presented in Romans 14 and 15. In these two chapters, the apostle Paul told us that although some believers insist on eating meat, some insist on eating herbs, others regard certain days, and still others do not regard them, we need to take a general attitude toward them all. Those believers who eat meat should not criticize those who do not and vice versa. If one believer regards a certain day, he should not criticize the one who does not. Because God has received every kind of believer, we have to receive them also. If we practice such a receiving of believers, the oneness among the Lord’s children will be maintained.