There was no wall in the garden of Eden, but in the New Jerusalem there is a great and high wall. This wall is a separation. Today there is a need for separation in every city. This is according to God’s principle. What came out of the first creation did not have a separation, because there was no lawlessness. In the second creation there needs to be a separation because there is lawlessness. In the New Testament, once a believer is saved, he becomes the materials for the building of the New Jerusalem; however, not every church may have a wall, because the wall is built up through the believers’ transformation. According to the record in the Old Testament, the work that the enemy does, as shown in typology, is to tear down the wall of the holy city. When God’s people were recovered and returned from captivity, they needed to rebuild the wall of the city. Hence, their enemies attempted to frustrate the building of the wall of the city.
The truth we have spoken of regarding the ground of the church is a matter of building up the wall of the city, the main function of which is separation. One of the functions of the wall is to protect the things of God and keep out the things that are not of God. The work of the church on the earth today must produce a result, and that result is the building up of a wall. What is natural zeal? What is God’s abode in man? There must be a wall built up to separate these two matters. Otherwise, when people are on fire for the Lord, they will love the Lord fervently while at the same time burn down His building. If someone gives ten thousand dollars to help the church, we should not immediately say, “Thank and praise the Lord”; rather, we must exercise some discernment.
A lady living in America wanted to offer us twenty thousand dollars. She had a friend who was a sister, and this sister had some fellowship with us. She told us that her friend wanted to give us a gospel van. After much careful consideration and analysis before the Lord, the co-workers wrote the sister a letter, stating that we never directly accept donations from men but would only accept, on God’s behalf, men’s offerings. Therefore, we told her that we would not accept the gospel van right away but would first consider whether or not her friend had consecrated herself to the Lord. We told her that this is our spiritual exercise and asked her to forgive us.
Later, the same sister wanted to give us some money. I said that everyone should give only before God and that if she wanted to give, she should put the money into the offering box. These situations displeased her greatly. Her friend came back from America, and after some transaction with this sister, she decided to donate the money to a certain denomination. Now she has become one of the executive committee members in that denomination. If we had not considered this matter in the beginning, I am afraid that it would have become a problem among us. It is not a sin to receive people’s donations, but man’s natural zeal tears down God’s building.
We should not quarrel with people while we work for the Lord and release the Lord’s truths. When we begin to work for the Lord in a serious way, we need to always be cautious and guard ourselves by building up the wall; we cannot receive everyone or speak loosely. To invite the brother from Hong Kong to give a message on the Lord’s Day might seem to be a small thing, but in principle it is a serious mistake. This brother and his wife are meek, have a heart for others, and pay attention to the work among the students. They are pure, and they themselves believe that they are pure. However, even though he has been delivered from certain things on the negative side, there has been no building on the positive side. The first time he came to Taiwan, he wanted to gain something from us, but the brothers did not allow it. Later he contacted a certain brother and told him that his students’ work was nondenominational. However, based on our standing, we can never give our support to what he is doing. This is the destructive work of the enemy.
We should always pay attention to the building up of the local churches for God’s building. On the positive side, we should accept everything that is necessary for the building, and on the negative side, we should be in fear and trembling to maintain the separation, lest things come in that God does not desire.