CHANGING TO THE NEW WAY
We must change our philosophy and logic and drop everything of the old way. We must be willing to change to the new way. Man cannot change the globe, but he has improved the means for traveling around the globe. Man discovered the wheel as a means of travel thousands of years ago. Today every means of travel depends upon the wheel, even the airplane. But there have been many changes and improvements throughout the years since the discovery of the wheel. In the same way, we must have a change. I have been speaking concerning the new way, the God-ordained way, for the past seven and a half years, but I have not seen much real practice of the new way. Today everyone welcomes the new way. Thank the Lord for this. But I still beg you all to have a change.
The God-ordained way to meet and to serve is the present tide of God’s move. When a tide comes in human culture, no one can stand against it. The tide and the trend in human culture will sift everyone who does not go along with it. Today in human culture, democracy is a tide. Communism has been practiced for about seventy years, and people have found out that it does not work. It has caused people to suffer. Now people who have been under the practice of communism are tired of it. They do not want communism or atheism. They want democracy and western culture with the Bible. This is why we have the burden to go to eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. We should go, not with the element of old Christianity, but with the new way.
THE NEED OF BEING IN ONE ACCORD
IN THE ELDERSHIP
I want to share something more concerning our service as elders. In order to take care of the church, the elders must be in one accord. Once you lose the one accord, the blessing is gone. In the New Testament, the blessing of the outpoured Spirit, which is Christ Himself (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17), was brought in by the one hundred twenty being in one accord (Acts 1:14; 2:1-4). In the book of Acts, the one accord is mentioned five times (1:14; 2:46; 4:24; 5:12; 15:25). If we are not in one accord, we are through with the oneness of the Body, and the blessing in the church and in the work will be gone. This should be a serious warning to us.
(Elders' Training, Book 11: The Eldership and the God-Ordained Way (3), Chapter 11, by Witness Lee)
