I have given you these examples to show you that reading the Bible is not a simple matter. Since our training is based on the four aspects of the revelation in the New Testament—truth, life, the gospel, and service (or the church)—I hope that you all would exert an effort to read the life-study messages and footnotes according to the sequence of the New Testament. If you do this, you will be powerful in preaching the gospel. If someone asks you a question, you will be able to answer him right away. Those who know that you are serving full time may think that you are a Bible expert, so if you are unable to immediately answer their questions and have to go back to study the Bible in order to do so, they will be disheartened, and you will not have as much impact with them. However, if you are able to quote the Scriptures and give a brief explanation, they will be interested in listening to you, and it will be easy for you to gain them. This has much to do with the extent of your scholastic pursuit and personal study.
In 1943 I was laboring in Chefoo. At that time Chefoo was under the occupation of the Japanese. The church did not have a denominational background and there were no Western missionaries in it, yet our work brought in a big revival. The number of people meeting with us at that time was greater than the total number in the eight local denominations raised up by the missionaries. Almost every one of us sold everything and gave all that we had to the church. Seventy saints migrated to Suiyüan Province, and thirty moved to the mouth of the Sungari River. Because of this, the Japanese secret agents became suspicious of us. They secretly sent people to investigate our meetings and later sent the military police to arrest me. They interrogated me twice a day for three hours each time.
The Japanese tortured me for almost a month. One day a Japanese man with a translator came to interrogate me, asking, “Why do you call your meetings ‘revival meetings’? Why do you use the term revival?” They hated the word revival, which can also be translated as restoration, because they thought that it implied the restoration of the Chinese nation. The Japanese man who interrogated me was one of the people who had come to investigate our meetings. When he had first come to our meetings, I had given him a small Bible, and that Bible was on the desk beside him. The Lord gave me wisdom, and I did not reply to him right away. It was only after I was sure of his intention that I told him, “All of our practices in the church are according to the Bible. Whatever the Bible has, we also have. Whatever the Bible does not have, we do not have either.” Then he asked, “Is the word revival in the Bible?” I replied, “Yes, the word revival is in the Bible.” Then he gave me the small Bible and asked me, “Where is it? Show it to me.”
Here is my point—if I had told him that I could not remember where it was and that I would have to spend time to look it up, the consequences would have been unimaginable. However, at that time I remembered that the word revival is in Habakkuk, one of the twelve minor prophets. Although I partially remembered the verse, I knew that it would not be easy to find. That day, however, I truly had the Lord’s grace. I picked up the Bible and opened it. When I looked down, the page that I was on was Habakkuk 3, and when I placed my finger on that page, my finger pointed to the exact verse that contains the word revival— “O Jehovah, revive Your work / In the midst of the years” (v. 2). The Japanese officer was immediately subdued. There are sixty-six books in the Bible, comprising more than a thousand pages, but I was able to turn to the right page and point to the right verse. Thus, he knew that I was not a false preacher.
Hence, you must spend time to study the truth. I hope you would be familiar with the Bible to such an extent that you would be able to turn to the page and point to the verse that answers the questions that people ask you. This will surely subdue them.
In the experience of life, the Lord transforms us after we are saved and after He sanctifies us. Based on my own experience, the most difficult part of the Lord’s transformation work is the transformation of our character. It is easy to correct a mistake, but it is very difficult to change our character. The Chinese have a saying which says, “Mountains and rivers can be easily changed, but a person’s nature is difficult to change.” Although we have been regenerated, we may not have had that much transformation, and even if we have had some amount of transformation, not much is seen in our character. I hope you are clear about this point so that you would exercise to be properly transformed in your character.
About fifty years ago, there was a Christian group in Honor Oak, England under the leadership of T. Austin-Sparks. The members of that group were the most spiritual Christians in the world. They never invited outsiders to speak to them. The only exception they made was that they frequently invited Brother Watchman Nee to speak while he was there from 1938 to 1939. In 1956 and 1957 we invited Brother Austin-Sparks twice to minister to us and provided him and his wife with very warm hospitality. When I visited them in 1958, Brother Austin-Sparks returned the courtesy and also gave me hospitality in a very warm way. He invited me to speak on the Lord’s Day and held special meetings for me. During my month-long stay there, I clearly saw two things. First, I saw that the British character of those Christians was intact and unchangeable, and second, I saw that they had absolutely no building. Hence, I was clear within that our natural character is not suitable for the building. For the building up of the church, your character, as well as mine, must be broken.
To build a meeting hall, for example, we need bricks, wood, stone, and steel. To build all these materials together requires that we break them. Suppose a piece of wood or a brick wanted to keep its original appearance and refused to have its long parts cut off, its wide parts sawn off, or its sharp edges sanded down. Consequently, it would have no way to participate in the building. A meeting hall can be built only because every single piece of material has been broken and not one piece remains intact. Similarly, if our character is too strong, and we are not willing to be broken, then it will be impossible for us to participate in the building.
Although the Lord’s life is powerful, it encounters an obstacle in us—our character. Our character is more solid than cement. No matter how hard our character is smashed, it cannot be broken, and no matter how much one drills it, it cannot be drilled through. Our character is not only composed of our nature but also of our personality. Nature is inborn, but personality is cultivated. Our character is thirty percent nature and seventy percent habit. For example, suppose a Chinese person is brought to America shortly after his birth. After growing up, he may be Chinese in nature, but he will have an American personality. This indicates that character is composed less of one’s nature and more of one’s habits. This also shows us the reason why Japanese and Chinese people, even though they have a blood relationship, are different in their character. They are different in character because they are raised in different environments.
The cultivation of a person’s character is almost complete by the time he reaches the age of fifteen. Brother Nee once said that if a person’s character is not changed before he is fifty years old, then it will be impossible to change his character, because after a person turns fifty years old, his character becomes set and cannot be changed anymore. Throughout my more than sixty years of observation, I have not seen many people under the age of fifty who were willing to be changed through the breaking of their character. I confess that this is not an easy matter. However, I can also testify that this depends on how much you are willing to receive the Lord’s grace and whether you are willing to cooperate with the Lord. This altogether depends on your willingness.