I give thanks with all my heart to the Lord whom I serve, for He has given me the privilege to write this book. I had hoped that a better writer would be raised up to fulfill this responsibility, but it has pleased the Lord that I should take it up myself. According to my choice, I should and would be the last one to write such a book. My reluctance is not due to my timidness, but to my thought that writing such a book on spiritual progress and the stratagems of warfare is not an easy task for one who has believed in the Lord for less than ten years. Among the spiritually seeking believers there is always the danger of excessive subjectivity concerning one's own spiritual experience. This is not healthy, for self-examination, the analyzing of oneself, is a means of cultivating the self-life and fills a person's mind with vain thoughts. The Bible does permit believers to relate their own experience; this is something that the Holy Spirit would lead men to do. But experiences that are as wonderful and profound as the rapture "to the third heaven" should better wait "fourteen years" to be mentioned. It is most important that we pay attention to experience, but a mind that is filled with experience will make it more difficult for one to give up the self-life. I do not have "third heaven" experiences, and I have not received any great revelation; I have only received the grace from the Lord to learn in an incomplete way to follow Him in the small things in daily life. In this book I have merely tried to communicate to God's children what I have received from the Lord during these few years.
About four years ago I felt the need to write such a book. At that time, due to my physical weakness, I was resting, studying the Word, and praying in a little house by the lake. I felt the need for God's children to have a book based on scriptural teaching and spiritual experience, which would make a clear analysis of the spiritual life and would afford the Holy Spirit a way to guide the saints and lead them out of searching in darkness. At that time, I was very clear that the Lord had commissioned me to do this. As a result, I began to write the chapter on the difference between the spirit, the soul, and the body, the chapter concerning the flesh, and the half chapter on the soul-life. After a while, I stopped for a number of reasons, one of which was the fact that I was called to do other things. However, that alone could not have stopped me, because had I wanted to, I could still have found the time to write it. The greatest reason I stopped from further writing was that many of the truths which the Lord had commissioned me to write were not fully confirmed in my experience at that time. If I had written the book under such a condition, its value and power would have been diminished. I was willing to learn more and to confirm and experience His truths more, so that what I wrote would not be spiritual theories, but spiritual facts. This stopped the work for three years.
During these three years or more, I can say that the writing of this book was on my mind every day. Although to man, the publishing of this book is long overdue, I myself was most clear about the Lord's hand. During the past few years, the truths in this book—particularly those in Volume Three—have released many from the authority of darkness. This proves that we have seen the spiritual reality. The Lord has been particularly gracious to me to show me the goal of God's redemption and the way to differentiate between the new creation and the old creation. For this, I have to thank the Lord. The Lord has allowed me to travel more during these few years and has afforded me the opportunity to meet with some of the best of His children in various places. This, of course, increased my observation, knowledge, and experience. The Lord showed me in my contact with others the shortages among His children and the way of salvation revealed in the Bible. I can say to my readers that even though this book is a book that examines the spiritual life, all the points recorded in it can be proven in real experience.