When I returned to Taipei in 1984, I was burdened of the Lord to find out a new, scriptural way for us to meet and to serve for the building up of the Body of Christ. By October of 1984, I had a deep and clear realization that all of Christianity had nearly come to a standstill. Statistics showed that some of the major denominations were decreasing in number. Whereas the increase in Christianity had been very low, the Moslems and the Buddhists had much increase. We had also come nearly to a standstill in our increase. This fact greatly burdened me for our situation in the Lord’s recovery. I went to Taipei to do some research, some experimental work.
At the very beginning of my study, I found out that for the church to grow up with the proper increase, there is the need for the proper preaching of the gospel. To have the increase in life we need to beget many new ones. If we stop begetting, we will be terminated. If the human race did not have the element of begetting, it would be terminated within a short amount of time. The factor of begetting has kept the human race going on from one man whose name was Adam to billions of people. Begetting is the base of the Lord’s move. Without begetting for the increase and spread of the church, we cannot build up anything. Within ten years beginning in 1974, I observed that the churches in Orange County, California had very little increase. Moreover, by 1984 the church in Taipei had decreased in number over the previous twenty years. How can we talk about the building up of the church when we are not begetting or multiplying? I realized that we had to sacrifice something and suffer some loss initially in order to take the new way, but what was the use of remaining in the old way in the same unfruitful state? We needed to sacrifice something to find out some new way. For the Lord to have a proper way out of the denominational traditions, we must take care of four crucial steps: gospel preaching, home meetings, group meetings, and church meetings.
The proper preaching of the gospel is not at all according to the traditional way. I hate tradition to the uttermost because I fully realize that it has greatly damaged and killed many of us without our awareness. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, the evil one, Satan, has been using tradition to slaughter and annul us. Tradition is oldness, and oldness is staleness. Oldness, staleness, and tradition are synonyms. The practice of degraded Christianity, which we to some extent still retain, has become stale. This was the reason that I paid a great price to return to Taiwan in 1984 and stay there for a period of time.
While I was there, I was before the Lord day and night concerning what He wanted to do. I was considering the way to carry out the proper preaching of the gospel that was outside of tradition and according to God’s ordained way revealed in the Bible. I believe that the Lord showed us this way. Concerning the preaching of the gospel, we are fully clear that we need to go to visit people by knocking on their doors. There are many ways to preach the gospel, but visiting people by knocking on their doors is the top way for preaching the gospel.
Now that we have picked up the God-ordained way of preaching the gospel by visiting people in their homes, others are following us to do the same thing. In a conference of some Catholic bishops in 1987, one bishop said that if we have never knocked on people’s doors, we have never consecrated ourselves to the preaching of the gospel. The Southern Baptist denomination recently decided to train eighty-nine thousand young laymen to go to visit people in their homes in Texas to get one million people saved within two months. They said that preaching the gospel by visiting people in their homes is according to the New Testament plan and will never be improved on. They discovered that this is the top way to preach the gospel. Out of this one million they intend to baptize seventy thousand to make them members of the Southern Baptist denomination. Their success in this endeavor will contribute to convincing all the believers that the top way to preach the gospel is to visit people where they are, to go to their homes.
To preach the gospel by visiting people in their homes does not exclude other ways to preach the gospel. Peter took advantage of the situation on the day of Pentecost to speak to thousands of people, and three thousand were added in one day. This was a special occasion arranged by the Lord, but it is not the God-ordained way to preach the gospel. The God-ordained way is to go to people where they are. Because they are in their homes, we must go there.
Actually, to knock on doors means to visit people. This is the scientific way to preach the gospel. It has been fully tested, and the results have been marvelous wherever it has been practiced in a proper way. Anything that is scientific remains. To preach the gospel to the people where they are is not only scientific but also logical and reasonable. Can we be satisfied merely by bringing a few people into Christ by inviting them to come to us? We invited many new ones to our love feasts in the past, but we did not bring in that many.
A spiritual giant may have big campaigns for the preaching of the gospel, but what is the real result for the building up of the church? Furthermore, when this spiritual giant is gone, who has been perfected to preach the gospel? Tradition has killed us, cheated us, and deceived us, so we must come back to the ordained way of perfecting all the saints. Ephesians 4:11 and 12 say, “He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints.” The evangelists are not only for preaching the gospel but also for the perfecting of the saints to do the work of preaching the gospel as they do. We need to be perfected by some evangelists. We do not know how to preach the gospel in a proper and adequate way. Anyone can move his fingers on the keys of a piano, but to learn how to play the piano, a person must be perfected. The Lord’s way is for all of us to be perfected. We need to be perfected by the evangelists who are the experts in preaching the gospel.