I have two important burdens these days. One is what I have shared with you in the past concerning the vision of the Body of Christ; the other is what I am going to share with you now concerning the way of meeting as revealed in the New Testament. This is the burden which has been in me for the past three years.
Three years ago when I returned to Taipei, I brought up the matter of changing the system. We need to change the system of meetings. Now we have had more than three years of preparation. I feel that the church in Taipei should give this matter a thorough review. It may be that after another month we will have a thorough rearrangement of the way of our meetings. This is something unprecedented, not only among ourselves, but also within the twenty-century-old Christianity. We need to go back to the apostolic age to receive and carry on the way of meeting as it was when the apostles were on earth.
At present, among the different halls of the church in Taipei, there are about thirty-five hundred in the meeting on the Lord’s Day. If we include everyone who comes to meet at different times, the number is about five thousand. In addition, in the trainings held for the past two years, there have been about twenty-six to twenty-seven thousand people gained through door knocking. Less than one quarter, about five thousand, have remained to meet with us in the districts. If we add these two categories together, the old and the new ones, the church in Taipei has about ten thousand people who come to meet at different times. This situation is merely a transition. This transitional period has been long enough, however, and I feel this is the time we should have a major rearrangement.
Moreover, in considering again and again before the Lord in the last few days, I feel that the believers, not only the newly saved ones but also those who have been saved for years, are not clear concerning the way of the believers’ meetings. I am afraid that even among the co-workers and elders, there are not many who thoroughly understand. Therefore, I would like to give you some suggestions concerning this matter. I hope that you will write these down point by point so that after you have gone home, you can study thoroughly what is the proper way of meeting for the believers according to the divine revelation in the New Testament. Then we will study further how to practice this way of meeting. If we merely see a way and do not know how to practice it, we are still outsiders having no way to enter in.
In 1933, for the first time I went to Shanghai, which was the place where Brother Nee was working. In that place was the largest church, the leading church in the whole of China at that time. After a certain time, I heard Brother Nee say that the way of meeting we were practicing was following the customs of degraded Christianity; it was not according to God’s desire nor according to the Bible. He cited the words of the type in the Old Testament in Leviticus 20:23: “Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.” He said that the whole system of meetings in Christianity today is the customs of the nations. The nations he spoke of were not the Gentile nations in the New Testament age today; rather, he referred to the many denominations of the deformed Christianity. These many denominations are the denominated assemblies in Christianity. They are typified in the Old Testament by the nations that became problems to the Israelites. After hearing Brother Nee’s word that day, for the past fifty years we have been trying to eliminate this thing from among us. Nevertheless, not only have we not eliminated it, but we have unintentionally strengthened it.
From the time Brother Nee saw the error of the customs of the denominations, he began to condemn the system of meetings at that time and also endeavored to find out from the Bible the way of meeting for the believers. He also spent time to study the practices of the various denominations. Until his departure from the earth, however, he had not found a way to practice. This brother who brought the Lord’s recovery into our midst saw clearly fifty-four years ago that, although we had left Christianity, the customs of the nations as seen in the meetings of Christianity were still following us. We have not yet eliminated this thing; even until this morning, we have not been fully freed from it. I would like to speak a frank word to you trainees, especially those who have received training for the past two terms and are now in the communities concentrating on home meetings, small group meetings, and district meetings. I am very concerned for those meetings in which you are serving, whether they are totally according to the new way, or are partly old and partly new. How do you actually carry out the meetings? What do you do? What kind of results have you produced? We should know that in anything we do, the natural way is very simple. But if you have to work by absolutely following instructions, then it is not so easy. I am afraid that after all you have done, it is still the same way, the old way. Therefore, I would like to remind you and also offer you some materials for further study.