A great revival broke out, not only in Shanghai but in other parts of the country. This continued for several months until something very sad happened.
We were new to this matter of what they called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We were very ignorant. We did many things that were not right, and because of that, some tragic things happened.
When these tragedies happened, we went back to the Lord and sought the face of the Lord. Thank God, we learned a lesson.
The lesson was this: Calvary precedes power.
The cross precedes power. If our flesh is not dealt with, it is dangerous to put power in the hand. But if our flesh is dealt with, then it can be used to the glory of God. That is the lesson we learned painfully at that time.
In 1937, the final Japanese war broke out. In the middle of 1938, Watchman Nee went to London to have fellowship with Brother Fox.
While he was there, he had sweet fellowship with T. Austin-Sparks, one of his kindred spirits. From there, he was invited to go to Denmark.
It was while he was in Denmark that he gave the messages now known all over the world as The Normal Christian Life, Sit, Walk, Stand. These were the messages he gave at that time.
In July 1939, he returned to Shanghai. It was during wartime.
Recognising that the war would be long and that the financial needs of all the workers would be great, he felt—and there were other circumstances that brought him to that decision—that he should go into business, specifically the pharmaceutical business.
He was hoping that the profits of that firm might be used to help the fellow workers. You know, in China, the fellow workers suffered greatly, even in ordinary days, in financial support. In war, of course, it was even more difficult.
One of my fellow workers starved to death because we would not tell anybody our need. Only God knew our need. Some fellow workers drank water for many days.
So Brother Nee went into business with good intentions, but this was a dark spot in his life.
After some time, at the end of 1942, the responsible brothers in the assembly there in Shanghai withdrew his ministry. They would not let him speak.
He told me, “I believe in the sanctity of the church.”
So he retreated. He retreated to a small hill—not the famous Kuling Mountain in central China, but a Kuling hill outside the city of Wuchang.
There he quietly prepared for the future. He began to buy some houses with the intention of training young workers in the future.
During those days, he suffered isolation. He suffered quietly. The work of the cross went deeper into his life. He would not explain, and he would not defend himself.
These hidden years, from 1942 until 1948, were the years in which God was doing a deeper work in his life.
In April 1948, after the war was over, he was invited back to Shanghai to speak to the brothers and sisters there.
At his first address, he said:
“I am like a widow who has many children.
And in order to support them, I remarried.
But my children all rejected me because of that.”
All the misunderstandings disappeared. There was no need to explain or defend himself, and the spirit of unity returned to God’s people. I was there.
Brother Nee began to do what he felt was his life work. He began to have training.
So, in 1948 and again in 1949, there were two sessions of training. Workers—young workers, promising people, responsible brothers and sisters—were gathered together on that mountain for four months of intensive training.
The training was from morning until night: three sessions each day, three hours each session. Brother Nee would speak three hours in one session, another three hours in another session, and another three hours in the third session.
Those who attended the training would each give their testimony, and they tried to help one another after the testimony by pointing out any weakness.
Finally, Brother Nee would, in all faithfulness, tell the brother or sister how he felt before the Lord that something needed to be corrected in that life. It was almost prophetic.
During the course of the second training session, the political situation in China changed. The Communists came over China, and they barely finished the second session by the grace of God.
Then Brother Nee fled to Hong Kong. I was there, and we were together for a few months.
He felt it was his duty to return. We all tried to persuade him not to go there. He knew what would happen to him, but he felt it was his duty. He had to go back. So he went back.
During the first year and a half, there was no interference. The work in China grew by leaps and bounds.
But in April 1951, the government gathered all the Christian leaders to Peking and explained the government policy concerning religion.
The explanation was that, according to the provisional constitution, there was freedom of religion. But this freedom of religion was the privilege of the citizens of the People’s Republic of China.
In other words, if you were a reactionary, anti-revolutionary, imperialist, or enemy of the Republic, then you had no right to freedom of religion.
Immediately, everybody knew what that actually meant.
In April 1952, Brother Nee was ordered to go to Manchuria for some reason. While he was there, he was arrested and put in prison in Harbin.
From 1952 to 1956, the Communist government prepared materials to accuse him. It was not until February 1, 1956, that the government officially announced the arrest of Watchman Nee for the first time.
On June 21 of that same year, he was brought back to Shanghai to be publicly judged. He was accused of many crimes.
One of the accusations was that he was the master spy of a spying organisation. In other words, every assembly was a cell. There were thousands of them in China.
I was told that, during that public meeting, when he was accused of his many crimes, he stood there saying nothing. But when they accused him of being a master spy, he denied it.
He knew that would be the crime charged against him, because there was supposed to be no religious persecution.
He was sentenced to the maximum of fifteen years, and later it was extended five more years, making twenty years. He was imprisoned in the First Municipal Prison in Shanghai.
He was put in solitary confinement for a certain time. Nobody was allowed to see him. After a long while, his wife was able to see him once a month, always under watch.
He was given prison work translating scientific articles in periodicals and books from English to Chinese. That was his work in prison.
Many people asked whether any spiritual writing came out from the prison. He was not allowed.
Before he went to prison, when I was with him back in the thirties, he developed severe heart trouble. He was born with a heart smaller than normal, but his heart enlarged to double the size.
Many nights he sat there; he could not lie down. Oftentimes he was in agony before he stood up to preach. But the Lord kept him, and kept him through twenty years of imprisonment.
In January 1971, he was removed from the First Municipal Prison in Shanghai to the White Cloud Mountain labour camp in Anhui.
His wife passed away in September 1971. On June 1, 1972, the government notified his relatives—his sister-in-law in Peking—to go there to gather his ashes.
Nobody knew how he died. He was supposed to be released in April 1972.
We were told, and we heard, that they still wanted him to write a confession, which he refused.
We know nothing, up to now, of how he died. But one thing we do know: after he died, we received news that our brother was faithful to the very end.
Dear Heavenly Father, we have to tell Thee: Thou alone art worthy. Thou art worthy of all the deaths, all the things throughout the centuries. Thou art worthy of all the living martyrs throughout the centuries, because Thou art worthy.
God, our God, our Lord, our Master, our love, our King, our Lord, we do pray that Thou who art able to form and mould an earthen vessel to Thy heart’s desire, Lord, mayest do it to each one of us here.
Lord, we pray that Thou wouldst remove from us all the resistance and opposition, that Thou mayest be able to mould us and fashion us according to Thy will and to Thy good pleasure.
May Thou be glorified in the church, in Christ Jesus. Amen.