What should we do if there is no clear sense of the atmosphere or direction of the meeting?

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“Often the atmosphere of our meetings is cloudy or foggy, and our meetings seem to have no focus or direction; consequently, the saints do not know where the meeting is going or how to direct the meeting. In such a case, someone must take the lead to exercise his spirit and break through the “fog.” This may be done by simply choosing a hymn or praying in a strong way in the spirit. This is something we need to learn to do. We need to realize that what the Lord can do among us and the extent to which He can work depend on our cooperation. If no one is willing to cooperate with the Lord to function in the meeting, the Lord will be unable to move, and the meeting will be empty. If we are truly open to the Lord, the Lord will do many things.”

(Basic Principles for the Church Meetings, ch. 1)

According to God’s economy, there are only four races on this earth

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“The Bible is a book concerning God with man. In between God and man, there is a third party, Satan. Satan always makes trouble, and all the trouble is the chaos. The Lord needs a group of people, the overcomers, who will be one with Him to conquer all the destructive chaos and triumph in His unique constructive economy.

THE ADAMIC RACE, THE ABRAHAMIC RACE ACCORDING TO THE FLESH, THE ABRAHAMIC RACE ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT, AND THE OVERCOMING RACE

In the first 10 1/2 chapters of Genesis, God was dealing with man as the Adamic race. But after these chapters of the Bible, God shifted to another group of people. The second group of people is composed of the descendants of one father, Abraham. God shifted from the Adamic race to the Abrahamic race. God‘s dealing with the Abrahamic race occupies nearly the entire Old Testament, from partway through Genesis 11 to the end of Malachi. The Old Testament covers the race of Adam and the physical descendants of Abraham. Both were a failure to God, but God could never be disappointed. He is the almighty One and the faithful One. He has the capacity to fulfill His faithfulness to keep His economy.

In the New Testament economy, God had a serious, vital shift to another group of people. He shifted from Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh to Abraham’s descendants according to the Spirit. The book of Genesis tells us that Abraham had two kinds of descendants, who were likened to the dust of the earth (13:16), and the stars of heaven (15:5). His earthly descendants are as the dust of the earth, and we, the New Testament believers as his heavenly descendants, are as the stars of heaven. The Jews, by their natural birth, all belong to the physical descendants of Abraham. Then all the believers in Christ, regardless of their race, are the spiritual descendants of Abraham (Gal. 3:7, 29). Regretfully, however, most of the spiritual descendants of Abraham, also fail God. Then to whom can God go in order to carry out His purpose?

At the beginning of the last book of the Bible, the Lord Jesus as the High Priest walking among the golden lampstands gives a call to another group of people, the overcomers. In Revelation 2 and 3, He says “to him who overcomes” seven times (Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). This is a sevenfold call to us, His believers, the spiritual descendants of our great father, Abraham. Christ calls out seven times for the overcomers.

The overcomers are the fourth race. The first race was Adamic, the second race was Abrahamic according to the flesh, and the third race was still Abrahamic, but according to the Spirit. However, even the spiritual Abrahamic race becomes a failure. Humanly speaking, it is quite disappointing, but divinely speaking, our God can never be shaken or disappointed. He is God! Regardless of what happens, He is still standing. Not only is He standing, but also He is the One who sat enthroned at the flood and who sits as King forever (Ps. 29:10). Because He is such a One, He produces another race, the top race, the super race, the race above all the races. This last race is the overcoming race!

From the time of Adam to the time of Abraham was exactly 2000 years. After the first 2000 years of human history, God shifted from the race of Adam to the race of Abraham. From the time of Abraham to the time of Christ was another 2000 years. Now we are here in the New Testament. The New Testament age is approaching 2000 years of history. Thus, there have been 2000 years for the Adamic race, 2000 years for the Abrahamic race according to the flesh, and almost 2000 years for the Abrahamic race according to the Spirit. What the Lord needs is the race of overcomers to conquer all the satanic chaos and triumph in the divine economy.

The book of Revelation is a book on the overcomers. The overcoming race in this book begins from Revelation 4 and continues through Revelation 22. The overcoming race brings in the success to God for His economy. We need to consider where we are today. Are we in Genesis 1-10 in the Adamic race, in the remainder of the Old Testament in the Abrahamic race according to the flesh, or in the New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation 3, in the Abrahamic race according to the Spirit? We may say that we are in the New Testament, but this in itself is not adequate. We must be in the last 19 chapters of the Bible, from Revelation 4 through 22, from the throne to the New Jerusalem.

We need to be those who belong to the overcoming race. If someone were to ask us what kind of people we are, we should be able to say, “I belong to a race of which you do not know. I belong to the race of the overcomers.” According to God’s economy, there are only four races on this earth — the race of Adam, the race of Abraham according to the flesh, the race of Abraham according to the Spirit, and the race of the overcomers. We should declare by faith that we belong to the race of the overcomers.”

(The Satanic Chaos in the Old Creation and the Divine Economy for the New Creation, chp. 3, pp. 63-65)

Teaching the new ones to sing hymns is the best way to nourish them

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“To teach the new ones to sing the hymns is the best way to nourish them…. After the time we go to someone’s home to baptize him, the next time we meet in his home, we can begin to teach him to sing. After singing only four or five times, he will be infused and nourished by the hymns. He may have children at home. When you sing, they may not sing, but after you leave, they will start singing. By singing a little, the truths in the hymns will gradually enter into them.”

(The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1984, vol. 4, p. 416)

How do we grow in life?

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“We all need to have a private time with the Lord. This needs to be built up into a daily habit. The best time for such a private time with the Lord is in the morning. Some who leave for work very early, however, may need to choose another time of the day. Nevertheless, we all need to set aside time for the Lord daily, preferably at least thirty minutes.

During this time, you should go to the Lord and pray, not for so many affairs or business matters, but to contact the Lord, asking Him to examine you, to enlighten you, and to expose your situation in His light. As the Lord enlightens you, you will need to confess one item after another. When we do not come to the light, we do not see the uncleanness, especially the offenses on our conscience. But when we are enlightened, we are aware of all the dirt. We need to confess everything exposed by the Lord’s light. Once I made a confession to the Lord that lasted more than two hours. The more I confessed, the more I needed to confess. After I confessed one thing, I had to confess another, and then another. To confess is the best way to contact the Lord in prayer for the genuine growth in life. The more we are dealt with by the Lord, the more He will be wrought into our being. This is what it means to grow.

In order to grow, we must firstly contact the Lord in our time of private prayer. I encourage all the saints, especially the young people, to build up such a habit. Every day you must have a time of prayer. Sometimes you may pray for the church or for the Lord’s recovery, if you are burdened to do so. You may also pray concerning your affairs. But the primary matter is to pray for the Lord’s enlightenment, exposing, and examining. Ask the Lord to show you what is within you and ask Him to deal with you. You should say, “Lord, expose through Your light my real situation and condition.” If you pray like this, the light will come, and you will be dealt with. Then whatever you pray will not be a performance, but a genuine prayer from your cleansed spirit.

You need to lay a good foundation in the Word of God by reading through it consecutively from Genesis to Revelation. Read book after book without selection, choice, or preference. Try to read the Bible through once every year or every two years. It is important to build up the habit of reading and studying the Word.

We need to pray and to read the Word, putting these things together.

Along with reading the Bible, we need to develop the habit of reading some profitable and nourishing spiritual books, doing this in a very balanced way and not eating too much at one time. Rather, it is better to eat several times a day. You may read four pages of a message at one time and then read more later in the day or the next day. In reading spiritual books, do not try to take in too much at once. If you build up the habit of reading the Word and spiritual books, you will be healthy spiritually and you will grow.

If you take the Word without receiving light, there must be a problem within. There can be no problem with the Word, for the Word is light. Because you do not receive light, you need to ask the Lord to show you what is wrong, to show you why you have not been receiving light from Him. When you receive light on certain matters, accept the light and confess to the Lord immediately without excusing yourself.

We need to be filled in spirit with the fullness of God. The way to be filled is the same as the way to grow in life: to pray properly, to take the Word of God, to read some nourishing spiritual books, and to be enlightened. If we pray, read the Word, and are enlightened, we shall spontaneously and immediately be filled with the Lord, and the Lord will be added to us. This is the growth in life.”

(From Life Messages vol. 1, chapter 2)

Abiding is for the sake of fruit-bearing

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“John 15 is a very valuable and deep chapter in the Bible. A number of Bible teachers teach only the abiding in the Lord from this chapter. Actually, however, John 15 stresses the bearing of fruit. Abiding is not for the sake of abiding; abiding is for the sake of fruit-bearing. If you abide in the Lord for your whole life and do not bear any fruit, your abiding means nothing. The stress in John 15 is not on abiding. The key is abiding, but the stress is fruit-bearing. We can have the fruit-bearing by abiding.

For the branch to abide in the vine is the living of a life under all kinds of conditions—the sunshine, the blowing wind, the rain, the heat, and the cold. In other words, to abide in the Lord is to live a life in Him under all kinds of suffering. Actually the vine tree suffers day and night for and until the season when it will produce its fruit (see Hymns, #635).”

(Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, chapter 23)

We need to come to the Bible daily and even hourly

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“Because the word in the Bible embodies God, Christ, the Spirit, and life, we Christians need to come to the Bible daily and even hourly. We should not take the excuse that we do not have time. Finding time to spend in the Word depends on our realization of its importance. We all find time to eat every day, no matter how sloppy, lazy, or loose we may be, because we realize that eating is a life necessity. If we do not eat, we will die. When we see that reading the Word is a life necessity, we will find time to do it.

We need to spend time in the Word every morning… Everyone can make it because life necessity teaches us. Contacting the Bible is much more important than keeping a job or eating breakfast. There is no excuse for not contacting the Lord through the Word every morning.”

(CWWL, 1978, vol. 3, “The Recovery of Christ as Everything in the Church,” ch. 7, p. 273)

When we all are living in Christ as our life, Christ is the oneness

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“We may talk about oneness, but we all need to realize that the genuine oneness is nothing less than Christ Himself as our life in a practical way. Christ is the oneness, the unity. When I am living in Christ as my life and not in myself, I have the oneness, and I am in the oneness. When we all are living in Christ as our life, Christ is the oneness. If this is our situation, then we have the reality of the Body, and then we are also equipped for the service. Romans 12 stresses that without the Body we cannot serve, because each of us is only one member.”

(To Serve in the Human Spirit, chapter 1)

To bear the cross means to refrain from doing what you have the power to do

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“To bear the cross means that you refrain from doing what you have the power to do. You are qualified and empowered to do everything necessary to fulfill your desire, yet you refrain from doing so. A person like this is the strongest person. The strongest person is not the one who is able to do something, but the one who is able not to do what he has the power to do. This self-denial is the unique way to usher in God’s kingdom and to realize the kingdom life. As we shall see in the next message, the kingdom life came in through Joseph’s ability not to do what he had the power to do. We need to be such people today.

There is no doubt that, in ourselves, we cannot be such people. Our life is not the kind of life that has the power not to do what it is able to do. When we have the opportunity to do something, we simply do it. But the life of Christ has the power not to do what it is capable of doing. This fact is the key to the four Gospels and to the life of the Lord Jesus. Often He had the position, the power, and the right environment to do many things, but he also had the power not to do those things. For example, He could have asked the Father to send twelve legions of angels to rescue Him; yet He had the strength not to do this (Matt. 26:53). This life of self-denial, of bearing the cross, is the life that ushers in the kingdom.”

(Life-Study of Genesis, Chapter 119, Section 7)

Four crucial points

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“Concerning the spiritual and divine things for the church, we must keep in mind four crucial points. First, we must go through the cross. Our native flavor should be crossed out by Christ. Both the Americans and the Chinese should be crossed out. In the church there is room for no natural person, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3: 11). On the cross both the Jews and the Gentiles were crossed out. Second, everything should be by the Spirit. Third, this is to dispense Christ to others. Fourth, everything is for the building up of the church. In other words, whatever we do should be through the cross and by the Spirit to dispense Christ to others for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.”

(CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “The Divine and Mystical Realm,” p. 157)

Our Need to Study the Hymnal (from “Having this Ministry…” March 2023, issue no. 18)

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Originally posted at https://newsletters.lsm.org/having-this-ministry/issues/Mar2023-018/study-hymnal.html

“This may come as a surprise to some of our readers, but the hymnal in the Lord’s recovery was compiled not only for singing. Because it is a storehouse of biblical truth, the hymnal is intended also to be studied closely and learned thoroughly. As Brother Lee observed, “The study of this hymnal alone is the study of the highest theology in the Lord’s recovery.”

The hymnal that the Lord has given to us has enriched our meeting life immeasurably by providing us with the most profound biblical truths in singable form. It would be hard to imagine our meetings without the invigorating corporate singing that we all enjoy. Nevertheless, if we use the hymnal only for singing in the meetings, then we are missing the opportunity to enjoy its many riches in full. To be sure, the hymns are meant for singing, but they are also meant for careful study.

The Bible itself contains many musical compositions that are intended as much for study as they are for singing. The Psalms, of course, are songs that were sung by the children of Israel for various occasions, but even the New Testament contains hymns. When we study, for example, Romans 11:33-36 and 1 Timothy 3:16, we are studying what some have understood to be hymns sung by the early church. The apostle Paul surely included these compositions with the intention that they would be studied for the revelation that they contain. To study hymns, therefore, is to follow a biblical precedent.

Brother Lee had a strong burden that we would study our hymnal to learn the highest theology. He also strongly encouraged the saints to learn the hymnal’s table of contents thoroughly to know all the categories and subcategories of the truth according to which the hymns are arranged. The following excerpts from his ministry give a sense of how seriously he viewed the study of the hymnal for the saints’ ongoing apprehension of and constitution with the truth.

Our hymns were written not according to our own ideas but according to the truths in the Bible. To explain the biblical truths is not an easy matter. To express the truths in poems and lyrics requires even the more that we have a thorough understanding of the truths. If we desire to study and pursue the profound truths in the Bible, we must do it by using our hymnal along with the Bible and by being assisted by the Life-studies and spiritual books. Sometimes even one line of a hymn is full of the riches of the truth…The study of this hymnal alone is the study of the highest theology in the Lord’s recovery. To study the table of contents of our hymnal until we thoroughly understand it and find the basis of the biblical truth of each hymn would require at least four years. Our spiritual books and Life-studies are the expressions of the truths in written words, and hymns are the conversion of the words into poems and lyrics. To compose hymns is to reach the peak, to arrive at the ultimate point, of the study of the truth. (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1984, vol. 1, “The Four Crucial Elements of the Bible—Christ, the Spirit, Life, and the Church,” p. 223)

A person who spends several years to study this hymnal will attain a certain level of theological knowledge even if he does not study theology. Even the table of contents, with the different kinds of hymns and their categories, shows that the theological knowledge contained in the hymnal is quite rich. (CWWL, 1984, vol. 4, “Crucial Words of Leading in the Lord’s Recovery, Book 3: The Future of the Lord’s Recovery and the Building Up of the Organic Service,” p.114)

In our hymnal we have 1,080 hymns. We collected all the best hymns from the Christian writings. From more than ten thousand hymns, we selected only about eight hundred. After the selection, I did my best to classify them into a table of contents for the hymnal. I would ask the young people to study it. This table occupies four and a half pages with thirty categories of hymns. In these thirty categories there are more than four hundred items. Within the category of Experience of Christ there are thirty-two items. These items are the riches of Christ. (CWWL, 1985, vol. 3, “The Divine Speaking,” pp. 284-285)

One reason why the hymnal was published in English was “to show the Christians in America that we understand the truth, that our theology is comprehensive and balanced, and that we have included the best hymns from various groups” (CWWL, 1984, vol. 4, “Speaking Christ for the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” p. 114). In fact, some of the hymns were included more for study than they were for singing, as Brother Lee helped us to realize:

We composed our main hymnal with so many hymns to show others that we in the Lord’s recovery have the knowledge of the truth. We put many hymns into the hymnal mainly for our knowledge of the truth and not for our singing. (CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Speaking Christ for the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” p. 186)

As just one example of the breadth and depth of the truth embodied in any topic in the hymnal, Brother Lee points out how much there is on the matter of the church that requires our careful study:

In the table of contents of our hymnal there is a category called “The Church.” It covers the church as the mystery of Christ, the increase of Christ, the fullness of Christ, the vessel of Christ, and the lampstand of Christ. It also covers the church’s general definition, course, faith, unity, foundation, building, attraction, coordination, and fellowship. Hymns, #824 is on the general definition of the church, whereas #852 is on the attraction of the church. Perhaps many of us have been in the church life for a number of years, yet we are still not clear about the definition of the church, nor do we know what kind of price we need to pay when we are attracted by the church. These two hymns reveal to us these two aspects of the truth. I hope that we all can earnestly study the truths contained in our hymns. (CWWL, 1984, vol. 1, “The Four Crucial Elements of the Bible—Christ, the Spirit, Life, and the Church,” pp. 223-224)

As we continue to use our hymnal for the enjoyment of Christ in song, may the Lord grant us a renewed appreciation for the hymnal as a necessary tool for our study of the truth. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for providing us with another resource through which we can know the truth and be brought deeply into the enjoyment of Your unsearchable riches!”