Biography of Watchman Nee; part one (family,childhood and salvation experience)

THE BIOGRAPHY OF WATCHMAN NEE PART ONE; FAMILY,CHILDHOOD AND SALVATION EXPERIENCE

FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD
Watchman Nee, a faithful servant of God , was consecrated to the Lord even before birth. Desiring a son, his mother had prayed to the Lord, '' If i have a boy, i will present him to you.'' Soon afterward, Watchman Nee was born on November 4, 1903, the third of nine children of Ni Weng-hsiu, a well-respected officer in the imperial customs service, and Lin He-Ping (peace lin), who excelled as a child at an American-staffed Methodist mission school.

During a stint at the Chinese Western Girls school in Shangai to improve his English, Nee met Dora yu, a young woman who gave up a potential career in medicine to serve as an evangelist and preacher.

Since nee’s parent were both Methodist he was batised by a bishop of the Methodist church as an infant.

In 1916, at age 13, Nee entered the church missionary society vernacular middle school in Fuzhou to begin his western style education. He  then went on to the middle school at trinity Fuzhou, where he demonstrated great intelligence and ambition, and consistently scored at the top of his class.

HIS SALVATION EXPERIENCE

In the spring of 1920, when Nee was 17, Dora Yu was invited to hold ten days of revival meeting in the church of heavenly peace in Fuzhou. After the meetings, she was moved to apologise to her son for a previous incident of unjust punishment. Her action impressed Nee so much that he dicided to attend the next day’s evangelistic meetings to see what was taking place there.

 After returning from the meeting, according to Nee’s own account:

On the evening of 28^th April,1920, I was alone in my room, struggling to decide whether or not to believe in the Lord. At first I was reluctant but as I tried to pray I saw the magnitude of my sins and the reality and efficacy of Jesus as the Savior . As I visualize the Lords hands stretched out on the cross, they seemed to be welcoming me and The LORD was saying , ‘’I am waiting here to receive you.’’ Realizing the effectiveness of Christ’s blood in cleansing my sins and the being overwhelmed by such love, I accepted HIM.

 

Previously, I had laughed at people who had accepted Jesus, but that evening the experience became real for me and I wept and confessed my sins, seeking the Lord’s forgiveness. As I made my first prayer and knew joy and peace such as I had never known before. Light seemed to flood the room and I said to the Lord, “Oh Lord, you have indeed been gracious to me”.

Watchmman Nee, Watchman Nee’s Testimony.

After his conversion, Nee desired to be trained as a Christian worker. He first attended Dora Yu’s Bible Institute in Shanghai, though he was dismissed due to his bad and lady habits, such as sleeping in late. So, Watchman Nee attended no theological schools or Bible institutes, yet he acquired an exceptional knowledge concerning God’s purpose, Christ, the Spirit, and the church through his study of the Bible as well as the writings of spiritual men and women. During his early ministry, he spent one-third of his income on books by Christian authors such as D.M. Panton, Robert Govett, G.H. Pember, Jessie Penn-Lewis, T.Austin-Sparks, John Nelson Darby, William Kelly, and C.H> Mackintosh. He was brilliantly gifted in his ability to select, comprehend, discern, and memorize appropriate material. Watchn Nee gleaned all the good, scriptural points from his collection of over 3,000 of the best Christian books. Including nearly all the classical Christian writings from the first century on Nee’s seeking to improve his character brought him into close contact with a British Anglican missionary Margaret E. Barber who became his teacher and mentor. Nee would visit Barber on a weekly basis in order to receive spiritual help. Barber treated Nee as a young learner and frequently administered strict discipline.

When she died in 1930, Barber left all her belongings to Nee, who wrote:

‘’we feel most sorrowful concerning the news of the passing away of Miss Barber in Lo-Hsing Pagoda, Fukien. She was someone who was very deep in the Lord, and in my opinion, the kind of fellowship she had with the Lord and the kind of faithfulness she expressed to the Lord are rarely found on this earth.’’

Through this fellowship with Miss Barber along with his study of the Bible and numerous spiritual books, Watchman Nee received a wealth of revelation. He had the foundational realization that to be a Christian is altogether a matter of the divine life. In fact, his entire ministry testified that he had learned to pay more attention to life than to work. He saw the subjective aspects of Christ’s death and resurrection as well: that he had been crucified with Christ; that it was no longer he that lived, but Christ lived in him. He also realized that in order to experience the death of Christ in a subjective way, he needed to bear the cross. He saw that he had risen with Christ and that the resurrected Christ with the fullness of the Spirit had become his life.

 read also his marriage and ministry (biography part 2)

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