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My Personal Testimony of Coming Into the Local Church
I would like to share with you how I got saved and entered into the practical church
life in Los Angeles, CA.
I was raised in a sound evangelical denomination. In fact, I was in the third generation
of our family attending that denomination. In that church the gospel was regularly
preached, revivals were held two to three times per year, missions were strong and
numbers were increasing. I received the Lord Jesus into my heart in one of the childrens
meetings when I was nine years old.
There were four children in our family and our mother prayed much for us and others
to be saved. She was a lover of Jesus and a person seeking the truth. Later I became
a pastor and missionary for Christ. My younger brother left the denomination that
we were in and began to meet with the local church in Los Angeles. He invited my mother
to a meeting and she attended. She was going through a lot of personal hardship and
suffering in the family. The meeting was a prayer meeting and at the end of the meeting,
one of the elders spoke a brief word on transformation in Romans 12:1-2 and 2 Corinthians
3:16-18. After over 55 years of being a Christian, she had never heard anything concerning
transformation and was deeply impressed. She said to him, Why do we not hear things
like this in the denominations? She received great light and help from that short
word of fellowship.
With my wife and five children I went to Indonesia as a missionary. While we were
there my brother sent me some books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. While I was reading
Brother Nees book, The Glorious Church, it was as if scales fell off my eyes
and I saw for the first time in my life that Gods principle always has been, and still
is, one man and one woman. The Bible begins this way and ends this way with Adam as
a type of Christ and Eve as the type of the church in Genesis and Christ as the Lamb
who is the Bridegroom and the church who is the Bride in Revelation. This is the New
Jerusalem. The vision of the oneness of the Triune God with His people is not only
spiritual but also practical. When I saw this I felt I lost my choice. It was no longer
go to the church of your choice, but be the church which is His choice!
When we returned to the U.S. in 1971, we began to meet with the local church in Los
Angeles and became one with all the Christians in that city. We dropped our titles,
position, teachings, and denominational names and took only the name of Christ. We
left things that divided us from being one practically, and now we are functioning
as normal believers in Christ, loving and serving Him and the believers in the church.
After 28 years of living, experiencing, and practicing this vision of the local churches,
we are strengthened and encouraged as never before that God is realizing His purpose
in the local churches for the building up of the Body of Christ on the earth in this
age so He can return.
B.L.
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