Church History Conference Part 3 – The Christian Mind: Older Than Creation and Found in Christ

I would admonish you, whether you’re listening to this tape a hundred years from now, if I never meet you and you never hear me. Oh, to God that we would come back to this Christian view of ministry. Could I get a little bitty amen? Those of you who’ve been in big movements, saints, you can’t have a big movement and have quality. It can’t be done. Moves too fast, and you know the damage that came out of it, do you not? Okay. I want to get from this point on, kind of personal.

One more: have you read either The Pilgrim Church or The Torch of the Testimony? You should read one of those books if you ever get the chance. You must read one of those books. You’re just not well educated if you haven’t read either of those two books. But those two books desperately need rewriting. I’m talking about that blank page now, saints. I’m talking about what comes next. What will come next? I wish I could be twelve men, to do the things I’m interested in doing. No one human being can write that story, but I want to tell you something. I want to throw this out to you. I hope this seed falls on some young man. I hope 50 years from now that these next words have borne fruit.

Now, some of you may say, “But Gene, the Lord’s going to come in the next 50 years.” Okay, but just in case He doesn’t, okay? Can we suspend our belief in the imminent coming of the Lord for a minute to take a little responsibility for that blank page? Shall we? Those people… there’s so little about them, but I want to tell you something you may not know. In virtually any city where they ever lived and were persecuted and killed, today there is a large library. Cities have a way of digging up the minutest details of their ancient past, researching them and publishing books about them, sometimes with only one or two copies. And in so doing, they will also rebuild the surrounding context of this event, which we’re often not left with. But unfortunately, some of that’s written in Czech, some in Yugoslavian (if there is such a language), Polish and Russian, Italian, Swiss or ancient French, or some forgotten language, or Latin or Greek, and none of us can possibly know all those languages.

You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to see 15 or 20 brothers outside of the organized church, each one a linguist in a language. And all of you go out to those places and go to those libraries where some scholar there locally has dug up all this stuff, and y’all get back and translate it and work on it for 10, 15, 20 years and write that story. Write that glorious story. And when you get through, and you’ve come up to the Brethren, add what the world calls “The Little Flock of China”. I believe the verdict of history is in, or pretty close to it, and those brothers and sisters took that torch.

Now I am going to say some more along this line. Somebody may say, Gene, this is none of your business. This is my business. We heard the story of Watchman Nee today. The story of that work of God in its totality has not yet been written in China. Is that not true? That is true. And the brothers and the sisters who know that story are dying off. Forgive me. Don’t be offended. They’re not going to be around much longer. Most have gone on.

Now, I have a history nature in me, and this is driving me buggy, because if we don’t get it firsthand, it’s going to be filled with speculation by people who don’t have the foggiest idea what they’re talking about. I don’t want to see that happen, do you? Oh, come on. I need a little help here. You don’t see that happen, do you?

(Continued in Part 4)