In this chapter I would like to fellowship concerning the vision of the Lord’s move today. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, a burden came to me in October of 1984 concerning the situation in the Lord’s recovery at that time. I was burdened to go to Taiwan to study our way of meeting and service, and to experiment with a new way. At first I was not clear what the Lord would lead us into, but I was burdened. According to my observation, the recovery had fallen into a situation of oldness and had become stale.
I spent time to research the statistics concerning Christianity. Through those statistics I came to the conclusion that all of Christianity, including Catholicism, the Protestant denominations, and the free groups, had come to a standstill in every way. In the last century and the first part of this century, many good expositions of the holy Word, messages on life, and messages on the principles of the Lord’s death and resurrection were published. However, since the end of World War II, very few books of spiritual value have been published in Europe and America. Although a number of word studies and dictionaries have been published, there have been hardly any books with a definite revelation of the divine truths and a rich supply of life. Andrew Murray, Jesse Penn-Lewis, and T. Austin-Sparks may be considered to be the last three writers in the line of the inner life. After their writings, almost nothing new has come out.
With regard to gospel preaching for the increase, the situation in Christianity in the United States has also been going down. I came to this country in the early 1960s and have watched the situation in Christianity for over a quarter of a century. Recently a number of large denominations came together to study how to cover the entire earth with the gospel of Christ by the year 2000. The conclusion they arrived at was that they are short of persons. Actually, they are not short of persons because there are millions among them. One denomination alone numbers eleven million in the United States and three million abroad. Because the practice of the clergy-laity system has annulled so many of them, they say that they are short of persons. Many of the major denominations have been decreasing in number for the past fifteen years. In the matter of increase, Christianity has come to a standstill.
By 1984 there were at least seven to eight hundred local churches in the Lord’s recovery around the earth on six continents, but we also had nearly come to a standstill in our increase. That caused me to be burdened. Even though I was occupied with the revision of the Recovery Version of the New Testament, I never forgot this burden for a single day. I have been seeking a new way for a new start for the Lord’s interest on this earth. I reconsidered the teaching of the Bible, especially of the New Testament. I reconsidered church history and the different practices of Christians in the past. I also paid much attention to the present situation of all the denominations.
In October of 1984, I did not fully know how the Lord would lead us. However, I had the full assurance that the new way must begin strongly with gospel preaching. The gospel has to be spread, preached, and announced, not by inviting people to come to us, but by going to them where they are. I knew that this way for the gospel was biblical, and I knew that we must experiment with it at any cost to our resources. Before any new thing is developed, it must be tested many times, and the Full-time Training in Taipei was the “laboratory” for us.
During this time of experimenting, I suffered more criticism than ever in my over fifty years of serving the Lord. However, I did not care about the criticism because I had the assurance in what I was doing. I was assured that not only we in the Lord’s recovery but also all of Christianity needed a new start. Without a new start, there could be no way for the Lord to complete the building up of His Body as a preparation for His return. There is no use in maintaining something old and unscriptural. Everything must be up-to-date and scriptural. Something that is out-of-date and unscriptural will not only decline but will come to an end. We must learn what the Lord’s will is for the present time and how He desires to go on.