WATCHMAN
NEE, an apostle of Christ from China
God's Dynamic
Salvation Work
Beginning in the sixteenth century, many Protestant
missionaries were sent to
Nee Shu-tsu, whose English name was Henry Nee, was
born of second-generation Christian parents in
Prior to his salvation Nee Shu-tsu was an ill-behaved
student, yet he was also exceptionally intelligent. He always ranked first in
his class as well as in his school, from elementary school through his
graduation from
Equipping and
Training
Watchman Nee attended no theological schools or Bible institutes. His wealth of knowledge concerning God's purpose, Christ, the things of the Spirit, and the church was acquired through studying the Bible and reading spiritual books. Watchman Nee became intimately familiar with and greatly enlightened by the Word through diligent study using twenty different methods. In addition, in the early days of his ministry he spent one-third of his income on his personal needs, one-third on helping others, and the remaining third on spiritual books. He acquired a collection of more than 3,000 of the best Christian books, including nearly all the classical Christian writers from the first century on. He had a phenomenal ability to select, comprehend, discern, and memorize relevant material, and he could grasp and retain the main points of a book at a glance. Watchman Nee was thus able to glean all the profitable scriptural points and spiritual principles from throughout church history and synthesize them into his vision and practice of the Christian life and of the church life. Watchman Nee received much enlightenment and help from a number of Christian writers.
Revelation and
Living
Through his fellowship with Miss Barber
and others, along with his study of the Bible and numerous spiritual books,
Watchman Nee received a wealth of revelation. He was truly a seer of the divine
revelation. The core of his revelation was threefold: it concerned (1) the living
of a crucified life, (2) the living of a resurrected life, and (3) the issue of
such a living, the church. Related to the crucified life, he saw and
experienced the subjective aspects of Christ's death. He realized that he had
been crucified with Christ, that it was no longer he
that lived, but Christ Who lived in him. He also realized that in order to
experience the death of Christ in a subjective way, he needed to bear the
cross. Although he had been crucified with Christ in fact, he also had to
remain in Christ's crucifixion in his experience. He learned that to remain in
Christ's crucifixion was to bear the cross by refusing to allow the old man or
the flesh to leave the cross. He realized that in order for him to have such an
experience, God must sovereignly arrange his
environment, making it a practical cross for him to bear. This is exactly what
God did throughout Watchman Nee's life.
From the very beginning of his ministry, God arranged numerous situations in
which he had the opportunity to deny the self and the natural life by bearing
the cross and living by Christ as his life. Watchman Nee saw that he had not
only died with Christ, but had also risen with Him. The resurrected Christ with
the fullness of the Spirit had become his life. It was by the resurrection life
of the indwelling Christ that he was able to bear the cross and to participate
in the fellowship of His sufferings and be conformed to His death. By the
resurrection life of Christ, he abandoned the world, forsook his future, denied
himself, was freed from sin, and overcame Satan. It was also by the
resurrection life of Christ that he served the Lord, worked for Him, and
carried out His commission. His contemporaries bore witness to the fact that he
consistently rejected his natural strength in the Lord's service. He feared the
intrusion of his natural life into the Lord's work; he therefore dared not
minister apart from the indwelling Christ. In delivering messages, contacting people,
writing articles, corresponding with the believers, and in mundane matters, he
acted not by himself but by the resurrection life. It was by living such a
resurrection life that he was able to pass through his extended martyrdom of
twenty years' imprisonment, which culminated in death.
Watchman Nee went on to see that the church as the Body of Christ was simply
the enlargement, expansion, and expression of the resurrected Christ. His
vision that Christ in resurrection was the life and content of the church was
far advanced. According to this vision, he not only ministered by the
resurrected Christ, but he also ministered the resurrected Christ Himself to
the believers for the building up of His Body. He frequently emphasized the
fact that anything which is not Christ in resurrection is not the church, and
anything not done by the resurrected Christ is a foreign element in the Body.
He desired to serve the church with nothing but the resurrected Christ. The
more his ministry progressed, the more he ministered the resurrected Christ to
the believers and to the local churches. The resurrected Christ became not only
his life and living, but also his message and ministry.
Burden and
Commission
The divine revelation which Watchman Nee
saw resulted in the Lord's twofold burden and commission to him: first, to bear
a particular testimony of the Lord Jesus, and second, to establish local
churches. The first burden and commission arose from his personal depth of
knowledge and experience of Christ's all-inclusive death and resurrection. The
Lord specifically burdened and commissioned him to bear testimony to this
truth. He faithfully responded to this burden by releasing a number of spoken
and written messages on the subjective aspect of the Lord's crucifixion and resurrection,
on the principles of life, on the supremacy of Christ, and on God's eternal
purpose.
However, Watchman Nee's ultimate burden was not just
to elevate the individual believers' experience of Christ, but to establish and
build up the practical corporate expression of Christ in the local churches for
the satisfaction of God's desire. This was the ultimate commission he received
from the Lord based on what he had seen and experienced of Him. His personal
testimony recorded on
What the Lord revealed to me
was extremely clear: Before long He would raise up local churches in various
parts of
When the Lord called me to serve Him, the primary objective was not to hold
revival meetings, help people hear more scriptural doctrines, or for me to
become a great evangelist. The Lord revealed to me that He desired to build up
local churches in various places to manifest Himself and to bear the testimony
of unity on the ground of the local churches. In this way, each saint
[believer] is able to function in the church and live the church life. What God
wants is not individuals trying to be victorious or spiritual; He wants a
corporate glorious church presented to Himself.
Sufferings
Watchman Nee saw an undeniable vision and
received a definite commission from the Lord concerning the church, and he
suffered greatly due to his faithfulness to them. Because the vision was so
clear and the commission so real, it did not matter to him that he was
rejected, opposed, and condemned. He anticipated this response and was
determined to pay any price for the commission he had received of the Lord. His
faithfulness to this commission ultimately cost him his life. His profound
revelation combined with his selfless sufferings issued in a rich ministry of
life according to the Lord's commission to him: the unique New Testament
ministry of Christ and of the church.
Watchman Nee endured much suffering for the sake of the New Testament ministry.
Due to his absoluteness in following the Lord and his faithfulness in
fulfilling the Lord's commission, he underwent frequent mistreatment as well as
lifelong hardships. Because he unwaveringly fought the battle for the Lord's
move, he was under constant attack from God's enemy. At the same time, he was
also under God's sovereign hand. He recognized the sovereign arrangements of
God in his environment not merely as a divinely apportioned "thorn in the
flesh," but more importantly, as a means by which God was able to deal
with him. Due to both the enemy's attacks and God's faithful environmental
dealings, Watchman Nee lived a life of suffering. The majority of his sufferings
came from five sources: poverty, ill health, various denominations, dissenting
brothers and sisters in the local churches, and imprisonment.
In the early years of Watchman Nee's ministry, the
economic situation in
Watchman Nee was also frequently afflicted with serious ill health. For the
first eleven years of his ministry, beginning in 1922, he suffered alone, with
no wife to help him. During this time he contracted tuberculosis and suffered
acutely for several years. In 1934 at the age of thirty, however, Watchman Nee
married a true "help meet," Charity Chang, although the Lord was to
give them no children. In later years, he was also stricken with a chronic
stomach disorder as well as angina pectoris, a serious heart ailment. He was
never cured of the heart disease and could have died from it at any moment. In
fact, many times he ministered not by physical strength but by resurrection
life.
He also suffered for his belief that, according to the Bible, denominations are
wrong in that they divide the one Body of Christ. Because his firm stand for
the oneness of the Body of Christ was a testimony against the denominations,
they caused him much suffering. Some despised, criticized, opposed, and did
their best to destroy his ministry. They also spread false rumors about him and
misrepresented him to the extent that Watchman Nee once responded, "The
Watchman Nee portrayed by them I would also condemn."
A number of brothers and sisters meeting with the local churches became another
source of suffering to Watchman Nee. He found this type of suffering by far the
most painful. Some of these believers caused a great deal of trouble due to
their dissention, immaturity, incompetence, stubbornness, ambition for
position, or rebelliousness. Two years after the church life began to be
practiced in Watchman Nee's hometown in 1922, he was even temporarily excommunicated by his own
coworkers because of his stand for the truth of the Scriptures, when he
protested the ordination of the leading coworkers by a denominational
missionary. Although most of the believers meeting with them sided with
Watchman Nee, the Lord would not allow him to do anything to vindicate himself.
That was a deep suffering to his natural man.
The final source of suffering was his groundless condemnation and imprisonment.
Watchman Nee was arrested during the Communist Cultural Revolution in March
1952 and was judged, falsely condemned, and unjustly sentenced to fifteen years
imprisonment in 1956.
Watchman Nee was a man of sorrows and suffering. Along his entire path of
following the Lamb, he suffered much. Through all these sufferings, however, he
learned many lessons. These sufferings not only helped him learn to trust the
Lord; they also benefited him in dealing with his flesh, his self, his soul,
and his natural life. Due to his obedience to these dealings, he never passed
on mere teachings and doctrines, for his messages contained the reality he had
acquired through his sufferings. The experience he gained through his suffering
served as an immeasurable help to all those under his ministry and also became
a rich heritage to all the local churches, a heritage acquired by him at the
ultimate price.
His sufferings also helped him to receive further revelation from the Lord.
Certain kinds of suffering often issued in corresponding revelation. His
sufferings thus often became the Lord's revelation to him. He was purified,
dealt with, broken, and constituted by the Holy Spirit with the divine life
through his sufferings. Through such experiences of Christ within his
sufferings, he, like Paul, was prepared and positioned to receive the Lord's
revelation.
Means of
Ministry
Watchman Nee's
rich ministry of life was the issue of his revelation and suffering. He used
eight different means to carry out the ministry wrought into him by the Lord:
preaching the gospel, teaching the Bible, traveling, contacting people,
corresponding with people, holding conferences, conducting trainings, and producing
publications.
Watchman Nee not only spoke frequently both privately and publicly, but he was
also a prolific writer. His publications included gospel tracts, periodicals,
papers, newsletters, books, hymnals, and a chart of biblical prophecies.
Relationship
with Witness Lee
Watchman Nee's
closest co-worker was Witness Lee. Having been raised as a Southern Baptist,
Witness Lee was saved in 1925 at the age of nineteen. That year Witness Lee
began to seek to thoroughly know the Bible and found Watchman Nee's articles and publications to be the most outstanding
on biblical truths. He soon began to correspond with Watchman Nee and was
astonished that someone only two years older than he was such a mature
Christian. It was not until 1932, when Witness Lee invited Watchman Nee to Chefoo, that the two had their first personal contact.
During the time they began to spend together, Watchman Nee's
stress on the divine life rather than on knowledge caused Witness Lee's
fellowship with the Lord to deepen and to grow more intimate. In the same year,
believers began meeting in Witness Lee's home; by the following year, this
meeting was thriving. Due to the needs of the church, both men believed that
the Lord desired Witness Lee to serve Him full-time. Their time together
increased, during which Watchman Nee continually perfected and tested Witness
Lee, preparing him to bear more responsibility. Realizing that the Lord's work
in China must be one and that He had begun it in Shanghai through Watchman Nee,
Witness Lee moved to Shanghai in 1934 to be able to work more closely with
Watchman Nee. They labored, suffered, spread the work, received revelation, and
brought in revivals together. Brother Lee edited Watchman Nee's
publication The Christian from 1934 to 1940 and was his best man at his
wedding.
In fear of annihilation by the incursion of Communism, Watchman Nee sent
Witness Lee and a few others to
Watchman Nee was led by the Lord to
remain in Mainland
Before Brother Nee left
Watchman Nee was arrested by the
Communists in March, 1952 for his professed faith in Christ as well as his
leadership among the local churches. He was judged, falsely condemned, and
sentenced in 1956 to fifteen years' imprisonment. During this entire time, only
his wife was allowed to visit him. Although there is no way for us to know what
he experienced of the Lord during his long imprisonment, his last eight letters
provide a glimpse into his suffering, feeling, and expectation during his
confinement. While prison censorship did not allow him to mention the Lord's
name in his letters, in his final letter, written on the day of his death, he
alluded to his joy in the Lord: "In my sickness, I still remain joyful at
heart." Watchman Nee was practicing the word of the apostle Paul in
Philippians 4:4: "Rejoice in the Lord always." He died in confinement
in his cell on
The following is an account by Brother Nee's
grandniece, who accompanied Mrs. Nee's eldest sister
to the labor farm to pick up his ashes:
In June 1972, we got a notice
from the labor farm that my granduncle had passed away. My eldest grandaunt and
I rushed to the labor farm. But when we got there, we learned that he had
already been cremated. We could only see his ashes....Before his departure, he
left a piece of paper under his pillow which had several lines of big words written
in a shaking hand. He wanted to testify to the truth which he had even until
his death, with his lifelong experience. That truth is—"Christ is the
Son of God who died for the redemption of sinners and resurrected after three
days. This is the greatest truth in the universe. I die because of my belief in
Christ. Watchman Nee." When the officer of
the labor farm showed us this paper, I prayed that the Lord would let me
quickly remember it by heart...
My granduncle had passed away. He was faithful until death. With a crown
stained with blood, he went to be with the Lord. Although God did not fulfill
his last wish, to come out alive to join his wife, the Lord prepared something
even better—they were reunited before the Lord.
During Watchman Nee's
imprisonment he was confined, but his ministry was not bound (2 Tim. 2:9).
Under the Lord's sovereignty, his ministry has spread throughout the entire
world as a rich supply of life to all seeking Christians.
His ultimate burden was the churches as the house of God, God’s tabernacle.
Although his own earthly tabernacle (physical body) has been taken down, the
churches, which were so much on his heart, are not only surviving but also
continuing to grow vigorously and to spread throughout the earth. By the time
Watchman Nee was arrested in 1952, approximately four hundred local churches
had been raised up in