Prayer: Lord, we worship You. We are nothing, but You are all. We can gather here because You are not only all but also all-inclusive. Lord, we look to You from the depths of our being that You would visit us with Yourself and with Your riches in these three days of fellowship. O Lord, pour down Your Spirit, even Yourself, to fill us outwardly and inwardly. May there be no time wasted in these three days, but may every minute be under Your enriching. Cleanse us, Lord; we need Your cleansing. Thank You for constantly cleansing us with Your precious blood. O Lord, we also need Your forgiveness; do forgive us. Open Yourself and the heavens to us and speak a word which we need, a word which we lack. Lord, give us utterance; deliver us from our own natural way of speaking. Lord, put Your words in us and speak Your own words out of us. Bless every one of us. Amen.
Thank the Lord that He has brought you brothers from some faraway places to be here. You probably have many things within you that you would like to say and many matters that you would like to fellowship about. In our time of fellowship I believe that what the Lord is going to speak to us will be able to meet all our needs and answer our questions even without our knowing it. I have also looked to the Lord concerning this fellowship, seeking particularly to know what He desires to speak to us. I am in fear and trembling, being afraid of wasting your time. Without the Lord’s blessing, everything is in vain. Therefore, after my seeking before the Lord, I feel that this is a golden opportunity for us to focus on one matter—the center of the Bible. This matter is the highest vision in the Bible; it is the vision that governs and controls us.
Paul said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19). What was the heavenly vision to which Paul referred? It has been at least seventy-three years now since Brother Nee was raised up by the Lord to speak for Him among us. During this period of time, not only our hearts but even our hands have never left the Bible. According to the number of pages we have touched, it is as if we have thoroughly handled a hundred Bibles. Moreover, we have many notes of what we have gained from our study of the Word. After seventy-three years, we may say that the Lord’s revelation among us has reached its peak with a consummation during the Chinese New Year’s conference last year. This consummation can be seen in the new hymn that I wrote: “What miracle! What mystery! / That God and man should blended be! / God became man to make man God, / Untraceable economy!” The heavenly vision which the Lord showed Paul was this economy, the New Testament economy, the eternal economy of God. This economy is the revelation of the entire New Testament.
Everything in the universe involves two aspects: the “roots and trunk” and the “branches.” A tree has roots and a trunk, and it also has branches. We may trim the branches of the tree, but we must not touch its roots and trunk. The Bible, in particular the New Testament, is just like this: it has its roots and trunk and it also has its branches. The less knowledgeable and experienced a person is, the less he can see the roots and the trunk; all he can see are the branches. Let us use a flower for an illustration. It is very easy to see the blossoming of a flower and smell its fragrance, but we rarely consider its source, its origin. Only those with a pursuing heart pay very little attention to the outward blossoming of the flower and the spreading forth of its fragrance; instead, they study its source, its origin. Likewise, in our study of the Word, instead of paying attention to the branches, we should go deeply into the roots and the trunk.
Since the day I was saved, the Lord planted in me a fervent love for the Bible. Of course, in the beginning I only saw the branches, the trivial things in the Bible. As a rule, even the trivial things are joined to the principal matters. When we touch the trivial things, however, we often detach them from the principal matters. Let us consider baptism as an example. Whether baptism is a subsidiary issue or a main issue depends on how you view it and what you say about it. Today in general, when people bring up the matter of baptism, all they care about are trivial things, such as whether to use hot water or cold water. Furthermore, they argue much concerning these trivial things, and the more they argue, the further they are from the fundamental matters. In fact, baptism is fundamentally related to the economy of God. Unless you speak of baptism in relation to the economy of God, what you speak concerning baptism is something trivial. If you relate it to the economy of God, baptism is something fundamental. Fundamentally, according to what Paul said, to be baptized is to enter into the death of Christ and be buried with Him and thereby identified with Him in His death and resurrection (Rom. 6:4). If you have this view, you are joined to the economy of God and have entered into the “roots and trunk.”