Proverbs 29:18 begins, “Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.” If we do not have a clear vision, it will be hard for us to pursue progress in our service. Without the stimulus of competition, worldly people would be without a goal and would be eliminated. It would be hard for someone opening a factory to achieve anything if he did not think of a way to gain the market. Even though we are not opening a factory for business, the principle is the same for us who are doing the Lord’s work. We have the highest truth and the practice that most agrees with the Bible. However, if we are ignorant, boastful, closed to the outside world, and do not pursue progress, then the Lord will not have a way among us.
In order to propagate and increase, some people in the Catholic Church have accepted the so-called Pentecostal movement. Once I researched and attended this kind of Pentecostal meeting. I went to a meeting where they used the word charismatic instead of Pentecostal at their door. In the meeting the Catholic priests wore their priestly robes and the nuns wore the nuns’ garments. However, they did not sit in an orderly way. Some prostrated themselves and others sat on the floor. There was no one presiding over the meeting, nor was there a preacher. The believers simply stood up one by one to testify and share, and then at the end someone made some announcements regarding practical affairs.
Their way is very smart. It is known as the moderate charismatic movement. They approve of speaking in tongues, and they practice speaking in tongues, but in the meetings they do not do it, nor do they force others to do it. Furthermore, they do not perform miracles and wonders. They simply encourage the believers to share and testify how they have touched and enjoyed the Lord. This kind of practice touches people’s hearts. Moreover, they do not put any demands on the believers; they do not even demand that they attend the Lord’s Day meeting and testify. Therefore, it is easy for them to bring people in.
Our difficulty is that we are not only hoping to bring people in but are also hoping to bring them into the church life. Surely we need to bring people into the church life, but this requires us to endeavor step by step. We have to work harder because we not only ask the saints to meet but also expect them to meet according to a schedule. The dear elders in the churches even expect the saints to participate in practical services such as cleaning the meeting hall, cleaning the restrooms, and giving hospitality. Many people are willing to believe in Jesus, but they are not willing to clean the meeting hall and the restrooms. The charismatic Catholics normally rent their meeting halls. They hire people to clean the place so that it is very neat and clean. Even the restrooms look very nice. Therefore, their members are responsible only for coming to the meetings and do not have to worry about anything else. However, although they spend time together in the Lord’s Day meeting, the remainder of their time is spent going to movies, window-shopping, and playing games. We cannot condemn them, though, because quality comes out of quantity. The charismatic Christians have been able to bring in so many people. Thus, we cannot deny the fact that there has been a certain amount of the work of the Holy Spirit among them.
Today one cannot do business or operate a factory in an isolated way. Rather, one must learn from and investigate others’ practices and absorb others’ strong points in order to succeed. The Japanese do a very thorough job in this matter. Regardless of what line of business they are in, the first thing they do is send people to foreign countries to learn from others. They then come back and have a meeting to compare and absorb all the good points and strong points from each country. This is why their products can be marketed to countries all over the world, occupying the international market. The co-workers among us who are fifty years old or above are not like this; they are closed to everything except the truth. They do not care about anything and do not want to learn anything besides the truth. Consequently, there has been no progress. Today we are unaware that there are many groups that are far more advanced than we are, and we are also unaware of where we are. My burden is very heavy. Basically, I hope that all you trainees would clearly understand the way we are taking and also aggressively pursue progress in the matter of service.
First, the serving ones in the recovery must pursue progress in their service; second, they must pursue the knowledge of the truth. This is an area in which we have had the upper hand for the past sixty years. This is true even in the United States today. Unfortunately, the co-workers whom I trained thirty years ago have not sufficiently entered into the deeper study of the truth. They are able to give messages, but they cannot get into the depths of the truth. Not only so, some co-workers even feel that since we speak only on messages given by Brother Nee and Brother Lee, it would not be a bad idea to find some materials from others to speak on. This kind of understanding and feeling is altogether wrong.
The Lord’s speaking today is mostly in His recovery, yet we do not cherish it. People outside the recovery use the truths that have been released among us in a serious way, yet we who are in the recovery are indifferent toward these truths. There is a certain group which holds educational classes on the Lord’s Day. The believers who join the class must register and take a test, and no one can join the class in the middle of the course. Everyone in the special class has the book The Normal Christian Life, and they study it seriously. The author of that book is Brother Watchman Nee, and I wrote the preface. If you asked the people in this class whether they know Watchman Nee or Witness Lee, they probably would not recognize those names. However, each person has a copy of the book and is learning the truth from it. Few of us, however, possess the entire set of life-study messages. Others love the truths in the Lord’s recovery to such an extent, but what is our attitude toward the truths that the Lord has given us?
By glancing through the outline of the Bible study put out by that group, one can immediately recognize that they are using our material. For example, the outline for Romans 1 talks about the three “giving-ups” (vv. 24, 26, 28). This was not my personal invention. Rather, I started seeing this while I was with the Brethren. I was taught by the Brethren when I was young. Then I brought what they had taught me into the Lord’s recovery. I published my writings in the Life-study of Romans over ten years ago. Some young co-workers wrote to me a few years ago, telling me that they had visited the churches in Europe and America and had been influenced to study others’ writings. After their return, they took many different expositions and compared them with our life-study messages. Eventually, they concluded that all the materials out there cannot be compared to ours. In spite of this, we still do not appreciate the Lord’s speaking among us as much as others do.
You need to clearly know this way—the way of the recovery. If you do not know the way of the recovery clearly, I would advise you not to remain in it. Rather, you might as well take the free way of Christianity. However, even if you know the way clearly, you still need to know the truth and enter into the light that the Lord has given to us over the past sixty years. The light from these sixty years is a collection of what all the pursuers of the Lord in the past two thousand years of church history have understood concerning the Bible. Although we do not have as many publications as Christianity does, our publications are at the top. I am very confident about this matter. I have already told you that our writings were produced by our standing on the shoulders of many who studied the Bible during the past two thousand years, plus what the Lord has shown us. You need to make an effort to study them in a deeper way.
Perhaps you may have some understanding of the basic truths of the Bible, but you probably have not spent much effort to study them. To study any course of learning is not that easy. You need to know the achievements of the masters throughout the ages. You need to spend time entering into their writings in order to reap the benefit. I hope you will treat the truth among us in this way, spending time to enter into it.