The second thing I want to fellowship with you is that there are different kinds of speaking. In the past, when we came to the big meetings, as soon as the leading brothers arrived, our mouths were sealed. Do not think that since we are now free in the home meetings, we can talk about anything and everything. This is also wrong. For every meeting, the Lord has called us out of our family, our jobs, our burdens, and our tiredness into His name. In other words, we are meeting in the Lord. Here we have the Lord’s presence. For this reason we must take care of two things: the Holy Bible and the Holy Spirit.
When we speak in the meetings, we should not speak about the news in the newspaper or about the merits and shortcomings of others. What we should speak in a Christian meeting must be the word of God. Here, we must be careful not to leave out the two words “of God.” If every person who comes to the meeting speaks but does not speak the word of God, the result is terrible. No matter what age we are, we must pay attention to this one thing: if we want to speak in the meetings we must be well acquainted with the Bible in our daily life. I believe many people can testify to this: before the Life-study messages were published, although the Bible was in our hands, we did not understand it.
The night before last, I attended a prayer meeting in Hall One. After we had finished praying, there were at least three or four testimonies about being helped by the Life-study messages. One sister said that in the sisters’ morning watch they used Matthew 1:1: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” They opened to the footnote, which said that “Isaac is a type of Christ as the son of Abraham, the One who inherits the promise and blessing God gave to Abraham....Isaac also, as a type of Christ, did mainly two things: he obeyed his father even unto death and was resurrected from death,...and he took Rebekah, a Gentile woman, as his wife....Christ, in fulfilling this type, was put to death and offered to God and was resurrected from death, and He is taking the church as His bride out of the Gentiles.” Then they read another note which said that the son of David refers to “Solomon...a type of Christ....” A sister from a denomination was also there in that morning watch. She was shocked. Previously, when she read Matthew 1:1, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” that was all that she saw. Whether she understood it or not, that was all that there was. She never imagined that there was so much in this one verse and that it could be so rich. I was told that after that, our sister began to attend the sisters’ morning watch regularly.
Since the release of the Life-study messages, the Bible has been an open book to us. When I wrote the footnotes, my main emphasis was to supply life. My second aim was to help people to understand the Bible. I have supplied footnotes for all the difficult verses in the Bible. I know that all of you here tonight love the Lord. The Lord Himself said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word” (John 14:23). If we do not read the Bible but are rather ignorant of the Lord’s Word, how can we keep it? Since we love the Lord, we should keep His word. If we want to keep His word, we must read His Word. At the very least, we must read a portion every day. If we would do this every day, little by little the word will be accumulated in us and we will have a rich store of the Lord’s word. If everyone reads the Lord’s Word in this way, the truth among us will greatly increase, and we will become a house of scholars. Then when we open our mouths, the scholarly fragrance will be there.
When we come to the meetings to speak the word of the Lord, we do so by two tracks. One track is the Holy Bible, and the other track is the Holy Spirit. First, we must be familiar with the Lord’s Word. Then we need to speak by the Spirit. With these two tracks, when our speaking is according to the Bible and according to the Spirit, we will not be off course. Thank the Lord, over the past ten years, the New Testament has been completely opened to us. Now, the Bible is no longer difficult to understand. When we come to a difficult passage, all we need to do is to open up the Recovery Version, read the footnotes, and then study the Life-study messages, and we will be clear.
The reason the elderly brothers’ morning watch at Hall One is so successful is that they have been coming together for morning watch for twenty to thirty years now. This is an experienced team. They come together to “play ball” every day. After twenty or thirty years, even those who could not play at first would have learned by now. This is why we need to come together frequently. Every Saturday we need to come to the home meeting. When we come, we must not come empty-handed, but we must come with our two treasures: the Recovery Version and the Life-study messages. Once everyone settles down, we may start reading these treasures. We need to speak the word of the Bible together; we also need to speak by the Spirit together. If a train runs on two tracks it will run smoothly. For us, we must speak the word of God by means of these two tracks.