The Present State of the Lord’s Testimony (Part 1): From the Plymouth Brethren to Watchman Nee

Gospel outreach doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know what happened to it, but the founder of Gospel Outreach came to visit me. We sat down on a bench at about 1:00 in the morning. I don’t know. It was so cold. I was shaking all over, and he said to me, “Gene, what is your gift?” Because, you know, one thing is to be one. The other one is, “What’s your gift?”, and when you’re here, you’ll use it.” I cannot tell you my exact words, but I can tell you what I was prepared to say because I knew he would ask. And that was, I don’t know what my gift is, but whatever it is, it needs to be broken. Saints, I don’t know what your gift is, but it needs to be broken, and in some cases, it probably needs to be destroyed.

There grew up another one that has been in and out of the institutional church: “the evangelization of the world in one generation”. Now, I think a lot of men really, honestly, genuinely believe that we are here to evangelize the world in one generation. John Armott started it, and many others have followed because it’s usable. The man who did more than anyone else in this world, who wrapped his life around that one hope and statement, was one of the finest men I ever knew, and a brother that I hold in reverence, and that was Bill Bright. He founded Campus Crusade for Christ to harness the energy and lives of college students to take the gospel to the entire world. He raised billions of dollars and trained thousands of staff to evangelize the world. However, on the day we buried him, which was last year, with all of his efforts, the Christian faith’s percentage-wise number was smaller than it was the day he started. We didn’t even get close to keeping up with the world’s population. But it was a churchless movement. It was nothing in the world but to go out and save people.

I don’t know how my Lord feels about this, but I’m going to guess that he’d rather see 100 people in His body, in His church, saved and in them, than 10,000 just saved. I may be wrong. Maybe it is worth the effort to keep people out of hell, for this thing to spread, salvation through His blood, but I can tell you this, it was never the intent of the apostles. You name me one man in the New Testament, including Peter, and every man who was ever anything, with the exception of Apollos. Every one of those men planted churches. If you want to restore something, restore that. We have a quarter of a million, half a million men in the ministry today, and none of them are doing what first-century men did.

Now, I bring down the curtain. The year 1900, and that’s ancient history. Somebody took the torch, and they knew it; they wanted to, and they had a heart burning for it, and that was Brother Watchman Nee. Now, is there anyone in this room who doesn’t owe Watchman Nee something? His writings are peerless. They’re wonderful; they’ve been a great influence. His life has been a great influence. I have lived with his work, “The Little Flock.” I don’t know if you know that or not, but I crossed the Pacific Ocean to live with those people and learn all I could from them. What a testimony. What a people. What a work. I put it right there, and say to you that it was God’s work on this earth. But it had a few problems, saints, and you don’t know these things. Mike, will you please fill in to break in here at any time and correct me if I’m wrong, add or subtract? They started their work in 1935. Now, Watchman Nee was born, I believe, in 1902. That doesn’t work. He had to start earlier than that. No, no, I think I can stay with that. Yeah, I can.

It was overcoming, powerful, and in the heavens. Three things were happening in China at that time. One was a gentleman named Sun Yat-sen, who was preaching democracy for China. That was that philosophical arm. Over here on the other side was Mao Zedong, who was preaching communism, and his first cousin or his second cousin was also a military man, and they fought with one another. They were rivals in their own family, and his name was Chiang Kai-shek. I bet you didn’t know that. All were born at the same time, right around the turn of the century. And then there was Watchman Nee. Thank God there was Miss Barber, too, who balanced him. He had a titanic mind, but he fell completely under the sway of the Plymouth Brethren. The Little Flock is an extension of the Brethren.

He read a book by someone named Raven, of the Brethren, called the Ravenites. The Ravenites taught, and were the first people ever to see this, and yet it’s like a nose on your face: in the first century, there was only one church per city, and it wasn’t a theory. There was only one church per city: to the church in Ephesus, to the church in Corinth, to the church in Laodicea, to the church in Philadelphia, to the church in Colossae, one church…the church in Jerusalem. By the way, there is one of them, one of those churches, still bears till this day its original name, one and only one, and you would never guess which one it is. It’s still called the church in Rome; it’s had a few minor changes, but it’s never changed that name from the very beginning.

Nee came so strongly to one church per city. He also preached on the overcomers and the seven stages of the church. He also returned to the Philadelphia concept, but he really pressed the idea that we can be the Philadelphia church. He was a stronger churchman than the Brethren ever were. He spoke on the ground of unity being the city you’re in, and going back and standing for that original church. There is a church in Jacksonville, Florida, and by the way, I believe the angels acknowledge that. I believe God acknowledges there was one town in this church in this city, and all the rest of us are just being stupid, running around in vain. They are redeemed, and in the pureness of Jesus Christ, we are all just brothers and sisters because we’re redeemed. I believe strongly in one church per city. But you didn’t know that till I just said it.

Now, Nee was so strong on this that the people…and he preached on it so much that they got…and the overcomers, and one church per city, and the Philadelphia church, and Watchman Nee, that his followers began to say, if you do not belong to us, you’re not saved. Now, I will say brother Nee repudiated that, but this I say of him, he took a long, long, long time before he repudiated it. I don’t know if anybody else has observed this, so let me observe it. We have made some really big mistakes. I can tell you that most of them were done by an individual who in no way represented the church. The question is not whether we make mistakes; the question is how long you wait before you sit down and chat, kind of obliquely. And God’s people are not dumb, not stupid. Most of them get the point. It’s how quickly you repudiate or maybe adjust a little bit that is far, far more important than the time span, rather than what you did.

I offer you an imperfect church. I offer you an imperfect work, but I also offer you, in most cases, a short distance between here and there. And now I have to tell you that there are times when you can’t do that. Let’s just say here is somebody who is just doing something outrageous, and a brother comes over here, and he outrages right back. Maybe this brother is just somebody going door to door. He’s not even part of the church, but he was, and this brother over here has been really jumping on his case, and then I’m asked to rebuke that brother. What will I do with that brother? If somebody can tell me what to do with that, brother, I’ll sit at your feet. I don’t know what to do sometimes. Sometimes I don’t know what to do, because the situation is too outrageous. So, I apologize for that. I will tell you this. If you want to handle the case, anybody here unhappy with this situation, you got it. You figure it out. The only thing I would ask you to do is not judge all of us by one of us. The people in India have a saying, and that is, you can judge an entire barrel of rice by one grain. That’s fine for rice. Saints, that doesn’t work for Christians. We are doing what we’re doing at the highest level we can, and still be fallen. Please keep that in mind.

Okay, brother Watchman Nee was so strong on locality, and it became such a doctrine, and then when you give a doctrine up here that big, you begin splitting hairs over it; for instance, they had this long discussion about what about London. So big, so far away. So, they came up with a new teaching: we’ll do it by postal zip code. I’m going to try to explain something almost impossible to explain. Is that two and two, or is that just two? Just two.

He preached at Hardoon Road. A big thing; there were a lot of people there. You don’t know this, but I know the people who met there. I know people who visited that place. I know the visitors and the attendees. Nee was a peerless Bible teacher and pulpiteer, and the people sat and heard him. Now, in the evening, they came together around what they called the Lord’s table.

I leave you at Hardon Road; Brother Watchman Nee, one of the great expositors of the Scripture of all time among Chinese people, hated and despised by Western churches, and persecuted by them, and later annihilated by the communists, or pretty close to it. Let’s talk about what was lacking, which later turned out to be a disaster that came out of it.