Witness Lee

2.1. Early Life and Education

Witness Lee was born on September 5, 1905, in Yantai, Shandong Province, China. His great-grandfather was a Southern Baptist who introduced Lee's mother to Christianity. Lee's mother received her education at an American Southern Baptist mission school and was baptized into a Southern Baptist church during her teenage years. She demonstrated her commitment to her children's future by selling her inheritance to ensure they received a comprehensive education in both Chinese and English. Lee's father, a farmer, passed away in 1923.

Lee was exposed to his mother's Baptist Church in Yantai, where he attended a Southern Baptist elementary school. He later continued his studies at a mission college operated by American Presbyterians. Despite his attendance at Southern Baptist services and Sunday school during his youth, Lee did not experience a personal conversion or receive baptism from them during this period.

2.2. Early Christian Journey

Lee's spiritual awakening began through the persistent prayers of his second sister, who had converted to Christianity. She introduced him to a Chinese pastor who frequently visited Lee and encouraged him to attend his Sunday morning services. In April 1925, at the age of 19, Lee was profoundly moved by the preaching of an evangelist named Peace Wang. This experience led him to dedicate the remainder of his life to serving God.

Through the teachings of Watchman Nee, Lee came to believe that denominationalism was unscriptural. This conviction led him to decline a position on the board of the Chinese Independent Church in 1927, and he subsequently left the denomination. Following this, Lee began to associate with the Benjamin Newton branch of the Plymouth Brethren, where he remained for seven and a half years. He was baptized by immersion in the sea in 1930 by a local Brethren leader, Mr. Burnett.

4.1. Ministry in Taiwan

When Witness Lee relocated to Taiwan in May 1949, he began his work with a small number of believers and churches already present on the island. Despite the initial small numbers, his diligent labor and continuous ministry of the word led to a dramatic increase in believers. Within the first year, the number of Christians under his leadership grew more than thirtyfold, and within five to six years, the number expanded from approximately five hundred to over forty thousand, or even over fifty thousand according to some accounts.

Lee initiated annual conferences and trainings for the churches in Taiwan. Starting in 1951, he conducted formal trainings specifically for his ministry co-workers. In response to Nee's instructions regarding publishing, Lee began publishing books through his publishing company, The Taiwan Gospel Book Room, which eventually became officially recognized as the publisher for Watchman Nee's work outside China. He also faithfully published The Ministry of the Word magazine, which ran for 415 issues from 1950 until 1986.

4.2. Ministry in the West and Globally

Witness Lee's outreach to the Western world commenced in 1958 with invitations to conduct conferences in London, England, and Copenhagen, Denmark. Between 1958 and 1961, he visited the United States three times. In 1962, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he held his first English-language conference in December of that year. The messages delivered at this conference were later published as the book The All-Inclusive Christ. In the ensuing years, Lee received numerous invitations to speak to various Christian groups throughout the United States. His messages from shorter conferences and longer informal trainings were printed in a quarterly publication called The Stream magazine, published by Stream Publishers, which was later renamed Living Stream Ministry in 1965.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lee traveled extensively across the United States and Canada. He also frequently returned to the Far East to strengthen and complete the churches in Taiwan. During the 1960s, he often visited the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan. In 1965, he traveled to Brazil and other parts of South America. In 1971, he visited Australia and New Zealand to assist the believers there. In addition to these countries, the 1970s saw him visit South Korea, numerous European nations, and Israel.

In 1974, Lee began conducting formal ten-day international trainings twice a year. He utilized these opportunities to expound on the Bible book by book, starting with the Life-study of Romans in December 1974 and the Life-study of Genesis from 1974 to 1978. The entire Life-study of the Bible was completed in December 1994 with the New Testament portion concluding in December 1984 with the book of Acts, and the Old Testament portion concluding in June 1995 with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. During this period, he also wrote extensive outlines, footnotes, and cross-references for the entire New Testament. These were eventually incorporated into a new translation of the New Testament, the Recovery Version, published in Chinese in 1987, in English in 1991, and in Japanese in 1995, with various other languages following after Lee's passing.

5.1. God and His Economy

Witness Lee taught that God is uniquely one, yet distinctly three: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. These three are eternally distinct, never separated, and never act independently. The Triune God, as the Father in Christ as the Spirit, is life and life supply to believers. God, while unchanging in His eternal existence and life, underwent a process in His economical move to indwell believers. This process included incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension, culminating in His becoming the life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45; 2 Corinthians 3:17). The Triune God dispenses Himself into believers to regenerate them with His divine life (1 Peter 1:3), transform them according to His divine nature (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18), and glorify them with His divine glory (Romans 8:30), making them the same as Him in life, nature, and expression. This dispensing ultimately consummates in the New Jerusalem, which is the mutual dwelling of the Triune God and the three-part man, fully expressing God eternally (Revelation 21:3, 22).

5.2. Christ and His Fullness

Lee taught that the living Christ is distinct from dead religion. Christ, as the Head of the Body (Colossians 1:18), is not merely the Leader of the church but the very Person from whom the Body has its existence, life, and function (Ephesians 4:16; Colossians 2:19). Christ's full ministry, which accomplishes His economy, is carried out in three stages: incarnation, inclusion, and intensification.
In the **incarnation** stage, Christ brought God into man, expressed God in humanity, and accomplished His judicial redemption, which provides believers with the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:14), justification before God (Romans 4:25; 5:18), reconciliation to God (Romans 5:10), and positional sanctification (Hebrews 13:12).
In the **inclusion** stage, Christ was designated the firstborn Son of God through His resurrection (Romans 1:3-4; 8:29), became the all-inclusive, compound, life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45), and regenerated believers to be the many sons of God (1 Peter 1:3).
In the **intensification** stage, He was intensified as the seven Spirits of God (Revelation 1:4; 5:6) to deal with the degradation of the church by intensifying His organic salvation, producing overcomers, and ultimately consummating in the New Jerusalem eternally.

5.3. The Spirit and Life Supply

According to Witness Lee, Christ is the life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45) and the reality of Christ in resurrection (John 14:16-20). While the Spirit is eternally one (Ephesians 4:4), His function and work have been "sevenfold" intensified in the age of the church's degradation for the completion of God's economy (Revelation 1:4; 5:6). This all-inclusive, compound, life-giving, indwelling, sevenfold intensified, and ultimately consummated Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. The experience of Christ as the Spirit leads believers into a divine and mystical realm where they enjoy and experience all that the Triune God is.

5.4. Salvation: Judicial and Organic Aspects

Witness Lee differentiated between the judicial and organic aspects of God's full salvation. The **judicial aspect** of God's full salvation was accomplished through Christ's death on the cross. This aspect ensures that sinners are forgiven, washed, justified before God, reconciled to God, and positionally sanctified into God. Having been judicially redeemed and reconciled to God, believers can now enjoy the **organic aspect** of God's salvation. This organic salvation is carried out in Christ's life (Romans 5:10) and is made available to believers through the life-giving Spirit. In this organic salvation, believers are regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed to the image of Christ, and ultimately glorified to fully express the divine life.

5.5. Believers and the Experience of Divine Life

The relationship between God and His redeemed people, according to Lee, is one of mingling, where the two natures-divine and human-are distinctly preserved. Believers are born of God with His divine life (John 1:13; 1 John 5:1) and partake of His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) to become the same as God in life, nature, expression, and function. God, in His divine Trinity, is an incorporation (John 14:10-11), and the goal of God's economy is to bring His regenerated, transformed, and glorified elect into an incorporation with the Triune God, so that believers and God become one eternally (John 14:20; 17:21, 23). To fully experience God's organic salvation is equivalent to reigning as kings in Christ's life (Romans 5:17). In this age, believers can reign as kings over sin and death by fully experiencing and enjoying Christ as life. Ultimately, in the New Jerusalem, believers will reign as kings with God in life eternally (Revelation 22:5).

Life, in Lee's teaching, is God Himself dispensed into the transformed three-part man (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Romans 8:10, 6, 11). This dispensing transforms man into the glorious image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), thereby enabling man to become God's expression. The Bible begins with the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9) and ends with the Tree of Life (Revelation 22:2), with the line of life always contrasting with the line of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Believers can enjoy Christ by spiritually eating and drinking Him (John 6:54-58). Today, since Christ is the life-giving Spirit, believers can practically and actually enjoy Him as their life and life supply by receiving God's word with all prayer (Ephesians 6:17-18). A simple way to enjoy Christ is by calling on His name (1 Corinthians 12:3), a practice found in both the Old Testament (Genesis 4:26; 12:8; Isaiah 12:3-4; Lamentations 3:55) and the New Testament (Romans 10:12-13; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Acts 9:14, 21). Calling on the Lord's name is both eating (Isaiah 12:3-4) and breathing (Lamentations 3:55-56).

5.6. The Church: The Body of Christ

The church, in Witness Lee's teaching, is the Body of Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:24). As such, the church is an organism (John 15:1-8), not an organization. The church is also the new man composed of all the redeemed and regenerated believers (Ephesians 2:15-16). Christ's work on the cross abolished the ordinances that separated Jews and Gentiles, opening the way for all believers to be truly blended into one new man. The church, as the fullness of Christ, is the result of believers enjoying Christ's unsearchable riches (Ephesians 3:8) and is also Christ's fitting bride and counterpart (John 3:29). In its highest definition, the church is the outcome of the dispensing of the processed Triune God and the transmission of the transcendent Christ (Ephesians 1:22). This church is expressed as local churches.

5.7. Church Life and Practice

Witness Lee emphasized that the biblical way of meeting and serving is spiritual and suited to a living, spiritual person, requiring individuals to be alive and in the spirit, in contrast to traditional methods which he viewed as natural, human, and religious.

He taught that the goal of biblical practices, such as the breaking of bread and water baptism by immersion, is to help believers function as living members of the Body of Christ. Prophesying, as revealed in 1 Corinthians 14, "does not mainly mean to foretell or to predict. To prophesy mainly means to speak for God, to speak God forth into people, and to speak Christ into people and dispense Christ into them."

To build up the Body of Christ, there are four crucial practices: begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building. Begetting involves leading sinners to Christ so they may be born of God (1 Corinthians 4:15). These new believers must then be nourished with the divine supply from the Bible (1 Thessalonians 2:7; John 21:15). As new believers grow, they must be perfected in the truth and in their functioning in the Body. Finally, all believers must be brought into the same work of building up the Body of Christ, following the pattern in Ephesians 4:12 and 16.

The church, as the Body of Christ, has two aspects: the universal aspect and the local aspect. The proper expression of the Body of Christ in a specific locality begins with believers practicing meeting as the church in that locality (e.g., "the church in Ephesus," "the church in Corinth," "the church in Thessalonica"). It also involves having one plurality of elders (Titus 1:5; Acts 14:23) and receiving all believers in Christ as members of the church, regardless of differences in race, culture, social class, secondary doctrines, or observances (Colossians 3:11).

Witness Lee stated that "The church is expressed in the local scopes on this earth, and there is one expression of the church where the expression should be one. Let us be simple. Let us not be complicated by the confusion in Christianity. It is a shame to ask people to what church they belong. If someone is a brother, that is all we need to know. I belong to the church; you belong to the church; we all belong to the church."

5.8. New Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of God's Ultimate Economy

The New Jerusalem, according to Witness Lee, is "the consummation of the completed divine revelation in the entire Bible-the aggregate of the fulfillment of all the prophecies, types, signs, and shadows." It is not a material city but a sign (Revelation 1:1), a symbol with spiritual significance. The New Jerusalem is "the complete mingling of the Triune God with His redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people." As a composition of divinity (the Triune God) mingled with humanity (all believers), the New Jerusalem is the wife of the Lamb (Revelation 21:9) and the tabernacle of God (Revelation 21:3). As the last and greatest sign in the Bible, the New Jerusalem is the goal and result of all God's work.

Witness Lee explained that "Hebrews 11:10 tells us that God is the Designer and Builder of the holy city, New Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22a; Rev. 21:2). This indicates that God is the Builder of the New Jerusalem. This building work of God began with the perfecting of the Old Testament saints, starting with the patriarchs in the old dispensation. It is continued more vigorously in the new dispensation to produce the mature believers. In fact, the entire Bible is a complete record of God's building work, by which God builds the New Jerusalem as His complete manifestation to have His full expression for eternity...."

10.1. Positive Contributions

Witness Lee's ministry is recognized for its positive impact on believers' spiritual growth and the building up of the church. His teachings emphasized a deeper, subjective experience of Christ as life, moving beyond mere doctrine to a practical, daily enjoyment of God. The extensive Life-study of the Bible provided a comprehensive and unique commentary that many believers found enriching for their understanding of the Scriptures. His emphasis on the church as the organic Body of Christ and the practice of "the God-ordained way" aimed to foster a more vibrant and functional church life among his followers. The expansion of the local churches globally, particularly from Taiwan to the Western world, demonstrated the reach and influence of his ministry, leading to spiritual transformation and community building for many adherents.

10.2. Criticism and Controversy

Despite its positive impact, Witness Lee's ministry and the local churches have faced significant criticism and controversy, particularly concerning certain theological interpretations and church governance. Critics have raised concerns about the group's classification within Christianity. Walter Martin, the founder of the Christian Research Institute (CRI), described the local churches as distinct from other groups, noting that while most members are Christians, there are "unscriptural teachings and expressions" within the group. Martin further stated that while the local churches cannot be called a cult in the classical sense, "in some areas of theology and practice, the movement clearly shows cultic characteristics."

Specific criticisms have included:

• Theological Interpretations:** Some critics have questioned certain unique interpretations of biblical doctrines, particularly regarding the Trinity and the nature of Christ, which some mainstream Christian denominations find heterodox or problematic.
• Church Governance and Practices:** The emphasis on the "one ground" of the local church, which rejects denominationalism and claims to be the sole proper expression of the church in a locality, has led to accusations of exclusivism and sectarianism. This stance has sometimes resulted in strained relationships with other Christian groups.
• Leadership Style:** Some former members and critics have raised concerns about the centralized authority within the movement and the perceived authoritarian nature of its leadership, particularly in the later stages of Lee's ministry.

These criticisms have led to ongoing dialogue and debate within the broader Christian community regarding the nature and practices of the local churches and Witness Lee's legacy.