For if that which was being done away with was through glory, much more that which remains is in glory. (2 Cor. 3:11)
Today, the church in Toledo visited brother Gifford Neill who wrote a blog post on his experience of the 1969 conference in Erie, Pennsylvania and the 1970s move to Akron. It was a historical move when the Spirit blew upon many dry and dormant believers, desiring for more, to God’s heart’s desire of building the church. This vision revived their faith and changed their lives forever. Many families gave up their comfortable living to migrate to the Midwestern, industrial city of Akron, Ohio. Brother Neill’s family was one of them. This is a person who is a living testimony of that revival and power of the Spirit. And he, at the age of 98 years old, prepared himself to meet us today. We met him at 10am after more than two hours of driving from Toledo, Ohio to Goshen, Indiana.
The first sentence he spoke was, ”We are the Lord’s recovery.” When this word came out of his mouth, the Spirit moved us to the reality of who we are and how we connect with one another in this life of God’s recovery. This recognition brought me to tears: that we are the Lord’s recovery and how sweet and precious the word recovery is to me and to this 98-year-old man. Brother Gifford opened the meeting by letting us know that at the age of 98, his body is decaying. He had just lost the vision in his right eye and the hearing in his left ear that morning. His body, as he acknowledged, is falling apart. Sometimes you can’t help feeling sad — there is nothing glorious about aging.
But his mind is unbelievably sharp. He had prepared to talk about something that was not presented in his blog post, mainly about him, the process that led him to the Erie revival and move to Akron, 19 years of “dormancy,” and the honeymoon sweetness of loving the church and moving to Akron for the church life. Physically, it was sad to see the decaying of human life, but in his sharing, you can’t deny the imprints and anointing of the Spirit when he mentioned his daydreaming about the church, when he was ironic about himself “knowing it all,” when his humor peeked through here and there when he spoke about his old age. We don’t know how his church life is right now — brother Neill also spoke of both periods of revival and periods of dryness, both highs and lows — but in his recalling and respeaking of the work of the Spirit, the Spirit in his own words established his condition at that moment to be glorious, full of hope and appreciation of man being in the long-lasting glory that never decays. Regardless how men may fail physically, mentally, or spiritually, the touch of the Spirit leaves a forever ink that is still inscribing in us, influencing us, and blowing upon us. As we listened to this elderly brother, we felt that the Lord was speaking — speaking in him and speaking in us when we were meeting together as His beloved church. The love of the church and the appreciation of the Lord’s recovery was so real and refreshing, quenching our inner thirst through tears. One sister was able to speak in the same power of the word of her own testimony. The sister I knew came back in that speaking. That speaking is the Lord’s speaking in her. The Lord’s speaking in her nourished the body.
In the same way, brother Neill’s son Tom’s and Tom’s wife Jean’s testimonies of the glory of the days of the revival and the sweet and nourishing memory of those days in the church life brought them to the water, to the simplicity, to the gratefulness, to power. Their condition before their testimony and after their testimony were different. Indeed, the Spirit needs our utterance in our speaking, in the words of our testimony to move and build. That brings us satisfaction and makes both us and the Lord happy. We long for such fellowship with the churches. Later, we knew that brother Neill couldn’t stay with us that long because of his age, but because the Spirit that day was so strong, he was carried through the entire two-hour meeting, and was not tired.
We identify in our spirits strongly that we are the continuation of brother Gifford’s line of revival in the Midwest. The heat didn’t die out; the heat is propagating in us. Moreover, the high peak truth that caused the Lord’s lovers to surrender and move to the Midwest for His work does have a landing ground today in application through a practical building. It involves much touching and understanding in the realm of humanity. It is through the hands-on serving and building with one another that the truth can manifest its power and its real present meaning in God’s economy. It is in the realm of application where the truth can always be new, living, and powerful, shining still bright as the Lord’s speaking has always been shining in our midst. Lord, may You have mercy that we will not be blind, missing Your speaking in a mediocre and isolated living any longer.
Brother Gifford called two songs. One of them he shared with us is hymn 1223, “O walk about Zion.” This is a song through which he wanted to express to us his love for the church, which is Zion, her bulwarks, her walls, her rivers. It is in this place that praises of God can be raised. That morning, we saw a beautiful picture of saints getting together in the right and proper condition of the church. Then, praises arose from our midst. How good and pleasant that we can dwell in unity with this brother whom we have never seen before. And this is for us to tell to all the generations. The words are the Lord’s recovery to pass unto the next generation — something that is surpassingly glorious, forever beyond human corruption and decay.
O walk about, walk about Zion,
Go round about her in love.
O walk about, walk about Zion
And count the towers thereof.
O set your heart on her bulwarks,
O set your heart on her walls,
O set your heart on her bulwarks,
Consider her palaces.
In elevation how beauteous,
The joy of all the earth!
In elevation how beauteous
Is Zion, that city of worth!
O there is a river in Zion
That flows so deep and so broad.
O how the streams of that river
Make glad the city of God!
Praise waiteth for Thee, Lord, in Zion,
Praise waiteth, O God, for Thee,
Praise waiteth for Thee, Lord, in Zion,
For Zion is filled with Thee.
How great the Lord is in Zion,
How greatly to be praised,
How great He is in that city
Which over the earth is raised.
O bless the Lord out of Zion,
O let His praises swell,
O bless the Lord out of Zion,
Ye who in Jerusalem dwell.
The Lord bless thee out of Zion,
The Lord bless thee o’er and o’er!
The Lord bless thee out of Zion
With life for evermore!
Behold how good and how pleasant
With all the brethren to be!
Behold how good and how pleasant
To dwell in unity!
O tell it to all generations,
O tell it to all who will come,
O tell it to all generations,
The Spirit and Bride say, “Come!”
(Hymn 1223)
– PC