Prayer: Lord, we worship You from the depths of our being. You have gathered us together here. May You bring every one of us and the whole meeting into Your Holy of Holies. We are looking to You here, touching Your throne of grace. May we open up ourselves to You that You may have a way within us. May You also open Yourself to us that we may have a way in You. Lord, defeat Your enemy, and gain all of us. Gain our inward being, and touch the innermost part of us. May every one of us be open before You and offer You a fresh consecration that we may have a renewed revival and a fresh beginning. Lord Jesus, may You speak to the depths of our being again and touch our feelings. Gain our spirits thoroughly to be Your eternal habitation, so that we can be one spirit with You and that You can have a way to move on this earth. Lord Jesus, we love You, and we want to follow You. We desire to live for You and to live You out on earth. Lord, while we are speaking here, be one spirit with us, and speak in our speaking. Grant us the fresh words, the words that touch Your heart’s desire. Reveal to us Your own word. Lord, the enemy has no ground here. All the power of darkness is removed. May You be everything here. May all the glory go to You. Amen.
This time we want to consider practically this new way that we have arrived at through four and a half years of studying and research. After all the study and investigation, we have to admit that the four major steps in this way are all revealed in the Bible and are ordained by God, that is, (1) the begetting of people through the preaching of the gospel, (2) the nourishing of people through the home meetings, (3) the perfecting of people through the small group meetings, and (4) the building up through the prophesying in the big meetings. Thank the Lord. After these four and a half years, the church in Taipei has finally been put on the right track and is on the right way. These four steps comprise the structure of our meetings, worship, service, and living for the Lord. To put the matter in a simple way, this structure is of one kind of gospel preaching and three kinds of meetings—the home meetings, the small group meetings, and the district meetings. However, although this structure is here today, there is the urgent need to have its content enriched.
The reason we were not satisfied with the past way is that it did not afford the saints the proper development in three things: the begetting, the nourishing, and the teaching. Our way in the past was too general and too vague. Now, as long as a brother or sister has a little desire for the Lord after he or she is saved, we can lead him or her on step by step, from begetting to nourishing, and from nourishing to teaching. The teaching here is the same as the perfecting in Ephesians 4. The gifted ones are not there to do the work directly. For example, the evangelists are not there to preach the gospel directly. Their main job is to perfect the saints to do that which they are capable of doing. This is like the college professors. They do not engage directly in the trade that they are teaching. Rather they are there in the school to perfect the students. After a few years, when the students graduate, they can do the same thing that the professors do. This is what we hope to see. But the message meetings we had in the past made everyone a passive listener. No one was perfected. Although we have seen from the Bible during the past few decades that every saved person is a priest and, as a result of this, we have been strongly advocating the universal priesthood, yet we have never arrived at this point.
A priest is one who offers sacrifices to God. The sacrifices offered by the Old Testament priests were the bulls and goats. The sacrifices offered by the New Testament priests are the saved persons. The strongest proof of this point is in the case of John the Baptist. He was born into a priestly family and was therefore born a priest. Moreover, he was the firstborn and the only begotten, and he should therefore have inherited the priesthood from his father. However, John the Baptist did not behave in this way. He did not live in the temple. On the contrary, he lived in the wilderness (Luke 1:80). When he came out to work, he did not kill bulls and goats for sacrifices. Rather, he called for people to repent and offered the repentant ones to God one by one (Matt. 3:1, 5-6). Hence, what John the Baptist did was a sign, showing others that the age had changed. The Old Testament age was over. The Old Testament priests have now been turned to become the New Testament priests. This can be proved from Romans 15:16. There Paul says, “That I should be...to the nations, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, that the offering of the nations might be acceptable, having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit.”
Today, we are all priests of the gospel. If we do not bring sinners to salvation and offer them up to God, we have forfeited our priesthood. We have seen in the past that according to God’s desire, the priesthood is not composed of a minority of people. It is not composed of one tribe, or one clan. Rather it should include all the saints. However, those who participate in the spiritual work of helping others in knowing the truth and experiencing life are still the minority. This is why, when I came back in 1984, I brought up the matter of a change in the system. The old system has created a distinction between the clergy and the laity. This is an Old Testament situation. In the Old Testament, among the Israelites, only those of the house of Aaron in the tribe of Levi were allowed to be priests. All others were not allowed to be priests. Even the Levites were only there to help in the miscellaneous chores. They were like today’s housekeepers in the meeting halls.
At this point, I would like to ask how many fruit you have borne this year. These fruit are the sacrifices you offer up to God. In the old creation, fruit trees bear fruit once every year. But in the new creation, there is fruit-bearing every month. Each month there is the yielding of fresh fruit (Rev. 22:2). Hence, if we do not bring one person to salvation a month and offer him to God, we are not fulfilling the duty of a priest. It is not a small thing for branches not to bear fruit and for priests not to offer up sacrifices.
The Lord speaks concerning the matter of fruit-bearing in John 15. There He says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and I appointed you that you should go forth and bear fruit” (v. 16). The word “appointed” here has the sense of commissioning, just like an ambassador being commissioned by a government. The Lord has commissioned us to go forth to bear fruit. If we do not bear fruit, the Lord says again, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes it away” (v. 2). This is a very dangerous situation. It does not say here that one will not be saved if he does not bear fruit. By no means does it say that. God’s salvation is eternal. However, if a branch is cut off from the tree, it cannot enjoy the sap of the tree any longer; the fellowship with the tree is cut off. No doubt you are saved. But if you are cut off, you will not be able to enjoy the riches of the life of Christ. I say this to stir you up. Today the Lord has not returned yet. We may think that we all can take it easy. But if the Lord returns today, what will you do at the judgment seat? In Matthew 25 the Lord told the slave who did not gain any profit that such an evil and slothful slave would be cast into outer darkness where there will be gnashing of teeth (vv. 26, 30). Today, no matter how much we suffer, our labor will be only for a few decades. It cannot be compared to the suffering we would receive from the Lord’s punishment in the future. Since the Lord has chosen us and has appointed us to go forth to bear fruit, we must go, labor, and strive to save the sinners. Only then will we have fruit to offer to God.