A group of young saints recently consecrated themselves to serve full time. Seventy to eighty of them are from the church in Taipei, and the remaining one hundred twenty are from other places. The majority of these saints are between twenty-five and thirty-five years old, and they need to be trained in all aspects. However, the atmosphere of prayer for such a training is lacking. We cannot depend merely on a certain person to train them. We must increase our prayer, and we must have a spirit of prayer. These days are for prayer. We should even fast and pray.
Only the Lord is the Spirit, and only the Lord can train us. We should never think that we are establishing a theological seminary. Today’s Christianity depends on theology, which is of no profit in accomplishing God’s economy; hence, we cannot take the way of theology. Theology emphasizes neither life nor the Spirit, but we emphasize both life and the Spirit. The natural man tends to care for knowledge and organization, not for life and the Spirit. We cannot walk according to the tendency of the natural man; neither can we be without knowledge, because even though the writing of the Bible is according to the Spirit of life, the written word is through knowledge and is knowledge. If there were no written word, God could not put forth the revelation concerning life and concerning the Spirit. Therefore, we need to have knowledge. It is regrettable that Christianity leans toward knowledge and does not stress life and the Spirit. In the Lord’s recovery we need to have proper knowledge of the Bible; however, we must not focus on knowledge. We must focus on life and the Spirit.
The brothers and sisters who desire to be in the training full time must have a new beginning with the Lord. This requires much prayer. How the training should be conducted requires our prayer. We should pray by ourself, when we come together in small numbers, and in the meetings. As a rule, we should pray unceasingly in the training meetings. We should pray and pray and pray. When our prayer is thorough, we will be clear concerning how to lead the training. Without sufficient prayer we will not know how the training should proceed. If we merely listen to messages to gain knowledge, we are taking a way that is not according to the Lord’s leading. Hence, we should have a spirit of prayer.
The full-time trainees who are twenty-one years old should continue with their education and not consider full-time service until after they finish their college education. Every morning, from Monday to Friday, all the trainees must study the Recovery Version and the Life-studies. They should study the text, the footnotes, the Life-studies, and the cross references. How much they study the cross references depends on their time. However, they must read through and understand the text of the Recovery Version and study the footnotes. In addition, they must read and understand the Life-studies.
When we study, we first need to read the text according to the outlines. Once we understand the text, we can read the footnotes. After we understand the text and the footnotes, we should find the corresponding portion in the Life-study messages and go over the Life-studies with the text and the footnotes. I hope that the trainees will study five days every week, from eight o’clock in the morning to twelve noon. After studying for an hour, they can take a fifteen-minute break. It is better to study in groups of three or five. Saturdays should be set aside for service. If we are willing to practice this, after four years we will finish the entire New Testament.
We should pursue the truth by studying the Recovery Version and the Life-studies, but we should never consider this as our theology. The term theology is misleading. We have only the Bible; we do not have theology. The problems in Christianity began around the second or third century when the church fathers developed a theology from the Bible. In the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, the so-called Nicene Creed was instituted to determine the important doctrines and theology. On the one hand, the creed was written according to the New Testament, but not all of the books in the New Testament were recognized at the time. On the other hand, the creed was written according to the teachings of the church fathers. For some, the creed is now more authoritative than the Bible.
Even though some people advocate the creed and consider it to be according to the Bible, the creed is not as complete as the Bible. For example, Revelation, the last book of the Bible, speaks of the seven Spirits, but this is not in the Nicene creed. Moreover, the items in the Bible that are included in the creed are not covered in a detailed way. Furthermore, the Bible is different from all other books. Although scholars spend much effort to study the writing style of the Bible, rarely can one describe the style clearly. For example, it is difficult to define the style of writing in the Gospel of John. It differs from the style of writing commonly used by writers, and the topics, central line, emphases, and structure of the sections in this book are not immediately obvious to a reader. It is as if the points in this book are scattered like stars in the sky with here a little and there a little. Hence, we cannot systematize the Bible by applying systematic theology.
In 1983 I released a series of messages in Stuttgart, Germany, concerning the central view of the divine dispensing (see chapters 1 through 10 of The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity). I have since studied the relationship between the Father and the Son, the Son and the Spirit, and the Spirit and the Father and found many important points. One point is that the Son comes with the Father. This is a crucial point. However, the theology in Christianity does not emphasize the Son coming with the Father. Not even the creeds point out that when the Son was on the earth, the Father was with Him. Christian theology is even general in the way it says that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist simultaneously. Unless a person studies this subject, he will not notice that the Son came with the Father.
Due to the incompleteness of the creeds, the British Brethren declared that they wanted the Bible, not the creeds. Later the Southern Baptist Church, one of the largest denominations in America, also declared that they wanted the Bible, not the creeds. The Church of Christ made the same declaration. More than sixty years ago, when we were raised up by the Lord in China, we also declared that we do not care for the creeds; we care only for the Bible. The creeds are not wrong, but because they are incomplete, they unavoidably cause people to err in their understanding.
In 1984 the Southern Baptist Church put out a publication with a list of all orthodox Christian groups, and we were included in this list. They also commented on several of our books, including The Economy of God. Their conclusion was that even though Witness Lee’s exposition of the Bible may not be considered wrong, he adheres too closely to the lexical meaning of the Scriptures; hence, theologians who follow the creeds or base their beliefs on the various Councils find my exposition difficult to accept. After I read their conclusion, I said Hallelujah, because in America our slogan has always been “Return to the pure Word of God.” The theology in various denominations in Christianity is not pure, but the truths in the Lord’s recovery are entirely based on the Bible. Our interpretation of the Bible is based on the Bible, not on our own views.
Since the time of Brother Nee, the light that we have received has been progressing and increasing because we follow the Bible in our exposition. For example, before 1939, when Brother Nee spoke of our co-death with Christ, he stressed reckoning, based on the writings of A. B. Simpson, the founder of Christian and Missionary Alliance. One of Simpson’s hymns says, “There’s a little word that the Lord has giv’n... / Let us reckon ourselves to be dead to sin” (Hymns, #692). According to this hymn, the word that the Lord has given us is reckon. Brother Nee translated this hymn into Chinese. From 1938 to 1939 Brother Nee gave the messages in The Normal Christian Life in which he emphasized reckoning. However, after 1939 Brother Nee saw that the fact of our co-death with Christ in Romans 6 can only be experienced in the Spirit revealed in Romans 8. Therefore, mere reckoning does not avail; we must be in the Spirit, because the fact of our co-death with Christ is only in the Spirit. In this matter Brother Nee had a great advancement.
Another example is concerning church practice. In 1934 Brother Nee conducted a Bible study with the co-workers in Shanghai to study the church. The messages were published in The Assembly Life. After He completed the draft, Brother Nee asked me to write a preface to the book. In this book Brother Nee said that we did not have official apostles who establish churches; hence, no elders can be officially appointed. Hence, at best we were unofficial apostles establishing unofficial churches and appointing unofficial elders. Three years later, in 1937, Brother Nee gathered the co-workers in Shanghai and gave messages that were later published as The Normal Christian Church Life. In these messages he said that there are still apostles today and that an apostle is one who is sent out by the Lord. Since there are apostles, there are churches that are established by the apostles and elders who are appointed by them. This shows that Brother Nee had a change in his understanding concerning this matter. In 1948 several co-workers and I went to Brother Nee’s home in Foochow, and we stayed with him for some time. While he was speaking with us, he said that in 1937 we clearly saw the line of Antioch, but we neglected the line of Jerusalem; however, we should stress the line of Jerusalem. This does not mean that he had a different view, but it shows that his view became more complete.
These examples show that we care only for the Bible, not the creeds. If a person cares for the creeds, it is not possible for him to change, and neither is it possible for him to advance. In a few years we may see more than what we have already seen. Our expounding of the Bible progresses and advances whenever we receive light. We cannot set up a creed to replace the Bible; this is evil before God. Although many denominations stress the creeds over the Bible, they cannot deny the fact that the Bible is a higher authority.