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Witness Lee
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At age 19 he was fully captured for Christ and immediately consecrated himself to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ for the rest of his life. |
Witness Lee (1905 - 1997), a faithful lover and servant of Jesus Christ, labored selflessly and poured out his being for the interest of his Lord. Born in northern China, Witness Lee was raised in a Christian family. At age 19 he was fully captured for Christ and immediately consecrated himself to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ for the rest of his life.
In 1933 Witness Lee began to labor with Watchman Nee, a renowned Christian preacher, teacher, writer, and visionary in China. Watchman Nee clearly saw that God’s eternal purpose to express Himself corporately is accomplished in this age through Christ and the church. Witness Lee was grealty helped by Watchman Nee to see and know Christ as his life (Colossians 3:4). Witness Lee
Witness Lee began to experience… Christ who lived in him. |
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began to experience the subjective aspects of Christ’s death and resurrection: that he had been crucified with Christ; that is, that it was no longer he that lived, but Christ who lived in him (Galatians 2:20). He also realized that in order to subjectively experience the death of Christ, he needed to bear the cross.
In addition, Witness Lee saw, as did Watchman Nee, that he had risen with Christ (Ephesians 2:6) and that the resurrected Christ with the fullness of the Spirit had become his life.
Furthermore, Witness Lee was helped by Watchman Nee to see that the church as the Body of Christ is simply the enlargement, expansion, and expression of the resurrected Christ. Their realization that only Christ in resurrection is the life and content of the church was extraordinarily advanced. Watchman Nee was indeed a seer of the divine revelation in the present age, a revelation which resulted in the Lord’s twofold burden and commission to him: first, to bear a specific testimony of the Lord Jesus, and second, to establish local churches. Witness Lee fully received this same vision as well as this twofold burden and commission.
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This fruit of their labor is the visible overflow of the resurrected life of Christ, whom they lived and ministered to others. |
As a result of the collaboration of these two faithful servants to minister Christ for the building of His Body, by 1949, 400 local churches were built up in China. In 1949, due to the incursion of Communism, Watchman Nee wisely sent Witness Lee to Taiwan to carry on the building work according to the divine revelation they had received, while Watchman Nee remained in China, where he was eventually martyred for the Lord. Through Witness Lee’s diligent labor and unceasing ministry of the Word, within five to six years there were over 40,000 believers meeting in numerous local churches throughout Taiwan.
Both men cared more for life
than work. |
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In 1962 Witness Lee moved to the United States, where he continued to minister the unsearchable riches of Christ to build up His Body. His exposition of the entire Bible book by book during the period from 1974 to 1994, entitled Life-Study, constitutes his major ministry work. He also wrote extensive outlines, footnotes, and cross references for the entire New Testament which were incorporated into a new translation of the Holy Bible, the Recovery Version. As he had done in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he established a publishing facility, Living Stream Ministry, dedicated to disseminating the writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.
In addition to the above-mentioned ministry to the Lord’s children, Witness Lee traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and the world to preach the gospel and shepherd the believers. As a result of the ministries of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, thousands of people have been saved and over 2,000 churches have been raised up worldwide in over 65 nations. The Lord grealty blessed their ministries with the increase and growth of churches worldwide, primarily due to the fact that both men cared more for life than for work. This fruit of their labor is the visible overflow of the resurrected life of Christ, whom they lived and ministered to others.
The Lord builds the church—yet not directly, but through His members. |
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At the Bible’s first mention of the church, the Lord declares that the church needs to be built and prophesies that He is the One who will build it: “I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18). Yet the Apostle Paul later elaborates, “According to the grace of God given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid a foundation, and another builds upon it. But let each man take heed how he builds upon it” ( 1 Corinthians 3:10). Here Paul reveals that he too is a builder, in fact a wise master builder, and that each believer is likewise a builder. Taken together, these verses indicate that the Lord Himself builds the church—yet not directly, but through His members. This truth is confirmed by Ephesians 4:11-16 which reveals that such gifted persons are given by the Lord to the church for “the perfecting [equipping] of the saints [believers] unto the work of the ministry [service], unto the
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“Brother Witness Lee’s virtue lies in his ability to perfect the saints and to usher them all into the service.”
Watchman Nee |
building up of the Body of Christ,” thus “the Body…causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.” Watchman Nee testified of Witness Lee as such a gift to the church for the building of the Body of Christ: “Brother Witness Lee’s virtue lies in his ability to perfect the saints and to usher them all into the service [ministry].” (The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Vol. 60, page 523) Indeed, Witness Lee was also a wise master builder of the church, the Body of Christ, according to the divine revelation in the present age.
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