Watchman Nee

Watchman Nee, Ni Tuosheng, or Nee T'o-sheng (November 4, 1903 – May 30, 1972), was a Chinese church leader and Christian teacher who worked in China during the 20th century.

His evangelism was influenced by the Plymouth Brethren.

Watchman Nee was born on November 4, 1903, the third of nine children of Ni Weng-hsiu, a well-respected officer in the Imperial Customs Service, and Lin He-Ping (Peace Lin), who excelled as a child at an American-staffed Methodist mission school.

His grandfather was a gifted Anglican preacher.

During a stint at the Chinese Western Girls' School in Shanghai to improve her English, Lin He-Ping met Dora Yu, a young woman who gave up a potential career in medicine to serve as an evangelist and preacher.

Since Nee's parents were both Methodists, he was baptized by a bishop of the Methodist Church as an infant.

In 1916, at age 13, Nee entered the Church Missionary Society Vernacular Middle School in Fuzhou, Fujian province to begin his Western-style education.

He then went on to the middle school at Trinity College in Fuzhou, where he demonstrated great intelligence and ambition.

Among his classmates was Wilson Wang, brother of one of Watchman Nee's good friends, Leland Wang.

The two boys completed college despite severe flooding which brought cholera and plague and hardship to their region.

In the final examinations, the 2 boys scored almost the same marks with Wilson Wang topping the class, followed closely by Watchman Nee in second place.

In the spring of 1920, when Nee was 17, Dora Yu was invited to hold ten days of revival meetings in the Church of Heavenly Peace in Fuzhou.

After Nee's mother attended these meetings, she was moved to apologize to her son for a previous incident of unjust punishment.

Her action impressed Nee so much that he determined to attend the next day's evangelistic meetings to see what was taking place there.

After returning from the meeting, according to Nee's own account:

"On the evening of 28th April, 1920, I was alone in my room, struggling to decide whether or not to believe in the Lord. At first I was reluctant but as I tried to pray I saw the magnitude of my sins and the reality and efficacy of Jesus as the Savior. As I visualized the Lord's hands stretched out on the cross, they seemed to be welcoming me, and the Lord was saying, "I am waiting here to receive you." Realizing the effectiveness of Christ's blood in cleansing my sins and being overwhelmed by such love, I accepted him there. Previously I had laughed at people who had accepted Jesus, but that evening the experience became real for me and I wept and confessed my sins, seeking the Lord's forgiveness. As I made my first prayer I knew joy and peace such as I had never known before. Light seemed to flood the room and I said to the Lord, "Oh, Lord, you have indeed been gracious to me.""

As a student at Trinity College, Nee began to speak to his classmates concerning his salvation experience.

Later, he recounted:

"Immediately I started putting right the matters that were hindering my effectiveness, and also made a list of seventy friends to pray for daily. Some days I would pray for them every hour, even in class. When the opportunity came I would try to persuade them to believe in the Lord Jesus... With the Lord's grace I continued to pray daily, and after several months all but one of the seventy persons were saved."

After his conversion, Nee desired to be trained as a Christian worker.

He first attended Dora Yu's Bible Institute in Shanghai, though he was still a high school student.

However, he was dismissed due to his bad and lazy habits, such as sleeping in late.

Eventually, Nee's seeking to improve his character brought him into close contact with a British missionary Margaret E. Barber who became his teacher and mentor.

Nee would visit Barber on a weekly basis in order to receive spiritual help.

Barber treated Nee as a young learner and frequently administered strict discipline.

In 1922, he initiated church meetings in Fuzhou, Fujian province, that may be considered the beginning of the local churches.

During his thirty years of ministry, Nee published many books expounding the Bible.

He established churches throughout China and held many conferences to train Bible students and church workers.

Following the Communist Revolution, Nee was persecuted and imprisoned for his faith and spent the last twenty years of his life in prison.

When she died in 1930, Barber left all of her belongings to Nee, who wrote:

"We feel most sorrowful concerning the news of the passing away of Miss Barber in Lo-Hsing Pagoda, Fukien. She was one who was very deep in the Lord, and in my opinion, the kind of fellowship she had with the Lord and the kind of faithfulness she expressed to the Lord are rarely found on this earth."

Through Barber, Watchman Nee was introduced to the writings of D.M. Panton, Robert Govett, G.H. Pember, Jessie Penn-Lewis, T. Austin-Sparks, and others.

In addition, he acquired books from Plymouth Brethren teachers like John Nelson Darby, William Kelly, and C.H. Mackintosh.

Eventually, his personal library encompassed over three thousand titles on church history, spiritual growth, and Bible commentary, and he became intimately familiar with the Bible through diligent study using many different methods.

In the early days of his ministry, he is said to have spent one-third of his income on personal needs, one-third to assist others, and the remaining third on spiritual books.

He was known for his ability to select, comprehend, discern, and memorize relevant material, and grasp and retain the main points of a book while reading.

Nee derived many of his ideas, including plural eldership, disavowal of a clergy-laity distinction, and worship centered around the Lord's Supper, from the Plymouth Brethren.

From 1930 to 1935, his movement interacted internationally with the Raven-Taylor group of Exclusive Brethren led by James Taylor, Sr.

This group "recognized" the Local Church movement as a parallel work of God, albeit one that had developed independently.

He was honoured by Christopher H. Smith (R–NJ) in the US Congress on July 30, 2009.