In the group meetings a continuous fellowship should be maintained among the attendants. Then they will know each other and will offer prayers to God for one another. They will have a mutual care for one another. Someone may ask a question, to which one brother will give an answer while another strengthens his answer. This is the way in which they will learn the truth. We should build up an atmosphere in which all the attendants of the small groups are anxious to know the truth. Perhaps the saints in a small group would sing the song “Oh, He’s the wonderful Spirit in us” (Hymns, #1113). A new one may then ask a brother concerning the wonderful Spirit. This question will afford a good opportunity to give this one a teaching. After one brother speaks something about the wonderful Spirit, another brother can add a little. Then one sister adds a little more, and another sister gives a little testimony to confirm this teaching. This way of meeting is living, rich, and flexible. To hold a group meeting in a religious way full of legality is too dead. We must be living and very flexible, keeping the meetings so flexible. Everybody should be free to speak. However, nobody should speak nonsensically. Everyone should say something meaningful. In the small group, our teaching should be carried out in this way.
We should also promote the seeking after life. We have to stir up a hunger for this. In the small group meeting a newly saved and established one who is not yet strong in life may ask something concerning seeking after life. A brother may answer: “The life we seek after is not the plant life, the animal life, or even the human life. We seek after God’s life, the divine life, the eternal life, which is Christ Himself. We need to have this life added into our being more and more. Brother, you have been saved for three months, and you have this divine life, but even we who have been in the Lord for over fifteen years still feel that we do not have enough of the divine life. Therefore, we need to seek life more and more. It is the same with you.”
If the newly saved one is a thoughtful person, he may ask how to seek after the divine life. A brother may explain: “We must seek after the divine life in everything, even in the way we comb our hair. We used to do everything by our own life. Now that we have another life, the divine life, God’s life, we must have a change. Do not live by your natural life. You have to live by the divine life. Even when you comb your hair, you must do it not by your own life, but by the divine life. When you comb your hair by your natural life, you comb it in a natural way. You may simply comb it according to the modern style. It is not easy to avoid this because the modern style may be quite attractive and tempting. However, within the modern style there is the Devil. Are you happy with that? If you comb your hair by the divine life, the Devil will be chased away.” This kind of talk will help the entire audience. They will all realize why they need the divine life.
After meeting in small groups like this for one year, all the attendants will enjoy much help, edification, building up, teaching, and instruction. This kind of teaching is much richer than the common way of teaching. This kind of meeting may be considered as an improved Bible study. Pick up this principle and try to practice it. You will find many benefits in this way of meeting.
After only one year, everyone in the small group can be very useful. They will have experienced many things. Then they will need to go out to repeat for others what has been done for them. First, they should go to visit new ones in their homes by knocking on their doors. These new ones may be their relatives. Within one or two months, they should get at least two or three baptized. All of the young believers will be able to do this. After they baptize people, they should right away go back to their homes in the way we did for them the previous year. They should have home meetings with them to nourish, cherish, and take care of them. Then after three months, they should bring them together to have small group meetings. We should tell the young believers to do for others what we have done for them. They have learned and experienced many things. We are the first generation, and they are the second generation. Now they have to work on the third generation. After another one and a half years, the third generation will produce a fourth. Generation after generation the church will increase.
The larger meetings of the church are not the same as the home meetings and the group meetings. The bigger meetings are for speaking for the Lord and speaking forth the Lord, speaking the Lord out. The Lord is in us. Now we need to pour out what is stored within us by speaking. We should speak forth the Lord into others, speaking the Lord out of ourselves and into others. This is to minister and dispense Christ, to serve people with Christ, like a waiter serving people with food. For this we need a larger meeting so that many saints can come together to do the same thing—to mutually speak for the Lord and speak the Lord to others. This is to exhibit Christ. Every week we have morning watch, home meetings, and small group meetings. Through all these activities we taste Christ, enjoy Christ, and experience Christ. We have an accumulation of Christ within us. Now we need to have a bigger meeting for the saints to come together to display the very Christ whom we have experienced. This display is an exhibition by speaking for the Lord and speaking the Lord forth, speaking the Lord from within us into others. In this way the riches of Christ are released. This is the scriptural way to meet, and it is altogether different from today’s common practice.
First Corinthians 14 promotes prophesying in the meeting. Many have misunderstood prophesying. They think that to prophesy is to tell people of things beforehand. In China and in the United States I attended a number of Pentecostal meetings and heard some prophecies of this kind. In 1963 I heard a prophecy that said Los Angeles would have an earthquake and the whole city would fall into the ocean. The next year the same kind of prophecy was made in San Francisco. This was published in the newspaper, but it was never fulfilled. To prophesy in 1 Corinthians chapter fourteen does not denote this kind of foretelling. To prophesy means to speak the Lord with the Lord’s word under His inspiration. We should not speak our own word or our own matters. If we speak our own word, that is not prophesying. We must speak the Lord with the Lord’s word. If we are one spirit with the Lord and the Lord is one spirit with us, we will speak the Lord with His word, being inspired by Him. We will have the inspiration to speak the Lord. Every day throughout the week we have some experiences of the Lord, so we have the riches stored up within us. When the church comes together, that is the time for each one of us to release the riches we have enjoyed of the Lord by speaking Him with His word under His inspiration. This is to prophesy.