We do not need to have more meetings, but we do need to utilize two meetings per week to give some educational teaching on the truth. The first meeting which we can use for this purpose is the Lord’s Table meeting. We can use the second half of this meeting to give a lesson on the truth. There is no need to preach a moving message. We need to give a lesson to everyone and do it according to the lesson book. In order to do this, we need someone who can spend the time to write the lesson book and someone who can spend the time to learn it. There are fifty-two Lord’s Table meetings in a year. If we can give one lesson on each Lord’s Day, when a saint stays in one locality for a year, he will receive fifty-two lessons.
The second meeting we can use is the prayer meeting. In most of our prayer meetings, after praying for one hour, the burden is discharged and the praying atmosphere is almost gone. But because it is still early and the saints do not want to leave, we may do some unnecessary things to fill in the time. This is a waste! We need to utilize this time to give everyone some lessons on the truth. We should give one lesson in the Lord’s Table meeting and another lesson in the prayer meeting. In this way we can have two lessons per week. In fifty-two weeks we can have one hundred and four lessons. Consider how much we can teach in one hundred and four lessons! We should no longer have routine meetings: Lord’s Day morning preaching, evening breaking of bread, Tuesday prayer, and Thursday small gathering. If we meet in such a habitual and routine way, we may all come to the meeting but have no feeling concerning what happens in the meeting. When the time comes, we may all sing hymns; then some will pray and others will give messages. As we meet in this way we let time slip by week after week. If we all hold the concept of merely maintaining the meetings, our children will graduate from grade school, high school, and college, but we ourselves will still remain in the spiritual kindergarten. Surely we cannot tolerate such a poor situation.
In 1949 I went to Taiwan. Brother Liu Suey went with me to visit different places. One day when we came to Taichung, we sat in a park. I said, “Our church meeting not only needs to be spiritual but also educational.” An educational meeting is to give the saints spiritual lessons on the truth. I arrived in Taiwan in April 1949. When I started to work in August, I gave sixty lessons on “The Essential Topics of the Bible.” The foundation of the work and of the churches in Taiwan is built upon these sixty lessons. Everyone who was saved at that time received a good foundation. If a person came to the meetings every week, he at least received one lesson on the truth each week. In sixty weeks he would have received sixty lessons. The brothers and sisters had a solid spiritual foundation. But today we lack this kind of educational meeting. Therefore, today we do not have many who can teach others and share something solid. Most of what is shared is inspirational. Some would praise the riches of the ministry. However, the riches of the ministry are not their riches because they have not received the spiritual education.
If a person desires to be useful, he needs to receive an education for twenty-five years and then learn by his experiences for another twenty-five years until he reaches the age of fifty. Then in the third twenty-five years he should endeavor to serve and contribute to society. If he lives beyond the age of seventy-five, within him there will be many riches. He will have been educated, and he will have the experiences and the supply. He will then be very useful. If anyone has not received an education for twenty-five years, his foundation is not adequate. He needs to go to kindergarten, grade school, junior high, high school, college, and even graduate school. Through education he will build up himself. Then he can be useful in the future.
Approximately ten years ago, many of the English-speaking young people among us had an attitude of not wanting to study. They thought that the Lord would come back in a few years and that even if a person had very little education, he could still make a living. They thought that there was no need to be highly educated, and many did not even care to finish high school. According to their concept, they did not need to waste their time on studying. They felt that it would be sufficient to use all of their time to pray-read and fellowship with one another. At that time this kind of atmosphere was very prevailing. In order to make a living, the brothers were content to do some gardening, swimming pool cleaning, or carpentry. In February 1977 I gave message eighty-six of the Life-study of Genesis entitled “The Builder of the Pillars—the Skillful Hiram.” In this message I told the young brothers and sisters that their attitude was wrong and that they needed to abandon their wrong concept and study diligently to receive an adequate education, even the highest education. This message went out and had a great impact. Today, many of those who received this word have graduated from college. Some came and said to me, “Brother Lee, thank the Lord. If you had not released that message, I would not have finished my schooling today.” One brother, having heard this message, studied Greek and received a Ph.D in Greek. He is now an expert in Greek and has become one of the most useful assistants among us in doing the translation of the New Testament. The reason I say these things is that I hope that in the matter of meeting we will advance and make progress. We should not merely come to many meetings yet not build up ourselves in the truth. If we do not build up the spiritual education, we will have no future at all.
I myself have been taking the lead to minister to the churches for over thirty years, and I have gained many experiences. Ten years ago I realized that it was not sufficient just to have conferences. I realized that we needed to dig out the truth. Therefore, I determined to finish the digging of the New Testament. The more I dug, the more I felt that this was right. Today you cannot say that you lack educational materials. Our educational materials are very rich. But if all these materials are just on the bookshelf, without being labored on by you, without being read and researched by you, they will never become yours. If you love the Lord, you need to spend time on the Lord’s word. As Jude 20 says very well, you need to build up yourselves in your most holy faith. You will then have knowledge and wisdom, and you will be able to supply others and speak the Lord’s word in the meetings.
The overseas work began in 1949. At that time the total number of churches overseas was not more than one hundred. Now there are more than six hundred churches. In other words, we have increased by more than five hundred churches in five continents in the past thirty-six years. However, my emphasis is not this kind of numerical increase. I feel that it is not enough to have a large number of churches if the quality of the saints is poor. This would be like a nation that has many people, yet these people are void of the proper education and, hence, their quality is very low. This is inadequate. We need to build up the quality of our brothers and sisters. On what should we build them? On educational truth. All of you love the Lord and seek the Lord. For the sake of the future of the Lord, for the sake of our personal spiritual benefit, and for the sake of our next generation, we desperately need this spiritual education. This spiritual education requires the leading ones to promote it and all the saints to rise up and act.