Now what kind of life these in the local churches should live in order to express the Body of Christ is what we want to take care of in this training. Our training is to regenerate, sanctify, and transform those who are chosen and called by God, so that they would become the Body of Christ to be expressed in the different localities. It is not a simple question as to how this group of people should live and meet in the various places to become the corporate expression of Christ. For two thousand years, Christians have not been able to understand this fully. Today, the whole of Christianity is still probing in the dark. There are few who know the direction and the goal. For this reason, we began to have this training one year ago.
The first thing that this training does is to turn you over like a cake. We all know that in baking a cake, we need to turn the cake from one side to the other repeatedly. If we do not turn the cake, the underside will be burnt while the upper side is still raw. Therefore, we need to keep turning the cake until both sides are done. Our training here is to keep you from becoming an unturned cake. Sometimes I am afraid that when we turn too hurriedly, you cannot bear it. I advise you to take these turnings because they help you to get rid of your old concepts and ways and to deliver you from your old background and habits. Every one of us has three layers of inheritance from tradition. The first layer comes with our birth. Although we were created by God, we were born fallen. Whether we are Chinese, American, or Japanese, we were born into Adam’s race. We all have many problems with our character: laziness, sloppiness, and looseness. These are our nature. The second layer comes from the tradition in Christianity. We were born into human society. Because Christianity came to the East along with western culture, we have more or less been influenced by the traditions in Christianity. The third layer comes from the practices among us that have been inherited from Christianity. All these three layers, whatever they are, are not scriptural. More or less, they have been utilized by Satan to annul what God is doing and what He is going to gain in man.
We have said that God’s economy is to work Himself into a group of people that they may be regenerated, sanctified, and transformed, so that they may become the sons of God and the members of Christ to be constituted as the Body of Christ. If we compare every point of this vision with the practices of today’s Christianity, we will realize that the practices of Christianity have either reduced or annulled these points. For example, a person hears the gospel and is saved. After he is saved, he does not need anyone to tell him, but spontaneously he has the concept to do good, to worship God, to attend Sunday services, to listen to the pastors preaching, and to learn doctrines. He will join a congregation and become a church member, and come to attend services every Sunday. This can go on for twenty or thirty years, and eventually he becomes an old Christian. As far as God’s economy is concerned, although he is regenerated, there is no sanctification expressed in him, nor is there any transformation, much less any functioning. His organic function in the Body of Christ is altogether annulled. There are many believers among the different denominations in Christianity who are all chosen, redeemed, and regenerated by God. But their life function is completely annulled by the practices of traditional religion. We do not see much sanctification and transformation in them, nor do we recognize in their daily walk the mark of the sons of God. Furthermore, we could not see that they are the members of the Body of Christ to be constituted as the Body of Christ. On the contrary, we only see some religious formalities and worship activities.
Among us, although we have left degraded Christianity to come into the Lord’s recovery, it is not easy to stay in the recovery. I am afraid that our real situation has been gradually declining. This was especially true at the end of 1984 when I came back to Taiwan. There were brothers and sisters meeting everywhere. Few came prepared to function; rather, most of them came with a mentality to listen to messages. The responsible brothers in all the meeting halls tried their best to arrange for speakers to release messages week after week. Our practice was still to have those that came to the meetings sit there and listen to one man speaking. It is true that the messages did render people some help. But this help eventually made people dumb in speaking and paralyzed in their function.
In the old practice, the more the people listen to messages, the more they like to listen, and the less they function. When a person is first saved, he may still want to give testimonies in the meetings. But due to the atmosphere of the meetings, gradually the speaking function is annulled. This practice nullifies the life of the Son of God in the believers, and buries the organic function in the members of Christ. After the brothers and sisters are accustomed to listening to messages, they become settled. As a result, the condition of the whole church is stagnant; there are not many positive activities taking place. It is like a man over sixty years of age, lacking youthful vitality. Although the brothers and sisters still love the Lord and love the church; and although they still stand on the ground, learning to live in the spirit, and are neither backsliding nor cold, yet there is no more drive. They are not like a youth of eighteen or nineteen years old, full of vitality and vigor. On the contrary, they are half-dead, like the situation in Christianity.