The Universal Church and the Local Churches

Introduction: Watchman Nee was a Christian writer and teacher in mainland China who served the Lord from the time of his salvation in 1920 until his death in 1972. During his long and very fruitful ministry, Watchman Nee was greatly used by the Lord to help many believers know and enter into the experience of numerous biblical truths, many of which had been lost or neglected throughout church history. One of the many precious truths that he saw in the Bible, taught extensively, and recovered in practice was the crucial matter of the local church. He realized that the Bible revealed two distinct aspects of the Church: the universal Church and the local churches. Through much study, prayer, and fellowship with others, Watchman Nee was brought by the Lord into a thorough understanding of these two aspects; furthermore, he came to see that the pervasive ignorance of the local aspect of the Church among God’s children had caused catastrophic damage to their testimony of oneness. He saw that without a proper understanding of the scriptural way for believers in a city to meet together—as the local church—the unique Body of Christ had splintered into division upon division. In an effort to recover the practical oneness of the Church to the biblical standard, Watchman Nee made it a priority of his ministry to bring the believers into the same vision and practice of the local church life that the Lord had brought him into. This was his commission from the Lord, and it was a charge he shared with many co-workers, most notably Witness Lee, who would later bring Watchman Nee’s teachings to Christians across the world through his extensive spoken and written ministry. In this Website we will examine a sample of Watchman Nee’s ministry exemplifying his teachings concerning the universal Church and the local church, chapter four of The Normal Christian Church Life.