In Taipei we have more than four thousand brothers and sisters in the meetings. This number may not be large compared to the total population, but if over four thousand brothers and sisters all speak the word of the Lord in every place, this will be a tremendous matter. The Lord Jesus said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). We are the Lord’s witnesses; therefore, we are those who speak. The members of our family, our relatives, our friends, and our neighbors are our Jerusalem. We must speak every day, even if our audience is weary of hearing it. Perhaps one day if some calamity befalls them, they will remember what we have said to them. If the four thousand brothers and sisters in Taipei speak every day and everywhere, after ten years would they not have saturated Taipei with their speaking?
However, if we only have a big meeting where one person speaks and the rest listen, when you bring your relatives or friends to such a meeting, they will say, “What is the difference? When we go to other places, they also do the same thing, and the pastor speaks even better than you do. He is eloquent, his voice is clear and loud, and his knowledge is not inferior to yours—he is better than you.” If we meet in this way, it is not easy to subdue them. But if they come to our meeting and everyone speaks—the young ones speak, the older ones speak, the brothers speak, and the sisters also speak—then they will be amazed and will surely be moved.
When I came back to Taiwan this time, a brother told me that a certain one was invited to a small group gathering, and when he saw everyone speaking there, he was very surprised and said, “You are really wonderful!” Therefore, when we gather together, we all must be able to speak. We must be able not only to speak, but also to speak with truth, with weight, not with nonsense, and to speak golden and precious things in every word. This, of course, will astonish people and move them.
Therefore, we must exercise to do two things. First, we must exercise to go on in the word of the Lord. Many of you have a college education, and your vocabulary and expression are with a collegiate style. This has not been acquired in two or three days. It has required at least four years, or eight semesters, of a college environment under the influence of the proper textbooks, instruction, and teachers. After four years you then have the collegiate style and character. You have not only the style but also the deposit within you. If during the present changing of the system every one of us is faithful and everyone endeavors, if everyone labors in the Word and prays conscientiously, I believe that after three or four years all the brothers and sisters among us will have the bearing of a spiritual collegiate. At that time, you will not only be willing and able to speak, but you also will have things to speak about. You will have something real, and you will not merely say, “It is so good to believe in the Lord Jesus. If you believe in Him, you will have peace and joy. I used to provoke my wife to anger, but now I do not throw chopsticks anymore.” Because most people today are somewhat philosophical in their thinking, they do not like to listen to such things. You must preach to them the truths in the Bible as the gospel.
Last year when I was in Texas, two or three hundred Chinese, many of them having Ph.D. degrees, were invited to the meeting. I preached the gospel to them, speaking to them a message entitled “The Triune God Dispensing Himself into the Tripartite Man.” They listened with interest and were fascinated while I spoke to them. By the Lord’s mercy, we have dug out the fundamental truths and even the deep and mysterious things in the Bible, and we have also put them into print. My only fear is that the brothers and sisters may not have the heart for these things, and even if they do have the heart, there is no way if they do not labor. I hope that among the hundred of you in this meeting, at least sixty, including the older ones, are digging into the study of the Bible. Do not say that you are already sixty years old; a sixty-year-old is still very young. If you learn a little more, you will still have twenty useful years for the Lord. In summary, we all must labor on the Word of the Lord.
We cannot take the old way of Christianity. The old way of Christianity is to put the responsibility of speaking for the Lord completely on the pastors. Many Christians think that the pastors are the ones who have studied and that speaking is their job. Thus they spend money to hire a pastor to give them a sermon on Sunday. This is completely wrong. We must tear this down and stir up every one of our brothers and sisters. Each one loves the Lord, each one loves the Word of the Lord, and each one is willing to labor in order to study the Word. In your study you may read a book of the Bible such as the Gospel of Matthew, or you may read about a topic such as justification by faith.