I have never seen a revival greater than this one. At that time, there were people being saved every day. It looked as if anyone who contacted us would immediately be saved. Every morning at five o'clock, when I arrived at school, I saw people everywhere reading the Bible—more than one hundred of them. Reading novels had been very fashionable, but now those who wanted to could only do so secretly. Instead, Bible reading now became an honorable thing to do. There were eight classes in our school, each with a prefect and a deputy prefect. It was amazing to see that the prefect of practically every class had been saved. Even all the famous athletes had been saved, among whom was Brother Weigh Kwang-hsi, the tennis champion of Fukien province for many years. Our headmaster admired us for everything we did. The only thing he lamented was our attitude towards the Anglican church. The headmaster was a member of the Anglican church, but we refused to belong to that denomination.
More than sixty people daily marched in procession carrying banners, and a few dozen also went around daily distributing tracts. The whole town of Foochow—about a hundred thousand people—was shaken.
Many brothers who were saved were immediately baptized. At this time, we began to meet according to the Scripture. This was the way the meeting in Foochow started. Later the number of believers increased, and the work in the villages also began.
During the period between 1921 and 1923, revival meetings were held to lead people to the Lord. At that time preaching the gospel was believed to be the unique work for God. But God opened my eyes to see that His purpose requires that those who have been saved by grace stand upon the ground of oneness in local churches to represent and maintain God's testimony on earth. Some of my co-workers had different views of the truth concerning the church. But when I carefully studied the book of Acts, I realized that God's wish is to establish local churches in every city. At that time the light shone upon me so clearly that I recognized that this is His purpose.
At the same time I received this light, a problem arose with some co-workers who held different views regarding important points of our work. This resulted in friction among us. They felt that we should be zealous in revival and gospel preaching work and that the fruit of such work could be easily seen. My view, however, was to establish local churches with less stress on the revival and preaching side. When an older co-worker went out to hold gospel meetings, as he frequently did, I was at times tempted to secretly hold revival gospel meetings of my own. However, instead of doing this, when he was away, I immediately acted according to the vision I had received. Upon his return, he would undo what I had done and work according to his concept. But when he was again absent, I would go back to my previous way. Consequently, we oscillated back and forth on this matter all the time. Since the light each of us had received in respect to the work was different, our ways of working were also different. One way was that of revival and evangelism, while the other way was that of establishing local churches. What the Lord revealed to me was extremely clear: Before long He would raise up local churches in various parts of China. Whenever I closed my eyes, the vision of the birth of local churches appeared. [Editor's note: By 1949, there were about four to five hundred local churches being raised up all over China.]