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Scripture Reading: Gal. 1:4, 13-16; 5:11; Rev. 2:6, 9, 14-15, 20, 24; 3:7-9, 20; 17:4-5; 18:4
Thus far in our fellowship, we have covered five main categories of items related to the history of the local churches: the revelations, the sufferings, the ministry, the work, and the churches. We saw that from the revelations plus the sufferings comes the ministry. With the ministry we have the work that produces the churches. The work comes not out of certain doctrines, gifts, or practices but out of the ministry. The ministry is composed, produced, and formed through revelations mingled with sufferings. This corresponds with the experience of the apostle Paul. First, he received revelations from the Lord. In addition to receiving these revelations, Paul passed through many sufferings. Out of this came the ministry. By and with the ministry, Paul worked, and that work produced the churches.
Today in this age the principle is the same. The Lord gives us the revelations. Then He puts us into a certain environment of sufferings so that we may have the ministry. With this ministry we work, and out of this work the churches are produced. The spreading of the practice of the church life comes from a work by the definite ministry, which is composed with sufferings and revelations. What the Lord has led us to pass through in His recovery is according to the record of the New Testament.
Our history is a history of being delivered from the present evil age. This is according to Paul’s word in Galatians 1:4. The book of Galatians opens in a unique way. Actually, every book of the Bible opens in a specific way. Genesis opens by saying that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. John opens by telling us that in the beginning was the Word. First Corinthians opens by showing us that we can call on the name of the Lord to enjoy Him as our portion. Galatians, a short book of six chapters, opens with a word that cannot be found in any other book. In 1:4 Paul says that the Lord Jesus Christ “gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us out of the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.” Some might expect Paul to say that Christ gave Himself for our sins so that we might be delivered from hell, but Paul does not say this. Paul says that Christ died for our sins so that He might rescue us out of the present evil age. This is according to the will of our God and Father.
The book of Ephesians reveals that the will of God is to have the church as a living Body for Christ (1:22-23; 3:10-11). It is not to have an organization but an organism. The will of God is not to have the Jewish religion or the religion of Christianity. The will of God is to have the organic Body of Christ. It is not to have circumcision or uncircumcision. The will of God is to have a new creation (Gal. 6:15). The new creation is the new man (Col. 3:10), and this new man is the church.
Christ gave Himself for our sins to deliver us out of the present evil age according to the will of God. We need to see the difference between the age and the world. In Ephesians 2:2 Paul says that we once walked according to the age of this world. The world refers to the satanic system composed of many ages. An age is a part, a section, an aspect, the present and modern appearance, of the system of Satan, which is used by him to usurp and occupy people and keep them away from God and His purpose. The world is the whole system, and in this system there are different ages. Satan has formed this anti-God world system to systematize men with religion, culture, education, industry, commerce, and entertainment through men’s fallen nature in their lusts, pleasures, and pursuits and even in their indulgence in living necessities, such as food, clothing, housing, and transportation. The whole of such a satanic system lies in the evil one (1 John 5:19).
The present evil age at Paul’s time was Judaism, the prevailing Jewish religion. Paul continues his thought about this evil age in Galatians 1:13 and 14 by telling us how he was in that age: “You have heard of my manner of life formerly in Judaism, that I persecuted the church of God excessively and ravaged it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries in my race, being more abundantly a zealot for the traditions of my fathers.” This describes how Paul was in that religious section of the satanic system.
What is Satan’s aim? His aim is to systematize people into his world and keep them away from God’s will to have the Body of Christ. As long as we are kept away from the Body of Christ, we are kept away from the will of God and are systematized into Satan’s system. Satan uses worldly entertainment, sinful things, and even religious things to systematize people away from God’s will. In Paul’s day, Satan used Judaism to systematize all the Pharisees, scribes, priests, and elders among the Jewish people. Today Satan uses the religion of Christianity to systematize many of the Lord’s people away from God’s will to have the organic Body of Christ.
Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and well pleasing and perfect.” The will of God is the Body life. We need to get into the Body life. As long as we are outside the Body life, we are outside God’s will. The main prevailing thing that keeps us away from God’s will, the Body of Christ, is the age. Therefore, we should not be fashioned according to this age. Religion, in Paul’s eyes according to Galatians, was an age, a section of Satan’s system. We should not be fashioned according to any religion. Paul says that he had been delivered out of that. In the past he had been in Judaism, advancing in Judaism beyond all his peers. He was a top religionist, but one day the Lord appeared to him and gained him. From that time Paul did not preach Judaism. He preached Christ, the living factor to produce all the churches.
Second Timothy and Revelation show that at the end of Paul’s life and John’s life, the churches had become degraded. Eventually, the degradation continued to such an extent that another religious system developed. Paul was delivered out of the age of Judaism. Today the real Christians and seekers of Christ have to be delivered out of the religious system of Christianity. The Lord’s people have to hear His call: “Come out of her, My people” (Rev. 18:4). This is the call to come out of Babylon, the religious system of Christianity.
One of the most damaging items in Christianity is the clergy-laity system. In Revelation 2:6 the Lord said, “This you have, that you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” The root word for Nicolaitan in Greek is composed of two words — niko and laos. Niko means “conquer” or “above others,” and laos means “laity.” The Nicolaitans must have been a group of people who esteemed themselves to be higher than the common believers. They formed a clergy to rule over and conquer the people with the excuse that the people were mere laymen who did not know the Bible.
The Nicolaitans are the so-called experts, the clergy who form a hierarchy. This system has been adopted by the Roman Catholic Church and has also been retained by the Protestant churches. Today in the Roman Catholic Church there is the priestly system, in the state churches there is the clerical system, and in the independent churches there is the pastoral system. Many pastors are even designated with the title Reverend, to show that they are in this special class of clergy.
Revelation 2:6 speaks of the works of the Nicolaitans, and 2:15 speaks of the teaching of the Nicolaitans. This clergy-laity system caused the church to become the religious system of Christianity, which is another religious age. Paul needed to be delivered from Judaism, the religious age at his time. Today we need to be delivered from Christianity, the religious age in our time.
I am sharing this to help us realize that the history among us has been one of coming completely out of Christianity without compromise. It is a shame that some so-called co-workers among us have tried their best to compromise. They say that between the denominations and the local churches there is a gap, and they consider themselves as the bridge to bridge the gap. This was a suffering to Brother Nee, and today this is a suffering to me.
Since 1927, just two years after I was saved, I began to be delivered out of the present evil age, the age of Christianity. Some have told me that I should not say that Christianity is degraded. But according to Revelation 17, the religious system of Christianity is a great prostitute. Verse 5 calls this great prostitute “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS.” We need to be delivered from this mother and from her daughters, who are the harlots. Since the mother of the harlots is the apostate Roman Catholic Church, the harlots, her daughters, should be all the different sects and groups in Christianity who hold to some extent the teaching, practices, and traditions of the apostate Roman Church. We need to be delivered out of this present evil age. We have to come out of Christianity and come back to the Body of Christ. The pure church life has no evil transmitted from the apostate church.
Because of our standing for the pure church life, others have been offended. But what can we do? Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.” If we were men-pleasers, we would not suffer persecution as Paul did. The history of the Lord’s recovery is a history of coming out of and being outside of the present evil age. We have burned the bridges between us and Christianity, but some among us have tried to build a bridge to bring us back. We need to burn all the bridges. There should be no bridge between the local churches and Christianity. Everything should be after its kind. The denominations are after their kind, and the local churches should be after their kind. We should be what we are without compromise or pretense.
I am afraid that in the coming years, if the Lord delays His coming, some subtle ones will be used by the enemy again to try to bridge the gap between us and Christianity. We need to maintain such a gap between us and Christianity. The wider this gap is the better because it is a gap between us and the present evil age. Thank the Lord that Brother Nee was a pioneer ahead of us to come out of Christianity into the pure church life to accomplish God’s will to have the Body of Christ. He suffered for this his entire life. He was even imprisoned by the Communists for the last twenty years of his life. There was a rumor saying that he was released, but this is a lie. He died in prison in his faithfulness to the Lord. There was no change with him. He was a real martyr. He was martyred for the church and the churches. He was really delivered from this present evil age.
Many of those who praise Brother Nee today would actually oppose him if he were here. The scribes and Pharisees excused themselves by saying that if they had been in the days of the prophets, they would not have participated in the deeds of their fathers, who murdered the prophets. The Lord Jesus exposed them by saying that although they built the graves of the prophets, they were witnesses to themselves that they were the sons of those who murdered the prophets (Matt. 23:29-31). Then He went on to say that, in the same way, they would kill and persecute the prophets sent to them (vv. 34-35). Brother Nee was persecuted and opposed because he came out of the present evil age to accomplish God’s will to have the organic Body of Christ. Our history is a history outside of the present evil age.
Now I would like to share something concerning the four main revivals among us. We have seen that the revelations plus the sufferings produce the ministry. By the ministry we have the work, and out of the work comes the churches. In addition to this, even in the Lord’s recovery, we need periodic revivals. In the Lord’s recovery in China, there were clearly and definitely four big revivals.
The first revival in China was related to the recovery of the truth concerning the assurance of salvation. Robert Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to China in the early 1800s. From that time until Brother Nee was caught by the Lord in 1920, the assurance of salvation had not been made clear. The Lord gave Brother Nee a clear vision of the assurance of salvation. Brother Nee told people that as long as they believed in the Lord Jesus according to the teaching and revelation of the Bible, they could have the assurance that they were saved. Many were revived by his messages on the assurance of salvation. Brother Nee’s preaching issued in a revival in 1923 in his hometown, Foochow.
In those early days of the Lord’s move in China, Brother Nee fasted and prayed every Saturday for the entire day. He told me personally that he would abstain from eating the whole day and pray for the entire day in preparation for his speaking the next day. For about a year, he fasted and prayed on Saturday and preached on the Lord’s Day. During that time nearly all his classmates were saved. The entire atmosphere of his school changed. Everywhere at the school, students could be seen reading the Bible, praying together, or fellowshipping together.
During this time of revival, Brother Nee and some other young brothers with him heard that in Nanking, far away from their hometown, a young Christian had been raised up by the Lord named Ruth Lee. She was the editor of a very famous and prevailing Christian paper called The Spiritual Light. Brother Nee and the brothers invited her to come to their hometown to hold some meetings. She agreed to come and would make the trip by boat. Brother Nee realized that as a sister, she should not be put to the forefront too much, even though he and the other brothers were much younger than she was. He thought that he would let the others go to the pier to meet her and that he would not go.
That night Brother Nee had a dream. In Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, Peter indicated that when the Spirit is poured out upon people, they will dream dreams (v. 17). Brother Nee personally told me about his dream, just as he related all the history from 1920 to 1932 to me. In this dream he and others were going to welcome Sister Lee, and the boat came. While he was standing there at a distance, he saw a young lady walking from the boat toward the people welcoming her. Then the Lord told him, “This is the co-worker I have prepared for you.”
When he awoke in the morning, he considered that this could have been a dream from the Lord, so he had better go to meet her. He went with a hesitant attitude, wondering whether or not his dream was of the Lord. Instead of going to the front, he stood at the rear. He saw the young people running to the boat to welcome Sister Lee. He had no idea what she looked like before that time, but she was the exact person he had seen in his dream. When they brought Miss Lee to him, he said, “I saw her already.” But the others did not know that he meant that he had seen her already in a dream the previous night. He did not relate his dream to Miss Lee until about four years later in 1927. The Lord arranged an environment in which she was forced to give up her work in Nanking. Then she came to Shanghai, and from that time she worked with Brother Nee.
The meetings that Brother Nee held in Foochow when Miss Lee came brought in a big revival. Because the saints there did not have a big hall, they eventually met in an open field. Everyone in the congregation brought a chair with him. If someone did not bring a chair, he had to stand. Many were saved during this time, and that was the first revival among us. The news of this revival spread to many places, and many were helped to become clear about the assurance of salvation.
The second revival among us happened twelve years later in 1935. By that time many churches had been raised up, but we had become somewhat cold. Brother Nee himself also had the feeling that he needed some burning. Thus, he made the decision in the spring of 1935 to go to England. He also decided that before going, he would come to my hometown of Chefoo.
Brother Nee and his wife stayed in my home. While he was staying there, we had a conference for one week. In that conference he ministered day after day on the overcoming life of Christ. Through this prevailing conference, we were all revived. We were all on fire again. He canceled his trip to Europe and returned to Shanghai to hold another conference. The fire of that revival burned the church in Shanghai in 1935.
This was the second revival among us that helped us to experience the overcoming life of Christ. Before that time we came to know the life of Christ, and we had some experience of the death of Christ, but what we had come to know and experience was not that prevailing. Through that revival we were brought into a full realization and a rich experience of the overcoming life of Christ.
The third revival among us was in 1942 and 1943. First, we were revived with the truth concerning the assurance of salvation. Second, we were set on fire with the overcoming life of Christ. The third revival was with the practicality of the church life. That revival transpired again in my hometown of Chefoo.
Before that revival Brother Nee had a big turn in 1939. In that year he saw the Body of Christ and the practicality of the local church. I went in 1939 to attend his conference on the Body of Christ. Then I went to his training in 1940. At that time I received much help from him, mainly from the private talks he had with me. Through those talks I saw what he called the blueprint of the practicality of the local church.
Later, I returned to Chefoo in northern China. Once I returned, I did not have the liberty to move anymore, because of the war. I realized that it was the Lord’s will for me not to travel but to stay in Chefoo to practice the church life in a practical way. From January 1941 we practiced everything that I had seen in Shanghai from Brother Nee. We had the proper eldership, the deacons, the service office, and the service groups. We practiced the church life for two years according to the blueprint Brother Nee had seen. At the end of 1942 the church in Chefoo experienced a great revival. This revival came through the practicality of the church life with all the service groups. The practicality of the church life brought all the saints into the building. The church in Chefoo had about eight hundred saints at that time.
By January 1, 1943, the revival in Chefoo was at its peak. No announcements were made beforehand to have a meeting on that day, but the saints came and met. From morning to evening, everyone met together without eating or drinking. There was no schedule or program, but many things were carried out by the Lord that day. After a couple of weeks, our meetings were similar to those recorded in Acts 2 and 4. We met day after day for over one hundred days. That was a one-hundred-day conference beginning on January 1, 1943. Every meeting was different and new.
It would take many messages for me to relate all the wonderful things that happened during that period of time. I would like to relate a few things to give us some idea of what was taking place. During one afternoon, a young man, who was a student of about nineteen or twenty years of age, was reading the Bible. He read Isaiah 1:3-4, which says, “The ox knows his owner, / And the donkey, his master’s manger; / But Israel does not know, / My people do not much consider. / Alas, sinful nation, / A people heavy with iniquity, / Seed of evildoers, / Children acting corruptly! / They have forsaken Jehovah; / They have despised the Holy One of Israel; / They have become estranged and have gone backward.” He also read Jeremiah 8:7, which says, “Even the stork in the sky / Knows its appointed times, / And the turtledove and the swallow and the crane / Keep the time of their coming; / But My people do not know / The ordinance of Jehovah.” He was very inspired by these verses.
The Lord impressed him within that he should stand up that evening in the meeting to give a testimony concerning these two portions of the Word. He was very fearful of doing this since he was very timid. He told the Lord, “If You want me to give a testimony tonight, You have to do one thing. You have to ask Brother Lee to stand up to read these two portions of the Word to all the people.” I had never talked to him before, and I did not even know his name. He thought it would be impossible for me to do this, but he told the Lord that he would not give a testimony unless this happened. At a certain point in the meeting, we all knelt down to pray. While we were praying, the Lord told me within to ask the saints to rise up and read Isaiah 1:3-4. He was amazed. Then I said, “Turn to Jeremiah 8:7.” He was trembling. After we read this verse, he gave a testimony, sharing with us about how the Lord had dealt with him concerning these verses. This is one illustration of the prevailing move of the Spirit at that time.
The move of the Spirit was also prevailing in all the homes of the saints. The saints offered all their possessions to the church. Every evening all kinds of offerings were given to the church. Just to keep an account of those offerings took much time. Everyone came to the meeting with something to offer, so we had to have different groups to keep an account of the different kinds of offerings. One group, for example, kept a record of all the title deeds to property that were offered. All those who owned any kind of property brought their title deeds and offered them to the church. By the last day of this revival, everyone literally offered all the things they had. Even things such as typewriters and sewing machines were offered.
Eventually, seventy saints traveled by boat from Chefoo to Inner Mongolia, migrating there for the spread of the church life. They offered all that they had to the church, and the church assigned a certain amount of money and material things to each of them, which was enough for them to travel and live on for three months. Our experience in those days was just like the beginning of the church life when “those who believed were together and had all things common; and they sold their properties and possessions and divided them to all, as anyone had need” (Acts 2:44-45).
In my whole Christian life I have never seen a revival like that. In all the homes there was not any loose talk or gossip. All that the saints spoke was Christ, the church, and the Lord’s migration. Every home — old and young, fathers, mothers, and children — was stirred up without one exception. At that time we called ourselves “the host, the army, of Jehovah.” Such a situation was the result of our being in the practicality of the church life. The saints entered into the service groups in the church life, and this caused them to be burned. Then the revival came in. During that revival many young people were raised up who later became leading ones in the churches.
After the war I was invited to come to Shanghai. I was still on the peak of the revival in Chefoo, so that revival was brought to Shanghai. This was the fourth main revival among us.
We have seen how Brother Nee was unable to minister for six years, from 1942 to 1948, because of the rebellious turmoil in Shanghai. Through the revival there in 1947 and the first few months of 1948, the rebellious and dissenting ones were brought back. Nearly all of them repented and confessed to Brother Nee. That brought Brother Nee back to the ministry. Some said that Brother Nee had no time to minister from 1942 to 1948 because of his business, but this was not true. He had the time, but he did not minister because of the saints’ rebellion against him. He told me this in a definite way. In 1947 I begged him to minister in Shanghai, but he said that he could not minister because of the rebellious ones there.
Thank the Lord that through the revival in 1947 the whole church in Shanghai was brought back, and eventually Brother Nee’s ministry was recovered. The recovery of his ministry confirmed and enlarged the revival in the church. Later, about eighty seeking ones from different parts of China who had come to Shanghai to participate in that revival were with Brother Nee for a six-month training. After that training from April to October in 1948, the trainees returned to their localities, and their localities were set on fire. That became the biggest, most powerful, and most prevailing revival among us. This revival spread throughout all of China. In one locality over seven hundred people were baptized in one day. Eventually, however, the Communists came to take over all of China.
The revival among us in Chefoo in 1943 spread to Shanghai in 1947. After I was sent to the island of Taiwan, this kind of revival was brought there. This was one of the reasons why the work in Taiwan went so fast in the first few years. Within six years we increased from about five hundred saints to about twenty thousand. This was due to the spreading of the flow of that big revival in China.
The main spiritual aspect of the fourth revival was that all the saints consecrated all that they were and all that they had to the church. That was not only a revival with the practicality of the church life but also a revival with the full surrender of the saints to the Lord for the church. Whatever they were, whatever they did, and whatever they possessed were handed over to the church. This uprooted all the worldly things and built all the saints together. The saints became a prevailing expression of the Body of Christ with the power and impact of the one accord. That was the practicality of the saints being built up.
Even today we are still inheriting all the good points of those four revivals. We are inheriting the experience of the assurance of salvation, the overcoming life of Christ, the practicality of the church life, and the practice of fully surrendering ourselves to the Lord for the church. I hope that we would be so clear about these four aspects: the assurance of salvation, the overcoming life of Christ, the practicality of the church life, and the full surrender of whatever we are, whatever we have, and whatever we can do, to the church.
At this point I would like to fellowship about my realization of Brother Nee through my contact with him. Brother Nee and I were far away from one another when we were young Christians. He was in southern China, and I was in northern China. He was saved in 1920, and I was saved in 1925. My mother was baptized as a teenager, and she became a member of the Southern Baptist denomination. I was brought up and educated in Christianity, but I was not saved. One day I heard that a young lady preacher around twenty-five years old was coming to my town to hold some gospel meetings. I was nineteen years old at that time. I was curious to see such a young woman preach the gospel.
One afternoon I went to hear her speak. Since that time I have never seen a person preaching who was that prevailing. She was preaching to a crowd of over one thousand people about how Satan has captured, possessed, and occupied people. She used the story of Pharaoh having the children of Israel under his tyranny. I was captured by the Lord because of her preaching. That young sister’s name was Peace Wang. She became the second sister who was a co-worker among us after Ruth Lee. Through her preaching I was saved in April 1925. At that time as a young man, I was very ambitious, but I was really turned to the Lord.
I loved the Lord, but I had nowhere to go for help. I tried to collect books about the Bible to help me understand it. In my hometown there was a Christian paper called The Morning Star. In that paper there was an article by Brother Nee. It was the best article in the paper to me, and I enjoyed reading it. I did my best to collect all the issues with his articles. I had never met him, and from reading his articles I thought that he must have been an old writer. In one of the issues, there was an advertisement for people who wanted to subscribe to Brother Nee’s monthly magazine entitled The Christian. I sent in my subscription and received the twenty-four issues of The Christian in 1925 and 1926.
During that time I wrote to Brother Nee. This was the beginning of my contact with him through written correspondence. Mostly, I asked him questions about the Bible. In one letter I asked him to tell me the best book to help me understand the whole Bible. He told me that according to his knowledge, the best book to help me know the whole Bible was J. N. Darby’s Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. He said that I would have to read it a number of times in order to understand it. Later, when I went to visit him for the first time, he gave me a set of Darby’s five-volume synopsis.
By reading Brother Nee’s writings, I began to realize the truth concerning what the proper church is and the wrongdoings of Christianity. Although I was then in a denomination, I was inwardly through with the denominations. In my denomination there was a young man who noticed that I had become different from the others. One day he came to me and asked me how we could know that we are saved. I gave him a booklet by Brother Nee on the assurance of salvation. After reading that, he was clear that he was saved. Eventually, our pastor referred to us two as Joshua and Caleb.
Later, this young brother was being transferred by his company from Chefoo to Shanghai. He asked me where he should meet in Shanghai. I told him that the booklet I had given him on the assurance of salvation had something in it concerning where a meeting of Christians was. I told him that he had better go there. He went to that meeting of the church in Shanghai. Eventually, he became one of the first three elders in Shanghai.
At the end of 1927, my denomination elected me to be one of the board members. By that time I was forced to tell them that I could not stay in that denomination anymore. That was the year I left them to go to a Brethren assembly. I went to Brethren assembly meetings faithfully every week. I picked up many good teachings there concerning typology and prophecy. Years later in August 1931, the Lord impressed me that I had received so much biblical knowledge, yet I was cold and dead. There was a real repentance within me. Thank the Lord that after I was saved, I never went back to the world. But by that time, although I attended so many Brethren meetings each week, I was cold.
When the Lord convicted me concerning my coldness, I rose early the next day. My home was at the foothill of a small mountain. I went to the top of this mountain and wept before the Lord with repentance. I was desperate. From that day I went there each morning to have a time with the Lord. I continued to pray in this way for a few months. During that time when I was seeking the Lord, Brother Nee held an overcomer conference in Shanghai in 1931. I attempted to go to Shanghai to this conference, but Japan had invaded Manchuria, and I was advised not to go. If I went, I ran the risk of being cut off from my home, so I canceled my trip. The young brother in my denomination who had gone to Shanghai returned to Chefoo the next year, and he told me about all the good meetings there.
He and I went to our former denomination, and we proposed that they should invite Brother Nee to come to speak to them. Although we had left that denomination, we left them with a very good impression of us. They still appreciated us as young men. They agreed to our proposal and invited Brother Nee. At the same time, the Southern Baptist seminary in a county close to Chefoo also invited him to speak to them.
In the summer of 1932, Brother Nee came to Chefoo, and I joined those who went to his boat to greet him. I attended all the meetings in which he spoke. I went with him to the Southern Baptist seminary, which by that time had become involved with the Pentecostal movement. In those years the Pentecostal movement was prevailing in northern China. This was the first time I had seen the practice of the Pentecostals. In the meeting some were jumping, others were rolling on the floor, some were laughing, and others were shouting. This went on for a time. Then the pastor called the meeting to order, and Brother Nee spoke. After the meeting Brother Nee and I walked together. I remarked to him about the strange practices in their meeting. He said to me, “In the New Testament there are no forms.” Later, he stayed in my home for two or three days. During this time we had long periods of fellowship. That was in July 1932.
On the evening of the day that Brother Nee left, a brother who was a member of my former denomination came to me. He was seeking help from Brother Nee, but Brother Nee had left. He and I had a long fellowship that evening at the seashore, since my home was not far away from the beach. At a certain point he said, “You have to baptize me tonight in the sea.” I said that I was not a pastor, an elder, or a deacon. He rebuked me by saying, “You told me that all the disciples of Jesus, who are qualified to preach the gospel, are also qualified to baptize people. You have to baptize me.” I asked him to pray with me. Then the word in Acts 8 came to me: “Look, water! What prevents me from being baptized?” (v. 36). Then I baptized him. When we came up out of the water, we were both in the heavenlies. He told me that from tomorrow he would never go back to the denominations but would come to meet with me. I told him that from tomorrow I would stop going to the Brethren meetings and would begin to meet with him. That was really the Lord’s move.
His baptism took place on a Tuesday. On Thursday of the same week, another two came to us, asking us to baptize them, and we did. On the Lord’s Day more were baptized. The following Lord’s Day we had eleven brothers taking the Lord’s table. That was the beginning of the first local church in north China in my hometown of Chefoo. The news of this reached Brother Nee in Shanghai. By the end of the year, there were about eighty of us meeting together.
At the beginning of the following year, there were about one hundred meeting in Chefoo. In April of that year, Sister Peace Wang came to visit us. She was the one through whom I was saved. By this time in 1933, she had become one of the prevailing co-workers. Then Brother Nee came, and he stayed with us for about ten days. Afterward, he went to England to visit the Brethren.
During the first three weeks of August 1933, I was struggling with the Lord concerning giving up my job and serving Him full time. The Lord was calling me inwardly to serve Him in this way. At that time my younger brother and I had the highest paying jobs among those in the church, so many of the church’s needs were secretly taken care of by us. The Lord was calling me to give up my job, but I was considering what would happen if I did this. I was helping to meet the church’s needs, but if I went full time, others would have to meet my needs.
Actually, from the first day that I was saved through Sister Wang’s preaching, I was called by the Lord to serve Him full time. I knew that my destiny for my entire life was to serve the Lord in a full way. From August 1 to August 21, 1933, I was struggling with the Lord concerning this matter. On Wednesday, August 21, I fellowshipped with two of the leading ones after the prayer meeting. I explained the situation to them and asked them to pray for me that night. I could not go on another day without a definite decision in this matter. Late that night I had a time with the Lord, and it was so clear that His will was for me to answer His call. The only thing causing me to hesitate was my unbelief. Then the Lord impressed me that if I did not answer His call, He would be through with me as far as His work was concerned. I told the Lord with tears that I would answer His call and take His way.
The next day I resigned from my job. After resigning, I went to the post office the following day to pick up a letter there for me from Manchuria. This was the first letter that I received inviting me to come to a place to speak for the Lord. I accepted this invitation and went to the capital of Manchuria to speak for the Lord’s interest. While I was there, a letter came to me from my general manager, saying that he did not want me to leave my job. He said he would promote me and increase my monthly pay if I would stay. Usually at the end of the year, the employees of this company received a good bonus. I considered that if I worked for another three months, I would receive this bonus, and then I could drop my job.
When I returned home from Manchuria, there was a letter awaiting me from Brother Nee. It was a short note from him dated August 17. This was within the three-week period of time in which I was struggling with the Lord. This note said, “Brother Witness, concerning your future — I feel that you have to serve the Lord full time. How do you feel about this? May the Lord lead you.” That short note still means so much to me. That annulled the letter from my general manager. I told the Lord that even if my company offered me the whole world, I would not take it. Then I made the decision to go to Shanghai to see Brother Nee.
When I went to Shanghai, I asked Brother Nee why he wrote that note on August 17. He said that at that time his boat was on the Mediterranean while he was returning from Europe to China. When he was in his cabin, he had a burden to pray for the work in China. While he was praying, the Lord said to him within, “You have to write a note to Witness Lee telling him that you feel he should serve the Lord full time.” While Brother Nee was sailing on the Mediterranean, I was struggling with the Lord in China. We were a thousand miles apart, yet he received a burden from the Lord to write me this note at such a critical time. That fully convinced me that he was a real man of God. I realized that I had to work with him for the Lord’s move. That was the beginning of our working together.
