I would also like to relate something of our recent experience in Taiwan which shows how the Lord’s blessing is with us. In October of 1984 I went to Taipei and I was led by the Lord to carry out and finish three “risks.” First, fifty-two elders were established overnight in Taipei and twenty-eight more were added later. Approximately ninety percent of these elders are under forty years of age, and some are a little over thirty years of age.
Second, we realized that we had been on the island of Taiwan for over thirty-six years and we had still not evangelized the entire island. As a result we made a decision to rise up and evangelize, “gospelize,” and “truthize” the entire island of Taiwan within five years. We are calling for five hundred full-timers every year for the next five years, giving us up to twenty-five hundred full-timers. This is a big risk.
Third, I proposed that for the Lord’s move for evangelizing Taiwan, we needed a large center for training. We acquired thirty-seven and a half acres on which to build this center, which cost about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. After making the decision to purchase this property, we made an announcement to the twenty-one halls of the church in Taipei concerning the need. On the Lord’s day nearly the entire amount of cash came in to purchase the property from each offering box in the twenty-one halls. No one knows who offered how much, but the land was paid off mostly by one Lord’s day offering.
Later, about two hundred and fifty full-timers were raised up on the island of Taiwan. Since approximately one hundred and thirty of these full-timers were raised up in Taipei in 1985, over five thousand have been baptized in the church there. This is the Lord’s blessing.
In December of 1985 we had two big gospel meetings in a stadium in Taipei that can seat twelve thousand people. To my surprise, this stadium was filled over its seating capacity with fourteen thousand people for the first gospel meeting. There were at least seven thousand newcomers there. When I sounded the call at the end of the meeting for the unsaved ones to receive the Lord, approximately fifteen hundred to two thousand people came forward. Again, this is the Lord’s blessing.
In the last two meetings of the 1985 winter training in Irving, Texas, I fellowshipped about the matter of going full-time, and one hundred ninety-eight responded to the call to be full-time. Again, we can see the Lord’s blessing on His recovery. The present need of the world and of all the Lord’s children is the Triune God. We are those who have the truth concerning this processed and consummated God, and we are experiencing the Lord’s blessing wherever we go.
Now we must see what our responsibility is. We all need to do one thing—go! In the New Testament, there are two small words that are great in their spiritual significance—come and go. In Matthew 11:28 the Lord tells all who labor and are burdened to “come to Me...and I will give you rest.” In the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, there is a call for the thirsty sinner to come and drink the water of life (22:17). After the Lord had stayed with His disciples for three and a half years, He took the lead to go (through His death and resurrection). They did not know that the Lord’s going was His real coming to them (John 14:2-3; cf. vv. 18, 28). He took the lead to go and He came back in resurrection.
In Matthew 28:18-19 the Lord told the disciples, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The Lord did not say to go to disciple the nations and baptize them. He said go to disciple the nations, baptizing them. Discipling includes baptizing. We disciple others by baptizing them. I have heard Christians debating as to where people were to be baptized, how people should be baptized, and what kind of water people should be baptized in. But I hardly ever heard a stress on baptizing people into the name, that is, into the Person, of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit. The Lord charged us to go to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the Triune God, the processed and consummated Triune God.
Some may feel that if we mean business with the Lord to go, this means to be full-time. All of the believers are God’s priests and our profession is the divine priesthood. Whatever a priest does is to God’s service. We may need to make a living, but this does not mean that we do not go. Acts 8:1 tells us that a great persecution fell upon all the saints in Jerusalem, and all of them were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria except the apostles. Thousands of believers left Jerusalem and carried out the spreading of the gospel (Acts 8:4). Were these ones who were scattered full-timers? In a sense they were and in another sense they were not. No doubt, some of them still had jobs, but they all went. They all were the goers to disciple the nations. Without that persecution, they probably would not have gone. The persecution kept them from remaining in Jerusalem. The Lord’s word in Acts 1:8 that the believers were to be His witnesses first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, and then in Samaria was fulfilled through that great persecution. When that great persecution came, thousands of believers were sovereignly sent to spread the gospel.