God is triune and in His Godhead, in His divine person, there is the Divine Trinity. This Divine Trinity needs an organic entity, an organism, to bear fruit for His expression. The Divine Trinity’s organism is the universal true vine and the branches (John 15:1-5). The vine is the embodiment of the entire Divine Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The branches are the enlargement of the vine. The universal true vine and its branches as revealed in John 15 should be considered as a reality more than as a metaphor. The organism of the Divine Trinity in John 15 is the Divine Trinity mingled with His chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people. The greatest fact in the entire universe is that God in His Divine Trinity mingled Himself with us to constitute us into an organism to carry out His intention, to bear His expression for His glory.
In England in 1958 a friend took me to see the Queen’s vine, a very large vine enclosed in a greenhouse. My friend exclaimed to me, “How great is this vine!” But I responded that the Queen’s vine was very small compared to Christ as the true vine, who is so great that He fills the entire universe. Christ as the vine is tremendously long. This vine reaches every place on the globe by its branches.
Our destiny as branches of the universal true vine is to bear fruit (John 15:2-5) for the glorification, the expression, of the Father (v. 8). The danger of not bearing fruit is to be cut off, dried up, and burned (vv. 2, 6). To be cut off from the vine is to lose all the life supply and nourishment of the vine. Many Christians consider that bearing fruit depends upon the environment and that not bearing fruit is therefore excusable. Fruit-bearing, however, is not a matter of our environment; it is our destiny. We have been destined by God to bear fruit. Because many Christians have not borne any fruit for many years, God’s destiny has been annulled in them. The best way to carry out God’s destiny of bearing fruit is to visit people by knocking on their doors. Visiting people by knocking on their doors has been fully proven by experience as the best way to bear fruit.
You do not need the agreement from your church before you can knock on doors to bear fruit. To bear fruit is your destiny. The leading ones should not say, “You must wait before going out to knock on doors until we get everything prepared for the whole church.” This is unreasonable. Bearing fruit is like breathing. To ask someone to wait until something is prepared before bearing fruit is like asking someone to stop breathing. We must not wait to bear fruit. We should go out to knock on doors and bear remaining fruit by setting up home meetings. Such fruit will convince others that visiting people is the way to bear fruit.
In the past when the saints brought a person to the Lord, our practice was to get the church’s approval before he could be baptized. But the new ones who believe should be baptized immediately. No permission is needed from the church to baptize them. Around 1930, in Shanghai there was a young man who received the Lord and was planning to study in the United States. Brother Nee was very burdened that this young man be baptized immediately before he left China, but one of the leading ones would not agree. He felt that since this new brother had only recently heard the gospel and believed, it would be risky to baptize him and that without testing, no one knew whether his belief was genuine or not. Brother Nee replied that he would bear the responsibility for the new brother’s baptism, but the elder still insisted that baptism should be through the church’s approval. Eventually Brother Nee relented, yet he never agreed with this kind of practice regarding baptism.
God has chosen us and sent us to bear fruit. God’s destiny for us is to bear fruit, so we must go out to knock on doors, visit people, help them to believe, and baptize them. Our statistics show that out of twenty doors that we knock on, one person will be baptized. We must redeem the time to knock on more doors in order to find the sons of peace (Luke 10:6).
According to some recent statistics collected in England, all the major denominations in that country, such as the Catholic Church and the Church of England, have decreased in numbers by twenty-five percent since 1970. Only one group, the Home Church, which began after 1970, has increased. In the United States, many of the big denominations have also decreased. Among those who have increased, the highest rate of increase has been about six percent each year. The reason for this decrease and slight increase in numbers among the denominations is that the traditional way, a degradation from the God-ordained way, does not work well.
During the fifteen years prior to October 1984, we were influenced by the traditional way. Yet when the ministry began in Taiwan in 1949, we increased from about five hundred on the entire island to about fifty thousand in the first five or six years. In those years, there was a hundredfold increase mainly through the practice of meeting in the small groups. After 1960, however, when I left Taiwan to come to the United States, the number of saints gradually decreased, and the small group practice was nearly annulled.
When I went back to Taipei in 1984, the practice was nearly the same as the denominations. Big meetings were held with good, eloquent speakers appointed to speak good messages. Everyone appreciated this kind of meeting. However, I reminded them that the church in Taipei had over twenty-two thousand members in 1959. In 1984, approximately twenty-five years later, the church in Taipei had only eleven thousand members. There had been good meetings, good speakers, and good messages, yet the number of people had been reduced. Pointing out this situation to the saints, I said, “We have been on this small island for twenty-five years with forty thousand believers under our edification, yet the island has not been evangelized. What is the good of preaching the principle of Christ’s death and resurrection and of having good meetings? Regardless of how good the present way seems, it does not work well. Saints, you must change your way!” In Taiwan I have the complete ground and God-given position to tell the saints to change their way because the Lord used me to begin and establish the work there.
In 1950 Brother Nee brought a revival to Hong Kong, and he asked me to go there to arrange all the services of the co-workers, elders, and deacons. In 1954 I returned to Hong Kong to minister the word, and the hall was crowded with over one thousand people. Since that time, however, there has been very little increase in Hong Kong. The low rate of increase in the churches is a shame to us.
The work among us in the United States has also been increasing very slowly over the past ten years. From the beginning of the Lord’s move in the United States in the early sixties, our rate of increase was between twenty to thirty percent each year. But in the last ten years the rate of increase, especially in Orange County, has only been about three percent each year. In all of the churches throughout the United States, the low rate of increase concerned me very much.
When I finished writing the notes for the Recovery Version of the New Testament to complete a twelve year Life-study of the New Testament, I realized that it was the time for me to go back to Taiwan to have a new start. I could no longer tolerate the situation among the churches of very little increase. I began again to study Christian history and our own history of sixty years. I reconsidered what was mentioned in the Bible concerning the way of Christian meeting. The Lord brought me to see that the traditional way of Christianity was absolutely wrong and was an annulling and killing way. Therefore, I made a strong decision to change our method, our way. I likened the change of our way to the change in transportation on the globe. The globe can never be changed, but the transportation on the globe changes and improves all the time. In the 1930s I traveled by boat from Chefoo to Shanghai in mainland China, and the trip took about forty-eight hours. During those trips, I got seasick. Today I can fly on a jet plane all the way from Los Angeles to Taipei in only about twelve hours. During such a trip, I can sleep and eat well. Thank God for the improvement of transportation. Man’s mode of transportation has evolved and improved from the mule wagon to the jetliner. Likewise, the Bible can never be changed, but our way must be changed and improved. We cannot change the Bible, the Lord Jesus, God, the truth, the gospel, salvation, or any of the divine things, yet we can surely change our way!
I made the decision to come back to the biblical way, that is, the God-ordained way to preach the gospel in the homes, to set up meetings in the homes, to edify the saints in the homes, and to build up the church in the homes. Home sweet home! In this new way there are just two words: Go! Home! We should go out of our own homes and bring the Bible, the gospel, the Lord Jesus, the Triune God, grace, light, life, and the dynamic salvation into the new ones’ homes! Do not ask them to come to us; rather, we must go to them to set up the church meeting in their homes. We will fulfill our destiny to bear fruit by going out to others’ homes.
It is unreasonable and illogical to doubt that this new way will work. What way is more effective than this way? Many of the saints over the past several years have not baptized anyone, yet in a few days of going out to visit people by knocking on their doors, they have baptized five, six, or seven in one evening! Even to baptize one makes this way worthwhile. The God-ordained way fulfills our God-made destiny as branches to bear fruit.
The purpose of the Lord’s choosing, His appointment of us, is to bear fruit (John 15:16). Fruit-bearing is not only God’s destiny assigned to us, but it is also God’s appointment to us. God destined us and appointed us to bear fruit, but many of us had no feeling about being barren in the past. One leading one had not baptized anyone as fruit for twenty years, yet he had little feeling about it. Since returning from a trip to Taipei, however, he has baptized about one each week. What a difference! For a branch to bear fruit is crucial; otherwise, it will lose all of the enjoyment, riches, nourishment, and life supply of the vine.
The way to bear fruit is by abiding in the vine (John 15:4-5), by being supplied with the Lord’s instant words (v. 7), and by going forth (v. 16a). The living, instant words of the Lord always come when we bear fruit. We bear fruit by going forth. Some Bible teachers have said that the fruit in John 15 is the fruit of our character, such as good ethics, good morality, and good virtues. I would not say that this is wrong, but the word “go forth” in John 15:16 indicates that the fruit is living persons. The Lord charged us to go forth and bear fruit. To bear ethical virtues, we do not need to go forth. But to bear fruit among people, we need to go forth to people’s homes. To bear fruit is the way to fulfill God’s destiny, and the way to bear fruit is to visit people by knocking on their doors. The way to have fruit that remains (v. 16b) is by setting up home meetings with the new believers (Acts 2:46; 5:42) and by praying for the home meetings of the believers.
The Divine Trinity’s organism is for the multiplication and spread of the processed Triune God. This organism is to have the processed Triune God multiplied in millions of His chosen ones.