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As the Lord is going on, we need to be clear about the nature, position, and function of the church as well as the history of the church. Then we will know where we are. The revelation in the New Testament concerning the church is clear.
The church is produced by Christ becoming life to us. Christ came as God incarnate, lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, and died on the cross to take care of all the problems and to release the divine life, producing the church. He died as the Lamb of God to take away our sins, accomplishing a full redemption for us, and also as a grain of wheat, releasing the divine life within Him to produce many grains in resurrection (John 1:29; 12:24). As the grain of wheat, Christ died and resurrected to release the divine life into all His believers, making them, as many grains, the same as He is. He was once the only grain, but through His death and resurrection He was multiplied to become many grains. These many grains constitute the church. The church is a constitution of Christ, the produce of Christ, Christ’s multiplication.
On the day of Pentecost the believers were baptized into the Spirit (Acts 2:4). The Triune God was within them, and they were in the Triune God. At that time they became the church, which is the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all, to be a corporate expression of God in Christ on earth (Eph. 1:22-23). However, this glorious situation did not last long. The New Testament shows that near the end of the first century, while some of the apostles were still on the earth, religion had subtly crept into the church. For instance, Revelation 2:15 says that some held the teaching of the Nicolaitans. The word Nicolaitans is composed of two Greek words meaning “to conquer” and “the common people,” indicating that hierarchy had come in.
Church history confirms that at the end of the first century a system of hierarchy began to creep into the church. In the New Testament the terms elder and bishop are synonyms and are used interchangeably. In Acts 20:17 Paul called for the elders; then in verse 28 he addressed them as overseers, or bishops. This proves that the elders are the bishops. Elder mainly denotes the person, and bishop, or overseer, denotes the function of an elder. These two terms refer to the same person. In the New Testament there is no rank among the elders and overseers. However, at the end of the first century, Ignatius began to teach that the elders oversee one church and that the bishops oversee several churches, thus ranking the bishops above the elders.
Initially, the church had no organization but was purely an organic constitution of regenerated believers to be the Body of Christ for His expression. Then organization began to come in through hierarchy, which eventually expanded to include many levels. Hierarchy and organization kill the function of the members of the Body of Christ.
The hierarchy in the Catholic Church was fully established by A.D. 600. The hierarchy did not develop much in the first two centuries because the church was under the persecution of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the ranking of bishops above elders was the start. By A.D. 313 Constantine the Great accepted Christianity, and it eventually became the state religion. Thus, not only was the church free from persecution, but also thousands of unbelieving, unconverted, unrepentant Romans were brought into Christendom as prophesied by the parable of the tares in Matthew 13:24-30.
Originally, the church did not need organization because every member was living. Every member in our physical body is living and therefore functions as it should without needing to be told what to do. We do not need to give an order to our nose for it to smell something. Because we are living organisms and every member is living, every part of our body functions spontaneously. Only something lifeless, like a machine, needs organization. The unification of Christianity with the Roman Empire brought many dead ones into Christianity, creating the need for organization. Due to the papacy and the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church, the earth became increasingly dark. The Dark Ages lasted from the sixth to the sixteenth century. Corrupted, darkened, evil organization prevailed until the Reformation began.
The Reformation began around 1517. Martin Luther had no intention to rebel against the Catholic Church. His writings show that his intention was only that the doctrine of justification by faith would be made clear to the people. However, after Luther many reformers began to leave the Catholic Church. Luther made a mistake when he supported the establishment of state churches in Germany. This mistake resulted in the formation of many state churches in Germany and abroad. The state churches separated from the Catholic Church, yet they kept many organizational aspects of the apostate church, especially the hierarchy of the clergy. This organization kills the function of the members. Today in the Catholic Church and in the state churches, the members do not all function. Hired clergy carry out spiritual functions for the lay people.
After the state churches were formed, seeking saints began to see certain aspects of the truth through their reading of the Bible. For instance, some saw that baptism should be by immersion rather than by sprinkling, the Catholic practice. Those who saw baptism by immersion in the Scriptures stood up for this truth and even suffered persecution for it. This is the source of the Baptist Church, which is a private church. Other examples of private churches are the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church. These also failed to cut off all aspects of organization. The state churches and the private churches inherited organization from their “mother,” the Catholic Church.
From the second century the church fathers began to argue, debate, and fight over their different concepts concerning the Trinity and the person of Christ. The church was divided by these doctrinal disputations. Then Constantine the Great came into power. Because he did not want to see religious fighting in his empire, he summoned all the great teachers to a council in Nicaea in A.D. 325. That council produced the Nicene Creed. However, the first Nicene Creed was not complete, and a later council amended the creed by adding that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.” However, this creed still did not stop the disputation and division. Thus, from the beginning, the church has been damaged by organization, which kills the function of the members of the Body, and division, which is brought in by doctrinal disputation. Since the sixteenth century, division after division has come in among the private churches. After the Second World War, especially in the United States, the independent groups began. Today there are thousands of divisions among Christians.
God’s purpose is to have a proper church—full of life and constituted with Christ—to be the expression of God on the earth. Today the church has been fully deadened by organization and divided into many different groups. Most Christian groups hold the basic items of the faith concerning the Bible, the Person of Christ, and salvation, but the fulfillment of God’s purpose has become impossible. Organization and division prevent the church from being a living organism—the Body of Christ as the fullness of the One who fills all in all—to express God.
The degradation of the church through the centuries has been a result not only of organization and division but also of mixture with heathenism and paganism. After Constantine the Great accepted Christianity, many pagan things were brought into the church and given a Christian name, including Christmas, Easter, and the worship of Mary. G. H. Pember clearly defined the pagan things brought in by Catholicism in his book Mystery Babylon the Great. In Matthew 13:33 the Lord likens this mixture to leaven, “which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened.” This woman is the apostate Roman Catholic Church, called Jezebel in Revelation 2:20. Today nearly every truth has been leavened. The leaven of Christmas has been added to the truth of the incarnation. Easter has been added to the resurrection. The purity of the truth has been lost in degraded Christianity.
The recovery of the truth began when Martin Luther recovered the truth of justification by faith. Two centuries after Luther, seeking Christians in northern Europe were under persecution and forced to leave their countries. Many went to Germany, where a brother named Zinzendorf, who genuinely loved the Lord, allowed them to settle on his large estate. These persecuted ones came to Zinzendorf’s estate with many differing opinions, and their dissension and fighting increased after their arrival. One day in 1727 Zinzendorf called them together and convinced them to drop their disputations and to hold only to the items of the common faith. That Lord’s Day, at the Lord’s table, they experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and there was a great revival. This began the first practice of the church life in the Lord’s recovery, but the light that these Moravian Brethren saw was not very clear.
One hundred years later, in 1827, the Lord raised up the British or Plymouth Brethren under the leadership of John Nelson Darby. They took a stand to practice the church life. The light became clearer in this second practice of the church life in the Lord’s recovery. They were quite strong in spirit and rich in life, but when they began to study the Scriptures, they became ensnared and paid too much attention to doctrines. They developed different understandings concerning doctrines, and by 1918, ninety years after their beginning, they were divided into approximately one hundred fifty groups. The two main divisions are the Exclusive Brethren and the Open Brethren. Among these, there are many other small divisions. Some years ago, a young sister told me that she was raised in a Brethren assembly that was divided because some insisted on using an organ and others insisted on using a piano. The Brethren became dead and then divided by paying too much attention to doctrines. Eventually, they became the fulfillment of the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3. Thus, the Brethren practice of the church life was spoiled by the end of the 1800s after spreading quite prevailingly from Europe to South America, North America, Africa, and Australasia.
The first practice of the church life began with Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren in 1727. Then the British Brethren were raised up in 1827 with a more complete vision but were damaged by emphasizing doctrinal knowledge. One hundred years later, the third practice of the church life began in China. Brother Watchman Nee explained to me that the Lord was forced to go to the virgin soil of China because the long history of traditional Christianity in Europe and America had spoiled those places for the proper practice of the church life. Because China was pagan and heathen, it was unspoiled, virgin soil for the practice of the church life. Brother Nee was saved in 1920, and two years later he saw the light concerning the problem of denominations and the proper practice of the church life. He started a meeting at a sister’s home in his hometown of Foochow, and that was the beginning of the church life in China. Before that time all Christian meetings in China were led by Western missionaries and were held in church buildings that were built by missionaries. At nineteen years of age, Watchman Nee was the first native Chinese to start a meeting in a believer’s home without a pastor or anything of denominational Christianity. This group simply met in the name of the Lord Jesus and according to the Bible.
Among this group there were seven or eight young people who were co-workers, including Brother Nee. One was especially gifted in preaching the gospel. He was becoming popular as a traveling evangelist, when a brother from the Christian and Missionary Alliance proposed to him that he should be formally ordained so that various denominations would open their doors to him. The others meeting with Brother Nee agreed with the ordination of this brother. They had cut off the old current, but religion came in through a gifted one who was seeking popularity. When Brother Nee refused to agree with this brother’s ordination, the other members signed a paper to excommunicate Brother Nee. Thus, religion crept in to spoil the first attempt to practice the church life in China.
In those times Brother Nee was learning the lesson of the cross—not to fight for himself and not even to vindicate himself. He moved away to a suburb of Foochow, and from 1925 to 1927 he used his time to publish twenty-four issues of a magazine called The Christian in which he expounded the first three chapters of Revelation. He was only a little over twenty years of age. That magazine grew to a monthly distribution of ten thousand, and I became familiar with Brother Nee by subscribing to it. I began to write to Brother Nee in 1925, and he answered me. Through this correspondence we came to know each other. In those twenty-four issues, he thoroughly exposed denominational Christianity, explaining the meaning of the works and teaching of the Nicolaitans (2:6, 15). Throughout China hundreds of young people were enlightened and raised up to follow the Lord through reading The Christian.
I began to become clear about the denominations in 1925, when I was nineteen. I remained in my denomination and testified to the other members for about two years. Because they respected me as a seeking young believer, they asked me to give messages on Lord’s Day mornings. In 1927 they elected me as a member of the board, but I told them that I could not accept the position and asked them to remove my name from their “book of life.”
In 1926 Brother Nee received a burden to move to Shanghai, and the church life there began by 1927. About five years later, in 1932, the Lord touched me, and a church was raised up in my hometown of Chefoo. That was the first church in north China. From 1932 to 1934 small groups were raised up in many places through Brother Nee’s publications.
A large number of believers left the denominations, but few were clear about the proper practice of the church life. Many of the groups that were raised up met in a way that was still influenced by their denominational background. Religious concepts were brought into the new start. In 1933 I dropped my job and went to Shanghai to meet with Brother Nee, and he asked me to stay there. At that time the sisters were not allowed to pray or testify in the meetings. That was something of religion that had crept in from the Brethren background. Brother Nee and some of the other leading ones felt that this restriction was not good or profitable and caused the church to be like a half-paralyzed body. Therefore, Brother Nee fellowshipped with the brothers concerning the need to release the sisters to function. However, he could not get through, because most of the other leading ones would not agree. When I came to Shanghai, Brother Nee said to me, “Brother Lee, we have to pray for a problem that we have here. In our meetings the sisters are silent. This is a loss.” We prayed steadfastly, and eventually the dissenting ones reluctantly agreed to release the sisters. In 1934 the sisters began to pray in the meetings, but they were not allowed to give testimonies. There was still some religion there. Gradually, many began to feel that there was a loss, because many sisters have good testimonies. After much consideration, we made a decision that, based upon 1 Timothy 2:12, the sisters should not teach, but they could give personal testimonies. We took this stand to give the sisters the liberty to testify. This history shows that religion is in our blood. It is not easy to be completely rid of religion. Apparently, we had cut off the old current, but religion still crept in.
It is not easy to be free from all religious concepts. Many traditions and concepts have been brought into the church over the past nineteen hundred years. Today even unbelievers have concepts concerning Christianity. When a man is saved and comes into the church, he already has certain concepts about how things should be done. However, the young people do not have many opinions. It is for this reason that the Lord began His ministry with a group of young Galileans. Nearly two thousand years later in China, the Lord again came to a fresh group of young people. Because the young people are fresh, they are good for the Lord’s new move.
Year after year Brother Nee saw more light and helped us to see the light as well. In the early years under the leadership of Brother Nee, we studied the Bible, church history, all the major spiritual writings, and many biographies of spiritual giants from the early church fathers down to the present century. By around 1928 Brother Nee had collected over three thousand classical Christian writings. In 1924 and 1925 his bedroom was full of books. His bed had two rows of books on it, leaving only a narrow strip for him to lie down—he was buried in books. By his help we built up a habit to collect and read valuable spiritual books. Therefore, although we did not come to the Western world, we contacted Western Christianity by reading the histories, biographies, and all the main writings. We decided that if any practice or teaching was not according to the Bible, we would not take it. At that time we were not clear that the main thing is not to be scriptural but to be in the spirit. Gradually, the Lord adjusted us from stressing doctrines to stressing the spirit. Before Brother Nee’s arrest and imprisonment he had begun to emphasize that we must be in the spirit.
Throughout the years of Brother Nee’s ministry, there were at least three or four times when he saw a further revelation concerning the church. Looking back, we can see that the revelation was completed just before he was imprisoned. Because I was with him for many years, I not only read his writings, but I also had many talks with him. I knew what was within him. The central, crucial point of Brother Nee’s ministry was twofold—Christ as life and everything to us to produce the church, and the church as the Body, the fullness, of Christ to be expressed in many localities. Once, Brother Nee said that he had a dream in which he saw a local church in every city in China. This vision was his burden and his ministry. In my life I have met all kinds of Christians, but I never met a person who knew life, the Lord, and the Bible as deeply as Brother Nee.
Because he knew life, the Lord, and the Bible, Brother Nee was clear about the Lord’s move, and he realized that some day the recovery would spread to the Western world. However, because he did not expect it to go to the West soon, he never encouraged the co-workers to go out of China. Also, the situation in China did not encourage us to go abroad, because the work in China was full of God’s blessing, and there was much work to do. With one language we were able to serve six hundred million people. From Shanghai, where the largest church was, we supplied five or six hundred local churches throughout China. Therefore, we were fully occupied. We did not have time to consider going abroad. Then, under the Lord’s sovereignty, there was a political change in China. In 1949 all of mainland China was suddenly taken over by the Communists, who would not allow any teachings or groups to exist except communism and the Communist party. Therefore, the Lord’s move was forced from mainland China to Taiwan, and from Taiwan it eventually spread to the United States.
The crucial point of Brother Nee’s ministry was to minister Christ as life to produce the church, which is the Body and the fullness of Christ expressed in many localities. The subtle strategy of the enemy is to cause Christianity to receive Brother Nee’s ministry concerning life but to reject his ministry concerning the church. The enemy’s subtle work is of three aspects. First, one source has spread a rumor that after the Second World War Brother Nee changed his view concerning the ground of the church and the practicality of the church life. According to this rumor, there is a difference between Watchman Nee’s teaching concerning the church and my teaching. Further Talks on the Church Life was published in 1969 to refute this rumor. This book lists the date, location, and original publication information for each message to prove that Brother Nee never changed his view concerning the ground of the church and the practicality of the church life. This book shows that, if anything, he became stronger.
After Further Talks on the Church Life was published, the source of the rumor changed his approach. In a book entitled Against the Tide, instead of saying that Brother Nee changed, the author says that Brother Nee was wrong in the matter of the church. Those who believe this accept Brother Nee’s ministry related to life but condemn his ministry related to the church. This is the subtle doing of the enemy to dilute this ministry. It is like cutting off the head but keeping the body. The Lord raised up the ministry of Brother Nee for the Lord’s recovery. The main point of his ministry is to recover the church life with Christ as life.
The second aspect of the enemy’s subtle activity is an attitude of compromise among some co-workers. Regrettably, not many of Brother Nee’s co-workers were clear and strong concerning the ground of the church and the practicality of the church life. Some were clear but were not capable or strong to present these things to the saints. Others were clear and capable but maintained a compromising attitude, fearing that they might offend others. They knew the truth and were clear about the ground of the church and the practicality of the church life, but they exercised their mind rather than their spirit to be clever and compromising to avoid offending others. Because Brother Nee’s ministry has been diluted in this way, today it needs to be strengthened and intensified.
The third aspect of the enemy’s strategy is to bring in mixture and confusion through religion. After we had already published many books concerning the church, I was sent by the Lord to the United States, but some co-workers who were afraid of offending others advised me not to use the term the local church. Nevertheless, I sounded the trumpet concerning the ground of locality. However, today the term the local church has become popular in Christianity. Some Pentecostal Christians have adopted the writings of Brother Nee and invented new ways to define the local church. Among Christians in the United States there are at least three or four different ways in which the term the local church is used.
In Matthew 16:18 the Lord promised and prophesied, “I will build My church.” Today religion has permeated every part of the earth. The enemy has utilized the Bible to form many different religions. The Lord has no way to use any of these religions to accomplish His purpose. Although some have been saved in religion, and some have even been helped to improve their daily walk, there is no possibility for the prophecy in Matthew 16:18 to be fulfilled in religion. However, the Lord will not give up. We know that He will build His church because in Revelation 19:7 His wife is ready.
The pure bride will not be the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant denominations, the independent groups, or the charismatic movement. It must be something else, something apart from religion. Thus, there is a need for the Lord to raise up a group to have a new start. He will take the same way that He took when He began His ministry in Galilee—He will gain a group of young people.
We must not become old or out of date in our concepts. A religious mind may disapprove of our way of releasing our spirit in the meetings. However, it is better for a meeting to be living and loud than for it to be dead and silent. Our way of meeting in the Lord’s recovery today is not a matter of formality but of exercising our spirit. The Lord is not only in the heavens but also in our spirit. The Lord said in John 15:4, “Abide in Me and I in you.” Galatians 2:20 says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Philippians 1:21 says, “To me, to live is Christ.” These words need to be real to us. We should express Christ in the meetings. When we eat, table manners are not as important as taking the food into us. Eating with good manners is good, but manners may prevent us from enjoying the food. The most enjoyable meal is eaten at home without formal table manners. When we come to the church meetings, we come home for a meal. We should care more for eating and enjoyment than for strict order.
According to the Bible, one day the Lord will use Antichrist and the kings under him to terminate religion. Daniel 8, 9, and 11 reveal that at the end of this age Antichrist will be raised up, and he will sign a covenant with the nation of Israel for seven years. After three and a half years the great tribulation will begin when Antichrist breaks his covenant with the Jews and begins to persecute them. He will cause the offerings to stop and will set himself up as God, putting an image of himself in the temple to be worshipped. That will be the destruction and termination of the Jewish religion. Revelation 17:16 says that when Antichrist breaks the covenant with the nation of Israel, the ten kings under his hand will burn the Catholic Church. According to verse 17, by doing this, they will be fulfilling God’s will.
Religion will be terminated, but the bride will be prepared (19:7). At that time the overcomers, the man-child and the firstfruits, will be raptured to the heavens as the bride (12:5; 14:4). We must decide whether we will be part of religion or part of the bride. I believe that today the Lord must do something new and cut off the old current of religion. The young people must prepare themselves to go either to Europe or to the college campuses in the United States. The Lord’s ministry is to minister Christ as life and everything to His believers so that the church would be produced as a living expression of Christ on the earth in many localities. This must be carried out entirely apart from religion. The saints should not be concerned about outward matters such as the eldership, head covering, or foot-washing. We simply need to go on with Christ for the church in a new and living way. This will pave the way for the Lord to come back.
