The Local Church

Saved For His Marvelous Purpose

I was born in January 1929 in Greensboro, North Carolina. I had a fairly normal childhood for growing up during the depression years. The times were difficult, and my brother and I worked very hard as young boys to help keep our family supplied with food and the necessities of life. I remember going hunting with my dad for squirrels and rabbits to put food upon the table.

About once a month we were given fifteen cents each for a movie and popcorn. As young boys we saw the newsreels of World War II, which left strong and vivid impressions upon our mind. My dad's philosophy was “to live and let live”, yet on the news we saw people dying and the bombings and raids and so much tragedy. We realized there were people who did not regard peace in the same way we did.

As I went through my teenage years there were no significant problems, but as I moved on into adulthood and moved away from home, the troubles began. As a young man in my twenties I found myself in much turmoil, struggle and strife. I was suffering from a broken heart and most unhappy. It was under these conditions that I met the Lord. I wandered into a church building one night crushed by the load I was under. The Lord just reached down and saved me. I could not understand it, but He genuinely saved me. The pain from my problems began to subside and the more the pain went away the more grateful I became to the Lord. “Thank you, thank you,” I said and gave my heart more and more to the Lord for His will for my life. I was so thankful to the Lord that He saved me out of my despair that I gave myself fully to Him, attending the denomination where I met the Lord, which was a place which cared much for the gospel and mission work.

It was at this place that I met my wife of forty-two years. We gave ourselves fully to the Lord. We went away to Bible school and desired to go to the mission field. We were eventually accepted by a mission board but as our family had began to grow, we found ourselves restricted from going to the foreign mission field. As the years began to go by we became dissatisfied with our denomination. It was not meeting our spiritual need. We were perplexed by denominational divisions because we could not see why the Lord would be divided by so many names. We just wanted the Lord, and to go on with Him. We were familiar with, and even tried a few different denominations as well as various free groups.

One weekend in the late summer of 1967 we attended a Bible conference in Asheville, N.C. where we met a person who gave us a copy of The Stream magazine. Once we read The Stream, we could not understand why this person was there at this ordinary Christian retreat. She must have been placed there by the Lord as the answer to our prayer. She told us she was going to California to meet with a co-worker of Watchman Nee. Of course we were familiar with and had read books by Watchman Nee. We were so excited to find out more and so happy to discover this was all apart from denominations and was going on here in America.

We immediately wrote to The Stream and asked for more material. We not only received material but a personal letter from a dear brother in the Lord, Witness Lee. In the spring of 1968 he came to our home and spent several days fellowshipping with us. He shared with us concerning God's economy, His plan, and God's way for the church on this earth. He told us about our human spirit, which is the actual place where God dwells (in our spirit, not in our soul).

In 1970 we moved from Greensboro, NC to Atlanta, Georgia to congregate with other believers who also desired to experience what the Lord wanted to do on this earth. It was so marvelous to begin to experience more of the Lord in a corporate way in the local church. We began to experience the life of God in us. We began to experience the reality of the mutuality of the Lord's Body on this earth. The Lord has since led us to other localities for the spread of the local church. He led us by faith to Indianapolis, Indiana and then in 1974 He led us to this metropolitan area where He has led us through several moves in the Washington, D.C. area. We now reside in Arlington, Virginia.

The Lord has provided and supplied us with all of our material needs, but much more so, He has supplied us spiritually and has revealed more and more of His purpose to prepare the church as His bride to bring Him back to this earth. Eventually this bride will become an army to defeat God's enemy Satan and to set up God's Kingdom on this earth (Rev. 19:7-9,14,19-21; 20:1-3). God became a man, the man Jesus Christ, who passed through incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, ascension and through such a process has become the life-giving Spirit to enter into man to bring man fully into God (1Cor. 15:45; Eph. 2:6). This has been accomplished by the Lord so that man now is qualified to contain the life of God and to pass through the process needed to become His bride, His counterpart to meet His need. In the book of Revelation in the Bible, it is recorded that the Apostle John saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God (Rev. 21:2,9-10). The consummation of the New Jerusalem is the ultimate goal of God and shall come to pass on this earth.

Dewey Goss | Back to List

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