1972 - Watchman Nee

May 30, 1972

Prison, Anhui

Watchman Nee.

Thousands of Chinese Christians have been slain throughout the centuries, but perhaps none as so well-known throughout the world as Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng in Chinese).

Nee was born on November 4, 1903, in the city of Fuzhou, Fujian Province. His God-fearing Christian parents dedicated him as a baby boy for the glory of Jesus Christ and the advancement of the kingdom of God in China. As a youngster, Nee was considered an extremely intelligent student. At Bible school in Shanghai one of his teachers remarked that he never saw Nee take notes, because he was able to retain everything he read or heard. He was also known to read through the New Testament at least once a month. After visiting Shanghai, missionary Charles Barlow commented,

“Some of these dear brethren are very sincere and thirsting for truth. Watchman Nee is undoubtedly the outstanding man among them. He is far beyond all the rest. He…has had a good education and is possessed of marked ability. He is a hard worker and reads much.”[1]

In 1922, at the age of 19, Nee started preaching in his home city. By 1928 he hired a property in Shanghai and held services there, having rejected standard missionary practices as unbiblical and ineffective. The congregation came to be known as ‘The Little Flock’. It grew into a nationwide movement, which by 1949 had over 70,000 members in 500 assemblies. Nee was famous for his dramatic illustrations from the pulpit, some for effect, some out of necessity. Randy Alcorn recalls one incident during the height of Communist persecution:

“Many years ago Ni Tuosheng—Watchman Nee—was asked to speak at a gathering. He knew in the crowd there were many authorities waiting to arrest him as soon as he spoke about Jesus or church. When he stood, there was a glass of water by him. Suddenly he threw it down, then crushed it with his heel. But the more violently he crushed it, the more the glass spread. Everywhere he put his foot down, glass spread farther. The unbelievers thought he had gone mad. But the believers understood. It was a sermon without words…. In attempting to destroy the church, the government has spread it.”[2]

In June 1928 Nee completed the final chapters of The Spiritual Man, “the first and last book he ever sat down and wrote, the rest of his publications all being transcriptions of his preaching and teaching.”[3]

Watchman Nee’s ministry was far from being smooth-sailing. He faced constant criticism from other church leaders over a number of controversial issues. One of them came from Nee’s conviction that each locality should only have one church identity, and that to have numerous denominations and divisions were blights on the unity commanded by Christ. Existing church leaders and missionaries assumed Nee was arrogantly advocating The Little Flock churches as the only true congregations in each location.

He was also heavily criticized in 1942 when he went into business with his brother George (Huai Zu), who was a research chemist. Nee became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the China Biological and Chemical Laboratories. The Little Flock at the time had more than forty “apostles” who travelled throughout China overseeing the churches. They had dire financial needs, and Nee’s motive for entering this business arrangement was to produce funds for the work of the gospel. Instead, the initiative attracted widespread ridicule and rumours from other Christians. The Little Flock’s Shanghai elders, who had been carefully selected and trained by Nee, now turned against him and pronounced him unfit to minister the Word of God.

As the Communist threat overpowered China and it became clear that times of severe persecution were coming for the Chinese Church, Watchman Nee was ministering in Hong Kong. The believers there encouraged Nee not to return to China, but to continue his ministry in Southeast Asia. After much thought and prayer, he decided to return to China and sacrifice everything for the Lord’s work there. He explained,

“If a mother discovered that her house was on fire, and she herself was outside the house doing the laundry, what would she do? Although she realized the danger, would she not rush into the house? Although I know that my return is fraught with dangers, I know that many brothers and sisters are still inside. How can I not return?”[4]

The danger was not long in coming. In 1951 Tianfeng, the official magazine of the Three-Self Church in China, launched a sinister campaign against Watchman Nee and the Little Flock. A disgruntled former member said,

“We have been utterly misled. From its very inception it has been subject to…and strictly controlled by Watchman Nee. It is an organized system of nationwide and occult character. Watchman Nee has an involved secret system for controlling 470 churches all over the country with Shanghai as his administrative base…. The dark mysterious control Watchman Nee exercises over the churches goes quite beyond the sphere of religion. To facilitate his totalitarian control he disseminates anti-revolutionary poison and dominates the thoughts of church members.”[5]

Tianfeng was the official mouthpiece of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in China. Watchman Nee was one of the earliest of a long line of house church leaders slandered and attacked by the magazine. It was a sure sign that the authorities would soon arrest him. In 1952 the Shanghai Liberation Daily published a cartoon mocking and slandering Nee. His stubborn faith had infuriated the government, and it was obvious they would stop at no lengths to silence him. The cartoon depicted

“two levels or floors of a house. On the upper floor people were pressing forward to where a man sat masked on a stepladder, urging them to pour their possessions into a great funnel labelled ‘Render unto God the things that are God’s.’ Every kind of gift was going in, right down to that of the coolie who had stripped off his shirt and the little jacket of his weeping child. On the floor below to which the receptacle extended it was differently labelled: ‘For the work of counter-revolution.’ Here, from the funnel’s outlet a stream of gold and silver, watches and jewellery and money gifts came pouring out at the feet of the admiring Watchman Nee, who relaxed with a prostitute seated in his lap.”[6]

Nee was arrested in the northeast China city of Harbin on April 10, 1952, and was charged as a “lawless capitalist ‘tiger’.” He was handed a huge fine, which he didn’t pay, so the pharmaceutical company he had been involved with was confiscated by the government. Nee was sent to prison and his Bible was taken away. Little is known of his experiences in prison between 1952 and his trial in 1956. It is believed he was offered freedom on numerous occasions if he would agree to lead a government-sanctioned Three-Self Church. He refused.

On January 30, 1956, a large crowd of 2,500 people attended an accusation meeting at the Nanyang Road Church in Shanghai. All of the city’s pastors were required to attend, and many of Nee’s former church members were also present. Numerous false charges were laid against Watchman Nee. No doubt the ones that hurt the most were from former leaders of The Little Flock who had gone over to the Three-Self Church. Like Jesus, Nee was denounced by his co-workers and despised by all men. In June 1956 he was formally excommunicated from his own church, which had by then been almost completely infiltrated by the Communists at the administrative level. On June 21st he was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.

Watchman Nee was sent to the Shanghai First Municipal Prison and placed in a tiny cell measuring 2.7 x 1.3 metres (9 x 4.5 feet). He was allowed to send and receive one letter per month. In 1957 his Normal Christian Life book was published, being a collection of sermons gathered over the years of his ministry. The book became a best seller, blessing millions of Christians around the world. Unbeknown to Nee at the time, he had become like the Apostle Paul, his message being widely read while he was behind bars. In total more than 50 books have been either written by, or about, Watchman Nee. Two titles have sold more than one million copies each.

By 1962 other prisoners reported Nee had become frail and weighed less than 45 kg (100 pounds). He was diagnosed with coronary ischaemia.

Throughout the 1960s numerous rumours and false reports came out of China regarding this man who had influenced millions for Christ. Some of these rumours are still widely believed as fact to the present day. For example, one report stated that “For refusing to stop preaching about Christ, Evangelist Watchman Nee had his eyes gouged out, and his tongue and both hands cut off. He was then sent to a prison in Shanghai.”[7] This was simply untrue.

In the summer of 1971, Watchman Nee’s beloved wife Charity had a heavy fall, fracturing several ribs and suffering a slight stroke. Her condition quickly deteriorated, and she died a few days later. Nee was calm when told the news. Charity had walked through many storms with her husband, and had been arrested and severely tortured in 1966. Her relatives, waiting outside for her, “could hear the lashings of a leather whip amid sounds of threats and abuse. When she emerged from the torture chamber her face was scarred and her eyes swollen.”[8] The Red Guards then proceeded to throw shoes and other objects at them and called out, ‘Your obstinacy will send you to God sooner than you expect.’”[9]

On April 12, 1972, Watchman Nee completed 20 years in prison. His release date had come and gone. China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, and there was no way such a hated man as Watchman Nee would be allowed to re-enter society. Despite being in very poor health he was transferred to the dreaded Baimaoling Prison Labour Camp in Anhui Province, which was to become his final home on this earth. Nee was suffering from angina pectora and was growing weaker by the day. He wrote to his sister in Beijing, explaining that even though his health was poor, “the inward joy surpasses everything.”[10] In another letter he wrote, “I deeply long to return to my own relatives and be with them, just as a falling leaf returns to its roots…. I am seeking a final resting place.”[11]

A short time later, on May 30, 1972, the man of God was granted his desire to be with Christ. Earlier that day the prison authorities finally realized his heart condition was in urgent need of medical attention. Nee was placed “on a tractor to go to the prison hospital some 12 miles (19 km) away. The prisoner was too weak to travel along the rough and bumpy mountain road, and as the tractor jolted to the discomfort of the frail and dying passenger, Watchman Nee died en route.”[12]

There was no official notification of the death of 69-year-old Watchman Nee. The prison authorities took his body and cremated it on June 1st. Even in death the authorities attacked Nee. Rumours were circulated by the Chinese government and Three-Self Church, claiming that Watchman Nee had renounced his faith in prison. This lie was dispelled after Nee’s niece collected her uncle’s few belongings after his death. She found a note under his pillow, which read: “Christ is the Son of God. He died as the Redeemer for the sins of humankind, and was raised up from the dead after three days. This is the most important fact in the world. I shall die believing in Christ. Watchman Nee.”[13]

Long after his death, information started to come out of China from some of Watchman Nee’s fellow prisoners, testifying to the impact he had on their lives. Wu Youqi spent 20 years in prison, some of them as a cellmate of Nee. Wu said, “It was the way he lived that had a great influence on me…. I didn’t become a believer because of what he spoke but because of how he lived. Watchman Nee’s character was different.”[14]

1. Angus Kinnear, Against the Tide: The Story of Watchman Nee (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1987), 110.
2. Randy Alcorn, Safely Home (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 292.
3. Kinnear, Against the Tide, 126-127.
4. Kinnear, Against the Tide.
5. Tianfeng (November 30, 1951).
6. Kinnear, Against the Tide, 281.
7. Foxe, The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 330.
8. Cliff, Fierce the Conflict, 77.
9. Cliff, Fierce the Conflict, 77-78.
10. Leslie Lyall, Three of China’s Mighty Men (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973), 92.
11. Cliff, Fierce the Conflict, 80.
12. Cliff, Fierce the Conflict, 80.
13. Cliff, Fierce the Conflict, 80.
14. “New Information Regarding Watchman Nee’s Life and Testimony During His Imprisonment,” Assist News Service (August 12, 2003).