God has a plan, an eternal purpose, which He made in eternity past for eternity future (Eph. 3:11). The New Testament speaks of the dispensation, the economy, of God (Eph. 1:10; 1 Tim. 1:4). Economy is an anglicization of the Greek word oikonomia, which is composed of the words oikos, meaning house, and nomos, meaning law. An economy is the law of a household and denotes an administration according to a certain arrangement. This arrangement is a dispensation for the carrying out of an administration. God’s dispensation is His arrangement, His plan, for dispensing the riches of Christ into God’s people.
God’s administration is a family matter. In ancient times, the administration among large families was mainly for distributing the food, the necessities, to all the members of the family. Our God has the biggest family in the universe. God has a family plan to distribute all His rich provision to His children. His rich provision is altogether embodied in a person, the Second of the Trinity, Christ. All the riches of the Godhead and the fullness of the Godhead are embodied in Christ. God’s family plan, God’s family administration, is to distribute, to dispense, all the divine riches in Christ into His saved ones for their nourishment and feeding, resulting in the building up of the Body of Christ. Today we are under God’s economy to enjoy His rich distribution.
We are now under God’s dispensing, and this dispensing is by prophesying. Prophesying is the unique way, the best way, the excelling way, to dispense all the riches of Christ into God’s people for the building up of the organic Body of Christ. The dispensing of the riches of Christ by prophesying can be illustrated by the dispensing of food by a mother. Day by day a mother distributes, or dispenses, food to her little baby until he becomes a strong and husky boy. The little baby becomes such a big boy by the distributing of rich food. To prophesy is to distribute, to dispense, the Triune God as the rich food, the nourishing element, into others.
According to 1 Corinthians 14, prophesying should not be by only one speaker. Verse 26 says, “What is it then, brothers? Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.” Each one has. You have something and I have something. We all have something ready to speak by prophesying.
Those in the denominations who have a pastor listen to him week after week. After listening one time, they may feel good about him, but after listening to him for half a year, they may become bored, and he will become tired. He may be afraid to speak every week; it is hard to prepare a message with many stories, illustrations, quotations, and references. This kind of dispensing can be compared to one person trying to feed five hundred people with a single dish. Recently I attended a meeting in which many saints spoke. It was a feast for me to listen to each one. Each one spoke for less than three minutes with good content. In their speaking there were strong points which were not according to natural, traditional theology. Every one spoke on a particular point of the revealed Word.
Many people have the concept that the way Christians meet to worship God is to come together on Sundays to listen to a hired, learned preacher or pastor. This is the natural concept, and this natural practice has become the habitual and traditional way of many Christians. In 1937 Watchman Nee, the senior co-worker among us, called a special meeting in Shanghai for the leading co-workers. These messages were published in the book Rethinking Our Mission, which he later translated in England as Concerning Our Mission, and which have been published in America as The Normal Christian Church Life. In these messages he said that the scriptural way for the church to meet was in 1 Corinthians 14:26, but we did not find a way to practice what he saw. Eleven years later in 1948, Brother Nee held a four-month training in which he gave a series of messages which has been published in Church Affairs. In these messages he pointed out that the way of Christianity, the traditional service with one man speaking and the rest listening, is according to “the customs of the nations” (2 Kings 17:8—NASB). He told us that this way of meeting should be stopped and replaced. He said that we should push against the pressure of tradition. Twice in his life the leading co-worker among us strongly spoke concerning the traditional way of meeting, but we did not find the way to practice what he taught.
In October of 1984, I finished the Life-study of the New Testament and the writing of the notes for the Recovery Version. At that time I realized that our way of meeting and serving in the Lord’s recovery was old, traditional, natural, and according to habit. I stopped my work in this country and went back to Taiwan to study our situation. At that time I felt that I could not do much to help the churches in the United States. After a model church life would be raised up in Taiwan, I planned to return to the United States with a new way for the church life.
Because I realized that the way of meeting in the Bible was not like the old, traditional way, I began to reconsider the entire New Testament related to Christian meeting and service. I discovered that according to the New Testament record, the way ordained by God for Christians to serve and meet is absolutely different from our common practice. I determined that the old practice among us must be ended and that I must release to God’s people what I had seen in the New Testament. I must let them know that at the Apostle Paul’s time it was not as it is today. Our way of service and meeting has been altogether old, natural, habitual, and traditional.