Even a person like me who speaks for God is dependent upon the supply of the saints. Even the messages that I give come from the saints. If I were to keep myself in isolation and not meet with the saints or have frequent contact with them, then I believe that after half a year I would have no messages to give. I frequently attend the meetings in the various halls and homes to listen to the prayers and testimonies of the saints in order to collect material for my speaking. I want to thank you all because the messages that I give are supplied by you. We cannot minister the word apart from the church. Outwardly, it may seem that I am giving messages to the church, but actually the church is supplying me with the messages. Even your coming here to listen to the messages is a supply to me. If you all declared a strike and left the meeting, leaving me to look at the empty chairs, I would surely be unable to give a message.
We must see this great matter of the church! According to their human economic principles, Christians consider the church to be too troublesome. They do not want to be bothered by the church today. They think that in the future we will all enter the New Jerusalem anyway. However, the divine economy is not like this. God’s intention is that in this age a lampstand for His Son would be built up in every locality, regardless of how many believers are in that locality. As long as there is the building up of the church, the presence, the blessing, and the expression of the abundant grace of God will be there. The supply and the blessing of God are in the church. All of the spiritual supply and blessing is brought in through the church.
The last time I went to America, I met many friends on both the East and the West coasts. When we met, we immediately began talking about the matter of the church. They all lamented and said, “Brother Lee, organized Christianity cannot meet God’s need in this age, and the universal church—which transcends time and space, is heavenly and spiritual and will be manifested as the New Jerusalem in the future—also cannot meet the Lord’s need today. Furthermore, being spiritual in an independent way, no matter how high the degree of spirituality, cannot meet the Lord’s need today.” It is amazing that at the end of our conversations, these Western friends all asked me the same question. The question they asked was, “Brother Lee, how can we have a church today that is truly according to God’s desire?” They had heard that God had raised up a group of brothers in the East who had recovered this matter to some extent and who had also had quite a bit of experience in this matter. Hence, they were very eager to fellowship with me to receive some help. Now there are many brothers and sisters in the West who have this kind of feeling. They long to be able to have a real and practical church in various localities to meet the Lord’s need today.
Please remember that when we are speaking of the practical church, we are not referring to the great lampstand at the end of Revelation. Rather, we are referring to the seven small lampstands at the beginning of Revelation. We should thank and praise the Lord that today in nearly every major city or town on the island of Taiwan, from the east to the west and from the south to the north, there is a church, a small lampstand. The total number of churches is over fifty. This is the practical church manifested in various localities. Therefore, we have to clearly see that the Lord is not waiting for the future to build us into the great lampstand. Instead, the Lord is building us into the small lampstands in the localities that we are in today. God’s intention and economy are to have the small lampstands first, and then He will have the great lampstand. First He will have the small golden lampstands in different localities, and then ultimately in the New Jerusalem there will be the great lampstand of precious stones. Therefore, we must not vainly talk about matters in the future. We need to talk about the matter of the practical building at the present time. We need to be led to be built together in the local church where we live.