We who are saved should all be serious about taking this way. Before the young people are saved, they love to read romance novels, but after they are saved, all these things should either be thrown away or burned. They should never give these books to their classmates. If they give them to their classmates, they are not doing their classmates a favor; rather, they are doing them harm. In 1944, I went to Weihaiwe to preach the gospel. The majority of the congregation there worked as customs officials. Nearly all of their wives were saved, yet their houses were filled with either mah-jongg games or Chinese dominoes. After they were saved, they did not have any peace within, so they came and asked me, “We have mah-jongg tiles of very good quality, and they all cost a lot of money. What should we do with them?” I asked in return, “Why do you come to ask me?” They replied, “It is because we do not feel peaceful.” Then I told them, “If you have no peace, then why do you still need to ask me? If you have already smelled something stinking, do you still ask people whether or not you should eat it? If you have already smelled the stinking odor of mah-jongg, you do not need to ask people whether or not you should play it.” They answered, “Then we had better give them to other people.” To give your mah-jongg tiles away is even worse than being a bandit. A bandit who robs people’s money only does harm to them for a short while, but to give your mah-jongg tiles away may ruin someone’s life and harm people for two or three generations. So finally, they went back, spread this word amongst one another, and gathered together all their mah-jongg games. Then I said, “You all should burn your mah-jongg tiles as a testimony for the Lord.” Then they put their mah-jongg tiles together, piled them up, and while we were giving messages inside the house, they burned all the mah-jongg tiles, Chinese dominoes, and dice in the backyard. This is an example of purging out the leaven.
In 1938, I was staying with someone in Peiping (Beijing) who worked in the Union Hospital. One day he told me that he wondered if the Lord was happy with his silk umbrella that he had in his living room. I was younger than he was, so I respectfully asked him, “After you have spent so much money to get it, why do you now think that it is not good?” He answered, “The umbrella itself is not the problem. The problem is that the umbrella has dragons on it. Do you think that something with dragons on it should be kept in a Christian’s home?” Then I told him that since the first day I entered into his house, whenever I saw those four dragons, I felt very uncomfortable within. This brother’s feeling came as a result of reading the book of Revelation. When he read that the devil is a dragon, he asked himself, “If I belong to God, why do I still allow something of Satan to remain in my home?” Satan is very deceptive. This is the reason why people today not only have pictures of dragons, but they also wear dragon ornaments, perform the dragon dance, and even wear clothing with dragons embroidered on it. They are totally occupied with dragons.
In 1936, when I was in Tientsin, a sister invited some of us for dinner. This sister’s husband was a very famous architect, and the ceiling of her dining room was filled with dragon paintings. Her husband was not at home that day, and we went to her home for dinner. She said that whenever she ate in that dining room, she felt very uncomfortable. I asked her why, and she told me that it was because of the dragons on the ceiling. Then I asked her why she did not like dragons when everyone else likes dragons. Everyone has the image of a dragon either on their teapots or on their clothes. She told me that because she was a child of God, she should not allow such things to remain in her home, but that since her husband was not willing to remove them, it was out of her control. I consoled her by saying that if it is not up to us, then it is not our business.
Since we are saved, we should allow the Lord to enlighten us so that we may see if there is anyone that we have wronged or treated unrighteously. If we have done so, we have to deal with any problems we have with them thoroughly. In addition, if we have obtained something in an unrighteous way, whether it is from someone in our own household or from work, we have to deal with this matter absolutely. If we are willing to go to the Lord and check with ourselves completely, we will find that our entire being is full of leaven. One time, Dr. F. B. Meyer, an American, went to England to preach. He said that there was no way for a Christian to be blessed if he merely listened to sermons day after day yet was unwilling to be dealt with and had no feeling when he stole money from his manager or spent his company’s funds. After that sermon all the bank drafts of the surrounding post offices were sold out in a few hours. Why did this happen? This happened because so many people, after seeing their unrighteousness, went to buy bank drafts so that they could pay back the money that they had taken. In that meeting Dr. Meyer used a young man as an example. He said, “This young man has stolen three pounds and eighteen shillings from his master and even until now he has not returned the money. Then he asked the young man, “Do you have peace within?” Later someone invited Dr. Meyer for a meal. The young man was waiting for him there and told him, “Some years ago I really stole three pounds and eighteen shillings from my master, and I have no peace within. I have purchased a check for three pounds and eighteen shillings and have enclosed it in an envelope to return it to my master. Please tell me, am I doing the right thing?”
One time Charles Spurgeon used an illustration in his preaching, saying, “There is a young man here who is wearing a pair of gloves that he stole, and he should return them.” When he spoke such a word, he said it without any particular intention, but after he spoke, a young man came up to him and said, “The gloves that I am wearing really were stolen from my master. How did you know?” Spurgeon said, “I did not know anything. When I was speaking, I just was inspired to say that.” Many Christians have no problem with their salvation, but they have never dealt with all their unrighteous possessions. If we want to follow the Lord in a serious way, we should deal with all the idols, the ancestral tablets, and the stolen things in our homes.
Many years ago in Kaifeng, Honan Province, there was a sister who had an image of Jesus in her home. She bowed down to worship the image every day and at every meal took some food to offer to the image. Later, she was possessed by demons. A sister who knew her wrote to me and asked, “Can we worship an image of Jesus? Why is this sister possessed by demons even though she worshipped an image of Jesus?” I replied to her that we should not worship even an image of Jesus. We have to use our spirit to worship Jesus Himself. The Gospel of John shows us that when we worship the Lord in spirit and in truthfulness, He will accept us. We should not worship any image, even the image of Jesus, because there are demons behind all these kind of images, even behind the image of Jesus.
We need to pray much and to come back to God. We need to let Him enlighten us and show us if there is anything in our homes, in our being, or in our surroundings that is unpleasing to Him. For example, before some people were saved, their mothers-in-law were a great suffering to them, and they did not like them. Once they are saved, however, this dislike has to be removed. The dislike of the mothers-in-law toward their daughters-in-law also has to be removed. In short, if we dislike anyone or are holding a grudge against anyone—whether they are family, friends, or colleagues—we should confess and thoroughly deal with any problems that are between us. In this way, even if we do not preach the gospel to them, they will be saved through our behavior.
After one sister believed in the Lord, she felt very unpeaceful when she recalled all the times that she had been hard on her daughter-in-law. She desired that her daughter-in-law would be saved, but she was not bold enough to preach the gospel to her. She came to see me, and I said to her, “You persecuted your daughter-in-law before you were saved, do you think she will listen to you now? You should confess to her.” She replied, “I am her mother-in-law, how can I confess to my daughter-in-law?” I asked her whether she wanted the Lord or to preserve her face, whether she wanted her daughter-in-law to be saved or she wanted her to go to hell? She said, “In the past I persecuted her; if I confess to her, and later she persecutes me, what will I do?” I told her that she had to trust in the Lord to grant her the grace in this matter. A few days later she came back to me and said, “After I confessed to my daughter-in-law, she cried, and I also cried. Then the two of us knelt down to pray together, and she was saved.” Do you see this? Sometimes we can get people saved even without preaching the gospel. We may be sloppy, but our God is never sloppy. We should not be careless or excuse ourselves in these matters; rather, we should carefully purge out all the leaven. In this way one day our whole being will be absolutely clean and free from all defilement within and without. In addition, everything in our family will also be clean. A person who is free from all defilement is clean material in the Lord’s hand.