In this message I am going to give you a comprehensive word as a guide for your exercise during your time in the training.
The Lord’s recovery is surely of the Lord. This means that we believe in the Lord, follow Him, serve Him, and bear the testimony of the church for Him altogether according to the pure revelation of the holy Scriptures. In the past we examined the characteristics of various Christian denominations, such as how much they accepted the Bible, how they practiced the Christian living, and how they set up churches. We did not accept their practices right away, regardless of what kinds of practices they had. Instead, we brought their practices before the Bible and compared them with the revelation in the Bible. We accepted only that which was according to the Bible, trying to accept as much as possible. Although we were born not in the first or second century but in the twentieth century, through our thorough research and our open-mindedness we have received nearly everything that measures up to the Bible. Therefore, we have received much help. We can say that the way of the Lord’s recovery today is altogether according to the Bible and not according to the two thousand years of Christian tradition.
The University of the Philippines, as the highest national institute of education in the Philippines, gathers the country’s top students. There was a professor of agricultural technology who was saved among us and who saw the way of the church while pursuing his doctoral degree in the United States. After returning to the Philippines, he started teaching at this university. He bore a strong testimony for the Lord and led almost everyone around him to salvation. Within only four years, the testimony of the church was raised up in that locality. There were about forty saints meeting together, and almost all of them were in the field of education. Some of the saints were his colleagues and teaching assistants, and others were his students and friends. There were also some middle school teachers.
When I visited the Philippines recently, I visited this church. The saints told me that the agriculture department at the University of the Philippines has seven thousand students and that there are fourteen Christian organizations, mostly from the United States, that are carrying out campus works among the students to gain the campus. The saints specifically pointed out that most of these fourteen organizations oppose us. Furthermore, in opposing us they take the same way used in the United States—whomever we contact receives the slanderous book The God-Men the following day. The brothers had been doing their best to defend the truth. I asked them if they had used the “Statement of Decision” issued by the court in relation to the lawsuit we had filed in the United States, and they said that they had not. They had only used some articles printed in the newspaper. I told them that this was not enough and that they had to utilize the “Statement of Decision.” After they published a defending statement of rebuttal in the newspaper, one pastor wrote a letter to us, saying that our rebuttal was excellent and that the only defect was that our truths were not according to tradition. I told the brothers that this was the best kind of praise. The truths that we teach are definitely not according to tradition but according to the pure words of the Bible. So I had the brothers tell that pastor that if he wanted to debate with us, he would have to use the Bible, because that is what we respect. We would disregard any debate with us that is based upon the Nicene Creed or the things of tradition.
Many of the beliefs in today’s Protestantism, and even more in Catholicism, are not according to the Bible but according to the so-called councils. Some in Christianity believe that the decisions of the councils surpass the teachings of the Bible. Therefore, instead of saying, “This is what the Bible says,” they say, “This is what the councils decided.” The first council was the Nicene Council of A.D. 325, presided over by Constantine the Great. Afterward, in A.D. 570, the papal system was officially recognized, and the pope replaced the councils. Before the recognition of the papal system, all the controversies over spiritual matters were settled according to the decisions of the councils. Throughout the generations much of Christianity has been saying, “Thus says the councils,” and not, “Thus says the Bible.”
The Lord’s recovery, however, is different. We declared from the beginning that we were absolutely not according to tradition and that we did not care for the Christian councils prior to the establishment of the papal system. We have come back to the pure word of God. Regardless of how good the teachings of the Christian councils and the traditional theology are, as long as they do not correspond to the Bible, we reject them. We are only for the pure word of God.
Since you are attending the Full-Time Training, as a rule, you should be trained in the matter of knowing the church. This means that you should learn to come back to the pure and accurate word of God to see what the church is and what the way, the ground, the practice, and the content of the church are. I hope that you all would know these points clearly. We have many books regarding these matters, but regrettably, they have not been compiled in a systematic way. Rather, the books contain one point here and another point there. Presently, we are compiling the Truth Lessons and are preparing to publish them in four levels. Each level will consist of forty-eight topics. The purpose is to systematically arrange all the literature that we have published in the past sixty years so that the saints can have a summarized and clear understanding of the truth.