After four years and four months of study and learning concerning the practice of the new way, we have now reached a conclusion. Broadly speaking, we have studied thoroughly the four steps of begetting, nourishing, teaching, and building. The first step is to preach the gospel by visiting people. This is spiritual begetting. The second step is to nourish the newly saved ones in the home meetings. This is nourishing. The third step is to help these ones to attend the small group meetings, where there is not only the teaching, but the all-inclusive perfecting as well. This is spiritual teaching. The fourth step is for everyone to prophesy in the church meeting. This is building. Instead of saying begetting, nourishing, teaching, and building, we can also say begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building. The teaching is actually the perfecting. The result of perfecting is that everyone comes together to prophesy for the Lord. This is the practical building up. All these four steps have their theoretical basis in the Scripture, and they are a conclusion we have drawn through our experience of nearly seventy years in the Lord’s recovery, plus a summary of the materials that we have collected through our research.
God’s New Testament economy is an entirely new revelation. It has inherited nothing from the Old Testament. This revelation began first with John the Baptist and was continued in the Lord Jesus. The record of the four Gospels is a record of the ministries of these two persons. After the Lord Jesus, there were the twelve apostles, with the one hundred twenty that coordinated with them in their service. They are represented by Peter. There was much revelation through them in the first half of the book of Acts. Then we come to Paul, who not only occupies the second half of the book of Acts, but wrote his own Epistles, fourteen of them in all, from Romans to Hebrews. After Paul, the aged John followed with his mending ministry, and the revelation of the entire New Testament economy was complete. These revelations constitute the canon of the New Testament. Hence, from Matthew to Revelation, we have God’s New Testament economy, which is the entire New Testament revelation, and which forms the teachings of the apostles. Although the church became degraded and deformed even before the early apostles passed away, this book of revelation is preserved intact until today.
After the church became degraded, the Roman Catholic Church appeared. From approximately the sixth century until the sixteenth century, for a period of ten centuries, the history of the West was known as the Dark Ages. Throughout this period, although the Bible was there, it was locked up by the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit would not tolerate this, nor would the seekers of the Lord agree to this. Therefore, in every century the Lord raised up some men for the move of His recovery work. A brother by the name of E. H. Broadbent has written a book called The Pilgrim Church. In that book, he pointed out the line of recovery throughout the ages and included all the recovery works from the second century until the sixteenth century.
The consummation of all those recoveries was the recovery with Martin Luther. Luther recovered the truth of justification by faith and unlocked the closed Bible; he made it an open book. He did some study concerning the matter of the church. At the beginning, he thought that he would only recover the truth and would not leave the Catholic Church. He still considered the Catholic Church the only church of God on earth, and he felt that he could not start something new.
But God’s sovereign hand would not allow him to stay in Catholicism. At the beginning, when he conducted the reform and sounded out the truth, the Catholic Church had no intention to remove him. For a while, he was allowed to carry on the work of reformation with the truth. Later, when the truth he preached became too prevailing and the Catholic Church was too much affected, the Catholic Church plotted to remove him. At that time, the rulers of Germany were unwilling to be subject to the control of the Catholic Church and had already separated from Rome politically. When the Church sought the life of Luther, Germany stepped in to protect him and through him established the German state church. This is the first state church in history. After that, the nations in northern Europe followed this example one after another. All kinds of state churches, such as the Anglican Church, the Swedish Church, and the Danish Church, came into being. This was the age of the state churches. By the end of the sixteenth century, the independent churches such as the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Congregationalists were also formed. This indicates that from the time of Luther’s reformation many believers have been studying the way Christians should meet, worship, serve, and work. But this was only a beginning. Not much had taken form yet.