A Progressive Recovery

God never reveals a spiritual truth all at once.
— Watchman Nee, Spiritual Knowledge, Part 3, Chapter 4, “The Way of Renewing,” page 123

When Brother Nee made the statement above, he was mainly referring to our personal apprehension of the truth. Still, the same principle applies to how the truth is revealed in the Bible. That is, it is always revealed in a progressive manner, never all at once. The seeds of divine truth are sown in the book of Genesis, then grown and develop all through the rest of the Bible, until they are harvested in the New Testament and the book of Revelation.

In keeping with this principle, the recovery of the truth and of the Christian experience has also been progressive. The divine revelation of the Bible was completed before A.D. 100, but not long after that the churches were overtaken by the spiritual darkness of the pagan Roman church, and almost all divine truths other than what relates to the person of Christ were lost.

A History of Recovery

It was not until the 1500s that the recovery began in earnest, with Martin Luther and the recovery of the truth of justification by faith. At that time John Calvin also emphasized the sovereignty of God.

And while so many Christians seem to feel that the Lord’s recovery stopped there, in reality, He has been progressing ever since. In the 1600s Madame Guyon recovered something of the experience of the inner life. In the 1700s Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians began to recover something of the corporate aspect of the Christian life. Then in the 1800s John Darby and the Plymouth Brethren opened the Bible in a much fuller way. They saw something of the Body of Christ and of the local testimony of the churches, as well as so much concerning prophecy and the dispensational structure of the Bible. Shortly after them Robert Govett, followed by G.H. Pember and then D.M. Panton, began to develop the truth of the reward and discipline of the believers, both in terms of the rapture and in relation to the Millennial Kingdom. In the 20th century the Lord continued His recovery with T.A. Sparks, Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, who developed what had been seen before in a much more solid and substantial way.

This Website

This website, as the Lord leads, will seek to introduce believers to many of these aspects of the recovery of Biblical truth and of the Christian experience. In so doing, we hope to point out writings and authors from the past whose ministry still has real benefit, and encourage believers to spend time with these writings, as they are far more healthy and profitable than what is being produced today.