How can you tell that someone has become a pillar? In the church life we realize that if certain brothers are taken away, everything collapses, but if they are present, they are pillars supporting the whole building. The Lord is not concerned about those who are offended; He cares for those who will become pillars. The pillars can only be perfected in Bethel. In other words, the pillars can only be set up in Bethel. No pillar for God's house has ever been set up outside of Bethel. If that brother whom I met in Dallas had not come into the church but had remained in a denomination, he could not have been perfected to be a pillar. He was perfected in Bethel, in the church life. After we experience Christ in a subjective way and are definitely and absolutely in the church life, we still need a great deal of perfection.
Let us consider further the pillars mentioned in Galatians 2:9. When the Lord called Peter, he was a fisherman. He was raw, wild, and unperfected. But after the Lord had spent three and a half years working on him, he was perfected and, on the day of Pentecost, he was set up as a pillar. When Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost, the angels might have rejoiced and said, "This is Boaz. This is the sign that God's building is coming." If you read the book of Acts, you will see that Peter was a pillar standing in front of the New Testament temple of God.
Young people, this is a word from my heart. The Lord's recovery is spreading, and I have the assurance that it will spread at a good pace. But the rate of the expansion of the Lord's recovery depends upon the pillars. I believe there will be churches in all the major cities of this country and in all the leading countries on earth. For this, there is the need of the pillars. I hope that you young people will see this. If you see it, you will say, "Lord, I cannot deny that You have appointed me to Your way and that I have heard Your up-to-date word. I realize that I must experience Christ in a subjective way and that I must be perfected in the church life in Bethel. Lord, have mercy on me and grant me the grace I need."
Young people, my burden is that you realize that your responsibility is tremendous. If during the coming years many of you will be perfected, the Lord's recovery will spread at a rapid speed. How much the Lord has done through those who have been perfected to be pillars! What do you think the Lord could do if He had a hundred more?
My burden is not simply to release a message. It is to help you see that today we all have the golden opportunity to be perfected and to be made pillars. Because we are at Bethel, our opportunity is much greater than Peter's was. Peter was in the Gospels, in the beginning of the New Testament, but we are at the end of the New Testament, even in Revelation 3:12. I believe that the opportunity we have today is unique in history. Never before has there been such a church life as there is today in Anaheim, and never before has the Lord's ministry of the Word been so bright and rich. Do not exercise your mentality or hold to your opinion. Your opinions will take you nowhere. Drop your opinions, love the Lord, take Him as your life and as your person, and live by Him in the church life. Learn of those who have become pillars. They have devoured, absorbed, and soaked in everything of the church and of this ministry. Follow them to know nothing and to daily be saturated with the church life and with the Word of God. If you do this, I believe that after a few years many of you will become pillars. Then wherever you go, the pillar, the signboard of God's building, will go with you. We all are in the church and under this ministry. Today is surely a golden opportunity ordained by the Lord.