Let me say something in a brief and clear way. Why do we talk so much about peculiarity? Because this one thing frustrates us from the experience of Christ and from the building up of the Body. These two matters have been frustrated to the uttermost by our peculiarity. Thank Him that we have been and still are the Lord’s seekers in this age. Even the angels cannot deny this. You may say: “Sometimes I don’t love the Lord so much.” I would say that is a lie. I believe all of you love the Lord, and we are all seeking after the Lord. This is not of ourselves; this is of Him. We love Him, we seek after Him, and we come to the meetings to practice the church life. But we all have to admit after a certain number of years in the recovery, our advance, our progress, our growth has become quite slow. In the first two or three years of our church-life experience, the speed was very high—but not today. We are not stopped completely; we are still driving, but the speed is too slow.
It is easy to turn to the recovery. Overnight you can turn. To get into the church life is easy. Tonight you turn and tomorrow you come to the meetings and begin to practice the church life. You begin to meet in the Name, and you begin to stand on the ground. You are happy, and you begin to function. After all this, however, the highway is climbing up and up. After all this you need to grow in life. To grow in life is just to experience more and more of Christ. In the initial stage of our church life we turned this way very fast, we stood on the ground of oneness very fast, and we practiced the church life very fast. After all these matters we have come to the point that the highway is not so flat. The highway began to go up. Why? After all these years, you now need to grow. After all the things we have done we now need to grow. We have reached a state where we must experience Christ. Without this we become jobless in the church life. You know the church-life doctrine, and you are familiar with the church-life practice. What else do you need? You need to grow.
Before 1973 many among us thought it would be good to go to a new place. There they would be busy. Now even though they went somewhere else, still they ask: What else? Still they have nothing to do because the main thing they need is to grow in Christ. They need to experience Christ directly and purely. If we don’t experience Christ directly in our present state we all become jobless. What has caused us to become jobless? Not sin, but peculiarity. I thank the Lord that in Orange County at least a thousand saints have been brought to this stage. If these dear saints don’t grow in life they all become jobless. To take the ground of oneness doesn’t mean so much to them because they have it already. For example, when some young ones graduated from elementary school, they were proud. Suppose, however, they did not go on to study in high school. After three years their graduation from elementary school would mean nothing. After graduation from high school, or even from college, or from a master’s degree or a Ph.D., if you don’t keep studying further and further, after a certain time you will feel jobless.
Why do some in the churches feel that they are now jobless, with nothing to do? They had a good start in the church life. It was so good at Elden Hall. Comparatively speaking, they might say that today the church is not as good. I would say that I don’t believe this is the case. The church has never changed. I would say the church today is much better than Elden. The church has not changed, but you have changed. You are like the southern California climate—you have a lot of fluctuations. The church stands the same and even rather is going on and on. Even the angels would say that the recovery in the United States is much stronger and richer than it was seventeen years ago. You say Elden was better simply because you haven’t grown. You didn’t grow, and you have become jobless. If you don’t grow in Christ, you have nothing to do. If you don’t grow in life, there is no possibility of having even a little bit of building up. So of course you become jobless.
Recently the church in Anaheim has been promoting gospel preaching. Of course, gospel preaching is quite an activity; it is very active. If you haven’t grown in life and if you don’t have some amount of building, you would not go along with the gospel preaching. Whatever the church does, you would not go along because you are behind. So you are jobless. Those who are growing and being built are all the time one with the church in any kind of activity.
Peculiarity eats up the experience of Christ. This is a germ. This is even a serious disease like tuberculosis. It is a strong, hard germ with hard wax covering it. So it is hard to deal with. This germ not only eats up the experience of Christ, but also keeps people from being built up in the local church. You may be in the local church, but you are not being built up. What keeps you from the building? The peculiarity. The peculiarity eats up your experience of Christ, and without the experience of Christ, there is no way for you to be built up.