[Raptor]

Some of you may have even considered that you should leave the church life. Yet you realized that if you left, it would be terrible. (Perfecting Training, Chapter 19, Section 3)

Once we lose the church, we will lose the power in our gospel preaching. Can there be any power in the visitation carried out by those who have left the church? There will not be much power, because those who are visiting have severed themselves from the Body. (Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church Life, Chapter 14, Section 3)

However, some have tried to pour cold water on this truth and have even left the church. They not only have lost the blessing of the church, but they have fallen to the point that they even oppose the blessings that God is bestowing on the church. However, once a person leaves this ground, he begins to oppose the blessings received by the church. It is a strange thing that when a person leaves the ground of the church, regardless of what the Lord has done in the church and regardless of what happens in the church, he can only criticize and oppose. This is a pitiful situation. This indicates that in order to receive God's shepherding, we must be in the church. Once we lose the church, we lose the Lord's shepherding. In contrast, a person loses the blessing when he loses the ground of the church. (Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church Life, Chapter 14, Section 2)

We have observed one thing over the years: when a person is in the church, he is blessed, but when he leaves the church, he loses the blessing. Over the past nearly forty years, every person who has left the ground and the practical living of the church has lost the Lord's blessing, even if his reasons were justifiable. Regardless of how much we feel that we are right and that the church is wrong, once we separate ourselves from the church, there are serious consequences. (Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church Life, Chapter 14, Section 1)

But it is quite a different matter to leave the church. If you forsake the church, your joy will disappear and will not return until you return to God's testimony. I do not say this lightly. Without exception, those who have left the church have lost their joy. (Life-Study of Genesis, Chapter 54, Section 2)

If you leave the church life, you will be defeated. Like a piece of driftwood that cannot control its direction but is carried along by the current, you will drift with the tide of this age and float downward until you find yourself in a wicked city. (Life-Study of Genesis, Chapter 54, Section 3)

, I know of many cases of those who experienced the very opposite of this as a result of leaving the church life. Their conscience began to lose its function, and the negative and worldly things they had put off gradually returned. The Genuine Ground of Oneness, Chapter 3, Section 5)

If you check with those who have left the church life, you will find that they have been deprived of the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ (Life-Study of Colossians, Chapter 25, Section 2)

Whoever is for the church has the best marriage life, but the family life and the marriage life of those who have left the church go downhill. (Elders' Training, Book 03: The Way to Carry Out the Vision, Chapter 6, Section 1)

Hence, for a believer to leave the church is a kind of punishment. Once a person stops meeting with the church for two or three weeks, immediately he stops growing. If he does not meet for two years, he will become like a child again. If he stops attending the meetings for another three years, he will be nearly finished in his spiritual life. (Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel—The Four Great Pillars in the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 9, Section 2)