If we consider the history of the church over the past four to five hundred years, we will see that during this time the Lord has recovered many things. The Lord’s recovery began with the recovery of the truth of justification by faith. This truth was recovered through Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation. Following the Reformation, many other truths were recovered, including sanctification by faith, holiness by faith, the living of a life by faith, victory by faith, and many other items.
In the 1700s some of the dear saints who were in the Lord’s recovery began to pay attention to the church life. As a result, at that time in Europe there were many kinds of brethren meetings. In the eighteenth century some brothers moved to Bohemia to be with Count Zinzendorf. Under his leadership they began to practice the church life, and to some extent it was proper and even quite wonderful. At that time these saints experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and this issued in a big revival. They enjoyed genuine brotherly love and truly practiced the church life. This was an all-inclusive expression of all the items that the Lord had recovered from Luther’s time up to that point. These brothers received all the positive things that had been recovered before them.
The practice of the church life by the brothers in Bohemia was good, but the Lord desired to do something more. Thus, approximately one hundred years later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Lord raised up some brothers in England under the leadership of John Nelson Darby. Their practice of the church life was even better than that of the brothers in Moravia. These brothers in England were very inclusive of all the positive things that the Lord had recovered before them. Unfortunately, they excluded anything further that the Lord tried to recover. They took in all the good things that had been recovered from the Reformation until 1828, but once they had received all those things, they felt satisfied and felt that what they had achieved was good enough. They did not realize that the Lord still had much more that He wanted to recover. As a result, they became exclusive and would not receive the things that the Lord recovered after them.
After raising up the Brethren, the Lord continued to advance His recovery. The next major item that the Lord recovered was the inner life. For this the Lord used William Law and then Andrew Murray. Andrew Murray took all the good things that the mystics and William Law had recovered. Although Andrew Murray made great progress in the matter of the inner life, the Brethren excluded him and would not receive what he had recovered. Hannah Smith was also one whom the Lord used in recovering the matter of the inner life. She wrote the book The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life and was also excluded by the Brethren.
Outside the Brethren movement the Lord made great progress in the matter of the inner life. He also made improvements in the preaching of the gospel. Charles Spurgeon of England and D. L. Moody of America were both evangelical giants in the nineteenth century, but neither of them were in the Brethren movement. In fact, many of the missionaries who were sent to the mission fields and who spread the gospel over the whole earth were not part of the Brethren movement. Both the recovery of the inner life and the recovery of the preaching of the gospel were reactions to the Brethren movement.
A third reaction to the Brethren movement was the Pentecostal movement. The Lord raised up the Pentecostal movement because the Brethren focused excessively on knowledge. The Brethren practiced the church life, but they were too much on the line of knowledge. Thus, the Lord responded by recovering the line of the inner life, the preaching of the gospel, and the power of Pentecost.
In the present age the Lord desires to build up the church life and to bring in a new era of the church life. He is seeking after a people who will receive all the good things that have been recovered in the past and who are also open to the new things that He will do in the future. By the Lord’s mercy and grace we have been practicing to take this way through the ministry of Watchman Nee for more than thirty-five years. This is why the Lord has blessed the work in China so much. When the Western missionaries came to China, we said to them, “Brothers and sisters, there is no need for you to come to China to build up different churches. Instead, you must join us and together we will build up the Lord’s church in China. You do not need to come here to build up the Methodist church or the Presbyterian church; simply join with us.” Although we spoke to them in this way, very few of them agreed with us. Nearly all of them wanted to keep their own “churches.” As a result, they and their work received little blessing from the Lord. On the other hand, the work in China under the ministry of Watchman Nee has been prevailing. The reason it has been prevailing is that it is something according to the Lord’s heart and the Lord’s desire.
I believe that the Lord now wants to raise up something in the United States. Thus, if we are faithful to Him and take a stand to be inclusive of the past and open to the future, we will become a great reservoir to contain the Lord’s blessing and a strong stream to flow the Lord’s blessing to all the other countries throughout the whole earth. All that I have mentioned above is the history of the Lord’s recovery, and we must learn from this history.