Prayer: Lord, thank You for Your mercy. Thank You that You have exposed us, that You have shown us our shortage, and that You have shown us what You need. Lord, we thank You for all these things, yet we are still ignorant concerning the proper experience of the group meetings. Today we are still looking to You. Show us Your way. Show us how to face the situation and how to meet the need at the present time. We need Your wisdom. We do not like to do anything by ourselves, by our wisdom, or on our own. We are in fear and trembling before You. We do not like to speak anything by ourselves. Lord, save us and rescue us from making mistakes. We do not like to be misled. Lord, cover us against all the devices of the evil one. We desire to be preserved, and we desire to be kept. Lord, cover us and give us a clear understanding and an open spirit without any prejudice or hint of opinion. We do not like to be opinionated. Lord, cover us from all these things that we may have a clear, pure, and even purified fellowship so that You can show us Your way. Amen.
In this message I will fellowship a few points which we have seen from history. The New Testament shows us clearly that in the beginning of the church life the meetings were first in the homes (Acts 2:46; 5:42). The fact that the saints were meeting in their homes indicates strongly that they met together in groups. There was a group in every home. The larger gatherings were needed, but the larger gatherings were not a daily need. The daily need was the group meetings.
The record in the New Testament does not make the group meetings as definite as what is being revealed to us today. The reason for this may be that the divine revelation is always released after the experiences of God’s people. First comes the experience of God’s people; then God’s revelation follows. There is no example in the entire Bible of God’s revelation coming before the experience of His people. God called Abraham, but if Abraham had not gone on, the divine revelation would not have come to him. All the revelations in the Bible came as God’s people went on in their experience. Because Abel, Enoch, and Noah went on with God, God was able to reveal something through each of them.
At the close of the New Testament the church had existed on the earth for less than a century. The last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, was written in approximately A.D. 90. At that time the church had not experienced very much, so the revelation stopped there. However, according to the record in the heavens, the book of Acts is still going on; it has never stopped. After the book of Acts, many centuries of church history have passed. In all the going on of the church we can see something further.
When Brother Nee was raised up, he started the first church meeting in 1922. That first church meeting was surely a small group. I was not there in the first ten years of our history in the recovery, from 1922 to 1932, but when I came into the work, Brother Nee purposely told me the details concerning those ten years. In the first four or five years the number attending the meetings was increasing. This increase was due to the spontaneous practice of the group meetings. In the beginning there was not a large meeting. But after ten years the situation changed. From 1927 through 1932 the church in Shanghai grew in size to about one hundred. After the number reached one hundred, the rate of increase became very low.
In 1933 I began to serve in Shanghai. Eventually, Brother Nee committed to me the responsibility for the church and the work. On the one hand, I was very busy, but on the other hand, from today’s point of view, I was not very busy. First of all, I gave a message on the Lord’s Day. At that time the main thing was the Lord’s Day morning message meeting. If the message was good, the meeting would be a success; if the message was not good, the meeting would be a failure. Thank the Lord, to some extent the messages I gave were a success. Every Lord’s Day morning I gave a message. The people and Brother Nee were happy. I also was happy. When I was young, I put my whole being into my speaking. Today I cannot speak in such a way. At that time I did not need a microphone. I would speak for an hour and ten minutes, and my whole being would be exhausted. Consequently, I needed the entire next day to rest. Therefore, on Mondays I was quite free.
The second thing I did was to take care of the weekly meetings, mainly the prayer meeting and a brothers’ fellowship meeting. The brothers’ fellowship meeting was for the practice of 1 Corinthians 14. Because all the brothers were priests, the meeting had no chairman or clergy. Even though I was not charged to take the lead in that meeting, I still was there unconsciously taking the lead.
The third thing I did was to visit people. Although I rarely went out to visit people, and people rarely came to fellowship with me, I did visit, fellowship, and contact the saints on occasion. I also took care of the correspondence.
By studying the past history and our present situation, I have realized that if we had had the way of the group meetings in 1933, we could have gained several times as many people as we gained at that time. This would have made us very busy.