Witness Lee

Witness Lee
Born	1905 (1905) Yantai, Shandong, Qing Dynasty China
Died	June 09, 1997 (1997-06-10) Anaheim, CA, USA

Witness Lee (李常受, pinyin Lǐ Chángshòu) (1905 – June 9, 1997) was a Chinese Christian preacher associated with the local churches denomination and the founder of Living Stream Ministry. He was born in 1905 in the city of Yantai, Shandong Province, China, to a Southern Baptist family. He became a Christian in 1925 after hearing the preaching of Peace Dang Wang and later joined the work started by the late Chinese Christian worker Watchman Nee, to whom Lee became the closest of co-workers. Lee, following his senior co-worker Nee, emphasized the believers' subjective experience and enjoyment of Christ as their life for the producing of the church, not as an organization but as a Body, to express Christ.

Biography

Early Years

Witness Lee was born in 1905 in Shantung province in China. Lee’s mother’s maternal grandfather was a Southern Baptist who in turn brought Lee’s mother into Christianity. Lee’s mother studied in the American Southern Baptist mission school and as a teen-ager was baptized into the Southern Baptist Church in about 1885. In order to provide her children with the proper education in Chinese and English, Lee’s mother sold her only inheritance to raise enough money to send her children to school. Lee’s father was a farmer and died in 1923.

Lee was brought into contact with his mother's Baptist Church in Chefoo where he studied in the Southern Baptist Chinese elementary school and later in the English mission college operated by the America Presbyterians. Although Lee attended the Southern Baptist Church services and Sunday school in his youth, he was not converted nor baptized by them. Five years later, Lee stopped attending any Christian services.

It was not until Lee’s second sister was converted to Christianity that Lee began to meet again. After her conversion, she prayed for Lee and introduced him to a Chinese pastor of the Chinese Independent Church who paid Lee many visits to encourage him to attend his Sunday morning services. Only after a long delay, on the second day of the Chinese New year in 1925, did Lee finally decide to attend the morning services of that Chinese Independent Church. After about two and half months, Lee was baptized into their membership by sprinkling and converted to Christianity in April 1925, at the age of 19, through the preaching of Sister Peace Wang. Lee at that time gave dedicated himself to be a “bondslave” to serve God for the rest of his life.

Through the reading of Watchman Nee, who was earlier influenced by the Plymouth Brethren, Lee began to believe denominationalism was wrong and that there was such a thing as “a proper church.” In 1927, when Lee was elected to be a member of the board of the Chinese Independent Church, he refused to accept the position and would not remain in the denomination any longer. Afterwards, Lee began to meet regularly with the Benjamin Newton branch of the Plymouth Brethren. Lee continued attending the Brethren meetings for seven and a half years and was baptized by immersion in the sea by the local Brethren leader, Mr. Burnet, in 1930.

The Beginning of Lee’s Ministry

Not long after Lee’s conversion to Christianity, he studied the writings of various Christian teachers and in the course of such study came across the publications of Watchman Nee in a Christian periodical called ‘‘The Morning Star’‘ and a magazine published by Nee himself called ‘‘The Christian.’‘ Lee began to correspond with Nee to seek advice and fellowship about how to best understand the Bible. This relationship eventually became a lifetime of working together for the spreading of Word of God. Together, Nee and Lee studied and spoke on many aspects of the biblical truth with a focus on “Christ as the mystery of God and the church as the mystery of Christ.”

In 1932 Lee met Nee face to face when Nee visited Chefoo to speak to the Chinese Independent Church congregation. During Nee’s visit, Lee’s relationship with God and his approach to the Bible was revolutionized. After Nee’s visit, some local Christians began to meet with Lee and began a church in Chefoo that started meeting in Lee’s mother's house. As the number of the church grew, it eventually obtained its own meeting place.

During this time Lee began to feel that God was calling him to quit his job to serve the Lord full-time. This feeling became stronger and stronger until in August 1933 Lee could not go on in his Christian life until he was true to the vow he had made to God to be a bondslave of Jesus Christ just eight years earlier. In tears, Lee responded to God and left his job to serve the Lord full-time. Soon after, Lee received a letter from Watchman Nee dated August 17, which was the time Lee was struggling with the decision of dropping his job to serve God full-time. The letter said, “Brother Witness, as for your future, I feel that you should serve the Lord with your full time. How do you feel? May the Lord lead you.” It was through such a letter that Lee felt his decision to serve the Lord full-time to be strongly confirmed.

From that point onward, Lee began to work closely with Nee and later, when Nee was unable to carry on the work, Lee continued to minister according to the vision and living that he saw in Nee's life and work. Lee would eventually develop the ministry entrusted to Nee and to him, but it would be a development that enlarged upon the basic vision of “the enjoyment of Christ as life for the building up of His Body through the local churches.”

Ministry with Watchman Nee

In 1934, Witness Lee moved his family to Shanghai and was entrusted with the responsibility of the publishing work of Watchman Nee. Specifically, Lee was assigned to be the editor of Nee’s magazine, ‘’The Christian.’’ Furthermore, Lee began traveling within China to give messages to Christians and to establish local churches. For example, many local churches were raised up in Chekiang province as a result of Lee’s work. From the end of 1935 until the summer of 1937, Lee established churches in Peking and Tientsin and traveled to the northwestern provinces of Suiyuan, Shanshi, and Shensi to preach the gospel and to edify the Christians there.

Because of the Japanese invasion, however, Lee returned to Chefoo in November of 1937 and spent most of his time caring for the church in Chefoo and Tsingtao, a nearby city. Throughout his time in Chefoo, Lee spent much time to personally care for the members of the churches there and closely followed the ministry of Watchman Nee. At the end of 1942 a great revival occurred in Chefoo and from January 1, 1943 the church met continuously for one hundred days. Due to Lee’s experimentation of evangelism by migration during this time, Lee was arrested by the Japanese army in May of 1943 under suspicion of espionage activities and underwent a month’s interrogation, with flogging and the “water treatment.” His health was greatly weakened by this imprisonment and he developed tuberculosis shortly after his release. In order to rest and fully recuperate, Lee moved to Tsingtao in 1944 and stayed there for two years.

Lee then resumed his work in China once his health recovered after the Second World War. Lee focused on Shanghai and Nanking where revivals took place in 1947. In December of the same year, Lee with other co-workers visited many churches in the southern provinces including Hong Kong, Canton, Swatow, and Amoy to try to bring those churches into the revival that had occurred elsewhere.

During a visit to Foochow around this time, Lee met with Nee whose ministry had been stopped for six years because of a series of serious misunderstandings. Lee helped to recover the ministry of Watchman Nee and, in April, Nee and Lee traveled together to Shanghai where a revival took place due to their ministry.

As the situation in China was going well for Nee and Lee, there was a sudden change in the political situation due to the rise of Communism under Mao Zedong. This change caused Nee, with the unanimous agreement of all his co-workers, to direct Witness Lee to leave mainland China and to go to the island of Taiwan to continue the work. Lee was charged to continue the publication work he had already been entrusted with. Despite Lee's reluctance to leave and to be with Nee and the other co-workers as they face persecution, he left for Taiwan in 1949.

Watchman Nee and Witness Lee met for the last time in Hong Kong in 1950. For over a month they ministered together and brought in a revival in the church in Hong Kong. Lee was charged to instruct, teach and lead the elders and to make arrangements concerning the services and the deacon’s office as well as purchasing land for the building of a new meeting place. Lee also took responsibility for the publication work outside of China, which at that time was in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

A short time after their last meeting, Watchman Nee returned to mainland China where he was imprisoned for the rest of his life. Due to the imprisonment, Nee and Lee were prevented from seeing each other and communicating directly ever again. Lee strived to faithfully carry out the work that his senior co-worker, Watchman Nee, began but never finished. Witness Lee was one of the closest, if not the closest, co-worker of Watchman Nee. Just before Watchman Nee died in prison, he told his prison roommate whom he had converted to Christianity, “When you get out, find a brother by the name of Witness Lee, and let him know that I never gave up my faith... When you see him, you see me. And his word is my word.”

Ministry in Taiwan

Witness Lee moved to the island of Taiwan in May 1949. Lee officially began his work in August of the same year with very few believers and churches under his ministry. In just one year, the number of believers increased thirtyfold and within five to six years, the number increased to over 40,000. Back in Taiwan, Lee conducted conferences and trainings for the churches on a yearly basis. Beginning from 1951 he also held a formal training for his ministry co-workers. Furthermore, in answer to Watchman Nee’s charge to him concerning the publication work, Lee began to put out books under The Taiwan Gospel Book Room, which at that time was recognized by the public as the publisher of Watchman Nee’s work outside of China (there was also the Shanghai Gospel Book Room and the Hong Kong Gospel Book Room for the publication work in China and Hong Kong, respectively). Furthermore, Lee put out a magazine called The Ministry of the Word which continued for 415 issues from 1950 until 1986.

Beginning in 1950 Lee traveled yearly to the Philippines and stayed there for three to four months at a time to establish churches there. Over one hundred churches were raised up in the Philippines through his ministry.

Going West

The beginning of Lee’s work in the west was initiated by invitations he received to conduct trainings and conferences in London, England and Copenhagen, Denmark from April to October of 1958. Between 1958 and 1961, Lee visited the United States three times. In 1962, he felt that the Lord was leading Him to move to Los Angeles. In December of 1962, Lee held his first conference in Los Angeles in English. The conference messages were later published as a book called ‘’The All-Inclusive Christ.’’ In the following years, Lee was invited by many Christian groups throughout the United States to speak to them.

Throughout the 1960’s, Lee held a number of shorter conferences and longer informal trainings both in Los Angeles and in other cities across the United States. His messages were printed in a small magazine called ‘’The Stream.’’ Lee also founded Stream Publishers in 1965, later named Living Stream Ministry.

In 1974 Lee moved to Anaheim, California where he began to hold formal, ten-day international trainings twice a year. At the same time he began to hold weekly meetings in southern California. He used both of these occasions to expound the Bible book by book beginning with the Life-Study of Romans (December 1974) and Genesis (1974-1978). The Life-Study series of the New Testament was completed in December 1984 with the book of Acts and the Life-Study series of the Old Testament was completed with books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs in December 1994. During this time, Lee wrote extensive outlines, footnotes, and cross references for all the books of the New Testament. These were eventually incorporated into a new translation of the New Testament, the Recovery Version, which was published in Chinese in 1987 and in English in 1991.

Witness Lee traveled extensively during these years. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lee visited many places in the United States, Canada, the Far East such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan. He also visited several parts of South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Europe, and Israel.

In 1976, Lee supervised the building of a meeting place in Anaheim which would serve as the meeting place for the church in Anaheim as well as the office and conference center of Living Stream Ministry. Lee also supervised the building of a second conference and publishing center in Irving, Texas in 1981-1982. These two facilities enabled him to conduct his trainings and his publication work in an uninterrupted way.

The "God-ordained way"

In the mid-1980s, Witness Lee felt that the rate of increase in the churches was too slow. Unsure of the way to proceed, he traveled to Taiwan in 1984 to further study the problem. Eventually, he felt there should be a shift away from big meetings with one person speaking to an emphasis on small meetings in homes, as seen in Acts 2:46.

The result of his labor was “the new way”, or as he later referred to it, the "God-ordained way." Lee felt that by practicing the God-ordained way, the churches could be brought back to the Biblical pattern for carrying out God's New Testament economy while also combating the perceived degradation and oldness that had crept into the local churches. According to Witness Lee, the God-ordained way consists of four major steps:

The first step of the God-ordained way is to fulfill the New Testament priesthood of the gospel to seek, visit, and contact sinners for God's salvation to make the sinners organic members of the Body of Christ and offer them to God as the New Testament sacrifice (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9).

The second step is to nourish and cherish the newborn babes in Christ in home meetings as nursing mothers (1 Thes. 2:7).

The third step is to perfect the saints by mutual teaching in group meetings for the work of the ministry to build up the organic Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12-13).

Finally, the fourth step of the God-ordained way is the prophesying by all the saints in the church meetings for the direct and organic building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the processed Triune God (1 Cor. 14:1-5, 23-26, 31, 39a).

— book, Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, by Witness Lee, Chapter 10, Section 4

Witness Lee spoke extensively about the God-ordained way beginning from about 1990 and continued to do so for the remainder of his life.

The "High Peak" of Lee’s Ministry

In February 1994, Lee began to release what he called “the high peak of the divine revelation.” This focused on what he called God’s economy, which is to make the believers God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Other major topics he released were on “the New Jerusalem, the complete salvation of God with its judicial and organic aspects, the full ministry of Christ in His three divine and mystical stages, and the incorporation of the believers with the consummated Triune God.” (Lee uses the word “incorporation” in the sense of persons indwelling one another, also known as coinhering.) He began a series of expositions of the Bible called “The Crystallization-Study of the Books of the Bible,” of which he only completed James, Song of Songs, John and Romans before his death. On the side of practice, Lee continued to encourage the practice of the new way locally and the fellowship among the churches and believers globally.

Death

It was during the “high peak” of his ministry in 1994 that Lee became sick with prostate cancer. On May 30, 1997, Lee was hospitalized due to complications with his cancer. The last conference he gave was in February 1997. On Monday, June 9, 1997, at 9:30 AM, Witness Lee died. His last word to the world and to his Lord was “sacrifice.”

Teachings of Witness Lee

God

Firstly, God is uniquely one in essence, or substance, and distinctly three in hypostases, or persons. The three of the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—are eternally distinct, but They are never separate from one another, and They never act independently. Such a Triune God is the Father in Christ as the Spirit to be the life and life supply to the believers.

Secondly, the Triune God has been “processed and consummated.” In His eternal existence God is unchanging, but in His economical, or outward, move the Triune God underwent, in Christ, the processes of incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension to be consummated as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor 3:17) to dwell in the believers.

Thirdly, the processed and consummated Triune God dispenses Himself into His chosen people to regenerate them with His divine life (1 Pet. 1:3), transform them according to His divine nature (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18), and ultimately glorify them with His divine glory (Rom. 8:30), thereby making them the same as He is in life, nature, and expression.

The fourth item related to God is the matter of God’s New Testament economy (1 Tim 1:4), which is God's plan or way to accomplish His eternal purpose by dispensing His very being into His chosen people (Eph. 3:8-11) to consummate the New Jerusalem as the mutual abode of the Triune God and the tripartite man (Rev 21:3, 22) for His full expression in eternity.

Christ

Concerning Christ, Lee firstly taught that the living Christ was versus dead religion. Secondly, Christ as the Head of the Body (Col.1:18) is not merely the Leader of and pattern for the church but more intrinsically the very person of the church, out from whom all the Body has its existence, living, and work (Eph. 4:16; Col. 2:19). Thirdly, Christ’s full ministry in the three stages of His incarnation, His inclusion, and His intensification, through which ministry God accomplishes in full His eternal economy according to His heart’s desire. In the stage of His incarnation Christ brought God into man, expressed God in humanity, and accomplished our judicial redemption, effecting for the believers the forgiveness of our sins (Col. 1:14), our justification before God (Rom. 4:25; 5:18), our reconciliation to God (Rom. 5:10), and our positional sanctification (Heb. 13:12). In the stage of His inclusion, through His resurrection Christ was designated the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29), became the all-inclusive, compound, life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), and regenerated all His believers to be the many sons of God (1 Pet.1:3). In the stage of His intensification, He as the life-giving Spirit is intensified to be the seven Spirits of God (Rev. 1:4; 5:6) to deal with the degradation of the church by intensifying His organic salvation, producing the overcomers, and consummating the New Jerusalem for eternity.

The Spirit

Witness Lee taught Christ has become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), the reality of Christ in resurrection (John 14:16-20). Second, while the Spirit is eternally one (Eph. 4:4), in the age of the church’s degradation the function and working of the Spirit are intensified “sevenfold” for the completion of God’s economy. Third, Lee described the Spirit in full as the all-inclusive, compounded, life-giving, indwelling, sevenfold intensified, and consummated Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God. This description abstracts major truths pertaining to the Spirit revealed in the New Testament. Fourth, the experience of Christ as the Spirit ushers the believers into the divine and mystical realm of the consummated Spirit and the pneumatic Christ, where the believers enjoy and experience what the Triune God is. Today, Christ as the life-giving Spirit is ministering to the believers things that are not physical (and not even merely spiritual) but divine and mystical, and He is bringing the believers into a realm that is divine and mystical.

Salvation

The judicial aspect of God’s complete salvation was accomplished by Christ’s death on the cross for God’s judicial redemption so that we might be forgiven before God, washed, justified, reconciled to God, and sanctified unto God positionally. Having been judicially redeemed and reconciled to God, the believers now enjoy the organic aspect of God’s salvation which is being carried out in Christ’s life (Rom. 5:10), which has been made available to the believers via the life-giving Spirit. In such an organic salvation the believers are regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed to Christ's image, and ultimately glorified to fully express the divine life they received by regeneration.

Life

Following his senior co-worker, Watchman Nee, Lee defined life as the processed Triune God being dispensed into the transformed, tripartite man (1 Thes. 5:23; Rom. 8:10, 6, 11). This dispensing transforms man into the glorious image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18) so that man may become God’s expression.

Lee stated that the Bible begins with the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) and ends with the tree of life (Rev. 22:2). The line of the tree of life is always versus the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Another major emphasis in Lee’s ministry was the experience and enjoyment of Christ by spiritually eating and drinking Him (John 6:54-58). Because Christ is the life-giving Spirit today, the believers can practically and actually enjoy Him as their life and life supply. Lee, along with many other Christian figures, said the best way to eat the Lord is to “pray-read” His Word, that is, to receive the Word of God by means of all prayer (Eph. 6:17-18). He also taught that the simplest way to enjoy Christ is to call on His name based, in part, on the Biblical truth that no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). Lee emphasized that calling on the Lord was practiced by both the Old Testament figures (Gen. 4:26; 12:8; Isa. 12:3-4; Lam. 3:55) and the New Testament Christians (Rom. 10:12-13; 1 Cor. 1:2) and that Saul of Tarsus, before his conversion, identified a person as a Christian by his calling on the name of the Lord (Acts 9:14, 21). Furthermore, because Christ is the life-giving Spirit, or Pneuma (the word for “breath” in Greek), the believers in Christ can breathe the Lord. Actually, calling on the Lord is both a drinking (Isa. 12:3-4) and a breathing (Lam. 3:55-56).

The Believers

In his teaching, Lee showed from the Bible the organic union between the regenerated man and the processed Triune God (1 Cor. 6:17) and that the relationship with the Triune God is more than a union; it is a mingling of the processed Triune God with His redeemed people. In this mingling God’s identity as God and the believers’ identity as man are distinctly preserved. The following definition of mingling can be found in Meriam-Webster: "to bring or mix together or with something else usually without fundamental loss of identity." In Lee's words, "Although these two elements [divinity and humanity] are mingled, the essence of each element remains distinct, and a third element is not produced. This is the correct understanding of mingling."

In God’s economy man becomes God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Lee taught that because the believers are begotten of God (John 1:13; 1 John 5:1) with His divine life and are partakers of His divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4), the believers become what He is in life, nature, expression, and function.

One of Lee’s ultimate teachings was, what he termed, the universal, divine-human incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers. God in His divine Trinity is an incorporation (John 14:10-11), and the goal of God’s economy is to bring the regenerated, transformed, and glorified elect into an incorporation with the Triune God, whereby the believers and God become one forever (John 14:20; 17:21, 23). This is what Lee called the “high peak of the divine revelation.” Lee intended “incorporation” to refer to persons indwelling one another, that is, coinhering. God in His Divine Trinity is an incorporation by coinhering mutually and by working together as one; the three of the Trinity are an incorporation by what They are and by what They do (John 14:10-11) Also note that to coexist is to exist together at the same time. To coinhere is to exist in one another, to dwell in one another. To say that the Father and the Son coexist means that They exist together, but to say that the Father and the Son coinhere means that They dwell in one another.

Lee said that the full experience of God’s organic salvation equals reigning in Christ’s life (Rom. 5:17). In this age, the believers can reign over sin and death by the full experience and enjoyment of Christ as life, and ultimately, in the New Jerusalem, the believers will reign in life with God forever (Rev. 22:5).

The Church

The church is the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23; Col 1:24). As such, it is an organism (John 15:1-8) and not an organization. The church is also the new man composed of the redeemed and regenerated believers from the two peoples of mankind, the Jews and the Gentiles. Those who formerly were enemies by nature, Christ has reconciled in His own body through the cross, forming the two into one new man and making peace between them (Eph. 2:15-16). Lee taught that one of the results of Christ’s work on the cross was to abolish the ordinances that divided the Jews and the Gentiles, thus opening the way for the genuine blending of all the believers in the one new man.

Lee also taught that the church as the fullness of Christ results from all the believers enjoying the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). The riches of Christ enjoyed by the believers become the fullness of Christ for His expression. The church is also the increase of Christ as the bride of Christ (John 3:29). It is the counterpart of Christ, and it matches Christ. Lee also taught concerning the organic building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God. The universal vine with its branches (John 15:1-8) is a figure of the Body of Christ, which is the reality of this organism of the Triune God. Lee taught that, in its highest definition, the church is the issue of the dispensing of the processed Trinity and the transmitting of the transcending Christ (Eph. 1:22).

Lee's teaching often emphasized that the church, which is the result of the universal dispensing of Christ, is expressed in every locality or city as the local churches. These local churches are the lampstands standing on the ground of locality to express the one unique Christ. Lee stated that the local churches are the process, the procedure, while the one Body of Christ is the unique goal. The Lord's desire to build up the church and the distinction between the universal church, composed of all the believers everywhere throughout history, and the local church, composed of all the believers in a given locality, are hallmarks of Lee's teachings regarding the church. He explains:

In Matthew 16:18 the Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build My church.” The Lord's word here refers to the building of the universal church. The Lord wants to build the church in the universe upon Himself as the rock, but His building is done through the local church. If the Lord did not build the local church, He would have no place to start His building of the universal church. We must consider this: if there is no building of the local church, how can there be the building of the universal church? If we put aside the local church, there would be no universal church. Therefore, the local church is the reality and the practicality of the universal church. Even the Lord's building of the universal church is gained through His building of the local church.

— Witness Lee, The Testimony and the Ground of the Church, Chapter 11, Section 3

Church Practice

Lee's teaching concerning church practice is notable for its emphasis on following the Biblical pattern revealed in the New Testament rather than established tradition. This is prevalent in Lee's teaching concerning how to have the 'church life':

The scriptural way to meet and to serve is in contrast to the traditional way. In chapter four we saw that the traditional way to meet and to serve is natural, fitting man's natural and fallen condition, not requiring man to be living and in the spirit, religious, and adopting the way of human society for religion. In contrast to this, the scriptural way to meet and to serve is spiritual, fitting the taste of the living and spiritual man, and requiring man to be living and in the spirit.

— Witness Lee, The Scriptural Way to Meet and to Serve for the Building Up of the Body of Christ, Chapter 6, Section 1

Lee also emphasized the importance of Biblical practices such as the breaking of bread and baptism by immersion. The goal of such practices was to bring the church members back to the scriptural way to carry out the church life and to help all the believers to function properly as living members of the Body of Christ. Lee's teaching of how to have the church life often stressed the need for all the believers to speak one by one (1 Cor. 14:26,31) in the meetings, that is, to prophesy. Lee pointed out that prophesying, as revealed in the New Testament, particularly 1 Corinthians 14, "does not mainly mean to predict, to foretell. To prophesy primarily means to speak something for God and to speak forth God to others, to speak, to dispense Christ into others."

Lee also taught that there are four vital practices necessary for the building up of the Body of Christ—begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building. First the local church members need to lead sinners to Christ that they might be begotten of God (1 Cor. 4:15). Then these new believers need to be “nourished,” fed spiritually in a personal way with the divine supply from the Scriptures (1 Thes. 2:7; John 21:15). As the new believers grow spiritually, they must be perfected in the truth and in their function in the Body. Ultimately, every believer must be brought into the same work of building up the Body according to the pattern in Ephesians 4:12 and 16. Practically speaking, this organic building work consummates in all the members being perfected to prophesy for the building up of the Body of Christ.

The Basis for the Believers' Oneness in the Church

Lee, following Watchman Nee, taught that the church as the Body of Christ has two aspects: the universal aspect and the local aspect. According to Lee, the universal aspect of the church was presented by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 16 and by the apostles in the Acts and the Epistles (1 Cor. 12:3). The local aspect was presented by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 18 and by the apostles in Acts (8:1; 13:1; 14:23), the Epistles (Romans 16:1; 1 Cor. 1:2; Galatians 1:2), and Revelation (1:14).

Lee, again following Nee, taught that the proper expression of the universal Body of Christ in a particular locality, or city, begins with the believers in a particular locality practicing to meet as the church in that locality (for example epistles of the apostles addressed to "the church in Ephesus", "the church in Corinth", "the church in Thessalonica...") having only one eldership in each city (with many elders) (Titus 1:5, Acts 14:32) and accepting all believers in Christ as members of the church in each city regardless of racial, cultural, social, doctrinal or observational differences as long as they hold the common faith. Thus the "ground" upon which the believers meet is not a particular doctrine, race, tradition, etc., but simply the city in which they reside. Nee called this practice meeting on "the ground of oneness." Lee continued to teach this after being sent by Watchman Nee to continue the ministry outside of mainland China in 1949.

The believers meeting in this way may declare that "we are the church," with the understanding that the "we" is inclusive of all believers and not exclusive.

"The church is expressed on this earth in localities, and where there is an expression of the church, that expression must be one. Let us be simple. Let us not be complicated by the confusion in Christianity. It is a shame to ask people what church they belong to. If someone is a brother, that is all we need to know. I belong to the church, and you belong to the church. We all belong to the church."

According to Lee, "every local church should receive all kinds of genuine believers in Christ" and that having a name, such as Baptist, Methodist or Catholic, causes a believer to separate himself from the other believers in his city that do not share his special designation. Taking a name was thus considered to be divisive and contrary to the oneness all the believers have inherited in Christ.

"If a believer prefers to keep the Sabbath whereas we take the Lord's Day, or if he eats only vegetables whereas we eat every kind of food, we still must receive him. We must receive him because God has received him (Rom. 14:3) and because Christ has received him (Rom. 15:7). We must receive every believer in Christ according to Christ (Rom. 15:5)." "If a church does not receive all kinds of genuine believers, it is divisive and becomes a sect." "Therefore, although we should practice things such as baptism by immersion, the presbytery, and head covering, we should not make these things a special item that divides us from others. Furthermore, we should not make them our creed, and we should not designate ourselves by a name, such as Lutheran, Baptist, or Presbyterian, that is according to a particular teaching or practice."

The New Jerusalem

Lee taught that the New Jerusalem "is the finalization of the completed divine revelation of the entire Scripture—the aggregate of the fulfillment of all the prophecies, types, figures, and foreshadows." He often stressed that the New Jerusalem is not a physical city, but rather a sign (Rev. 1:1), a symbol with spiritual significance. Lee asserts that he was helped by the writings of others, particularly Gerhard Tersteegen and T. Austin-Sparks to see the real spiritual significance of the New Jerusalem.

In Lee's teaching, the New Jerusalem is "the full mingling of the Triune God with His redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people." Lee refers to the meal offering in Leviticus 2:4 as representative of this mingling, noting that, while the fine flour, representing man, is mixed with the oil, representing God, both remain distinct. As a composition of divinity (the Triune God) mingled with humanity (all the believers), the New Jerusalem is the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:9) and the tabernacle of God (Rev. 21:3). Lee's ministry on the New Jerusalem was very comprehensive, including an in-depth analysis of all the details mentioned in Revelation chapters two and three with their practical applications. However, an adjoining theme was Lee's emphasis that the New Jerusalem, as the last and greatest sign in the Bible, is both the goal and result of all of God's work:

The New Jerusalem is a sign of the aggregate of the result of God's work of the new creation in all the dispensations within the old creation.

— Lee, Witness, Conclusion of the New Testament, The Msgs. 254-264, Chapter 4, Section 2

Hebrews 11:10 tells us that God is the Architect and Maker of the holy city, the New Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22a; Rev. 21:2). This indicates that God is the Builder of the New Jerusalem. This building work of God began in perfecting the Old Testament saints, beginning with the patriarchs in the old dispensation. It continues more intensively in producing the matured believers in the new dispensation. Actually the entire Bible is a full record of God's work in building the New Jerusalem as His complete manifestation for His full expression in eternity...

— Lee, Witness, Conclusion of the New Testament, The (Msgs. 001-020, Chapter 20, Section 3

Witness Lee's View of Christianity

Witness Lee was generally critical of traditional Christianity as a system while also stressing the need to accept all believers based on what he taught was the common faith (Titus 1:4, Jude 3) similar in verbiage to the Apostle's Creed. The two quotes reproduced below help to illustrate this:

This degraded religious system [of Christianity] takes the natural, human, traditional, cultural, and religious way. Humanly speaking, religion is a good thing, but spiritually speaking it is something against God's economy. God does not want a religion, but He surely wants to see His economy accomplished. We are not here for religion but for God's economy, which is to propagate His completed Christ to produce the church as the Body of such a Christ.

— Witness Lee, The God-ordained Way to Practice the New Testament Economy, Chapter 3, Section 2

The church includes all those who share the common faith that saves us, the one faith spoken of in Ephesians 4:5. This faith is held in common by all who are saved (2 Pet. 1:1). This faith causes the believers to be one and does not divide them. Any creed or system of teaching that goes beyond the common faith divides the believers.

— Witness Lee, Crucial Truths in the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 6, Chapter 1, Section 7

Witness Lee's teaching regarding Christianity was punctuated by, primarily, criticism of what he saw were unscriptural practices, such as the use of denominating names and the clergy laity system. Nevertheless, Lee emphasized the need for oneness among all Christians throughout his ministry and his definitive book on the subject is perhaps "The Speciality, Generality, and Practicality of the Church Life."

Works

Key Publication Works

Much of Witness Lee's spoken messages have been published into over 400 different publications in over fourteen different languages, all published by Living Stream Ministry. Perhaps Witness Lee's most important publication work is his The Life-Study of The Bible, which comprises over 25,000 pages of commentary on every book of the Bible from the perspective of the believer's enjoyment and experience of God's divine life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Lee began another major work, Crystallization-Study of the Bible, using messages designed to take a look at the high points, or "crystals", of each book of the Bible. However, Lee died before completing this work.

Witness Lee was the chief editor of a new translation of the New Testament into Chinese, which he called the Recovery Version (Chinese). He also directed the translation of the English Recovery Version.

Witness Lee wrote, collected, and translated Christian hymns. From 1963 to 1964, Witness Lee wrote the lyrics to about 200 new hymns which he collated with hymns from other authors. He categorized them by topic for the current edition of Hymns, totaling 1348.

Radio Broadcasts

A radio broadcast of his messages can be heard on Christian radio stations in the United States, typically under the program name "Life-study of the Bible with Witness Lee". The same messages have been made available in podcast form at http://pneumamedia.org.

See also

• Watchman Nee
• The Local Churches
• Living Stream Ministry
• Recovery Version

External links

• Life and Work of Witness Lee
• Life and Work of Watchman Nee
• Published Works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee
• Publications and Biographies of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee
• Online Recovery Version Bible
• Free Recovery Version Bible
• An Oral History of Witness Lee in America - By James Barber (.mp3 Format, 89min, 10.2Meg)
• My last conversation with Brother Witness Lee from Kerry S. Robichaux
• Christian Research Institute Journal on Witness Lee and the local churches
• An Open Letter Concerning the Teachings of Witness Lee