Well, brothers and sisters, we have already reached a climax while we were at the Lord’s table. So I often feel it is better that the Lord’s table would be the end of this conference, rather than going down into questions and answers.
Whenever I have questions and answers, I always like to say a few words. The title Questions and Answers is the wrong title, because we may have many questions, but who is the answer? Nobody can answer any question. The Lord Himself is the answer. So if you want to get the right answer to your questions, go to the Lord—not to a question-and-answer period. So I hope, brothers and sisters, you will not be disappointed.
I have received five questions. Usually, I will only ask for three questions, but I do not know why the brothers gave me five questions. Now, I do not pretend that I know the answers. The only answer that we really can get is from the Lord. So if you have any real question, go to the Lord. It is only when you do not have real questions that you go to man.
Number one: In the book Shepherding, it mentions that every brother needs to shepherd each other. Can you explain how to apply this to younger brothers shepherding other brothers?
Now, if you have read the book Shepherding, it is suggested in that book that as soon as you are saved, you are supposed to do some shepherding. In other words, we cannot just think of ourselves. We have to think of other people.
Now, if you are newly saved, you may think that you need to be shepherded instead of shepherding. But this is not entirely true. If you are newly saved, it is true that you are not able to shepherd other brothers and sisters who have been saved longer than you are. They know much better than you do. But there is a shepherding you can do, and that is: you need to shepherd some unbelievers.
God has saved us not just for ourselves. He saved us for His purpose. So after you are saved, God expects you to do some shepherding. We cannot be self-centered. We cannot be selfish. We have to be useful in the hands of God.
So if you are not able to shepherd any brother or sister because you yourself are newly saved, at least you should learn to do some shepherding with unbelievers. Otherwise, we will be self-centered and selfish.
Every brother and sister, immediately after you are saved, is supposed to do some shepherding—not with believers ahead of you, but with unbelievers. We cannot be self-centered. We have to be used by God for His purpose.
I remember Brother Nee used to tell us that when he was first saved, he was very zealous for the Lord. So he began to attack his fellow students. Whenever he saw his fellow students, he tried to talk to them and convince them of the gospel. Eventually, all his schoolmates avoided him. When they saw him coming, they would run the other way.
Miss Barber—I forgot her name for a moment; Miss Barber—once asked him, “After you are saved, how many have you brought to the Lord?” He said, “No one. But I have done my duty. I tried to talk to everybody, but they avoided me.”
Miss Barber asked him, “Have you prayed for these people before you talked to them?” He said, “No.” Miss Barber said, “Pray for them first, and then God will work.”
So he began to put the names of his fellow students in his book, and he began to pray for them. After he did that, you know what happened: all the names in his book, except two, were saved. God began to work.
Brothers and sisters, it is always good to do some shepherding, because that enables us to get out of ourselves. Otherwise, we will be so self-centered and selfish, instead of being useful vessels in the hands of God.
So, brothers and sisters, if you are newly saved, God will expect you to shepherd some unbelievers. You may not be ambitious to put a hundred names in your book, but at least one or two—people for whom you will really pray, asking the Lord to give you an opportunity to share Christ with them. That is the way you begin your shepherding.
As you are growing in the Lord, then the Lord may give you a burden for some brother or sister who needs shepherding, and God will use you to do the work. So I would say shepherding is not limited to unbelievers, but it should include unbelievers.
I wonder, brothers and sisters, after you are saved, have you thought of your friends who are unsaved? What will you do for them? Will you pray for them and ask the Lord to give you an opportunity to share Christ with them? Or do you just think of yourself—how you can grow in the Lord?
God does not want us to be selfish or self-centered. That is not a good thing. He wants to use even a new believer to do some shepherding. So I would suggest that you do that.
I think the greatest joy as a young Christian is to lead others to Christ. I remember the first one that God used me to lead to the Lord. It gave me such joy.
As the Lord begins to use you, gradually this will be enlarged and increased, until you are able to be used of the Lord to shepherd not only unbelievers, but even believers who need help. As you grow in the Lord, you are able to help them.
So I would say shepherding is a responsibility for every believer. Think of yourself. After you are saved, have you been used by the Lord to lead some others to Christ? After you have been saved for some time, has the Lord entrusted to you some younger brothers or sisters for you to shepherd?
I think there is extreme joy when you find that those whom you shepherd have come to the Lord or have grown in the Lord. There is no joy greater than that. It is even more joyful than your own salvation. So I encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this shepherding.
Number two: How do we, as brothers and elders, shepherd sisters? What is our place? How do we help oversee the sisters, especially single sisters?
I think this is a very practical question. If you are newly saved and do not know much of the Lord, you cannot even do shepherding with other believers. You have to begin with your friends who are unbelievers, and you will begin to learn how to take care of other people.
As you grow in the Lord, the Lord may put some brother in your heart, or some sister in your heart, for you to shepherd. This is a glorious, growing thing.
We need to be careful. If you are a young brother and you are going to shepherd a young sister, there is always a danger. So in doing this shepherding, we need to be a little careful.
Let the sisters take care of the sisters. Let the elders—the grown ones, the mature in the Lord—take care of them. If the Lord puts some sister into your care, then you can do it. Otherwise, it may become a temptation to you.
So I would suggest, if possible, let the sisters take care of the younger sisters. But if you have already grown in the Lord and if you are older, it is not something that you cannot do with a sister. Still, in doing that, we need to be careful.
A question was asked: “I am really helped and touched by your message on the two wedding garments, particularly the one of gold and the other of embroidery. Will you please give us the Scripture references, since I was not able to capture them during the meeting?”
I think it is a good habit, when you read a Scripture, to try to find other Scriptures that confirm the Scripture you have been reading. This is always a good practice. But that does not mean that every time the Lord has shown you something, He will at the same time show you another verse to confirm what He has shown you.
I do not say that the Lord will not confirm what He has shown you, but sometimes it is not in definite words. It is the spirit of it.
When you are thinking of the wedding garments, we say the embroidered garment is the working of the Holy Spirit in your daily life. If you want to find another Scripture exactly saying the same thing, it may be difficult. But if you are familiar with the Scriptures, you know the spirit of the Word throughout the Bible.
The thought of the embroidered clothing of the wife of the Lamb is supported by other Scriptures. I cannot tell you exactly where it is, but as you read the Scriptures, you will find throughout the Bible that this thought is supported in other places.
What the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives, we all experience. Our experience will show us that this is a correct interpretation. How do we interpret the Bible? Is it necessary that you find another exact quotation in order to believe the interpretation of one Scripture? No. Sometimes you do not find the exact wording, but the spirit of it is everywhere.
Is it not true that the work of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in you, is like embroidery? It is not a quick work. It is a lifetime work. It takes time, and usually it is stitch by stitch. That coincides with our experience.
I cannot tell you exactly if you can find another verse that says embroidered clothing means the working of the Holy Spirit in your daily life. But I can assure you that this idea does not come from me. It comes from reading the Bible and finding that this interpretation agrees with what the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us, has been doing in our lives.
This can be proven not by another exact Scripture, but by your life experience. So I would say: do not always be so technical because you cannot find an exact verse in Scripture. Therefore, you cannot make any decision as to what that Scripture means.
That is the reason why we have to read the whole Bible. If you read only a certain part, but never the whole Bible, then if there is not an exact quotation elsewhere that you have read, you may take the position of neglecting the interpretation. But it is not always true that you will find an exact quotation somewhere else in the Bible. The spirit of it is everywhere.
I think it is quite evident from our experience that when the Holy Spirit is working in your life, it is not a one-time work. The work of Christ as our righteousness is a one-time work. You experience it altogether. But the work of the Holy Spirit is a daily thing, so you have to find it in your daily life.
So, brothers and sisters, that is a way to interpret the Bible. You may not have the exact quotation somewhere else, but as you read the Bible, you will find that in other places, when the work of the Holy Spirit is described, it is exactly like the work of embroidery—making you the wedding garment for the Lord.
On the one hand, I would say it is good if you can find another exact quotation to support this. But if you cannot find it in the exact wording, the spirit of it is there. That is why you have to read the whole Bible. You get into the spirit of the Word of God, and that is another secret for interpreting the Bible.
Another question: “Why do we not today have the kind of discipleship that Paul had with Timothy? Can we bring this kind of discipleship back?”
I am sorry to say that my knowledge is limited. I do not know everything about the Lord everywhere. I know only a part of it. So I will not say that discipleship cannot be brought back, but let me warn you.
In this country, there was a time—when I was young—when there was a work of discipleship. I think the older ones will remember. There were five gifted persons in Florida, and they started discipleship. They tried to use human ways to arrange discipleship.
They were gifted people; I knew some of them. They tried to match people, putting one person under another person’s discipleship. When I was a young man, this idea of discipleship was everywhere in this country.
These five men were very gifted and greatly used by the Lord. But eventually, because of this human arrangement—it was not arranged by the Lord—they tried to make arrangements. The principle was right, but the practice was wrong.
They made it so that one who was under another’s discipleship had to obey him in everything. He had to know everything about that person. He was in full charge of the person discipled to him. Brothers and sisters, no human being is perfect. So sooner or later, problems came up—more problems—until finally the whole idea of discipleship was given up.
So even discipleship, if it is to be brought back into practice, must be by the Holy Spirit. It is not something of human arrangement.
Paul discipled Timothy. It was not a human decision. Paul saw that this young man was promising, that he could be helped; and Paul was such a person that he could help young people. So he put Timothy under his wing.
Dear brothers and sisters, discipleship cannot be humanly arranged. It has to come from the Lord Himself. The Lord may put some younger ones in your heart, and you begin to pray for them, to be burdened for them, and to take care of them.
I think this is necessary even nowadays. Discipleship is scriptural, but it is not a human arrangement. It must be by divine arrangement. In this matter of discipleship, we need to be careful, but that does not mean we throw away the whole idea of discipleship.
I believe even today the younger ones should be humble enough to receive the help of the older ones, of those who have more experience than themselves. It may not be in a formal way, but I believe that in a spiritual way, discipleship is still a good thing.
Otherwise, everyone will do what he or she thinks, and that will cause disaster. This is all I can share, and hopefully Brother Dana will give us all the answers.
Before I share questions and answers, I would really like to take this opportunity to thank the brothers and sisters who made this possible. A dear brother from South Jersey came to Brother Stephen sometime in late October with a burden for a time like this. We prayed about it, and Brother Stephen asked if I would help him. We felt that we could do this if the Lord enabled us.
The brothers and sisters from Flushing—the Christian believers meeting in Flushing—have really helped us: Brother Ezra, Daniel, Tim, and others. Especially the brothers and sisters from South Jersey made the arrangements. Thank God that Harvey Cedars was available. They worked out all the details, the charts, and all those things with great love, as a labor of love.
Brother Stephen and I would like to thank all those who were behind the scenes and enabled this to happen within a month. It is a miracle that all of you were able to come, especially with the requirement that you be here from start to finish. Yet the Lord arranged it like this.
We realized, as soon as we said, “Let us go ahead with this,” that we were in trouble, because suddenly people wanted to come from overseas. We limited it to a few people from each fellowship to keep it this size, and even this is a little large for its purposes. But we are thankful that you have been cooperative and disciplined in the meetings. Everything has been wonderful.
Thank you, brothers and sisters from South Jersey, for arranging all of this and taking care of the financial details with Harvey Cedars. This is a joint labor of love by a number of people, and we recognize and are thankful for that.
I received the other ten questions, and they make you realize how poorly you presented things. Whenever you share and ten questions come up, you say, “Oh boy.”
Before I answer these questions, may I give a little answer to one of Brother Stephen’s questions? The person asking about embroidery was referring to Psalm 45:13-14. That was the Scripture he had in mind, where it speaks of the Messiah’s bride having gold embroidery from the gold of Ophir on her garment.
There is no Scripture that says the gold embroidery is the Holy Spirit stitching you. But I like that phrase, stitching you, because the Holy Spirit stitches me. Does He stitch you with a needle? In and out: death and life, death and life, death and life. He begins to place the character of the gold of Jesus Christ into our lives.
There is no Scripture that says it is the Holy Spirit and that He is needling you. It does not say that. But if you know what embroidery is like—the painstaking process of embroidering something beautiful—you realize how the Holy Spirit is working on us in order to produce something that one day the Bridegroom will say is bone of His bone, a kindred spirit. He will be happy with the way the bride looks.
It is all by the doing of the precious Holy Spirit, who is with us in these days.
Let me read a few questions, and then I am going to read a Scripture. Hopefully, by the time we read the Scripture, you will forget the questions, because they are unanswerable.
One question was: “In Acts 13, we read of five men who were ministering to the Lord and fasting when the Holy Spirit commanded Barnabas and Saul to be set apart for the work. Was this a meeting called specifically for that purpose? Would it be appropriate, if we feel the Lord might be calling us or another brother or sister into an extra-local ministry, to call together a meeting like that? Does the Lord normally, or perhaps always, make His calling of people into the work public in this way?”
Another question was: “Today, do we need someone like Paul, almost a spiritual father figure to many churches? In Paul’s day, he was almost God’s messenger, teaching, correcting, and exhorting churches in various locations. Today we have the complete revelation of the Bible. Do we still need such figures as Paul?”
Now let us read a Scripture. I would like to read Zechariah 4.
Then the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep.
And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold, a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are upon the top thereof;
And two olive-trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.
And I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my Lord?
Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these are? And I said, No, my Lord.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings of Grace, grace, unto it.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel; these are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive-trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof?
And I answered the second time, and said unto him, What are these two olive branches which are beside the two golden spouts, that empty the golden oil out of themselves?
And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these are? And I said, No, my Lord.
Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.
That is where I began my message on Friday night: the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. The condition Zechariah felt he was in was very similar to the condition we are in today.
That dear remnant came back to Jerusalem to build the house of God. They had gone as far as laying the foundation, which we would say is the foundation of Jesus Christ in terms of the household today. Then the enemy stepped in. The government stood against them, the surrounding leaders of Samaria stood against them, and the remnant was so weak that they stopped the work in confusion.
They were in a place where there needed to be recovery, but they could not do it. Time went along, and they remained in that state of destruction—stones fallen from the house of God.
Then the Lord decided in His mercy that He was going to recover the house of God. He said, “I am going to do this that you cannot do: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord.”
There are so many problems regarding the church and the way things operate today. There is so much confusion. When we set the plumb line against the church today, we realize that it is impossible to do what the Scriptures say unless the Holy Spirit can recover light and truth to God’s people.
Let us take this question in Acts 13. The five brothers—teachers and prophets—were together praying. The Spirit said, “Separate for Me Saul and Barnabas for the work.” They prayed, fasted, laid hands on them, and sent them out. The question is: should we do that today?
Let us say we are in New York City. We want to get together with the prophets, teachers, leaders, and ministry in the church in New York City. We want to fast, pray, wait on the Lord, and worship the Lord. But how are we going to do that?
There is a pastor over there, someone who calls himself a bishop over there, and an apostle over in another church. They are all pastors in a system, all competing with one another. How can they simply get together as ministering brothers to pray and see whether the Lord is sending workers?
The brothers in Acts 13 came together to wait on the Lord and worship Him. There was probably a stirring in their hearts that the blessing they had received in Antioch should spread further. We do not know exactly why they gathered, but as they gathered the Lord said, “Now is the time. I am going to send out these brothers.”
But in New York, we do not have the one church that they had in Antioch. Think about Antioch. Antioch had four different quarters in the city: a Jewish section, a Roman section, a Greek section, and a Syrian section.
Suppose those were four separate churches: Hebrew-speaking over here, Greek-speaking over there, Syrians in another place. First of all, they would never get together. Neither would they be one, nor would they know the workers in their midst. But Antioch was not like that.
Antioch was the first place where the unbelievers called the believers Christians. Why? Because when Jews, Greeks, Syrians, and Romans all came together, it was not a Greek place, a Hebrew-speaking place, or a Syrian place. What do you call these people? Little Christs. That is what Christian means. They proclaimed Christ everywhere and spoke of Christ’s resurrection in the common language of the marketplace.
The church was one in Antioch. Because the church was one, they could see who was being raised up and who was working. They could see that Saul and Barnabas had a special anointing, and the time came when they could send them out.
The church needs recovery. In a city like New York City, we have a synagogue system. There is a synagogue on every corner. I have no idea how many churches are in New York City, but I know it is more than a thousand. They are arranged according to language, ethnic group, denomination, Pentecostal experience, and many other distinctions.
We have holiness groups, Pentecostal groups, charismatic groups, and mega-churches. They all believe something different. They all have their own synagogue. We are more comfortable in our own synagogues.
The system is broken. The church is devastated. We are in a situation today where Laodicea and Sardis are so off track that you do not even know where to begin. How would you mend these things? It is basically impossible to mend by man’s hand.
But what if some people were so pressed in their spirit that they wanted the Lord’s way? What if they wanted to walk in the simple way of the Lord?
I was a Baptist pastor and had so much Baptist baggage that you cannot believe it. Even the church architecture had to look Baptist. I had to take a course in Baptist church architecture. I came out a genetically modified servant of God—genetically modified by the Baptists.
New York City has had great preachers. When I came there, David Wilkerson was one of the great lights in the city. In every generation there are real servants of God who speak the truth on a scale larger than their particular group or denomination.
I started going to a prayer meeting with David Wilkerson. I loved the prayer meeting, but only Pentecostal people would come. I was not Pentecostal, but I slipped in anyway. Yet Tim Keller’s Presbyterian group would never get together with David Wilkerson’s Pentecostal group. There was no mixing there.
The synagogue was developed by the Jewish mind when they could no longer go to the temple to sacrifice and worship. The synagogue idea has appealed to the whole of Christendom today: meet where it is convenient, meet near your house, meet where they speak your language, meet where they like your things and belong to your socioeconomic group. Meet separately.
The Lord loves all His people in these various places. From Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, we know that the Lord will find overcomers in all these places. But who is going to have a lampstand of testimony that says, “We want the Lord’s way”?
The house that Zerubbabel and Jeshua built was nothing like Solomon’s temple, but it was the house of God. It was built in weakness, not in strength, but by the Holy Spirit’s miraculous help.
When people said, “We do not know what to do, Lord. We cannot do it on our own, and the whole government is against us,” they looked up and saw the plumb line. Zerubbabel said, “I am with you. Build according to My plumb line.”
When I saw the plumb line of the Lord as He wants His church, and I saw my Baptist wall, it did not line up. There were so many things that did not line up. The main thing was that I did not line up.
I am not trying to get down on denominations. There are buildings and institutions out there where there are many saints. But I was out of line.
If somebody sees the plumb line and says, “Lord, I will sacrifice anything to have the wall built the way You want it built,” then the Lord has a testimony. That is the answer. If we try to unsnarl all these questions, we will get nowhere.
I had an older brother and a younger sister. When my sister was about three, my brother and I chewed a lot of Bazooka bubble gum and put it in my sister Eda’s hair. By the time our mother got home, it was dried in there. They tried to brush it out, and my sister was crying. Finally, they had to cut it out.
Our churches are like bubble gum in hair. Go ahead and try to comb it out; you just run into another problem.
Another question concerned coworkers who had a different opinion on a church issue from the responsible brother. The coworkers expressed their views, but the responsible brother dealt with the issue his own way. The question was what the coworkers should do.
My answer is: plumb line. When was there ever one responsible brother? If you have one responsible brother, you have a pastor. You can call him whatever you want.
I was the responsible brother as a Baptist pastor. The buck stopped with me. I made the final decision. But now, in Manhattan, if somebody comes and says, “Dana, what is the solution?” I say, “Go ask the brothers. Let them pray. Let them decide if the Lord tells them what to do.”
It is hard for people to get over this idea of the one-man thing. The Lord never intended for anyone to be idolized, for anyone to be so great that everybody falls back passively and does nothing, just waiting for the man of God to say something. You will never find that in the Bible.
The Lord still raises up workers, even great men of God. But there is no place for idolatry in the body of Christ. When it happens, it hurts the body of Christ.
You may have four or five responsible brothers in a fellowship. One may be a senior man who has been around a long time or has served the Lord in some way. But when it comes to a matter of decision, there is only one Boss, and that is the Lord Jesus.
If the brothers cannot hear what the Lord Jesus is saying, they need to wait until they hear what He is saying and not make a precipitous decision. We should all fall down on our knees and say, “Jesus, how can we love You so much and love one another, and yet be so at odds about a simple situation? You are the Head, Lord. So we yield. Lord, what is Your will?”
The Lord never set up a single man at the top of the church. That is not church government. Church government has to do with eldership. It is always plural. Leadership in the church is plural.
There is no answer except one: we would be left to ourselves, existing in church life that has gone far from the light and way of God, if it were not for the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit finds people on this earth—in every generation—who love the Lord so much that He gives them light concerning who Jesus is. That enables them to recover something of the church’s testimony.
When I was in seminary, we had a thick book on church history, but I learned almost nothing about real church history. We learned about the Lutheran movement, the Catholic movement, splits, divisions, and all the rest.
Then someone gave me a little book called The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent. I had not learned about that in the thick history book. The book showed that throughout church history there have been faithful ones, a remnant like the remnant in Jerusalem.
There were many Jews remaining in Babylon, saying there was no reason to go back to Jerusalem. It was better in Babylon with all the synagogues. But a poor remnant came back because their hearts and spirits were stirred by the Holy Spirit, and they went back to recover the house of God.
So it has been through every generation. The Lord wakes somebody up as though he has been asleep. Martin Luther woke up and saw the gospel. Count Zinzendorf saw the body of Christ and sent out missionaries. John Wesley saw assurance of salvation.
The Lord opens somebody’s eyes and asks, “What do you see?” Someone sees that there is a testimony in the church. The testimony is that the Lord Zerubbabel is building His church. He has laid the foundation, He will lay the top stone, and we should go help Zerubbabel do it.
Do not despise the day of small things. You may be a small remnant, but if you see what the Lord wants, you are a testimony.
We have to let many problems and questions go unanswered in one sense, knowing that when we see what the Lord wants, that is the answer. But it may involve us leaving somewhere.
The Lord does not merely have us walk out of something. He has us walk into something. I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, a pastor in an interdenominational charismatic church. Brother Stephen came to town and shared about the church, about who Christ is, and how Christ is all in all in the church.
By the mercy of God, one day I saw the Lord. I had to tear up my ordination papers. I was Reverend Dana, with the Reverend Disease. I was the pastor, the single head honcho, and the church was built on a human design—an interdenominational charismatic model.
It took me a second to see that all of that was wrong. It meant I left the ministry and never went back. I left my ordination, my gainful employment, and began working secular jobs. I did not merely walk out. I walked into a little group of people meeting in a house who had seen what I had seen.
We began breaking bread together every week, and we began discovering the headship of the Lord Jesus and what that means practically. For me, it meant I had to leave everything. If you want to see the truth and see that plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand, what will it cost you if you really see?
In the end, you will find yourself meeting with people who want to see the Lord just as you do. The problem is not that it is complex. The problem is that it is very simple.
The great thing the brethren recovered in the nineteenth century was the simplicity of the body of Christ. Most churches would have no idea what happened here Sunday morning, when the brothers one by one prayed, worshiped, cried, and sang. They would ask, “Who is leading this thing?”
Many know only a liturgy: sing hymn number 346, sing hymn number 222, take up the offering, and so on. Today, many have a worship band in front with lights, smoke, and sound. They may do a great job worshiping the Lord. They are great singers. But where is the body of Christ?
One day I was leading worship with my guitar in a charismatic setting. I thought it had gone well. We had moved in the Spirit, sang the right songs, and everyone spoke in tongues at the end. But I felt the Lord saying, “Dana, I would rather hear what I heard down at that little house meeting. I would rather hear people sing out of tune and ask for songs that are not in the flow, because I love My children so much. I want to hear every brother and sister say, ‘I love Jesus,’ when they gather around the Lord’s table.”
The Lord does not want one person to lead everything. He wants His brothers and sisters—all the body of Christ—together.
Did you notice anything this morning? I want to apologize because only one sister became a Brother Dora and worshiped this morning. We did not hear a prayer from the sisters. Maybe they were all afraid. Maybe I yell too loud. I told them they should be ashamed, and they were so ashamed they could not speak.
When we come around the Lord’s table, there is no brother and no sister in the sense of rank. We are all brothers and sisters. I wish you had joined in the worship this morning. But I know you are shy. Shame on you.
When the Lord gets what He wants, it is usually very simple: the body of Christ. That is a simple concept. That is what we experienced this morning. It was so wonderful.
I remember being in Russia at a school training evangelists and pastors in a Pentecostal church. We had a session on corporate prayer. Twenty-five people gathered in a circle, and a sister shared that her husband had left her, she had two children, and she had no money even to get home by cab.
The leader said, “Let us all pray for Sister Sasha.” They all closed their eyes and began speaking in tongues. Then my friend said, “No, wait. Who is going to pray for her?” They were waiting for the pastor to pray for her. They had never learned how to pray for one another in Russian.
Many church members around the world do not know how to pray out loud. So they had to learn to pray for Sasha one by one as the Spirit led them. It was so novel to them that they were crying afterward.
It is so simple. You gather together as brothers and sisters, let the Lord Jesus be the Head, and let the Spirit lead. By the grace of God, we all shepherd.
Did you hear that little word on shepherding this morning? Is there anything simpler? I have gone to shepherding seminars where they used Greek words and spoke about pastoral counseling, psychology, and degrees. I took pastoral counseling courses in seminary, and it was confusing.
How about helping somebody who is not saved when you first get saved? Then, as you grow a little in the Lord, how about helping a brother or sister who has just been saved and needs help? That is shepherding. The Word of God should be simple.
One question concerns Chinese-speaking churches and those who do not speak Chinese. They may not come because they do not feel welcome. We can have our own code language, so that even if people understand our language, they do not understand what we are saying.
In our group in Manhattan, we speak English, but we use code language too. A visitor may have no idea what we are talking about. “The recovery of the church” is a code phrase. “The eternal purpose” is another. Outsiders may ask, “What?”
We make things complicated. Things are much simpler. Usually, when the Lord has His way and reveals Himself in recovery, He recovers something simple: let the Spirit lead; have an open time of sharing; let the brothers and sisters come together in fellowship.
Zechariah did not know what to do. He was with the remnant, and the house was still unbuilt. Then he saw a vision of the Lord. The plumb line was not all he saw. He saw two olive trees.
The two olive trees represent brothers and sisters building the house. In the vision, you see yourself in there. They represent Zerubbabel and Jeshua: leadership and priesthood, worship and prayer. The house of God can be built as the oil comes forth to light up the testimony of God in the midst.
That which had become impossible suddenly became possible. We rejoice because the plumb line is in the hand of Zerubbabel. Who is going to despise the day of small things when the Lord’s life is there?
Turn to 2 John.
The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not I only, but also all they that know the truth.
I rejoice greatly that I have found certain of thy children walking in truth, even as we received commandment from the Father.
The Lord is trying to recover the testimony of His church. He wants lamps on this earth upon which Jesus’ testimony is shining, because brothers and sisters have come into conformity with His will and desire. Imperfect, yes, but gathering to be a testimony for the Lord.
In Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, all seven churches need repentance. They need to be faithful. They need to overcome if the Lord is to have a testimony in those places.
John was the apostle of recovery. He had hold of something that was the message of his life: if you walk in the light as Jesus is in the light, then you have life. You walk in truth, or reality.
Truth can be translated as objective truth or subjective truth—that is, reality. Usually John means reality. So he says, “I am so happy to hear that some of your children are walking in reality.”
The Gospel of John shows story after story concerning the reality of Christ among His people. The church is a simple reality: it is Christ’s life. We see the light, and because we see the light, we understand. The teaching becomes living instruction to us.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the reality. If you walk in reality, you have life. The church, when recovered, walks in the light of God, has the teaching of God, knows the way to walk, and walks in reality.
On the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit came down, the brothers and sisters found themselves walking in reality. What is that reality? The life of Jesus.
Look at 3 John.
The elder unto Gaius the beloved, whom I love in truth.
I rejoiced greatly, when brethren came and bare witness unto thy truth, even as thou walkest in truth.
John was a reality tester. He could go somewhere and immediately see whether this was Jesus, whether it was reality, or whether it was something man had made up.
If we walk in the light, we will have reality. But what happens when we get out of the light? Teaching becomes doctrine. Doctrine is knowledge without light. Walking becomes tradition—a step removed from reality.
When Paul wrote to Timothy, there were already problems in Ephesus. They needed to conduct themselves according to sound doctrine because they were losing the original, native reality: Jesus is our life.
Jesus’ life organizes. Jesus’ life brings forth eldership and deaconship. They raised up the seven men when the widows were not being taken care of. It is Jesus’ life. That is our reality. Keep the reality of Jesus in the midst.
But we get away from reality and light. We get into doctrines. From doctrines, we get into traditions. Then we get into dogma: things we say we believe without necessarily knowing their reality.
A Catholic priest once told me, “We believe Jesus is God. That is dogma.” But when someone says that as dogma, you do not necessarily get the sense that he knows the reality of it. He learned it in catechism: Jesus is God. But is it reality anymore?
The Lord is looking for people who want His reality, who are willing to get into His light, stand under His vision, and walk in that. It is a straight and narrow way. It is a simple, living way.
Whenever light is recovered, there is recovery. John Hus, before Luther, was studying the Word of God and translating it illegally from Latin into Czech. He saw that the Bible said, “Drink ye all of it.” That phrase changed his life.
The Catholic Church did not allow parishioners to drink the cup. They would give them bread, but not the cup. John Hus said, “No, the cup is for the brothers and sisters.” Eventually, thirty-four thousand Catholics gathered on a mountain outside Prague to taste the cup of the Lord Jesus for the first time.
The symbol of the Hussites was the cup, and John Hus was burned at the stake. He saw a little light in the Word, and he was martyred for it. Those Hussites eventually became the Moravian brethren, who made their way into Germany and began the Moravian revival more than one hundred years later.
A remnant sees some reality and wants to walk in that reality. Then, oh boy, you get in trouble. George Fox saw reality and walked right into jail in England. John Wesley came to the reality of assurance of salvation, preached it in the Anglican church, and they kicked him out.
When you see a little bit of light and walk in it, there is some recovery of life. No church has recovered everything, and none of us walks in the fullness of truth. But if we walk in enough of it that the Word is life, we touch something wonderful.
I am going to Brazil in a couple of weeks. The Lord is doing an amazing thing there. Many Catholics have left and been saved. Brother Christian Chen began more than thirty years ago translating great Christian books, including books by Andrew Murray, into Portuguese. The people of God in Brazil have received living words.
It is wonderful to go somewhere and see reality in the church. It is also a burden when I see a lack of reality because there is too much of man’s maneuvering, where everyone ends up doing the same thing.
When I go to a church where there are sixty people at the breaking of bread but five hundred at the ministry meeting, it breaks my heart. The reality of the breaking of bread meeting should be the highlight. Whoever is preaching afterward is an anticlimax.
We should put first things first. The Lord’s table, taken every week, puts first things first. We remember Him and begin there, whatever else happens in the meetings. That is a basic reality.
If the Lord’s table becomes something only a few older brothers and sisters attend—singing a few old songs, praying a few prayers, breaking bread, and then everyone comes in afterward—that is not the reality we know.
John says that if you walk in the light, you will have the light of life, which enables you to walk in a living way. When you walk in a living way, you are a testimony to Jesus.
Doing that corporately takes patience in prayer. It takes the Lord recovering things in us that have been lost. Even churches that started out in the way can lose the way. They start in a living way, then become stratified, develop levels of expectation and traditions, and the testimony is hindered.
There is maturity, order, leadership, submission, and discipline in the church. But those things should not take away from life. They should enhance life.
We have a way of coming down from living reality into something that remembers reality and can talk about reality but is not living reality. Then John says, “I was so happy to hear that your children are walking in reality.”
When we have a great testimony and the Lord graciously recovers something, but then we come down from reality and live in the shadowlands, what happens to our children? They leave. They do not want shadowlands.
If you have reality, they have something to see, something to be built into, and something they can help be part of. But if all they see is routine—the same preachers, the same prayers, the same pattern every week—they do not buy it.
Young people are invited to exciting churches with smoke, lights, and great worship. All you have is reality. If you do not have it, the young people do not buy tradition. They need to walk in a living way.
It does not matter how wonderfully we start. Are we willing to repent so that the Lord can recover His life in the church?
A question was asked in several ways: If you are a Chinese church worshiping the Lord in Chinese and not finding ground in the United States, is that God’s work? How do you solve that? Do you simply say that next Sunday everyone must speak English? No.
If you are pressed up against the Lord and, for the sake of the children, say, “Lord, we want Your way,” then there is a sacrificial way to become the church in Antioch.
Brother Christian Chen, my dear brother, would preach about Antioch about once a year. He would remind all the Chinese-speaking saints, “We want to be the church in Antioch. Pray in broken English so that we can all join in.”
He would say, “If you pray long-winded prayers in Chinese, America cannot understand you. Then we need a translation just as long as the prayer, and before you know it, our worship time is up. Pray in broken English so we can be the church in Antioch—not a Chinese church, but Christians; not a German church, not an American church, but Antioch.”
For two or three weeks after such a message, brothers and sisters who normally prayed in Chinese would pray in English. It was wonderful. Then they would go back to their comfort language and forget what had been said.
Many people in such congregations work in English, speak English, and speak to their children in English. Of course, there are older ones who only speak Mandarin, and we need to make a place for them. But if a church is moving in the direction of Antioch, the Lord has tremendous mercy.
I understand the older brothers and sisters. I am seventy-three years old. I am too old to learn Mandarin. But if a church is moving toward Antioch, the Lord has mercy.
Some American brethren try to bring friends to Chinese-speaking meetings, and people from Brazil or elsewhere may visit. But they do not always feel at home because it is so Chinese culturally and linguistically. I go because I want to be with my brothers. I am willing to pay that price, to listen to double prayers and sometimes attend meetings with no translation.
But what price are you willing to pay? Do you see Antioch, or are you satisfied with a Chinese synagogue?
The Lord has to show you the way through. It may take a generation for a church to move from here to there. But if you are moving in that direction, the Lord has much mercy.
I remember South Jersey. When I first went there, it was all English-speaking. Then many Chinese-speaking people who had been in a Bible study joined with the English-speaking group. Suddenly there was translation all the time. It was hard, and it seemed to me that they had gone a step backward.
But then they began moving toward Antioch. Now, when I go there, I speak in English, and someone translates simultaneously in a booth. There are headphones available, though not many. They have decided that they want to be Antioch.
Brothers and sisters come there who are not Chinese. There are African Americans and all kinds of interesting people in South Jersey. They found a living way to do this so that people could feel at home, whatever their background. I think it is absolutely wonderful.
I know there is a way, but I do not have the answer. There is One who wants to recover Antioch in your particular town, and He knows how to do it. If we will follow Him and pay the price, He will do it.
Then those missionaries who have come from China to the United States will build American churches. Wonderful. God’s work.
There is a great work going on in China. As a result of persecution and the coming of Communism, the Lord harvested many millions of Christians. It is an amazing work—surely one of the great works of the twentieth century.
The United States sent out missionaries when there were many churches that loved the Lord. Look at the shape we are in now. There are things happening that are unbelievable. Yet the Lord has mercy on the United States and is willing to send missionaries from a foreign land to show us the true and living way—the reality.
I may not know your language, but I can touch reality when I feel it. This morning, when we worshiped here, I could feel reality. We had English prayers and a brother prayed in Mandarin, with translation. That makes it interesting. But there was reality.
I love it when you can sense that we are walking in the light, that He is cleansing us, fellowshipping with us, and leading us in a living way. This is what the Lord wants for us.
It does not matter how much bubble gum is in the hair of the particular church you are in. It may be that you are in a church that used to be very real, and now it is not there anymore. If you will pray, look up, see Zerubbabel with the plumb line in His hand, and begin to follow according to His way, the Lord can bring recovery and a testimony to Himself right in the end time.
Well, now my time is up, and I am in trouble with everybody here. Thank you for bearing with me and giving us a chance to share in this time.