Thank the Lord that we can have this conference. We are all happy because at this time we have representatives from the churches in all the six continents of the world. We all have to praise Him that there are brothers even from Africa. It is not a small thing that we are meeting here together. We are not only joyful in our heart but also leaping in our spirit because the Lord has brought us to be here together from different localities, nations, and tongues all over the earth. This is not merely a doctrine to us; rather, it is a reality. Politicians, educators, and other professionals in the world have tried their best to unite the peoples of the world, yet they have never succeeded. Today in Christ we do not have to do anything, yet people from the six continents are gathered in one place. Hallelujah! The first thing I want to do before the Lord in this meeting is to point out the representatives from each continent.
Since the time the brothers decided to have this conference, I have been seeking the Lord unceasingly as to what He wants to speak at this time. These past few months I have been looking to the Lord with prayers and seeking to know what the Lord wants to say to all of His churches on the earth at this time. However, up to two weeks ago I was still unclear. Then thirteen days ago, on the Lord’s Day, something happened. Near the place where the church in Anaheim is located, there is a Pentecostal group with a comparatively large congregation. This group, which has been actively opposing the Lord’s recovery in these few years, may be considered the birthplace, the source, of the opposition to the Lord’s recovery on the whole earth today. They have tried their best to destroy the Lord’s recovery by their writings and actions. This is especially because since the Lord’s church came to the city of Anaheim, our number has grown quite much within merely two to three years, and also because we built a meeting hall that in America can be regarded as noteworthy. Both these factors have virtually become a threat to them; thus, they oppose us actively. Thirteen days ago, on a Lord’s Day evening, they spent two and a half hours in a conference specifically to propagandize against us. Over five hundred brothers and sisters among us attended that meeting and recorded their words of opposition against us in those two and a half hours. The next morning the co-workers came together and wrote down the opposing words from their tapes and looked at the points that were against us. Immediately ten of the brothers picked up the burden to take the sixteen points opposing us and write a refutation for each one. These were published in a newspaper. I was not among the ten brothers, and there was no need for me to speak anything. Praise the Lord! However, from what the brothers were relating and then writing about, I became clear within as to what to speak in this conference. It was through this opposition that the Lord told me what He wants to speak in this conference.
Why? It is because every single point of their opposing words in those two and a half hours concerns our subjective experience. We say, “God and man are mingled,” but they say, “This is heresy. God is God, and man is man. How can you say that God and man are mingled? Man is too small and too low. How can man be mingled with God? By saying this, you are advocating that man can evolve into God.” They use the term evolution-evolving into God. This is an extremely blasphemous word. They say, “The local church teaches this heresy, saying that man can be uplifted, can progress, and can even evolve into God.” Brothers and sisters, do you realize that this is an extremely great opposition and that it is a great contending against the truth? According to the truth, can man be mingled with God? Does the mingling of man with God mean that lowly man evolves and evolves until one day he becomes God? The opposers say, “This Witness Lee came from China to tell us that we will evolve into God. Isn’t this heresy?” They speak in such a seemingly plausible way.
Nonetheless, this kind of opposing word is just a “paper tiger” that can be flattened by a single strike. We have to say that it is not that we are evolving into God, but it is God who humbled Himself to come into our spirit. John 1:1 and 14 say, “In the beginning was the Word,...and the Word was God....And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory...), full of grace and reality.” This is His first step. Then verse 12 says, “But as many as received Him,...those who believe into His name.” The receiving here is not like having a very loving heart to receive brothers and sisters hospitably into your home. Do you receive the Lord Jesus like this? No. Here, to receive simply means to take in.
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