Following the Communist Revolution, Nee was persecuted and imprisoned for his faith and spent the last twenty years of his life in prison.

[2] During a stint at the Chinese Western Girls' School in Shanghai to improve her English, Lin He-Ping met Dora Yu, a young woman who gave up a potential career in medicine to serve as an evangelist and preacher.

[4][5][6] In 1916, at age 13, Nee entered the Church Missionary Society Vernacular Middle School in Fuzhou, Fujian province to begin his Western-style education.

In the final examinations, the 2 boys scored almost the same marks with Wilson Wang topping the class, followed closely by Watchman Nee in second place.

[7][8][9] In the spring of 1920, when Nee was 17, Dora Yu was invited to hold ten days of revival meetings[10] in the Church of Heavenly Peace in Fuzhou.

[11] After Nee's mother attended these meetings, she was moved to apologize to her son for a previous incident of unjust punishment.

After returning from the meeting, according to Nee's own account: On the evening of 28th April, 1920, I was alone in my room, struggling to decide whether or not to believe in the Lord.

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.

Later, he recounted: Immediately I started putting right the matters that were hindering my effectiveness, and also made a list of seventy friends to pray for daily.

Eventually, Nee's seeking to improve his character brought him into close contact with a British missionary Margaret E. Barber who became his teacher and mentor.

He was known for his ability to select, comprehend, discern, and memorize relevant material, and grasp and retain the main points of a book while reading.

[14] Nee derived many of his ideas, including plural eldership, disavowal of a clergy-laity distinction, and worship centered around the Lord's Supper, from the Plymouth Brethren.

From 1930 to 1935, his movement interacted internationally with the Raven-Taylor group of Exclusive Brethren led by James Taylor, Sr.

This group "recognized" the Local Church movement as a parallel work of God, albeit one that had developed independently.

After a series of communications Nee received a letter dated August 31, 1935, signed by leading Brethren, severing fellowship with him and his movement.

At age 21, Nee established the first "local church" in Sitiawan, Malaysia, while visiting his mother, who had moved there from China.

In January 1934, Nee called a special conference on the subjects of "Christ as the Centrality and Universality of God" and "The Overcomers".

He said, "My Christian life took a big turn from doctrines and knowledge to a living person, Christ, who is God's centrality and universality.

Although acquiescing to family pressure, Nee also saw this as an opportunity to support his many co-workers who were suffering great poverty and hardship during the Second World War.

Nee took over full management of the factory, reorganized it, and began to employ many local church members from Shanghai.

[9] In 1946, Peace Wang and Witness Lee began to work to restore the church in Shanghai as well as Nee's public ministry there.

[3][9] The rise of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, with its doctrine of state atheism, caused Christians to come under great persecution.

Some co-workers joined in the accusation of Watchman Nee while others, such as Peace Wang, Ruth Lee, and Yu Chenghua remained silent and were punished with life imprisonment.

Following this, mass accusation meetings were held across the country to condemn the "anti-revolutionary sect of Watchman Nee".

We could only see his ashes... Before his departure, he left a piece of paper under his pillow, which had several lines of big words written in a shaking hand.

When the officer of the labor farm showed us this paper, I prayed that the Lord would let me quickly remember it by heart... My granduncle had passed away.

He believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, even God Himself, incarnated as a man with both the human life and the divine life, that He died on the cross to accomplish redemption, that he rose bodily from the dead on the third day, that He ascended into heaven and was enthroned, crowned with glory, and made the Lord of all, and that He will return the second time to receive His followers, to save Israel, and to establish His millennial kingdom on the earth.

His well-known book, Sit, Walk, Stand focused on the believer's position "in Christ," an important feature of the Apostle Paul's theology.

[31][32] Nee held that the "outer darkness" mentioned in Matthew is a temporal place for saved Christians who do not live in obedience.

[33] In addition to speaking frequently before many audiences, Watchman Nee authored various books, articles, newsletters, and hymns.