Witness Lee

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Witness Lee (李常受, pinyin Lǐ Chángshòu) (1905-June 9, 1997) was a Chinese Christian preacher and church leader associated with the Local churches movement and Living Stream Ministry. He was born in Chefoo, Shandong Province, China, in 1905, to a Southern Baptist family. He converted to Christianity in 1925 after hearing the preaching of Peace Wang, and almost immediately came under the influence of Watchman Nee. He became a full-time co-worker of Nee in 1933, and moved to Shanghai to be with Nee in 1934. In the late 1940s as the Communists were advancing in China, Witness Lee was sent by Nee to Taiwan in order to continue their ministry there. During the 1950s, Lee worked with T. Austin-Sparks who held conferences with him in Taiwan in 1955 and 1957. However, although they were united in their views on Christ as life to the believers, they differed sharply on their views of the church, with Witness Lee teaching and emphasizing one-city one-church, and Austin-Sparks emphasizing the independence of individual congregations.

Witness Lee's ministry emphasized the experience of Christ as life and the practical oneness of the believers as the Body of Christ. Stressing the importance of attending to both these matters, he led the churches under his care to grow in Christian life and function. He was unbending in his conviction that God's goal is not narrow sectarianism but the Body of Christ. In time, believers began to meet simply as the church in their localities in response to this conviction. These local churches were soon established throughout all the Western hemisphere. In recent years a number of new churches have been raised up in Russia and in many eastern European countries.

1 Biography
2 "The Lord's recovery"
3 "One in Christ"
4 Controversy
5 External links
- 5.1 Supporting Witness Lee
- 5.2 Critical of Witness Lee

[edit] Biography

Born in 1905 in northern China, he was raised in a Christian family. At age 19 he was converted to Christ and immediately consecrated himself to preach the Gospel for the rest of his life.

Early in his service, Witness Lee met Watchman Nee, a renowned preacher, teacher, and writer. Witness Lee labored together with Watchman Nee under his direction. In 1934 Watchman Nee entrusted Witness Lee with the responsibility for his publication operation, called the Shanghai Gospel Bookroom.

In 1949, Witness Lee was sent by Watchman Nee and his other co-workers to Taiwan to insure that the things delivered to them by the Lord would not be lost. Watchman Nee instructed Witness Lee to continue the former's publishing operation abroad as the Taiwan Gospel Bookroom, which had been publicly recognized as the publisher of Watchman Nee's works outside China. Witness Lee's work in Taiwan manifested the Lord's abundant blessing. From a mere 350 believers, newly fled from the mainland, the churches in Taiwan grew to 20,000 in five years.

In 1962 Witness Lee felt led of the Lord to come to the United States, settling in California. During his 35 years of service in the U.S., he ministered in weekly meetings and weekend conferences, delivering several thousand spoken messages. Much of his speaking has since been published as over 400 titles. Many of these have been translated into over 14 languages. He gave his last public conference in February 1997 at the age of 91.

Witness Lee died in June 1997 in Southern California.

[edit] "The Lord's recovery"

Among themselves, Lee's followers in Christ call their movement "the Lord's recovery." Lee believed that one of the primary items in which God used both Nee and himself to recover was the need of all believers in Christ to be in oneness, and the practical expression of this oneness is realised in the practice of all believers in their city to meet as the church in their locality (e.g. epistles of the apostles addressed to the church in Ephesus, the church in Corinth, the church in Thessalonica, etc.) The term "Lord's recovery" among these christians refers to God's move to produce the practice of the Local churches. Witness Lee believed it could be traced back at least to Martin Luther and the reformers, and continued through others such as Madame Guyon, Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian Brethren, John Nelson Darby, and the Plymouth Brethren, as well as themselves. In many instances during spoken messages, Lee taught that "The Lord's Recovery" began as the move of the Holy Spirit beginning with the degradation of the churches in the first century in order to keep the testimony of the one Body of Christ and the testimony of the fact of the ressurection (cf. 1 and 2 Timothy, John 17:21). In essence, Lee taught that the very incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and propagation of Christ is the Lord's "recovery" of fallen man back to God the Father's purpose in creating man.

[edit] "One in Christ"

Although both Nee and Lee taught that, doctrinally, all Christians are one in Christ, they also strongly advocated the teaching that all Christians should also be practically one by having only one eldership in each city (with many elders) and accepting all believers in Christ as members of the church in each city regardless of racial, cultural, social, doctrinal or any other differences. Nee called this practice meeting on "the ground of oneness" (see Local churches), and Lee carried on in this after being sent by Nee out of China. Because of the unwillingness of other Christian organisations to accept this practice of oneness, they distanced themselves from Nee and Lee both in and outside of China. This could be said to form the source of criticism, even to the extent of labelling Nee and Lee as cultic in order to justify the rejection of such aspects of their teaching. Faced with such rejection, however, this did not diminish the ministry of the local churches, as they consider the standing to be more important to Christ than acceptance and validation through compromise in modernistic, sectarian christianity.

[edit] Controversy

Some aspects of Nee's and Lee's ministry are considered to be controversial by some Christians. For example, Nee's teaching of the "ground of locality" was not accepted by mainstream Christianity (in part because it called into question the division of the church into denominations).

Lee's distinctive view of the Trinity has been condemned by some apologists as being modalistic, which accusations he and others have strongly denied and sought to refute. Local church members respond that the modalist concept is not found in Witness Lee's teachings, but only in the accusations of others (statement of teachings[1]).

In a move without regard for contemporary acceptance, Lee declared that God became man in Jesus so that man could express God in Christ (in the life and nature of God, but not in His Godhead). Followers of Witness Lee generally respond to these charges by arguing that many passages in the Bible support their beliefs. For example, to demonstrate their belief that "man expresses God in Christ," they cite John 1:12-13[2], John 10:34 [3] and 2 Peter 1:4 [4], as well as verses in Corinthians and Ephesians.

It is important to note that Witness Lee's "writings" are usually compilations of transcripted and edited texts of his spoken messages to congregations. Some criticisms invariably thus focus and expound on particular quotes deemed heretical by critics. In so doing, a single phrase inside a paragraph, when removed from the context of why he spoke (wrote) it, could be interpreted as completely heretical. Unfortunately, this has become a favorite method to attack Witness Lee as being heretical by so-called counter cultists - by taking single quotes completely out of context and using conjecture to bend the minds of their readers against Witness Lee and the local churches - implying that Witness Lee and local church members believe and teach the opposite of what is really their faith.