From chapter nine of The Ministers in the Lord’s Recovery – Genuine Ministers of the New Covenant
In the 1960s the Lord’s triumphal procession continued on to the United States. Although Brother Lee had no intention to move to the West, on his third visit to this country the Lord constrained him to remain here for His work. As a man in his late fifties who had lived all of his life in the Chinese-speaking world, Brother Lee realized that carrying out the Lord’s work in the United States would involve considerable hardship. Nevertheless, undaunted by linguistic and cultural barriers, Brother Lee submitted himself to the Lord’s commission to minister in a new country, beginning with a conference in Los Angeles in December 1962. Throughout the 1960s he not only ministered in Los Angeles but also traveled extensively within the United States at the invitation of numerous Christian groups, many of which were dissatisfied with the denominations and had begun to meet as independent groups. Through these visits many seeking believers were captured by the Lord and decided to take the way of His recovery. One such group of Christians voluntarily sold their meeting hall, offered the money from the sale to the church in Los Angeles, and migrated to Los Angeles in order to meet with the church there. In the early years of the work in this country, from 1963 to 1969, most of the increase came from Brother Lee’s personal visitations throughout the States. Further, the church life in Los Angeles was so attractive and prevailing that many seekers of the Lord from various parts of the United States, and some even from Africa, New Zealand, and Europe, came to experience the sweet one accord. Many were led to consecrate themselves for Christ and the church and paid the price to migrate to Los Angeles for the church life, joining the ranks of the Lord’s conquered captives.
The work of the Lord’s recovery in the United States began with only about twenty-five saints meeting in a home. Eight years later, in 1970, Brother Lee held a conference with more than one thousand saints meeting in the Embassy Hotel in Los Angeles. In that year, under Brother Lee’s leadership, over four hundred saints migrated out of Los Angeles to ten major U.S. cities for the spread of the Lord’s testimony. By 1973 twenty-seven churches had been raised up in the United States, and a conference that Brother Lee held in the Los Angeles Convention Center that year was attended by more than three thousand saints. Surely this testifies to the triumph of the true new covenant ministry.
As a genuine new covenant minister, Brother Lee was not only a savor of life unto life to seeking believers who received his ministry but also a savor of death unto death to those who felt threatened by the results of his work. It was after the successful migration of the saints in 1970 that Brother Lee’s ministry began to encounter intensified opposition from leaders in organized Christianity, some of whom were alarmed that members of their groups were joining the local churches. Just as Paul was called a pestilent fellow (Acts 24:5), Brother Lee was accused of being “a trouble-maker” and agitating the religious status quo. However, as Brother Lee noted, the intense opposition from Christianity against the Lord’s recovery proved that His recovery in this country had become quite prevailing, since “people do not oppose anything that is not prevailing.”82 Brother Lee was a man of Chinese descent who ministered the word in accented English and did not have a theological degree or seminary training. Nonetheless, thousands of Americans eagerly received his ministry and eventually joined the Lord’s triumphal procession as defeated captives. This is because the sweet-smelling savor of Christ, who was constituted into our brother and emanated out of him, was a savor of life unto life to these hungry seekers of Christ.
As Brother Lee predicted in 1987, the United States proved to be “the center of the Lord’s spread throughout the earth to prepare the way for His return.”83 Indeed, from the United States, the Lord’s recovery spread to Europe, Australasia, Africa, and South America.84 Moreover, because Brother Lee released his messages in English, the Lord’s ministry in His recovery was no longer confined to the Chinese language and could easily be spread throughout the earth. By 1997, the year Brother Lee went to be with the Lord, a great number of books containing his messages had been translated into at least fourteen languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Portuguese. This paved the way for the ministry in the recovery to spread to every continent. During the 1970s and 1980s Brother Lee visited many countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Israel, Brazil, and a number of European countries, in order to strengthen the churches and perfect the saints. His tireless labor resulted in the building up of the local churches throughout the entire earth. By 1996 there were approximately two hundred-fifty local churches in the United States and two thousand three hundred local churches on earth, not including mainland China. This abundant fruit and glorious triumph of the ministry in the Lord’s recovery testifies that this ministry is indeed the genuine New Testament ministry.
81 CWWL 1973-1974, vol. 1, p. 136
82 CWWL, 1987, vol. 1, p. 3
83 CWWL, 1987, vol. 1, p. 3
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