Some dear ones who have a tender heart and who sympathize with the saints may say that some have a job and they work long hours and then they have a long drive and so they are worn out. I agree with this, but why in Elden hall was the attendance that high? Does it mean that all the saints there were jobless? Actually, today more are jobless. Today the unemployment is high. Twelve years ago at Elden hall nearly no one was jobless. So this is not a good excuse. Another excuse is that most of the sisters have to take care of their children. Again, what about Elden? Did all those sisters not have children? Were all the sisters single? There is no excuse! The only reason is that the enjoyment of the victory of Christ has been much reduced.
If you have ever met Christ in the morning, surely you expect to come to the meeting in the evening. The enjoyment of Christ, the meeting with Christ, always sends you to the church, to the meeting. Not only so, if you have been enjoying the victory of Christ over the enemy during the day, you are just equipped and ready and expecting and waiting for the meeting time. You would come to the meeting with shouting, with rejoicing, with praising. You come with the expectation that you can have a time to give a testimony that Christ today has defeated the enemy in you. Dear saints, the principle of the Bible is precious. God’s salvation is for a feast, and a feast always implies an assembly.
If you don’t come to the assembly, this is a strong proof that you are short of God’s salvation. You don’t enjoy Christ that much; you don’t participate in Christ’s victory that much. So your appetite, your hunger, your thirst after the meetings is not that high. This is the principle: if you enjoy Christ, surely you will have an aspiration to come to the meeting. If you participate in the victory of Christ you would hate that the day is too long. You would like to shorten the day so that you could come to the meeting sooner.
If you don’t participate in the victory of Christ, you always feel that the day is too short. Six-thirty would come quickly and you have not yet finished dinner. How could you go to the meeting? If this is your sensation, it proves you haven’t participated in Christ’s victory today. There is no need to say that you need to participate in the victory of Christ that much. If you just participate in Christ’s victory a little bit, it will encourage you, it will stir you up, to come to the meeting, the earlier the better. And when you come you will look for the front-row seats. When you have been defeated, you just are so reluctant to come to the meeting. Then you come in late and although some vacant seats might be in the front you would not take them. You would sit at the back. This is a sign that you need the victory of Christ.
Apparently, it seems that God’s enemy has defeated God in gaining man. Look at today’s world. All men have gone from God. All men have been captured by Satan. They also have their assemblies. You just consider every night how many gatherings, how many congregations, how many meetings, how many assemblies the fallen people have. Going to a theater is to go to a kind of an assembly. Going to a night club is to go to a kind of an assembly. Today the entire world has been captured by Satan. Satan does have his train of captives. But praise the Lord! Christ has won the victory. At least He has won a people. He has captured us! In every place there is the need of some proper Christian assembly that can constitute a testimony of the victory of Christ. All the people have become captives in Satan’s train but we are here! We wouldn’t join that train. We have no share in that kind of an assembly. We are here meeting as a testimony to the victory of Christ over Satan. We need to do this every day, the more the better, and as much as we can. Don’t you believe that the saints at Mount Sinai met every day?
Then you might ask, What about our living? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? How shall we be clothed? Don’t come to me. You had better come to the Bible to see what those people did at Mount Sinai. Have you forgotten? Manna came down, and living water flowed out. Then you would ask, Do you really mean it? If we meet every day, would manna come down? I really mean it! If you don’t believe me, let us try. Let us meet every night and see whether we will be short of food. The Lord Jesus’ words were to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
At Mount Sinai the ancient saints met every day. For forty years those nearly two million people only met and traveled. They just handled one thing, the tabernacle. They met around the tabernacle; they traveled with the tabernacle. That is all. They didn’t do anything else. For forty years they had no job: no farming, no industry, nothing. That was a clear type. Then on the day of Pentecost, the New Testament saints did the same thing. Day by day and day after day they met in the temple and from house to house. What were they doing? They were not gossiping but praising, preaching, teaching, talking about Jesus. No doubt, dear saints, Christianity has lost such a character. God has saved His people into a feast, but this feast has become a formal service.
Recently I read some definite news that in Red China in one county there were 140,000 new believers meeting in different places. Sometimes some of them, mostly the leading ones, came together to have meetings for the whole day from six in the morning to six in the evening. All the day long they met there. And the good thing is this: they called on the name of the Lord, and they pray-read the Word. It seems that we have lost the calling on the name of the Lord, and we have lost the pray-reading. Once in Elden hall in one prayer meeting the saints pray-read the entire book of Ephesians. Today we pray-read so little. This is a sign of a weak point, that we have lost the enjoyment of Christ, and we have missed so much the participation in His victory. If we would recover the enjoyment of Christ and the participation in His victory, surely the shouting, the singing, the praising, the calling on the name, and the pray-reading will be recovered.
Here is a battle, a struggle, between God and Satan. We have to realize that in the Lord’s recovery the first thing the Lord recovers is the meeting. The meeting is the front part of God’s recovery. You know that the front part of any building is very prominent. If the Lord’s recovery doesn’t have the proper meeting, it doesn’t have a front. We must look to the Lord for His mercy that we would pay adequate attention to the matter of meeting. The recovery of the Lord must have a front to declare the enjoyment of Christ and the participation in the victory of Christ. We enjoy Christ; we participate in His victory, and now we are in the feast.
Let us look at Exodus again. The children of Israel were slaves under Pharaoh. But one day they enjoyed the Passover Lamb. That was the beginning of their enjoyment of Christ. Christ became not only their redemption, but also their life plus their release and their freedom. Christ got into them. That hour they could not stay away from one another. From the hour of Passover they stayed together and right away they became an army of the Lord. And that army defeated the Egyptian troops by the Lord. So you could see that they enjoyed Christ, and they participated in the victory of Christ over the Egyptian army. These two things—the enjoyment of Christ and the participation in the victory of Christ—brought them into the feast. And that feast is the assembly. They assembled together to enjoy more of Christ. Eventually, they became not only the people of God but also the army of God. And their way of fighting was just to meet and to eat. Their way of fighting was to enjoy Christ and to participate in the victory of Christ. This enjoyment and this participation are nothing but meeting together.
We have to forget about the services Christians have today. In the morning we have to enjoy Christ, and during the day we have to participate in His victory. These two things will send us in the evening to the meeting. Every morning we enjoy Christ, every day we participate in Christ’s victory, and every night we come together. If you enjoy Christ in the morning, and during the day you participate in His victory, I don’t believe that in the evening you would stay home by yourself. These two things motivate you and urge you and charge you and even send you to the meeting. There would be no need for me to encourage you to sing hallelujahs or to call on the Lord’s name. You would do it spontaneously! The enjoyment of Christ and the participation in His victory would motivate you, would cause you to fly, to soar, to jump, to shout hallelujah, and to come to the meeting by companies.