We do commit this time into Thy hands, trusting Thy Holy Spirit to guide our fellowship, that Thou mayest be seen and heard and obeyed. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Thank God for gathering us together again this afternoon.
We mentioned yesterday afternoon that the morning session is asking, the afternoon session is seeking, and the evening session is knocking.
Ask, and it shall be given to you.
Seek, and ye shall find.
Knock, and it shall be opened to you.
We know that, in the Greek original, this verse means, “Keep on asking, and it shall be given to you. Keep on seeking, and ye shall find. Keep on knocking, and it shall be opened to you.”
We asked yesterday morning. We sought yesterday afternoon. We knocked last night. And, dear brothers and sisters, this morning we are asking for more, and more shall be given. This afternoon we seek for more, and more shall be found. And, God willing, tonight we will knock more, and more shall be opened.
So may the Lord help us. As we did yesterday, this is an open time of sharing, as led by the Spirit of God. If you have any question, you may ask. If you have any answer, you may give. If you have any truth God has revealed to you, share it with your brothers and sisters that we may be strengthened. And if you have any experience, share it with us that together we may learn.
Now, our brother Michael Ruth will start our sharing this afternoon.
I am back here. Should I come up?
Okay. Please bear with my voice. I would like to read one verse: Joshua 3:17.
And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan; and all Israel went over on dry ground, until all the nation were clean passed over Jordan.
Yesterday, as our brothers and sisters shared in a spirit of seeking, they spoke of different situations in different localities—many situations in which only a few, perhaps a little more than two or three, were gathered in the name of the Lord.
When I heard our brothers sharing, I felt that they were ministering to us. Let me explain what I mean.
Twenty-some years ago, when we began to meet, I remember the Lord giving very clear encouragement from the Book of Joshua. The encouragement was:
Be strong and of good courage; fear not, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.
I really touched that spirit of courage and strength in our brethren yesterday. I did not have an answer, but I felt that, in many ways, the Lord was answering as they shared their testimonies: the grace of God to be strong and the grace of God to be courageous.
Here in Joshua, one generation had passed away since the exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea. They were now at another body of water, threatening and overflowing its banks. It was a call to go through again.
It was not a tragic end; it was a glorious beginning.
May we be encouraged, whatever our history together, that we have only really begun in the Lord. Let us not have a fatalistic point of view, as though we must repeat history. May the Lord show us that it is time to enter in and possess the land.
The way the Lord gave—the pattern He gave—was very simple: follow the ark. It was not by man’s inventions, genius, or creativity. The way the Lord gave to enter the inheritance and possess the land was simply to follow the ark.
I love this picture. It is really like a vision, if you think about it. Israel woke up in the morning, came out of their tents, and saw those twelve priests standing and holding the ark. They lined up in orderly array. There was a pattern; there was an order. It was to follow the ark.
The priests were called and chosen of God to put their hands to the staves of the ark, lift it up, and go down. I see in this a calling for all of us, first of all, who have seen anything of the Lord. If any heavenly vision or revelation has come to us of God’s purpose and His testimony, then, by the grace of God, we are called and chosen to put our hands to it.
We are to lift up and hold fast the headship of Christ. In holding fast the headship of Christ, we go down to the bottom of the riverbed, to a place of death, and stand firmly.
It is on dry ground. It is on good footing. But it is holding up the ark; it is holding fast the Head.
If God has given us any vision at all of Himself, of His Son, and of His purpose, we are called to hold fast the headship of Christ. If we do, we will go down to a place of death. It is a standing, but it is not a standing for ourselves; it is a standing for all Israel.
Down in that place of death—the bottom, the lowest point—as they held up that ark, the treacherous, fearful, dangerous, threatening waters were held back, and all Israel passed through.
These priests who held up the ark were the first to go down, and they were the last to come up. There was a firm standing, holding fast the Head until all Israel passed through.
It was successful. It was glorious. It was a testimony even to the world. All Israel passed through.
It is such a beautiful picture of the headship of Christ and of the ground of the cross, which is really the ground upon which we meet. It is not the ground of teaching. It is not the ground that we see more than anybody else. It is the ground upon which the Lord is calling us to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. It is the way of the cross.
He leads us to that place of going down and standing firm, that all Israel might pass through. It is a picture of unity: these twelve men standing for all Israel.
But even more than that, I want to address this particularly to the brothers and sisters in Richmond: it was for all Israel.
Thank God, before Matthew 18—the revelation of the church locally—the Lord gives us Matthew 16, the revelation of the church universally. We can never lose sight of that revelation which is in the Lord’s heart.
If we do not have a revelation of Christ, and in the revelation of Christ see His church, then we will become ecumenical, or we will try all these inventions and ideas of man. But if we really see the Lord, we will see the heart of the Lord, and it is for all Israel. It is for all His people.
There is a standing for all.
Let me put it another way: old wineskins burst with new wine. The Lord said that for new wine, we need new wineskins. The local testimony must be a new wineskin, so that there is willingness and pliability for the Lord’s life to be expressed.
The Lord’s people are a family. It is not only old men who have the Father’s heart, but young men who fight the good fight, and little children who are a lot of trouble. But what a joy children are, and how incomplete we are without children. The Lord loves children.
I believe the Lord’s heart is for all His people—young and old, and even the little babies whose diapers we have to change all the time. All Israel: that is what we are standing for.
We do not move. We do not change positions. We do not do anything. We stand firm. We hold that ground. We hold fast the headship of Christ, and it is for the sake of all.
So I just share this: I believe the Lord would enlarge our hearts to embrace all. I think everyone knows what I mean. I am not saying ecumenical at all. I am saying that our vision includes all our brothers and sisters, and that this should be our stand and our ground.
As we did yesterday afternoon, any brother or sister, young or old, who wants to participate, just raise your hand high enough to be seen. You will be acknowledged, and a microphone will be given to you so everybody can hear and be with you.
So, it is open now.
I have a question to ask, Brother Carl. I wrote it down because I knew I would be nervous.
Yesterday you mentioned the move of the Holy Spirit in China. Could you please give us a brief sketch of this move, both in its early years and in its later development? Since you have been a firsthand witness of its development during those past years, please comment on some of the positives and shortcomings, and on what lessons we can apply here in the United States from the move of the Holy Spirit in both China and England during the last century.
Are you ready for that?
This is not the nature of this afternoon, because this afternoon is a time in which every brother and sister should participate, and I should not be the target. So, I do not know what to do.
The Lord moves in His sovereign way. We may learn something from one another, but we cannot imitate one another. What God has done in China is something from which we can learn, but I do not believe it should be duplicated.
That is why I always hesitate to relate something of the past. But I know these young brothers and sisters have asked me for a long time.
Let me explain very briefly, because it is a long history.
Back in the 1920s, the Lord did something in south China, in Foochow, among the students. This was the result of years of prevailing prayer by some dear missionary sisters.
Especially two sisters lived in a country place and gave themselves to prayer. They felt that, for the future of the Lord’s testimony in China, God must raise up young people.
Then, as an answer to their prevailing prayer, a revival broke out in Trinity College. Our dear brother Watchman Nee was there, along with a number of others.
Among the students, the Lord raised up these young men. It was a college according to the English system, so actually it was more like a community college here. God raised up these young men, and they were on fire for the Lord.
They went out into the streets with gospel posters hanging on them, and they preached Christ. People began to come to them. They did not even have chairs; people who wanted to attend a meeting had to bring their own chairs. But the Lord was doing a work there.
Then they began to meet regularly. They searched the Scriptures, and they felt that whatever was in the Word of God they should obey, but whatever was not there should not be done.
Even in China, Christianity was in such a condition that many things were practiced which were not in the Word of God, while things in the Word of God were not practiced.
These young brothers and sisters desired to follow the Word of God. As they searched the Scriptures, they began to see that they should be baptized by immersion. So they followed the Lord and were baptized.
It is very strange, but sometimes the first step is baptism. You seem to find this happening throughout church history.
After some were baptized, they began to feel that they should worship the Lord and remember Him in simplicity. The way the organized church remembered the Lord was too complicated, too ritualistic, and too unreal.
So, at the beginning, three or four brothers and sisters came together simply to remember the Lord in a simple way. There was our dear brother Watchman Nee, Brother Leland Wang and his wife, and another brother with his mother.
They continued to preach the gospel. They went out to other places to preach the gospel. It was during that period that the Lord began to show Watchman something more than merely getting people saved.
The Lord began to show him that God’s desire is for His church. He wants saved people to be built up together as His holy habitation. So he began to share these things with the brothers and sisters.
Most brothers and sisters were not ready for it. On the contrary, because Brother Nee felt very strongly that the Lord wanted to establish His churches everywhere—not merely to get people saved, but to have the saved ones built up together—he was finally rejected by his fellow workers.
Instead of fighting with his fellow workers, he retreated. To make a long story short, he met a few sisters who had the same vision.
In 1928, in Shanghai, he and a few sisters came together in one sister’s home. There they broke bread to remember the Lord. The Lord was the center from the beginning.
They believed in the one Body of Christ. We should not be divided, but we should be one. That is how the work in China began.
I came in contact with our dear Brother Nee in 1930. I was a student in high school. Thank God, He saved me.
A few of us were on fire for the Lord. We had meetings in our high school, and we went out to the villages to preach the gospel.
During that time, we invited what we called famous preachers to come and teach us. Every Friday after school, we used the Methodist church building—its Sunday school building—and asked a well-known preacher in Shanghai to come and preach to us. About one-third of the student body came, and many teachers joined us.
After several months, we had exhausted all the famous preachers we knew. So one day we were talking: whom should we invite next?
One brother said, “I have heard of a man named Watchman Nee. Let me find him and ask him to come and teach us.”
He did find him. Brother Nee was on the other end of our city. It was a Tuesday afternoon, when the brothers and sisters there met to study the Bible together. It was the time when Brother Nee was going through what you know today as The Gospel Dialogue.
This young brother, older than I but still young, was our teacher. When he attended that first meeting, he argued with Brother Nee. Afterwards, he asked Brother Nee to come and preach to us.
Thank God, Brother Nee did come. I remember it very vividly. He did not come alone, but with another brother. He preached to us a gospel message: “God Is Willing.”
I was already saved, but I was deeply touched. I wanted to hear him a few more times.
Let me tell you about the first time I went there. At that time, they rented a row of small houses with an open courtyard. They put two of these houses together. The wall was still there in the courtyard, but the space was open.
When I went there, I think there were more than one hundred people present. Chairs were placed very tightly together, and in the open court there were benches.
They met on Sunday afternoon.
My teacher and I went there because we did not know how much time it would take us to arrive. We arrived an hour early. There was nobody there, and the two of us sat in that meeting place joking, talking, and laughing, as young people usually do.
Suddenly the back door opened, and a brother came in. He said, “Brother Nee is resting upstairs. Please be quiet.”
I was so frightened.
Before two o’clock, people began to arrive, and the place was packed. Nobody talked. People came in either praying silently or reading the Word. It left such an impression upon me.
At two o’clock, Brother Nee came down and preached. He used to preach for two hours. There was not a sound, not a movement. The presence of the Lord was tremendous.
But I was not ready for it. I was too hot.
It was not until the Lord took me away from Shanghai that things changed. I graduated from high school, and I did not want to go to college. I thought it was a waste of time. I wanted to prepare myself to preach the gospel.
I picked a Bible school or institute to attend. I thought my father would certainly approve, because he loved the Lord and served the Lord. But, to my surprise, he objected.
He said, “No. You go to college. There is no good seminary in China. You go to college, finish it, and I will send you to America to study theology.”
I was so downhearted. I felt that was almost the end of my world. But I had to obey my father, so I went to college. It was a Methodist college.
Immediately, I plunged myself into Christian activities. To my surprise, it was a different kind of Christianity. I did not know that my university was the center of modernism in south China.
My professors were missionary professors. They did not believe the Bible was the Word of God. They did not believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God. When I tried to mention the Lord and His Word, they cut me down. To them, it was political, social, and economic matters—that was all.
It was a discovery to me. I did not know that. I thought all believers believed in the Lord Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and that all believers believed in the Bible as the Word of God. But it was not so.
So I was lonely. I was alone in the dormitory. There was no fellowship.
The only lifeline I had was in my room with two other fellow students. I did not care who was there, who was talking, coming, or going out. Daily, I knelt and read the Word of God. I could not live without that.
It was during that time that I began to read Brother Nee’s writings. Again, God began to speak to me and open my eyes. I began to appreciate what the Lord had given to our brother.
Whenever there was an opportunity, I would go to Shanghai and try to learn more.
The same thing happened: the first matter was baptism. I had been baptized when I was a baby. Other brothers began to share with me concerning believer’s baptism by immersion.
I objected. I said, “I had already been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. How could I be baptized again?”
But, strangely, as I searched the Scriptures, I knew I had not been baptized. I knew I had to be immersed, as the Scriptures taught. But I could not do it.
My father was a Methodist pastor. I loved my father, and I did not want to hurt him. I made up my mind that I would be baptized one day, after I graduated and became independent.
But one day, when I visited a friend, he talked to me about baptism. I argued with him and said, “No, it is not necessary.”
Afterward, I was praying: “Lord, I know I should be baptized, but I cannot.”
Then the Word of God came to me:
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
I went downstairs and knocked on the door of Brother Nee’s house. He came down and said, “What do you want?”
I said, “I want to be baptized.”
He said, “Does your father know?”
I said, “I think he does not, but I want to be baptized.”
I was baptized that night.
The next day was Sunday, and I had the opportunity to break bread with my brothers and sisters. But after I did it, I knew I had a problem. When I returned home, what should I do?
My father was the pastor of the church at that university. I attended every Sunday. They had communion once a month, and we would go forward and receive communion.
But I remembered that my professors were unbelievers. Could I partake of the Lord’s table with them? This is the Body of Christ. I had discerned that this is the Body, and I could not do it.
But I dared not talk to my father. For a whole year, whenever there was communion, I found an excuse to be away. By the end of that year, I had exhausted all my excuses.
The Lord gave me two brothers, my classmates. See how ignorant we were: sometimes the three of us would find an empty room on Sunday and break bread together to remember the Lord.
Then we heard that there were some sisters at the other end of the city who went by train to Shanghai by turns to break bread. We were introduced to them.
We said, “We will pray about it and see what the Lord wants us to do.” After several months of prayer, we felt that we should be together.
I remember one day, seven of us met in a sister’s home. We remembered the Lord in simplicity. No eyes were dry. It was very simple. That is how it began.
Then the Lord did something miraculous. Not many miracles of healing, really, but many were saved. It seemed as if the Lord was starting something, and I was not ready.
I could foresee that, if the Lord should start something, the responsibility would mainly rest on me. But I felt, in my situation, how could it begin?
In China, we have a saying about standing with two legs in two boats. On the one hand, I clung to traditional Christianity. On the other hand, the Lord was teaching me.
I wanted to follow Him all the way. Whatever He said, whatever was of the Lord, I wanted to follow. But, on the other hand, I could not let go of the old.
I knew this was not right. One day, I heard a message. A brother spoke from Luke 14: “Before you build a tower, sit down and count the cost.”
After the message was given, we had lunch together and rested. While we were resting, I was sitting alone and praying: “Lord, the reason I cannot follow You all the way may be because I have never really counted the cost.”
I began to count the cost. The more I counted, the heavier it became. I could not pay the cost. I told the Lord, “I cannot.”
The enemy tried to threaten me: I would be cast out of college, cast out of home, become a destitute person, with no future and nothing.
But it was at that time that the Lord appeared to me. I am sorry.
I saw His bleeding head, hands, and feet. He asked me one question: “I did all this for you. What have you done for Me?”
I said, “Lord, everything. You deserve everything. You should have everything.”
Even though I promised the Lord that I would give Him everything, I struggled. For three days and three nights, I could not see. I was in school, but I could not see what the professor was saying. I struggled.
But thank God, He overcame.
Then I went to my father and told him what had happened. He was hurt—hurt because I did not tell him that I had been baptized.
He said, “Why do you not trust me? If you want to pay that price, I will do it for you.”
But he understood. He loved the Lord. He said, “As long as you follow the Lord, that is all right.”
Everybody expected me to follow my father’s footsteps and become part of a Methodist church. But the Lord meant otherwise. My father was not sectarian at all. He said, “If you serve the Lord, that is fine.”
We suffered greatly from the Christian world. We were persecuted.
Still, I can remember that the last two years of my college life were the best years. There was uninterrupted fellowship with the Lord.
In 1935, I graduated from college, and Brother Nee sent word to me to join him in the work. I told him that I was unprepared and not ready.
But God, in His sovereign ways, brought me out of my home to be with our dear brother Watchman Nee. I was twenty years old.
When I first went to Shanghai to be with him, I think there were more than two hundred brothers and sisters there. It was a wonder.
There was Brother Nee, and there was Brother Lee. Brother Nee was often sick. The way he trained me was that he never told me in advance when I would be speaking.
Every Sunday, I was in fear and trembling, waiting for his word. If the meeting was at nine or nine-thirty, then by seven o’clock he would send me a note with two words. It would either say, “I come,” or, “You speak.”
He kept me in suspense for a whole year. I think it was good training.
I was too young, too innocent, and too ignorant. Nobody, in a sense, was controlling me. I was by myself. There were so many needs among the brothers and sisters, but I could not supply them.
Even today, I wonder: with all those wonderful sisters and brothers who had known the Lord for so long, they sat there and listened to me. What could I share with them?
So I had plenty of time on my hands. That is why I always tell young people: do not think that because the Lord has called you, you must immediately leave everything and begin preaching.
You may think you are free—nobody above you, nobody controlling you—and you have plenty of time. But what are you going to do with that time?
Fortunately, I loved to read, so I read a great deal.
Every week, Brother Nee would give me some books to read. He gave me all kinds of books, and thank God for that. So I have read all kinds of books, even to this day.
In the 1930s, the work in China began to grow through conferences, magazines, books, and brothers and sisters traveling out and sharing Christ.
All over China, in many places, God did the same thing with His people. Here and there, God’s people received the same vision. Later, we found that the testimony had spread along the seacoast of China, from Manchuria southward.
In the beginning, we were welcomed by organized Christianity. We were invited to speak in their schools and at their conferences.
But gradually, the doors began to close. Now, we never went to their schools or their conferences to talk about the church. We talked about Christ.
But when people saw Christ and began to seek after Christ, they came. As a result, many of the best and most zealous brothers and sisters in different denominations began to leave them and join us.
Our brother José’s father was one of them. So people began to blame us for stealing sheep.
Doors began to close. But thank God, we had more work to do. We were able to go into virgin soil, and we found that virgin soil was much better.
Another thing for which we thank God is this: even though we were rejected by organized Christianity, the messages God had given to us were given to the whole church.
We found that pastors and others began to preach what they read from our publications. We thank God for that.
Then war came to China. The war between Japan and China began earlier than the Second World War. In a sovereign way, God drew many brothers and sisters from the seacoast into interior China.
Schools, universities, and colleges moved inland. Brothers and sisters moved with the government, with the schools, and with their work. That is how the work began to grow in interior China.
When the war was over in 1945, the work had spread not only along the coast, but into the interior of China.
Let me be very honest with you. The Lord gave us a good beginning. We believe it was the move of God.
Even so, our understanding was limited. Our dear brother Watchman Nee saw much farther than many of us, even than many fellow workers. I use myself as an illustration.
I had been serving the Lord in the 1930s, traveling to different provinces and cities, preaching the gospel, holding gospel campaigns, visiting brothers and sisters, and so-called planting churches everywhere.
How did I do it? Mostly outwardly. After several years of observing, I came to my end. I said, “If that is all we did, what comes next?”
Outwardly, churches had spread through different parts of China. Many came to the Lord. We had many fellow workers. But where was the reality?
Local churches were everywhere, but where was the reality?
Thank God, for myself, during the wartime I fled from Singapore to India. It was during that period that the Lord opened my eyes to see that the reality of the church is Christ.
These outward things may be good things, but if they do not have Christ, they are empty. Once you see Christ, there is no limit.
Unfortunately, even before the Communists took over China, in my personal observation, we had gradually fallen into organization.
At the beginning, we never called ourselves the church. We said that we were standing for the church, but we were not the church, because the church includes all God’s people.
But in the 1940s, we called ourselves “the church here” and “the church there.” A pride came over us. We looked down upon our brothers and sisters in the denominations.
We felt that we knew and that we were superior, not knowing that God has His treasures everywhere.
We cannot blame the opposition from organized Christianity, because we brought it upon ourselves.
We began to appoint elders, though not in all places. Things began to be organized.
In my observation, that was the beginning of our undoing. God used the Communists to purify us.
But thank God, what God has done is still there.
Our dear brother Watchman Nee was in prison from 1952 to 1972. He died in 1972 in a labor camp.
Many of my fellow workers died in prison. Many brothers and sisters suffered. Many failed. Many were good.
So, brothers and sisters, I feel that twenty years is an important time. It happened to us in China. It does not need to happen that way again.
If we are humble enough, He is able to keep us. We fall because of pride.
God giveth grace to the humble, but resisteth the proud.
Thank God, His purpose never changes.
God seemed to begin a work at about the same time, perhaps a little earlier, in England. Brother Fox was a Baptist minister. He was very active in the Christian Union.
As a matter of fact, Joseph and Lewis wanted him to be their successor. But the Lord began to show him the Body of Christ and the spiritual principles of the universal church. It is the eternal purpose of God.
He told me himself that when he was pastor of that Baptist church, he preached what the Lord had shown him for a whole year, and only one brother received it.
Finally, he came out of that Baptist church and started what we know today as the Halford House Missionary and Conference Center. This was also in the 1920s.
I had the privilege of going there—not in the early days, but in the late 1950s. One thing that impressed me most was their prayer meeting.
They had prayer meetings twice a week: Tuesday night and Saturday night. On Tuesday night, they prayed for the whole world. On Saturday night, they prayed for their local needs. More than one hundred people were there praying together. I was impressed.
My observation is that God gave Brother Fox such a tremendous vision of the heavenly nature of the church that it blinded him to the practice of the local assembly.
He was so afraid that anything heavenly, when it touched the earth, would be corrupted. So, even though he believed in the local assembly, he discouraged people from gathering together.
Even before he passed away, things began to change. But the Lord had raised another brother, who is no longer there, to whom He had shown the truth and teaching.
In India, God began to work marvelously. God raised up our dear brother Bakht Singh. God called him, and he went back to India.
He traveled all over India preaching the gospel. Many, many were saved, because Christianity in India was dead.
Wherever he went, the Bible was opened. After he had labored for several years, he had a problem: when he returned to the same place, many who had been saved under his ministry had disappeared. Organized Christianity could not nurture these people.
He wondered what the Lord wanted him to do. A sister from England wrote and said, “If you need a place to be quiet before the Lord, you are welcome to come.”
This sister was a widow, our dear Sister Lady Houghton. The Lord told Brother Bakht Singh, “Go to England.” So he went.
When he arrived there, two young brothers from Brother Fox’s work were present. They had been trained by Brother Fox. One was Brother Parton, who had visited us and would be coming again. The other was Brother Goss, who is now in Melbourne, Australia.
The four of them, I was told, spent every morning praying and seeking the Lord: “What is the Lord’s way for India?” They did not tell Brother Bakht Singh what to do. They simply prayed with him.
After several months, God showed the pattern. He went down to Madras and began a work there.
I was fortunate to visit there a year later. At that time, I think there had been about four hundred people, but because of the war, half of them had left the city. We saw about two hundred people there.
When they started that work, they met every day for a whole year, twice a day. Before everybody went to work, they came together to learn the Lord. Afterwards, they came together and learned more of Him. They did this for a whole year, almost like the church in Antioch.
When I visited them, one thing impressed me. Brother Bakht Singh, when he prayed, quoted Scripture. But he did not merely tell you what a passage said; he quoted the chapter and the verse.
Whenever he wrote a letter, he would include Scripture passages at the end. He never needed to look through the Bible; he simply wrote.
When I went to Madras and was with the brothers and sisters, they would pray, “Lord, according to 1 Corinthians 3:16, according to Ephesians 2:—” I was lost.
They were very poor. I was with them during Easter time at a conference. They asked me to be with them. I ate with them and slept with them. We sat on the floor.
All we had was curry, rice, and vegetables—no meat. I was so afraid of the curry because it was too hot. They taught me how to bear the heat: “Just a bite of banana will do.”
They loved the Lord. They went into the streets every day preaching the gospel. God told them no plan; He never gave them a fixed pattern. They simply followed as the Spirit led.
They had convocations in different parts of India. Six thousand people would come. Anybody could come, saved or unsaved. They would live there and eat there, and nobody would say anything.
There was no time factor there. You did not know when Brother Bakht Singh would arrive, and the brothers and sisters suffered because of it.
At a convocation, he was supposed to be speaking, but they could not find him. He was talking with somebody. They lived in eternity.
After the convocation, people who had been saved went back to their villages and said, “Come over and preach the gospel here.” The brothers prayed about it, and if they felt led, a group would go.
They would rent a house, live there without saying how long they would remain, and preach from day to night. When people were saved, a few would be left there, and the others would go on to another place. The fire just spread.
There were hundreds of meetings, growing so fast. The problem was the follow-up.
It was such a marvelous work of God. But something happened.
They grew so much. They had many meeting places, and all of these meeting places had to be registered with the Indian government.
Unfortunately, they were all registered under the name of Brother Bakht Singh. He had the final authority over all the properties. Centralization.
There were divisions. People left.
Now, our dear brother, as I was told by Dana, who visited him recently, was in his dying days. The elders and workers were fighting over control.
How the brothers and sisters suffered. Many loved the Lord. Many were not involved. But the enemy had gotten in.
Brothers and sisters, as you look everywhere, it seems as if whenever God begins a work, it is so glorious. Then man’s hand begins to come in, and it corrupts everything.
But do we need to be disappointed? No.
The Lord said:
I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
What the gates of hell have prevailed over is not worth preserving. Let it be destroyed. It will not last into eternity anyway.
But thank God, what God has built is on overcoming ground. The enemy is under our feet, and it lasts into eternity.
Brothers and sisters, it is not necessary that after thirty years—a generation—there must be a decline. It is not necessary.
God is able to preserve us individually and corporately. If we believe in the preservation of the saints, it is not because we persevere, but because He perseveres.
We should also believe in the preservation of the house of God, because He is building His church.
What is visible can easily be seen. What is invisible must be seen with the eyes of faith.
Brothers and sisters, nothing is lost. Nothing that is of God is lost. It is all here.
I believe the day is coming when we shall see a glorious church:
Not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing;
But that it should be holy and without blemish.
The Lord will come and receive her to Himself. May we be part of it.
I am sorry that I took almost the whole time, but I could not help it.
Well, we still have fifteen minutes.