BROOKLYN, N.Y., APRIL 1ST, 1944
BROOKLYN, N.Y., APRIL 1ST, 1944
Beloved Brother, — I add a line to my letter of March 23rd, as I wish to speak of the practice in some gatherings (to which you referred in your letter of more than a year ago) of making a résumé of the care meetings and reading them at the prayer meetings.
I am sorry I did not comment on this in my reply. The practice is in accord with others which I have observed — not based on scriptural teaching or example, but what the natural mind would suggest as ‘nice’ and interesting. This covers much in the religious organisations and has built up Christendom. I recall in a certain prayer meeting on your side of the Atlantic a considerable time expended in furnishing lengthy [p. 341] accounts of two saints who had desired to break bread. These had been considered at the care meeting and thus all that was needed for the assembly was brief testimony. If such testimony showed that they had washed their robes they had a right to the tree of life and to go in by the gates to the city. The great scriptural principle of adequate testimony in any matter — “two or three witnesses” — was disregarded. Someone may cite Hebrews 12 — a “great crowd of witnesses” — but the assembly in function does not need such. Love among us affords confidence so that as adequate testimony is rendered in any matter requiring it the assembly can proceed to act on it with dignity and expedition.
Acts 15 furnishes an example of a care meeting and the procedure leads directly to the assembly. Much takes place to promote a good spirit and feeling; there is information as to the work of God and authoritative instruction, including the direct word of God — through James and Peter — and a final judgment is reached. To have an epitome of the proceedings made and read in the same assembly would obviously be both undignified (spiritually) and unnecessary. If the sisters are in mind in the epitome being read, the apostles instruction is that they should “ask their own husbands at home”. In regard of all that you have written about I have been thinking especially of Philippians 1: 9 - 11.
We have just seen off on the train to Miami our dear brother, Mr. Ralph. He is not as fit as we might wish, but the surgeon assures us that any trouble arising can be adjusted by his own doctor at Kingston. Thus we count on God for our brother, A.E.M. is at Kingston for Easter. We go, God willing, to London for the special meetings there.
My wife unites in love in Christ to Mrs. ——— and you and all.
Affectionately in Him,
James Taylor.