The so-called new way the Lord has shown us in the past four and a half years is a way that is fully revealed in the New Testament. It is not really new. But to us it is a new way. For this reason, I prefer to term it the God-ordained way. It is something ordained by God, and is neither invented nor produced by human thought.
At the end of the first century after the Apostle John passed away, the church lost its direction. From the second century the lovers of the Lord Jesus and His Word studied the New Testament and as a result saw something but not in full. In every century there have been these lovers of the Lord and lovers of the Word groping to find the right way to serve God. This kind of groping was needed because the New Testament was written in the way of life, not in the way of religious regulation.
The Old Testament was likewise not written in the way of religious regulation but was rather written by God’s revelation in different ages through different channels. The entire Old Testament from the first five books written through Moses to the last book of Malachi was written for revelation, not for regulation. Nevertheless, in the five books of Moses God gave a clear record indicating how the priests in the Old Testament should serve. From the priesthood and the priests in the priesthood one could learn how to serve God. Not one point was left for anyone’s decision. For any detail you had to refer to Moses’ writing, the law. You had to find out what was regulated by the law.
In the New Testament, however, it is difficult to find such a thing. For example, for close to sixty years I have tried to find verses concerning the matter of Christian meetings. You may not find one right away; then you may find a verse in Matthew 18. Verse 20 says, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.” You may consider that this is part of the way to have a Christian meeting, or from another angle you may not. You can thus see it is difficult to find the way to meet in the New Testament.
Similarly, consider the matter of preaching the gospel. Preaching the gospel is there in the New Testament, but it is difficult to say what the right way is. The New Testament tells us in full, but you need to spend much time to find the way. Then you will find some part in Matthew, some part in Luke, and so forth.
Therefore, through the centuries there have been some new discoveries. However, in each century something of human invention, human concept, and human ideas was added to what was discovered in the Bible. For example the Presbyterians discovered the presbytery but added something to it, and the Baptists discovered baptism by immersion but added something to it. As a result, what has come to us through today’s Christianity is a kind of a mixture.
Through the centuries there have also been some lovers of the Lord who knew the Bible better than others. They therefore dropped many things which were added or brought in through human concept. For instance, the Brethren dropped a lot and came out of the mixture. Yet even they did not get into the full understanding of the biblical way ordained by God. As I have often mentioned, we followed them. At the beginning under Brother Nee’s teaching, at least eighty percent of our practice was a copy of the British Brethren. This was the reason some of the missionaries called us “the Chinese edition” of the Brethren.
Ten years later Brother Nee began to see more from the Bible which did not justify some of the things of the Brethren practice. He therefore published a short four chapter book in 1934 entitled The Assembly Life. Three years later, in 1937, he spoke the messages contained in The Normal Christian Church Life, published the subsequent year in Chinese and later in English. Brother Nee received further visions from the Lord. For example, in The Normal Christian Church Life he wrote concerning the meeting of mutuality in 1 Corinthians 14. This chapter, which is particularly on the church meeting, indicates that when the whole church comes together, each should share something, one by one, in the way of mutuality. This matter is still not properly practiced among us. Ten years later, in 1948, Brother Nee again stressed these things in his training and in the book Church Affairs. Brother Nee saw something, but it was difficult to find a way to carry it out.