"At the end of 1922 Watchman was burdened to publish a magazine entitled The Present Testimony. In Chinese it is called Fu-shing, which means "revival." The first issue of fourteen hundred copies was published in January 1923 in Foochow. Its theme was specifically the deep things of God and was composed of messages on life with the Lord Jesus as the center, especially emphasizing His life, His crucifixion, His resurrection, His intercession, His Body, His coming back, and His kingdom. These messages were especially designed for the cultivation of the spiritual life and made no attempt to engage in intellectual debate.
"This magazine continued until 1925 when Watchman had the burden to publish The Christian. The publication of The Present Testimony was resumed in January 1928 in Shanghai. The following excerpts taken from his second testimony, given at Kulangsu on October 20, 1936, and his open letters reveal the purpose of the magazine and the reason for resuming its publication:
Before I became ill I not only visited various places to conduct special meetings, but I also had a great ambition to compose a good comprehensive commentary. I intended to devote much energy, time, and money in writing a large commentary consisting of about a hundred volumes. After completing The Spiritual Man, which I began in Nanking when I became ill, I realized that the task of expounding the Scriptures was not for me. However, since that time I have frequently met with temptation in this respect. After my illness, God revealed to me that the central point of the messages He gave me was not for expounding the Scriptures, preaching the ordinary gospel, paying attention to prophecies, or anything outward, but for laying stress on the living Word of life. For this reason I felt I should resume publishing The Present Testimony to assist God's children in spiritual life and warfare.
"We continue with a portion from his open letter from the twenty-fourth issue of The Christian, published in December, 1927:
The Bible contains numerous teachings which ordinary believers cannot fully understand. Moreover, the testimony of the Lord is so incomparably great that we cannot receive and preach it completely. During the time of my waiting and praying, God committed to me the testimony which He wishes me personally to bear. I consider the book The Spiritual Man to be an outline of the special testimony which the Lord has committed to me. In the past years, day by day the hand of the Lord has become heavier upon me, forcing me to realize that He desires me to bear a special testimony for His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. There are many who have ordinary testimonies, but the Lord wants me to bear a special testimony for Him. Therefore, I am ready to give up the work of expounding the Scriptures, which thing I would like to do most, in order that I might bear the specific testimony which God has freshly committed to me. The wonderful thing about it is that the Lord is also leading all the brothers and sisters who are meeting and having fellowship in Shanghai in the same way. Hence, by means of the coming issues of The Present Testimony, according to what we have received from God, we shall specifically explain "the deep things of God" to the Body of Christ. We wholeheartedly desire to bear this unique testimony which the Lord has committed to us. We also fully realize that the Lord will raise up many other believers besides us to bear this testimony together. The more we walk on the spiritual path the more we realize the importance of the message of the cross. Believers today have failed because they have not allowed the cross to work deeply and destroy all the works of the flesh. There is still a mixture of the new and the old creation in the lives of believers, because the old creation has not yet been replaced by God. Such mixture always results in loss to the new creation. Correctness in outward behavior, excellence in church organization, increase in Bible knowledge, and exertion in God's work are all insufficient to guarantee against a mixture of the flesh within. On the contrary, the flesh can act freely in all these things and promote them with all its might. For this reason, the work of the cross annihilating the old creation is indispensable. Without the cross standing between the new and the old creations, a person's spiritual life is false, shallow, and superficial. Since a believer's life is always related to both "self" and the Lord, the cross must destroy the self so that the Lord can have His legitimate place. The time of the millennium will be the right time for the Lord to overcome Satan. Therefore, by the grace of the Lord we would remind the church of God that the Body of Christ must rise up to work with Him to bring in the kingdom. Our desire is that the enemy might soon be put to shame and that Christ might soon be glorified.
"In his open letter published in the first issue of The Present Testimony of January — April 1928, he said:
We publish this little magazine because we have received the commission from God to help His children specifically in matters relating to spiritual life and warfare. In every age there is a unique truth especially needed for that period. For those of us living in these last days, there must also be some specific truth which we especially need. By means of The Present Testimony, we intend to bear testimony to the truth needed in this present age.
"The following words are taken from the open letter in the nineteenth issue of The Present Testimony of January — February 1931:
Some may think that the content of The Present Testimony is too deep and too specialized. However, many readers have written to us saying that while other magazines are greatly used by the Lord, The Present Testimony provides what the others do not. For this reason we are convinced that the command which we have received of the Lord is right. By the grace of the Lord, The Present Testimony will therefore continue to speak forth the deep things of God this year and in the years to come, the Lord willing.
"Publication of The Present Testimony was suspended following the thirty-sixth issue of July — August 1934 and was replaced by The Testimony in 1948. However, publication of The Present Testimony was resumed in January 1951."
(The above is quoted from Watchman Nee — A Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age by Witness Lee, published by the Living Stream Ministry, 1991, pp. 225-228.)
In the Collected Works, we have included only the thirty-six issues of The Present Testimony printed since January 1928 because the earlier issues of 1923—1925 are not available to us. These thirty-six issues are divided into four volumes. Issue Nos. 1 through 18 are in Volume 8, Issue Nos. 19 through 23 are in Volume 9, Issue Nos. 24 through 31 are in Volume 10, and Issue Nos. 32 through 36 are in Volume 11. In Volume 11 we have added a few messages from the Third Overcomer Conference, which were not published in the original magazine, but which form part of the series of messages in that period.
We have included only those messages which were written by Brother Nee himself, plus a few editorials written on his behalf by Ruth Lee. We have not included any translated articles by writers such as Jessie Penn-Lewis, Evan Roberts, T. Austin-Sparks, etc. This latter category of translated works appeared more often in the earlier issues of the magazine; latter issues were almost exclusively Brother Nee's messages. To give the readers an idea of what was published in each issue of the magazine, we have included the table of contents of every issue of the magazine at the back of Volume 11.
