# Watchman Nee



## chuckd (Mar 20, 2012)

I didn't get much feedback on the other thread posted in January. I would really like thoughts on this group. Maybe read Ch. 1 of Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things. I find it disturbing the way he attacks doctrine:
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Neither formula nor method works; only Christ is living. Even if one has learned a whole set of methods, he is not therefore educated to be a Christian, because God’s children must be born, not taught.

How often Christians take the teaching and the interpretations of Christ as truths, though in actuality truth is not the relating of a thing but is the person of Christ.

The word of God states that the truth shall make us free, but how many times truth is merely a doctrine to us.

If all we talk about is doctrine, we are handling something dead.

Work requires our memory, but life acts spontaneously.

By all appearances, this letter looked like one written by a Christian, though we know it was the result of doctrine and not of life._


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## bookslover (Mar 20, 2012)

As I understand it, Watchman Nee (1903-1972), a Chinese Christian who spent the last 20 years of his life (from 1952) in Chinese prisons, was a (mostly - I think he may have had some Pentecostal tendencies) orthodox Christian (though not Reformed, as far as I know) who bravely taught many converts and others in China until his arrest and imprisonment.


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## Scott1 (Mar 20, 2012)

You may find helpful doing a search of previous threads (search, upper right).

It is safe to say, stay away.


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## Jerusalem Blade (Apr 14, 2012)

I would agree with Scott – it's good to stay away from Nee, with qualifications. Though as Richard says, he held forth valiantly against the communists and was a powerful force in the conversion and nurturing of Christians in China, suffering much for his faithfulness to Christ.

The quote you gave, Chuck, I think but speaks against a dry knowledge of doctrine without the vitality of a deep communion with the Lord Jesus.

I was much into Nee three or four decades ago. He was a Plymouth Brethren of sorts; held that only "the local church" – comprised of true believers in a locality, regardless of doctrinal views – was the only true church. He was strongly against any denominations. He wrote a lot on this.

He had this view – written of in his _The Spiritual Man_ book(s) – that one must discern the moving of the Holy Spirit within one's human spirit in order to discern the will of God and walk well with Him. He held to a tripartite view of human nature, as opposed to a bipartite view the Reformed correctly have. His teachings on the place of the human spirit in the walk with God lead souls into a kind of navel gazing ("What is the Spirit doing and saying within me?") that makes a wreck of a healthy walk with Christ. I know this from sad experience.

I went to a church in Queens NYC – back in the late 60s and 70s – that was comprised of many of Nee's friends, both Chinese believers and American missionaries, all of whom left China when the trouble began there, and settled in NYC. They were good people, and were kind to me, a new and raw disciple. They were also being strongly influenced by a Chinese colleague of Nee's, Witness Lee, who settled in Anaheim California and began a local church movement that became very cult-like. Some of his teachings were way off also. Nee's teaching was received by some in the Keswick movement in the UK.

I didn't find a healthy spiritual walk with Christ until I knew the doctrines of grace, and was much influenced by Reformed Baptists, the Dutch Reformed, and the Presbyterians. I stay away from Nee these days!


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## Believer1993 (Apr 14, 2012)

I don't know a lot about Nee myself, but from the above quotes it sounds like Nee is saying that it is not enough to simply _know Christianity. Robert Price knows a lot about Christianity, but he is still dead in his trespasses and sins. I think Nee's point is that doctrine doesn't save, Christ saves. Knowing doctrine can't save you, only knowing Christ will save you._


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## J. Dean (Apr 14, 2012)

If in the quote Watchman Nee meant that intellectual knowledge of doctrine without saving faith in Jesus Christ does not save, then I wholeheartedly agree.

But if he meant that doctrine is irrelevant, then he was sorely mistaken.


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## yeutter (Apr 15, 2012)

Watchman Nee does not seem to depart from orthodoxy in the way his followers did. Witness Lee was a prominent follower of and successor of Watchman Nee. Witness Lee made a number of statements that show attrition to Modalism.


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