Changing the System

[YP0534]

Check out this quote I just ran across, spoken in Winter of 1986 but published only in 2001:

I was very busy with my work in the United States and was bearing a heavy burden with no possibility of leaving, but in 1984 when I finished writing the footnotes to the last book of the Life-study of the New Testament, I told myself that I would return to Taiwan. The saints in America can all testify that when I returned this time it was not an easy thing. I put aside all my work in Anaheim and completely devoted my heart to Taiwan. My burden was to bring the Lord’s recovery into a change of system here in Taiwan. We cannot change the Lord’s recovery itself, nor can we change the truth and life, but surely we must change the rate of increase in the churches. I hope that in the matter of changing the system, Taiwan can become the “fellowship center” for the entire globe.

I have been speaking for the Lord for more than fifty years, but I never used the term “push” because I believed that it signified human effort. Now, however, I have changed, and I intend to use this word a lot. All the full-timers are my helpers to help me push the elders and the church in Taipei. The church in Taipei is like an old car which cannot be pulled or pushed, so I need these more than seven hundred full-timers to push together with me. In saying this word I might greatly offend the elders in Taipei, but my intention is good and proper. We have changed neither the truth nor the life. Rather, we still highly regard them as much as in the past. We are only changing our ways of working by correcting our errors and making improvements. If pushing does not work, then we will have to “stir” and “incite.” Pushing is for something moveable, stirring is for something living, and inciting is for something weak. If the church in Taipei still would not move, I will have to ask these more than seven hundred full-timers to help me pick it up and carry it on our shoulders.

Witness Lee, The Furtherance of the New Way for the Lord's Recovery

Lee virtually admits here that he changed his intention to begin to exercise human effort. And in doing so he basically describes that he's handling a corpse.

I would like to tell him, brother Lee, no matter how much you would try to push that corpse, it would only become even more dead. The only thing to help a corpse is the resurrection life. Have you forgotten this? You cannot connect strings to a corpse and make it dance and then say that is a living thing.