A little more than a year after Paul was released from prison, Nero, the Roman Caesar, began to persecute the Christians. He put leaders such as Peter and Paul into prison. After Paul went into prison again, he wrote the second Epistle to Timothy. Before his second imprisonment, there were many Jews among the churches in the Gentile lands who were beginning to teach Old Testament things different from the New Testament teaching. By the time Paul went into prison, the Judaizing Christians had become even more aggressive. Perhaps they told others, “See? Paul is in prison. If his teachings were right, why would God have allowed him to end up in prison?” Paul’s imprisonment gave the Judaizing Christians and those who taught differently a strong ground to speak. This is the reason Paul wrote the second Epistle to Timothy.
The two Epistles to Timothy were written approximately two years apart. Therefore, Timothy did not remain in Ephesus for a long time. In 2 Timothy 1:13 Paul said, “Hold a pattern of the healthy words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” Paul reminded Timothy to hold “the healthy words.” He had already spoken concerning this in 1 Timothy 6. As we have already seen, these healthy words are the words of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament and the preaching of the Lord’s apostles concerning such things as God becoming flesh and the mystery of godliness. Paul charged Timothy to hold these words. This proves that at that time some believers were already not holding these words. This is a very serious matter.
Second Timothy 1:14 says, “Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.” This is the Lord’s commission to the apostles. It is also the apostles’ charge to the believers. We need to deposit the Lord’s healthy words, including the riches of life in the Lord’s words, into our being, like we deposit money in the bank. Verse 15 says, “This you know, that all who are in Asia turned away from me.” Paul was sitting in his prison in Rome. How could believers far away in the province of Asia have turned away from him? This proves that what the Asian believers were turning away from was not Paul’s person but his ministry. The “me” here does not refer to Paul’s person. It refers to his teaching. When we come to Revelation 2 and 3, we find the Lord writing to the seven churches in Asia, and the first letter was to the church in Ephesus. This proves that it was the church in Ephesus that took the lead to forsake Paul’s ministry and teaching. This is the background of the writing of the second Epistle to Timothy.
The burden in this chapter is not to expound the Epistles to Timothy but to continue from the previous chapter to speak on our present vision and practice.
First, let us fellowship a little concerning our history. In 1955 Brother T. Austin-Sparks was invited for the first time to come to Taiwan. In 1957 he came for the second time. During the second time, he raised a crucial issue. He thought that the way we were taking was good in every matter except one. The one thing he considered to be seriously wrong and absolutely intolerable was the ground of the church. In other words, it was the practice of the church. While he was alive, he was the only one on the whole earth who could echo what we saw concerning spiritual life principles. He echoed what we saw, and we responded to what he saw. At that time the rejection he faced in the West was more severe than the rejection we faced in the East. In the entire Western world he was the only one who saw the principles of life, and he was the only one who spoke on the deeper truths of life. Almost no one accepted his teaching. In the East we also spoke on these deep matters. Hence, on the side of life principles, we held the same view, but on the side of church practice and church ground, we could not fellowship with each other. At that time we saw that the church ground cannot be separated from church practice. Without the ground there can be no practice. In order to have the practice, there must be the ground. However, he did not agree with the matter of the church ground, and he did not agree with that kind of church practice.
From 1937 to 1938 Brother Watchman Nee visited a number of countries in Europe and stayed there for more than a year and a half. Most of the time he stayed in London with Brother T. Austin-Sparks. After he returned to China, he cabled me immediately to join him in Shanghai. At that time he called together a special fellowship meeting and reported to us in detail his fellowship with Brother Austin-Sparks in London. At the end he said that in almost every aspect they were in harmony with each other and echoed each other. The only exception was the practice of the church, which they could not get through in their fellowship. Brother Nee was somewhat sympathetic regarding the matter. He felt that in England the Brethren had spoiled the matter of church practice for more than a hundred years. Because of this, most seekers of the Lord were unwilling to speak concerning the subject. Brother Nee sympathized with their frustrations and spoke to us in this way, but he also pointed out that this was exactly where the problem between Brother T. Austin-Sparks and us lay.