[aron]

An excerpt from Life Study of Genesis, chapter 114:

"After the Boxer Rebellion, many saints in England prayed desperately for the vast country of China. The Lord answered their prayers by coming in and doing a marvelous work in the colleges throughout the country. Thousands of students, including a good number of brilliant ones, were captured by the Lord, and many of them saw a vision. I was one of these students, and I was very familiar with the situation. Brother Nee was not the only one to see something concerning the church. Many others did also. However, they were afraid to speak of their dream concerning the church. These students were afraid of the missionaries, whose goal was to advance their mission work, their mission church. They were fearful that if they spoke something different from what the missionaries were doing, they would get into trouble. Because of his bold speaking, Brother Nee was betrayed. In the middle 1920s he published twenty issues of a paper called The Christian. In the articles in this paper Brother Nee spoke according to his dream. As a result, people laughed at him, and he got into trouble. The missionaries, teachers, and theologians, all of whom were older than he, disregarded him and opposed him. Brother Nee had seen a vision of local churches in every city throughout China. A quarter century later, his dream was fulfilled. By 1948 there were about five hundred local churches in the provinces of China.

Before Brother Nee's dream was fulfilled, however, he suffered a great deal, not only from outsiders, but even from turmoil stirred up by insiders. Due to this turmoil, his ministry was set aside for a number of years. Brother Nee once told a certain brother that there was no possibility to ever resume his ministry. This is an indication of the severity of Brother Nee's sufferings. He suffered so intensely that he felt that it was impossible for him ever to resume his ministry. But, much to his surprise, the Lord did something in 1948 to restore his ministry. In the forthcoming biography of Brother Nee now in preparation all this will be made clear. As a result of the restoration of Brother Nee's ministry, hundreds of churches were raised up in the cities of China. This was due to Brother Nee's speaking, to his sounding of the trumpet, and to that of a few co-workers who were faithful to him."

Elsewhere, Lee talks about the 'persecution' of Christians in China causing the local churches to come forth. But Lee doesn't mention that this persecution is due to foreign affiliation. The incentive for the native Chinese to dissociate with European churches was very strong. They probably followed Nee not because he was right, but like Constantine before him, he offered a way for the widespread suffering to cease. And once you see everybody else is going, you go too. It's like a hit movie - eventually it gets its own momentum and people go see it because it is popular, not because it's any good.

What follows is an excerpt from The Meaning of the Church, Book 1. pp. 94,95:

"In 1900 thousands of Christians were killed in the Boxer Rebellion. From the human perspective, the church suffered a great deal. But from God's perspective, the church in China was able to travel a long distance in a glorious way. The Boxer Rebellion can be compared to a large camel that was unclean in the eyes of God, yet it functioned as a means of transportation for the church... The reason the churches in China are in their present condition is due to the persecution of Christians in the Boxer Rebellion. Since that time there has been the continual increase of the Lord's testimony in China."

None of the Chinese xenophobia as a backdrop to the rise of the Little Flock (i.e. 'the Lord's testimony') is mentioned by Lee. It isn't helpful to the story of Nee. Plus, the glaring disconnect of an indigenous, nativist movement arising as a reaction to foreign cultural imperialism, but later becoming an imperialist movement itself, and being exported and imposed on people in other lands, might at some point become too big not to notice.