History of the Lord's Move in Europe

Introduction

The following compilation was prepared for the October 2017 International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones in Leipzig, Germany, and the blending trips and conferences involving eight regions across Europe in the following week.

It was compiled between June 2017 and September 2017 using existing materials and interviews and updated with new interviews and reports from saints across Europe. Since this presentation is in the nature of a compilation of recollections of the local saints, the amount written on each area was based largely on how much information was received in the time available.

We apologise for any items which may have been missed or which are inaccurate due to the speed with which the materials were compiled.

This compilation is not exhaustive concerning the Lord’s move in Europe. There are other European cities and countries that are not included here since their history is more related to the Russian-speaking churches. This compilation focuses on the countries hosting the blending trips and the regional conferences so that visiting saints joining the local saints can have some sense of the present situation. Nearly all the content came from the saints in these respective countries. In total, the geographical population of Europe is more than twice that of the population of the US.

This compilation is prepared for all who are participating in any or all of the three events occurring from the 5th to 15th of October: the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones (ITERO), the blending trips in nineteen European countries, and the eight regional conferences being held in Copenhagen, Denmark; Thessaloniki, Greece; Stuttgart, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Florence, Italy; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; and London, England. In principle, there are eight conferences, but there is only one content and one speaking.

We hope all of you enjoy this brief presentation and that you will pray for the Lord’s continued blessing on the one accord among all the saints and churches in Europe.

Saints serving with Amana Trust

September 2017

New Testament Times to the Twentieth Century

And He made from one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, determining beforehand their appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwelling—Acts 17:26

The events of world history have been sovereignly arranged by God for Him to carry out His purpose…The rise and fall of the kingdoms of earth and the boundaries of all the nations have been predetermined by Him…God’s move among men is wrapped up with the course of history. Whether we speak of His becoming flesh through the incarnation, or of the spread of the gospel, or of the raising up of the church life, or of the preparation of the bride, all these aspects of His move require the proper environment, as far as the world situation is concerned. (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 5)

The world situation has always been the indicator of the Lord’s move on earth. (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 8)

Europe has been a crucial region in the Lord’s move throughout the centuries. Brother Lee points out in The World Situation and God’s Move (1981) that “for the first step, the spread of the gospel, God prepared the Roman Empire. For the second step, the return to the Bible, God prepared Germany. For the third step, the recovery of the gospel, the teaching of the Bible, and the proper meetings—God in the last two centuries used Great Britain. Finally, for the fourth step God has prepared the United States” (p. 40). The Lord brought His recovery to the US via the Far East for the preparation of His bride. In 1991 Brother Lee says further in The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move that “the recovery has taken root in the United States and the Far East, but there is a void in Europe. For this reason, the Lord’s direction of His present recovery must be toward Europe” (p. 17). In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries God has moved and is continuing to move to gain a group of people who have Christ as their life and live Him and who are being built up for Christ to have His Body to prepare His bride for His return.

The Roman Empire

The Context for Christ’s Great Accomplishments
and the Spread of the Gospel

“For Christ’s great accomplishments to be carried out, there was the need for the Roman Empire to be established.” (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 10)

God was incarnated as a man, Jesus Christ, during the reign of the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14). The reign of Augustus initiated a period called the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace, in which the Roman Empire experienced little large-scale conflict. Also, because such a large area of land in Europe and the Middle East was under one rule, people were free to cross the borders of many provinces without restrictions and in a situation of order. The use of ships on the Mediterranean Sea and the extensive Roman road network facilitated travel.

It was God’s ordination that the Roman Empire should be in control of the Mediterranean area during the time of Christ. The order which Rome brought to that warring region made it possible for the Lord Jesus to be born peacefully into mankind. The Roman method of capital punishment, crucifixion, made possible the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning His death.

The spread of the gospel after the resurrection and ascension of Christ was greatly facilitated by the common language, the single rule, the roads, and the domestic order that Rome established.

Greek was the language of the educated classes. The New Testament, though written almost entirely by Jews—Luke was the only exception—was written in Greek, not Hebrew. Even before the rise of the Roman Empire, about three centuries before Christ, the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek. This version, called the Septuagint, was translated by seventy scholars in Alexandria, Egypt. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, many times the Scriptures He quoted were from the Septuagint.The Roman Empire, then, was appointed by God to provide the situation in which redemption could be accomplished and the gospel spread. (The World Situation and God’s Move, pp. 10-12)

The gospel began to reach Europe in Paul’s second, third, and fourth journeys. During Paul’s second journey, as he and his co-workers were journeying through Asia after passing through Phrygia and Galatia, the Holy Spirit forbade them to speak the word in Asia. They went to Mysia and tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So they went to Troas, and there, Paul had a vision in the night.

A certain man, a Macedonian, was standing and entreating him and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And when he had seen the vision, we immediately endeavored to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to announce the gospel to them—Acts 16:9-10

The Journeys of Paul | © Living Stream Ministry.
Used with permission. Do not duplicate.

Paul then went into Macedonia, to Philippi, a leading city in that part of the province, and there, Lydia and her household were baptized. Later, Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi, but while praying and singing hymns of praise to God, an earthquake opened the prison doors, and they preached the gospel to the jailer. He and his household were also baptized.

From Philippi they travelled to Thessalonica, Berea, Athens (where Paul preached on the Areopagus), Corinth, and Ephesus (Acts 17—18). Paul went again to Ephesus on his third journey, through Macedonia and Greece to Troas (in Asia), and from there he journeyed back to Jerusalem, where he was eventually seized and bound by the Romans. On his fourth journey he experienced a storm and a shipwreck and eventually ended up in Rome, where he ministered until his martyrdom. During this period, Paul also expressed a desire to go to Spain.

From Paul’s time onward, the gospel spread throughout the Roman Empire, which covered much of southern and western Europe. Then as Brother Lee points out,

Satan followed. What God uses, Satan also comes along to use in order to cause damage. The emperors began to persecute the Christians, and countless numbers were martyred. Persecution, as we know, did not terminate the Christians; it rather helped them. Then Satan changed his strategy. Under the rule of Constantine the Great [A.D. 306-337] the Roman Empire made Christianity legal, and Christians had the full freedom of worship. Because of the favors he granted the Christians, thousands of pagans were baptized and became Christians in name. These were the tares spoken of in Matthew 13:24-30 that ruined Christianity.

Under his influence the Nicene Creed was drawn up (A.D. 325). He acted openly as head of the Church, which in his reign was first called Catholic; at the same time he kept his title of high priest of the heathen.

This ruin progressed from the fourth to the sixth centuries, by which time the papal system was fully established. With this the Roman Catholic Church reached its full development; it claimed to be the one, universal church (catholic means universal) and exercised worldly power over people and nations. No protest or dissent was tolerated. Over the centuries when it held sway, the Roman Catholic Church killed more genuine Christians than the pagan Roman Empire had killed. Under such a dark Church, the so-called Dark Ages were produced, lasting about ten centuries, from about A.D. 500 to 1500. (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 12)

The empire ultimately declined, and the western Roman Empire fell in A.D. 476, but Europe was under the power of the Catholic Church for another one thousand years. This period, known as the Middle Ages, has been called the “Dark Ages,” and for this long period of time Europeans were kept under the authority of the worldly church without access to the Word of God.

The Reformation

The Recovery of the Truth

However, the Lord enlightened some in Europe to rise up and protest the situation of degraded Christianity.

John Wycliffe (mid-1320s-1384) was a scholar at Oxford who stood up against the corruption of the Catholic Church and advocated for the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, the common everyday language of people.

Portrait of John Wycliffe | SourceKirkby, Thomas. John Wycliffe. 1828. Balliol College, University of Oxford. In Art UK. Accessed September 11, 2017. [Public Domain]

His writings influenced John Huss (1369-1415) in Bohemia, a region in what is now the Czech Republic, to focus on the Scriptures and expose the degradation of the apostate Catholic Church. Huss’s preaching and writing radically affected the region of Bohemia, which formed the basis for the Moravian Brethren three hundred years later.

Portrait of John Huss (Jan Hus) | SourceJan Hus (1370-1415). 15th Century. In Das Wissen des 20. Jahrhunderts, Bildungslexikon. Rheda, 1931. Accessed on September 11, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

Brother Lee says in The Testimony and Ground of the Church,

Before Martin Luther, there were some who were quite enlightened and who rose up to speak for God in protest to degraded Christianity. Two of the most powerful ones were John Wycliffe on the British Isles and John Huss on the Continent. Both of them were very strong, and the light they received from the Bible was also quite clear. Before the time of Luther, they rose up and told people that the Roman Catholic Church was an apostate church, that she had left the revelation of God, and that her actions were completely against God; under her, they said, the church had become completely degraded. They gave numerous illustrations and released much light, and their words were received by many people. In their time, they laid a very good foundation for the Reformation. (p. 210)

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was familiar with John Huss’s writings early in his monastic career in Germany, was strongly influenced by German medieval mystics and Augustine, and became greatly impacted by the apostle Paul’s writings.

Portrait of Martin Luther | SourceMartin Luther (Brustbild im Rechteck mit faksimiliertem Namenszug). In Museum im Melanchthonhaus Bretten (Inv.Nr: P Luth 88). Accessed on October 06, 2017 via Museum-Digital:Baden-Württember. [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

As he studied the book of Romans during the 1510s, he realized the truth of justification by faith. Romans 1:17 was the key verse that sparked the Reformation in Europe—“But the righteous shall have life and live by faith.” Justification was not through the sacraments, rituals, or assenting to the teachings of the Catholic Church, but through faith, which is given by God. In 1517, when a Catholic preacher came to Germany selling indulgences to raise money for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Luther protested by writing his 95 Theses. This act marked the beginning of the Reformation. From this point onward, the Lord would use many saints in Europe to recover one truth after another.

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses | SourceLuther, Martin. Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum [95 Theses]. Nuremberg: Höltzel, 1517. In Digitiser: State Library of Berlin. Uploaded on August 22, 2016. Accessed on October 01, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

Ultimately, as Brother Lee points out, the most worthwhile and precious matter that Luther recovered was to open the Bible to the people by translating it into the German vernacular:

In the Reformation the first thing Luther did was to open the Bible to the public. He released the Bible completely so that everyone had a Bible in their hands to read. This is the most worthy thing of the reformation, and it is also the most beneficial thing to later generations. Some have said that justification by faith was the first thing recovered in Luther’s Reformation, but justification by faith is not the center of the Reformation. The most important item of the Reformation was the recovery of the open Bible. Luther’s recovery of justification by faith was based upon what he found in the open Bible. Therefore, the most precious item given to us by the Reformation was the open Bible. The second item was justification by faith, which was derived from the first. Although the Bible was made available to the public, not much of it was opened up, interpreted. (The Testimony and the Ground of the Church, pp. 211-212)

About the same time as the Reformation, movable type was invented in Europe…The reformers made use of the printing press to publish the truths they had seen. The Bible also could be printed instead of being copied by hand. As a result, it was spread among the people. Formerly it had been locked up by the Catholic Church. Martin Luther unlocked it. But the Bible was not opened up much; it was read but not really understood. (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 65)

Sixty-two years before the publication of the 95 Theses, Johannes Gutenberg had printed the Bible (Latin translation) in western Germany on his printing press.

Gutenberg and his printing press | SourceHillemacher, E. Gutenburg’s Invention. In Great Men and Famous Women: a Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of the Lives of More than 200 of the Most Prominent Personages in History, Volume 5, by Charles F. Horne, New York: Selmar Hess, 1894. On Internet Archive Book Images. Accessed on September 11, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [No known copyright restrictions]

Gutenberg’s invention of movable type was sovereignly prepared by God to facilitate the spreading of Luther’s translation of the Bible in Germany, the translation of the Bible in other European languages, and the publishing of new revelations seen during the Reformation. This move of the Lord spread throughout Europe: the Hussites were active and at one point gained almost all of the inhabitants in the region that is the present-day Czech Republic; John Calvin, who saw the revelation of God’s predestination, and Zwingli were raised up in Switzerland; the Reformation spread to the Nordic countries; and Henry VIII in England was influenced by reformers to split from the Catholic Church.

While Luther and the other reformers were bold to stand for the truths they had seen, they were weak in their standing for the church. As a result, they acquiesced in joining the church with secular authority and formed the state churches, which are prevalent in northern Europe.

Regarding Martin Luther’s legacy, Brother Lee says in The History of the Church and the Local Churches,

At the time of the Reformation, the Lord’s recovery came into a definite form. Martin Luther was a great servant of God. The Lord used him to recover the truth concerning justification by faith and to make the Bible open to the general public. Thank the Lord that justification by faith has been fully recovered. It will never be lost again. At the cost of his life, Luther stood for this truth, but when he came to the truth concerning the church, he was weak. He did not bring us back to God’s genuine intention to have the church life.

Luther realized that it was wrong to be joined with the German government, yet he still did it. Due to this big mistake, the state churches were produced. Besides the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, there are also the state churches. All the state churches are Lutheran churches except the Church of England, which is an Episcopal church. The German state church, the Danish state church, the Norwegian state church, the Swedish state church, and the Anglican state church were the issue of the seed sown by Luther. (p. 30)

However, some believers, like the Puritans in England (who later moved to America) and Anabaptists (who practiced baptism by immersion), dissented from the state churches and formed private churches. Many of these groups recovered an aspect of truth, but they would establish their own churches, resulting in division:

With the coming of the Reformation the Bible was released. This, coupled with the free thinking that developed once Catholicism’s hold on the mind was broken, led Christians to the discovery of many new truths in the Bible. It seemed that everyone who discovered a new truth became the founder of a new denomination…All these newly formed denominations were persecuted by both the Catholic Church and the state churches. This was true of the state churches even in northern Europe. These freethinking Christians were thus in peril for their lives. (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 14)

The Mystics

The Recovery
of the Experience of the Inner Life

During this period, the Lord also recovered the experience of the inner life with the mystics, who reacted against the deadness of the reformed church. Regarding this group, Brother Nee says in What are We?,

At the same time there was a new discovery within the Catholic Church. A group of spiritual people were raised up by the Lord. The most spiritual one among them was Miguel de Molinos, who was born in 1640 and died in 1697. He wrote a book called Spiritual Guide which taught men the way to deny themselves and die with the Lord. This book affected many people at that time. One of his contemporaries was Madame Guyon. She was born in 1648 and died in 1717. She was even more knowledgeable in the matters of the union with God’s will and the denial of the self. Her autobiography is a very good spiritual book.

In addition there was Father Fenelon who was a bishop at that time. He was very willing to suffer for the Lord, and he worked together with Madame Guyon. Through these men and women, God released many spiritual messages. At that time men and women with the deepest experience of spiritual life were found in the Catholic Church. Protestantism was only paying attention to the doctrine of justification by faith. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, pp. 847-848)

Portrait of Madame Guyon | SourceMadame Guyon. Illustration in: Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 13, Memorial Edition, New York, 1916. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg, Release date, November 12, 2007. Accessed September 11, 2017, from www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23458. License: this eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org.

Portrait of Father Fenelon | SourceFather Fenelon. Illustration from: Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 13, Memorial Edition, New York, 1916. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg, Release date, November 12, 2007. Accessed September 11, 2017, from www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23458. License: this eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org.

Brother Nee also mentioned that around the same time, Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714), a Lutheran theologian in Germany, “wrote many books concerning questions of the church. He considered that the church at that time had deviated from the truth and that it must return to the proper ground as revealed in the New Testament before it could be built up” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, p. 848).

Portrait of Gottfried Arnold | SourceBusch, Georg Paul. Kupferstich Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714) evangelischer Theologe. 1716. Munich. In Wikimeda Commons. May 9, 2006. Accessed September 11, 2017. [Public Domain]

Brother Nee saw that there were “two flows. One came from believers like Molinos, Madame Guyon, and Fenelon. The other flow came from men represented by Arnold…Through [Madame Guyon’s] writings, one can see that she was indeed a very spiritual person. Concerning Arnold, he recovered mostly the outward matters. He proposed that Christians return to the scriptural ground of the New Testament. These two flows eventually merged into one” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, p. 848).

The Moravian Brethren

The Recovery of the Initial Stage of the Church Life

The merging of these flows resulted in a move to recover the initial stage of the church life in the oneness of the Holy Spirit, which was evident among the Moravian Brethren in the 1700s. The origins of the Moravian Brethren, however, can be traced back to John Huss’s time. After the persecutions of the Catholic Church, the number of Protestants in what is the present-day Czech Republic declined, but a remnant remained and was dispersed across northern and central Europe. A small group of believers in Moravia, led by a brother called Christian David, boldly proclaimed the truth and caused a revival, but, as a result, they were persecuted by the Catholic Habsburg Empire and fled their homeland.

Portrait of Christian David (Kristián David) | SourceKristián David. 1900. In Wikimedia Commons. Accessed September 11, 2017. [Public Domain]

In 1722 they came as refugees to Count von Zinzendorf in Saxony, in the eastern part of Germany. Zinzendorf received them, and they began to build a community in a new village called Herrnhut. Various Christians escaping from persecution found their way there.

Portrait of Count von Zinzendorf | SourceBalthasar Denner. Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. In Die großen Deutschen im Bilde. By Michael Schönitzer. 1918. Accessed on September 28, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

After a period of discord because of their different backgrounds, Zinzendorf urged the believers to be one. They signed an agreement and met in oneness. When they partook of the Lord’s table together in an atmosphere of oneness, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them, and they experienced a great revival. They set up continuous prayer for twenty-four hours a day, and they were the first Protestant group to begin overseas missionary work.

Brother Lee says the following about Zinzendorf and his group:

Two centuries after Luther, seeking Christians in northern Europe were under persecution and forced to leave their countries. Many went to Germany, where a brother named Zinzendorf, who genuinely loved the Lord, allowed them to settle on his large estate. These persecuted ones came to Zinzendorf’s estate with many differing opinions, and their dissension and fighting increased after their arrival. One day in 1727 Zinzendorf called them together and convinced them to drop their disputations and to hold only to the items of the common faith. That Lord’s Day, at the Lord’s table, they experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and there was a great revival. This began the first practice of the church life in the Lord’s recovery, but the light that these Moravian Brethren saw was not very clear. (The Recovery of Christ in the Present Evil Age, p. 37)

History shows us that there was a desire within many seeking ones for the proper church life. They could not express this inward desire, but actually there was something in them seeking or hunting the proper church life. In the eighteenth century the Lord moved among the Moravian brethren under the leadership of Count [von] Zinzendorf to recover something of the practice of the church life.

To our knowledge, since the time of the early apostles, the Moravian brothers might be considered as the first group of Christians to realize the church life in a somewhat proper way. Therefore, God’s blessing was poured out upon them. Although they enjoyed the practice of the church life to a certain degree, they were still not clear about many aspects of the truth concerning the church. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, pp. 32-33)

Eighteenth Century Britain

Revival and Missionary Work

In this same period the Lord raised up the Wesley brothers, John (1703-1791) and Charles (1707-1788), in Britain. John Wesley was also very much influenced by the Moravian Brethren.

Portrait of John Wesley | SourceDuval, P. S. Revd. John Wesley. 1788. Philadelphia. In History of all the religious denominations in the United States: containing authentic accounts of the rise and progress, faith and practice, localities and statistics, of the different persuasions. Harrisburg, PA, 1849. Bookplateleaf 0006. Accessed October 1, 2017 via Internet Archive Book Images [No known restrictions].

Brother Nee says in What Are We?,

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a great revival broke out in England. In 1729 the two Wesley brothers were raised up by God. They were called the Methodists. Through them, God brought in a great tide of revival. This was the beginning of the Methodist Church. The Wesley brothers were the prime figures of the eighteenth century. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, p. 849)

In his early years, John Wesley had been ordained a priest in the Church of England, but despite attempting to do many good works, he was still not saved. He first came in contact with the Moravian Brethren on his missionary journey to the American colonies and met with them in England after he returned from the colonies. He was touched by their living, and they shared with him about justification by faith. In 1738, as he was walking home after a meeting with the Moravian Brethren in London, he was saved. Three days before, his brother Charles had also been saved. From this point onward, the two brothers and their friend, George Whitefield, preached the gospel throughout all of England. They preached in the open air (which was against the practice of the Church of England) and brought many to salvation. They also recovered the matter of a holy living, of sanctification, and many people had a genuine turn and change in their behavior. Charles Wesley was also a prolific hymn writer. About their impact, Brother Lee says,

This was the time of the French Revolution. Those revolutionary ideas were gaining ground in England, and there was fear that the government itself might be overthrown. It was through the preaching of John Wesley and George Whitefield, those powerful open-air evangelists, that the gospel prevailed over the revolutionary tendencies and England was spared. British society was changed as a result of their work. (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 15)

England was transformed by this revival, and it also brought in a strong desire among the British to preach the gospel around the world. The expansion of the British Empire in this period went along simultaneously with the raising up of many missionaries in Britain who went all over the earth to spread the gospel.

Missionaries in China | SourceMissionaries in China. 1900. In Wikimedia Commons. Accessed September 27, 2017. [Public Domain]

The first missionary society, the London Missionary Society, was formed in 1795, and they sent the first missionary, Robert Morrison, to China in 1807.

Painting of Robert Morrison, Chen Layoi, and Li Shigong at work | SourceJenkins, Morrison at Work. 1828. Engraving of a painting by George Chinnery. In Memoirs of the Life and Labours Robert Morrison, Vol. 1. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans by Eliza Morrison, 1839. Accessed October 01, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

Other missionary societies—the Church Missionary Society, the Methodist Missionary Society, and many others, including Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission—were formed during this period.

Portrait of Hudson Taylor | SourceHudson Taylor. In Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: the growth of a work of God. By Howard Taylor. Princeton Theological Seminary Library. London and Philadelphia, 1918. Accessed on October 03, 2017 via Internet Archive Book Images. [NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT]

Nineteenth Century Britain

The Brethren, the Discovery of God’s Truth, and the Overcoming Life

In the nineteenth century the Lord also moved in Britain to recover truths and the practice of the church life. In What Are We? Brother Nee shares concerning the beginning of the Brethren:

In 1827 a group of people were raised up in Dublin, Ireland. Among them were men like Edward Cronin and Anthony Norris Groves. They saw that many things in the church were dead, lifeless, and formal. They began to ask the Lord to show them the church according to the biblical revelation. Through prayer and fellowship, they felt that they should rise up and meet according to the principle of 1 Corinthians 14. As a result, they began to break bread at a brother’s home. A short while later, a former Anglican minister, John Nelson Darby, began to join their meeting and to expound the Bible among them. Gradually, more and more expositors were raised up among them, such as William Kelly, C. H. Mackintosh, B. W. Newton, and J. G. Bellett. Through reading their books, I received light to see the error of denominational organizations and to realize that there is only one Body of Christ. The church should not be formed by human opinions but should be under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit…In addition, the Brethren made many discoveries concerning the millennium, the question of rapture, and the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, pp. 850-851)

Portrait of John Nelson Darby
© National Portrait Gallery, London | SourceJohn Nelson Darby by Edward Penstone etching and aquatint, late 19th century NPG D11119. Given by Edward Penstone, 1903. In National Portrait Gallery. Accessed September 28, 2017. Used with Permission. [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0]

Brother Lee says that “the move among the Brethren at the beginning was really marvelous. This was a golden time that was a great help to the church life. Many spiritual, seeking Christians agree that this may have been the beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecy in the Lord’s epistle to the church in Philadelphia in Revelation 3. However, due to the Brethren’s overemphasis on doctrines, they were divided again and again” (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, p. 35).

Many spiritual brothers were raised up by the Lord in this period, including Charles Stanley, George Cutting (who wrote about the assurance of salvation in Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment), Robert Govett (who saw the matter of Christian reward), G. H. Pember, and D. M. Panton. George Müller, who learned lessons concerning prayer and faith in God’s word, was also raised up in England to live a life of faith.

Portrait of Robert Govett | SourceGovett. Before 1901. In Wikipedia Commons. June 16, 2008. Accessed October 02, 2017. [Public Domain]

Portrait of George Müller |

Brother Nee also points out in What Are We?,

At the same time another group of people were raised up who paid attention to the inner life…After the line of [Robert Pearsall] Smith, there was Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith…There were also others like Stocknell (?), Evan Hopkins, and Andrew Murray. They continued the line of truth concerning self-denial preached by ones like Madame Guyon two hundred years earlier in the Catholic Church. These believers began to conduct conferences in Germany, England, and other places. These conferences were the beginning of what we know today as the Keswick Convention. The main speaker at these conventions was Evan Hopkins.

In addition to Hopkins, there was H. C. Trumbull who released the truth on the overcoming life at the Keswick Convention. These messages brought in a great recovery concerning the knowledge of the overcoming life and the way for believers to experience this overcoming life in their living.

[Jessie Penn-Lewis, a Welsh sister, was involved in the 1904-1905 Welsh revival, led by Evan Roberts, and] was one who truly bore the cross. Through her experiences, many believers were attracted to pursue the truth concerning the cross. Through these men and women, God led many to realize that the centrality of God’s work is the cross. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, pp. 852-854)

Portrait of Robert Pearsall Smith
© National Portrait Gallery, London | SourceRobert Pearsall Smith by Unknown photographer, albumen print on card, 1875. NPG Ax160485. 3 7/8 in. x 2 1/2 in. (97 mm x 62 mm) overall. Given by Barbara Strachey (Hultin, later Halpern), 1999. In National Portrait Gallery. Used with permission. [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0]

Portrait of Hannah Whitall Smith | SourceHannah Whitall Smith . Asbury Theological Seminary, B.L. Fisher Library Archives. In Wikimedia Commons. October 14, 2006. Accessed October 02, 2017. [Public Domain]

Portrait of Andrew Murray | SourceAndrew Murray. In Wikimedia Commons. December 12, 2009. Accessed October 02, 2017. [Public Domain]

Portrait of Henry Clay Trumbull | SourceHenry Clay Trumbull. 1905. The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. In Biographical sketches of distinguished officers of the army and navy. By Lewis Randolph Hamersly. New York: L.R. Hamersly, 1905. Accessed on October 01, 2017 via Internet Archive Book Images. [NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT]

Evan Roberts’ last revival meeting | SourceUnknown. Welsh Revival. July 04, 1905. In Wikimedia Commons. May 02, 2015. Accessed October 02, 2017. [Public Domain]

Twentieth Century

The contents of this page are:

The Lord’s Move in China

One hundred years after the beginning of the Brethren movement, the Lord started something new in mainland China. In the eighteenth century the Moravian Brethren were on the continent of Europe. In the nineteenth century the Brethren were used by the Lord in England. A century later the Lord moved in the Far East. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, p. 3)

Map showing the US, the UK, China, and Taiwan | © Amana Trust

Missionaries from England brought the recovered truths to China, and in the 1920s the Lord raised up Brother Watchman Nee for His recovery. It was through Sister M. E. Barber, originally from Suffolk in England, that Brother Nee was introduced to the top spiritual writings, which conveyed the past centuries’ recovery of truth and experience.

Portrait of M. E. Barber | SourceM. E. Barber by Unknown photographer. In Wikimedia Commons. Unknown upload date. Accessed on October 1, 2017. [Public Domain]

Sister Barber was sent by the Church Missionary Society to Fukien (Fujian) province in China, where Brother Nee was.

While she was there, her co-missionaries fabricated a case against her because of their jealousy of her. Because of these false reports, the mission board called her back. She was a person who knew the Lord in a living way, and she was always exercising to learn the lessons of the cross. When she returned, she made a decision not to say a word in vindication of herself. She stayed in England for a number of years…[until] she was vindicated, and the board immediately made the decision to send her back.

Before that time, she began to know the way of the Lord concerning His church. She came in contact with D. M. Panton, who was a student of the great teacher Robert Govett. Brother Panton came to know the evils of denominationalism, and he met with a group of others outside of the denominations…After Miss Barber contacted D. M. Panton’s group, she became clear about denominations. Then she resigned from her post as a missionary in the Methodist mission. After much prayer she became clear that the Lord would send her back to China according to His leading and not through any mission. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, pp. 39-40)

Sister Barber resigned from the mission and returned to China to live by faith. She was a deep person in the Lord and an important influence for Brother Nee. From her, he saw a pattern of one who lived Christ and also learned spiritual truths.

Brother Lee shares Brother Nee’s account to him regarding M. E. Barber in The History of the Church and the Local Churches:

Brother Nee came in contact with her soon after his conversion, and he received so much help from her…According to what Brother Nee told me, Sister Barber was a person who always lived in the presence of the Lord…She was a deep person in the Lord, and she composed a number of excellent hymns that are in our hymnal. All her hymns were very deep in the Lord. Furthermore, day by day she was waiting for the Lord’s coming back.

It was through M. E. Barber that he received the foundation of his spiritual life. Brother Nee would tell people that it was through a sister that he got saved, and it was also through a sister that he was edified. As a British person from the Western world, Sister Barber came to know the famous spiritual giants in Christianity at her time. Through Sister Barber, Brother Nee came to know the top spiritual books by people such as Robert Govett, D. M. Panton, and Jessie Penn-Lewis. The best publications on the exposition of the Bible and church history were introduced to Brother Nee through her. (pp. 40-42)

Brother Lee testified concerning Brother Nee:

The first meeting in the Lord’s recovery in China was in 1922 with Brother Nee in his hometown of Foochow [Fuzhou]. I am full of thanks to the Lord that in the first part of this century He gave Brother Nee as a gift to the Body. I was born in Christianity and raised up there. I even received my education in Christianity. In my seeking of the Lord, I passed through organized Christianity, fundamental Christianity, Brethren Christianity, and even Pentecostal Christianity. I also entered into the teachings of the inner-life Christians. In my entire life, I have never met a Christian who can compare with Brother Nee. I received the greatest and the highest help from him. He picked up good and helpful things from nearly every denomination, from every kind of Christian practice, and from all the seeking saints throughout the history of the church, and he passed them on to us. The first time I stayed with him, I realized that he was standing on the shoulders of many who had gone before him. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, p. 36)

Eastward view of Fuzhou (Foochow), 1900 | SourceMorrison, George Ernest. The Eastward View of Fuzhou (Foochow) from Black Stone Hill, in the late Qing Dynasty. 1900. In Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books, National Institute of Informatics, Toyo. Accessed on September 29. 2017. [PD-old-80]

Witness Lee met Watchman Nee in 1932 and throughout the 1930s and 1940s they were co-workers in China, speaking the truth and raising up churches.

Watchman Nee’s and Witness Lee’s Visits to Europe

Brother Nee visited Europe on two occasions, in 1933 and 1938-1939.

Brother Nee went to visit the Plymouth Brethren in England in 1933. Before that time he had read many of the Brethren’s writings. Also, through Miss M. E. Barber, he became acquainted with the writings of Jessie Penn-Lewis and T. Austin-Sparks. When he went to visit the Brethren in 1933, he also went to visit Brother Austin-Sparks at Honor Oak in London.

Later, Brother Nee went to Europe again in 1938, and he stayed there for one and a half years to have more fellowship. Mostly he was with Brother Austin-Sparks’s group at Honor Oak. He was also invited to speak in some of the Scandinavian countries. In those one and a half years, he ministered mainly on the aspect of Christ as life because he realized that the people there were not ready to accept the aspect of the church in a practical way. The Normal Christian Life is a collection of the messages Brother Nee gave then. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, pp. 102-103)

For a number of the saints who met Brother Nee in Europe at that time, their contact with him was life-changing (according to a brother’s conversations with some who had met Brother Nee). During Brother Nee’s visit, in July 1938 he was invited to the Keswick Convention, an annual gathering of Christians who emphasized the experience of the inner life.

Keswick Convention, 1913 | SourceChristian Herald. 1913. Christian Herald Association. In Internet Archive Book Images. Accessed on October 01, 2017 via Flickr Commons. [No known copyright restrictions]

The account in Watchman Nee’s biography says regarding this event,

On July 22 he attended the Keswick Convention with Brother Sparks. In the morning a missionary meeting was held. The chairman of the meeting, Mr. W.H. Aldis, knowing Watchman was present at the meeting, asked him to offer prayer. He hesitated at first, but after checking with Sparks and being encouraged by him, he offered the following prayer: “The Lord reigneth. He is reigning, and He is Lord of all. Nothing can touch His authority. It is the spiritual forces that are out to destroy the interests of the Lord in China and Japan. We do not pray for Japan. We do not pray for China. But we pray for the interests of Thy Son in China and Japan. We do not blame any man. They are only tools in the hand of the enemy of the Lord. Lord, we stand in Thy will. Lord, shatter the kingdom of darkness. Lord, the persecution of Thy church is persecuting Thee.” This prayer was offered in the presence of a Japanese Christian at the time the great havoc of the invading Japanese army was increasing. The whole congregation was both captivated and deeply impressed by this prayer. (Watchman Nee—A Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age, p. 204)

According to Brother Lee,

While Brother Nee was there, he also translated The Normal Christian Church Life from Chinese into English. He did that, of course, with a purpose. This book was translated in London while he was staying at Honor Oak. Miss Fishbacher [a missionary in China who had come into the church life there] helped him in this translation work. That book was printed by the bookroom of Brother Austin-Sparks. After it was published, it stirred up some problems. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, p. 103)

Although it was printed by the bookroom at Honor Oak, T. Austin-Sparks was not entirely receptive to Brother Nee’s ministry on the practicality of the church.

During this time, Brother Nee testified to Witness Lee “that on the whole earth, there was only one group that could ‘echo’ what we had seen of the Body of Christ. That was Brother Austin-Sparks’s group. Brother Nee, however, said that there was a big ‘but.’ They saw something concerning the principle of the Body, but they did not see the practical side of the church life” (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, pp. 104-105).

[In the summer of 1939,] Brother Nee returned to China and had a conference on the Body of Christ…Furthermore, Brother Nee would minister to the whole church in Shanghai every Wednesday night. He also spent several mornings each week with his trainees…Brother Nee’s fellowship on the Body during that time was the most strategic work of his entire life.

Due to the exposure of the enemy’s subtlety through Brother Nee’s messages during those three years, the enemy caused a big turmoil in the church in Shanghai in 1942. Eventually, the church there was closed, and Brother Nee’s ministry was stopped for six years. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, pp. 64-66)

At the same time, China was involved in World War II, and at the end of that war, China was plunged into a civil war that would last until the autumn of 1949. During the Communist takeover of China, Brother Nee sent Witness Lee to Taiwan to preserve and carry out the work of the ministry there.

Situation at the end of World War II | SourceChina, 1900-1949 Situation at the end of World War II. West Point. In www.usma.edu. November 5, 2012. Accessed on 30 September, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [PD US Army]

Brother Lee’s Visit to Europe in 1958

Brother Lee continued to fellowship with T. Austin-Sparks and with saints in Scandinavia, and in 1958 Brother Lee went to Europe to visit Honor Oak. During this trip, before going to Europe, he also visited Japan and the US.

(For more on these other trips, please see The Perfecting of the Saints and the Building Up of the House of God, chs. 7—13.)

In England Brother Lee held a conference at Honor Oak and then went to Denmark for another conference. He reported shortly afterward that “of all the places we visited, Denmark had the most positive situation…We did not expect them to meet in their homes, but in a letter I received from them recently, they said they are now meeting in more than twenty homes” (The Perfecting of the Saints and the Building Up of the House of God, p. 109).

He continued, saying, “My overall impression is that there is a need in every place to build up God’s house so that the wandering believers can have a home. If there is another opportunity for me to speak with the children of God, I will say that the greatest need on earth today is to build up God’s house” (p. 109).

Brother Lee shared on the day before he left Honor Oak,

The ministry is for the local churches, not the local churches for the ministry. Regardless of how good, how spiritual, and how high one’s ministry is, it still must be for the local churches. Regardless of how degraded the local churches are, they are still the lampstands…As I walked down from the platform by myself, one of the elders there came to me and said that Brother Nee’s ministry concerning the church and its practicality had been rejected there twenty years ago. He said that the Lord had not forgotten this and sent me there twenty years later to remind them of the same thing. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, p. 104)

The fellowship with Honor Oak, beginning in the 1930s, however, was eventually used by the Lord for the beginnings of the church life in the US. Brother Samuel Chang (Watchman Nee’s brother-in-law) moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and began to meet at Westmoreland Chapel. Westmoreland Chapel was connected with Honor Oak, and a number of the first saints in the church in Los Angeles began by meeting at Westmoreland. Brother Lee had also visited the US in 1958 (before he traveled to England) and had spoken at Westmoreland about eating Christ as the tree of life. Samuel Chang fellowshipped with the saints there about God’s view of the church and his own experience of the church life, infusing into them a burden for an expression of the church in Los Angeles (Reetzke, Recollection with Thanksgiving: A Brief History of the Beginnings of the Lord’s Recovery in the United States (2004), pp. 8-9). Eventually, after much and thorough prayer, the situation became clearer to the saints, and they began the first Lord’s table as the church in Los Angeles on Lord’s Day, May 27, 1962.

Soon after, Brother Lee moved to the US and ministered in English. From the 1960s onward, the ministry began to spread all over the earth and eventually returned to Europe.

Nordic Countries

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
and Sweden

Map of the Nordic countries showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

Through Martin Luther, the Reformation spread throughout northern Europe in the sixteenth century. However, the Nordic countries (formally defined as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland) followed the pattern of Germany to adopt Lutheranism as the state religion. Recently, in the 2000s each country, except Denmark, has decided to separate the Lutheran church from the state. Today the Nordic region is known for its declining number of believers and widespread secularism.

However, the Lord has moved and is continuing to move with the ministry of the age in the region. The first contact the Lord’s recovery had with Scandinavia was in 1938-1939 when Brother Watchman Nee was invited to Europe to visit T. Austin-Sparks’s group in England and also to visit believers in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Some of the messages spoken during this time in Europe were compiled to be the book The Normal Christian Life. The saints in the Lord’s recovery also knew and contacted Swedish and Norwegian brothers and sisters who had labored in China as missionaries in those early years. Brother Lee would sometimes speak about a Norwegian missionary in China who preached the reality of regeneration to an unsaved Lutheran pastor. He also recounted that “in 1943 we had a migration of seventy saints with their families from Chefoo to Inner Mongolia. Not one had even finished high school. Some of them were shoemakers. Eventually, within one winter, they turned more than forty Swedish China Inland Mission churches to the recovery. This is the operation of life” (Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans, p. 120).

Later, in 1958 Brother Lee made a trip to England and Scandinavia. Regarding his time in Scandinavia, Brother Lee reported to the saints,

We stayed in Denmark for about ten days and saw that there is much work to do there. Their situation exceeded our expectation. This proves that the Holy Spirit began His work long before we arrived. This does not apply only to Denmark. The Lord’s work can be seen in all of Scandinavia, including Norway and Sweden. We met many promising brothers who requested that we send them The Ministry of the Word so that they can translate it into their language. If time permits, we will visit them again, because there is much work to do there.

Two brothers from Norway came to meet us, and we had good fellowship with them. The impression I have from the trip to Denmark is that all the places in Scandinavia need to be led to know Christ as life so that God’s house can be built up in every locality. The Scandinavian countries have state churches that are formal and dead. Hence, many people become “homeless” once they believe into Christ. There is a need for them to know life so that God’s house can be established in every locality. (The Perfecting of the Saints and the Building Up of the House of God, pp. 109-110)

Eventually, in the 1970s the Lord’s recovery reached Scandinavia again when some saints in Sweden came into contact with Brother Lee’s ministry, and around 1975 a group of brothers from Germany and the US visited them. A small group saw the vision of the church and began to meet in homes in southern Sweden. They had fellowship with believers in Denmark and also went to a conference in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1980 a Swedish family moved to Stockholm for the establishment of the church life, but they were eventually isolated because of the turmoil in the churches in Europe in the late 1980s. However, they were encouraged and strengthened by the visitations of brothers travelling from the US to Russia in the early 1990s.

A young man from Korea was gained in Denmark in the late 1970s, and after moving to Sweden, he joined the church life in Stockholm and eventually decided to serve full time in 1996 after fellowship with Brother Lee. In the same year Brother Lee donated a considerable number of books so that the saints could open a bookstore in Stockholm.

Visitations from Sweden also helped to raise up the church life in Norway in the 2000s, although a foundation had been laid earlier. A brother from Southern California made frequent job-related visits to Norway from 1987 to 1996 and was faithful to spread the ministry through distributing tracts and visiting believers. One sister was gained from this period, and she began opening her home near Oslo for meetings. In 2003 a Norwegian couple touched the ministry in Asia, and upon returning, they began to meet in their home and present the ministry to believers. A third group in west and south Norway discovered the ministry on the Internet and began to listen to the Life-study radio programs in 2004. These three groups realized one another’s existence in 2004, and in 2008 the first Lord’s table meeting in Norway was held in Grimstad after the migration of a few saints to that city. In 2011 the first Lord’s table meeting was held in Oslo.

After the turmoil in the late 1980s, fellowship between Denmark and Sweden stopped, but in the 2000s saints who had been in the church life in Asia, the US, Africa, and other parts of Europe began to move to or have short-term stays in Denmark. One Danish sister was connected with the saints through listening to online broadcasts from Living Stream Ministry in Anaheim. Since 2010 a group of saints have been meeting regularly in Copenhagen, enjoying the ministry and participating in conferences and trainings. They have been strengthened by regular visits from saints in Norway and Sweden since 2014. The first Lord’s table meeting in Copenhagen will be held in October 2017.

One family of three in Iceland has been in contact with the ministry and has attended several of the Nordic conferences.

Some saints in Finland came into contact with the ministry in late 1970s and early 1980s. They had contact with the churches in Sweden, California, and Germany and began to meet as the church in Helsinki. The church was very much affected by the turmoil among the European churches in the late 1980s. Nevertheless, a small number stood firm with the ministry and were much supplied through the visits of saints from the US, who used Helsinki as a transit point to bring Bibles and Christian literature into Russia. Today the church in Helsinki has a clear sky and follows the Lord’s move in the Body.

In recent years there has been regular fellowship and blending among the Nordic churches with the twice-yearly regional conferences and joint brothers’ meetings, as well as frequent visits among the saints. There is also much blending with European churches through the European-wide conferences in London and the Netherlands, as well as through semi-annual trainings and ITERO. The Nordic churches are going on with the Lord for the accomplishment of His eternal purpose and heart’s desire by honoring the Head, following the churches, and participating in the Lord’s move in the Body.

French-speaking Countries

France (and parts of Belgium,
and Switzerland)

Map of French-speaking countries showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

The gospel reached France during the time of the Roman Empire. Lyon was a major center of Roman power in the region, and several Christians from Asia Minor arrived in the second century. In A.D. 157 Irenaeus, who had been in Smyrna and under the teaching of Polycarp, was sent to Lyon. The spread of the gospel resulted in persecution by the Roman Empire, and the amphitheater in Lyon was the site of many martyrdoms. Christianity became rooted in France under Constantine the Great while it was part of the Roman Empire and has remained a strongly Catholic country through the centuries.

Roman amphitheater in Lyon, France | SourceBloch, Vincent. Theater von Lyon. 2005. In Wikimedia Commons. March 13, 2013. Accessed on September 28, 2017. [Public Domain]

In the twelfth century, however, some French believers rose up against the corruption they saw in the Catholic Church. Led by Peter Waldo from Lyon, they were called the Waldensians, and they practiced lay preaching, voluntary poverty, and strictly adhering to the Bible. Waldo also commissioned the very first translation of the New Testament into the vernacular (Arpitan, a Franco-Provençal language). Persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, the Waldensians fled to the mountainous regions of northern Italy and centuries later joined with the Reformed-Calvinist branch during the Reformation.

France played an important role in the Reformation. John Calvin was born in France, but soon after he published his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which set forth reformist ideas, he was forced to flee and went to Geneva, Switzerland. He continued to experience persecution and exile wherever he went, but he made a major impact in Europe, reaching even Scotland.

Brother Nee says regarding him, “In 1536 John Calvin was raised up by God. He was one of the greatest vessels of God in that age. After he was raised up, he faced persecution everywhere, first in Switzerland and then in Germany. Wherever he went, he was met with persecution and exile. Finally, in Scotland he had a fresh beginning and established the Scottish Presbyterian Church” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, p. 846).

Calvin recovered the truth of predestination, seeing that salvation was not initiated by man but by God and that predestination is eternal and unchangeable. Calvin’s writings inspired believers in France, who became known as the Huguenots. The Huguenots were consistently persecuted by the French state and by the eighteenth century were almost wiped out. However, the French Revolution in 1789 established freedom of religion and the principle of laïcité, a strict separation and non-involvement of church and state.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Lord raised up the “mystics,” a group of believers in the Catholic Church. Regarding them, Brother Nee says that “there was the recovery of the inner life. Madame Guyon, Father Fenelon, and others brought in a recovery of the spiritual condition. These ones are now generally called the mystics. They practiced denying their self, joining themselves with God to oppose their self, giving no excuse to the self, and not asking God to spare His hand on them” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 57, “The Resumption of Watchman Nee’s Ministry,” p. 53).

In the late twentieth century, the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee began to be distributed and sold in France after a gift was given to set up ministry bookstores in Europe. In 1996 a bookstore was opened in central Paris, and the publication of The Stream magazine in the French language began. A family was sent to Paris that same year. In 1997 an agreement was signed by the largest Christian book distributor in France for four thousand French language copies of The Overcoming Life by Watchman Nee. Over twenty-five Watchman Nee titles have since been published and are being sold in most of the Christian bookstores in the French-speaking world.

After the migration of several families to Paris in 1997, a Lord’s Day meeting began in one of the saints’ homes with around ten adults and six children. In 2000 the church in Paris held their first Lord’s table meeting. In 2006 the saints began to preach the gospel together on the street by the Metro station with distributing the Rhema cards and introducing the Recovery Version of the Gospel of John to those passing by. They sensed the stubbornness of the people’s hearts and sought prayer through the Body. After five years the Lord answered the prayers by opening the door to the gospel and truth in 2012. In the same year, the church in Paris followed in the flow from the Bible distribution in the UK during the Olympic games. The saints were surprised by people’s openness in France toward the Bible, the Word of God. Since then, more and more young native French people have become remaining fruit, gradually though slowly. In addition, the visits of trainees from FTTA and FTTT have helped strengthen the gospel spirit in France.

The church in Paris is also laboring to build up little by little the church life in the God-ordained way—gospel preaching, shepherding the new ones in the homes, the group meetings, and the Lord’s Day prophesying meeting. Presently, there are around twelve group meetings that meet on a weekly basis. Also, the saints enjoy blending with the churches in the francophone world. The saints in the church in Paris are beneficiaries of the ministry of Christ. Recently more and more saints have been joining the semi-annual trainings on the crystallization-study of the Bible, and around thirty to forty saints join the video-training in Paris.

Today the church in Paris meets in two districts, one in the center of Paris and the other in the suburb of Nanterre. The church life has continued to spread in France through the distribution of the ministry, migration of saints from abroad, and students studying at French campuses.

The church in Lyon began with a few Chinese-speaking students and has been strengthened by the migration of several families. In 2003 three Chinese-speaking students, who heard the gospel and received salvation in other French cities and who were being shepherded by the church in Paris, started the Lord’s table in Lyon. The next year the number of saints grew to seven. The students continued to be shepherded by saints from the church in Paris and saints from Geneva, Switzerland. In 2005, during the Paris international conference, the students met a Colombian sister and her children who had immigrated to Lyon the previous year. They started to meet together, and French became their common language. Over the next two years, the gospel was actively preached at several Lyon campuses; many Chinese-speaking students were saved and brought into the church life. In March 2007 one of the co-workers came to Lyon to give a conference. The following year, after seeing the needs of the saints in Lyon, one couple from Malaysia, who graduated from FTTT in 2001 and had been serving full time in Russia and Malaysia, moved to Lyon as students. Shortly afterward, two families from the US answered the call through the Lord’s Move to Europe (LME) and moved to Lyon. In summer 2009 a couple with four children moved from a city 300 km south of Lyon to strengthen the church in Lyon. From 2009 the church in Lyon has continued to receive the rich supply from the ministry through the French literature translation work and the visiting of full-time trainees from all over the world.

In 1987 some believers living around the city of Dieppe in Normandy came into contact with the writings of Watchman Nee and were profoundly affected by what they read. In 2004 they began to enjoy Brother Lee’s ministry, and in 2005 a group of them attended the April French-speaking conference in Paris and entered into fellowship with the churches in French-speaking Europe. Today they are meeting as the church in Neuville-lès-Dieppe.

The church life began in Bordeaux when siblings from Taiwan, who were burdened for Europe, moved there around twelve years ago. Many saints from their locality had prayed for Europe. Thus, when they started to live in Bordeaux, these siblings had a strong burden to contact students daily, preach the gospel on the street, and lead the saved ones to have a corporate church life. Under the Lord’s mercy and blessing, they gained a large number of Chinese-speaking students. At that time, they endeavored to read the Bible, seek the ministry, distribute Rhema cards, and take every opportunity for blending in the conferences. Years after the siblings left Bordeaux, the ones who were under their shepherding still continued the burden to stand with the church. Some of them found jobs and settled with their families in Bordeaux. Between 2010 and 2012 several FTTT graduates settled and started to study French in Bordeaux. The Lord used them to strengthen His testimony again. A sisters’ house and a brothers’ house were established to encourage a corporate God-man life in Bordeaux. In the years since, the Lord has brought many young students to live together and experience a wonderful corporate Christian life. Some of them remained in France and grew to be pillars in the church life. Under the Lord’s blessing, in the past five years, more and more couples and their children have been added into the church life. By 2016 there were around twenty-five adults and ten children in the church life, composing eight families (five Chinese-speaking families, two English-speaking ones, and one French family) plus one sisters’ house. Curently, in 2017, although some of the saints moved away from Bordeaux, there are still five to six families holding the testimony there.

In the 1980s, before the turmoil, there was a Lord’s table in Strasbourg. Recently, in the late 2000s some saints from abroad moved to Strasbourg to study. A year later a French sister also moved to Strasbourg to study. There were three sisters meeting regularly once a week by the end of 2010. By 2013 more saints had moved to the city, and a more established church life was formed with a prayer meeting, Bible-study group, and the Lord’s Day gathering each week. More saints were added by being recovered, through the gospel, and through migration. The FTTA gospel trip visited Strasbourg for the first time in 2017, and there are regular visits from the saints in Taiwan.

Currently, there are churches in the following cities: Paris (130 saints), Lyon (34 saints), Neuville-lès-Dieppe (25 saints), and Bordeaux (20 saints).

There are also groups of saints gathering in Lille, Montpellier, Strasbourg, and Toulouse. Through the publications of the ministry and regular visitation by the saints, there are groups of believers being raised up in other cities such as Cergy, Mantes-la-Ville, Plaisir, Nemours, Rouen and Aubervilliers.

The Recovery Version of the New Testament in French was published in 2007, and The Holy Word for Morning Revival began to be published in 2009. The standing order for all the new French publications began in 2014, and there are now over one hundred saints registered for the standing order. Today there are more than two hundred saints in France and four cities with a lampstand.

Through the spread of the ministry in the French language, there are now saints meeting in the following French-speaking countries: Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Benin, Togo (the first table meeting in Lome, Togo, was held in August 2017), Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, and Madagascar in Africa.

German-speaking Countries

Germany and Austria
(and parts of Switzerland)

Map of the German-speaking countries showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

The contents of this page are:

Germany

October 2017 is the five-hundredth year anniversary of Martin Luther’s publication of his 95 Theses and the beginning of the Reformation.

Martin Luther was born in 1483 in Eisleben, Germany. Originally planning to study law, Luther later decided to dedicate his life to God and become a monk, after he was almost struck by lightning. While at the St. Augustine monastery in Erfurt from 1505 to 1511, Luther lived a very strict life and was tormented by his sense of guilt, confessing excessively and believing that only physical suffering could bring him closer to God. However, he could not find peace. During this time of struggling, Luther began reading the Bible. One day, while in Psalm 22, he read the first verse: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Luther realized that this must have referred to Christ and that God forsook His Son because He bore all of our sins. Gradually, Luther realized that one’s sins were not forgiven by outward ritual or behavioral changes; forgiveness was through faith in what God accomplished in Christ.

On a visit to Rome, Luther saw the wealth and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church and became disillusioned. Luther testified of his regeneration as being at the time that he read Romans 1:17: “The righteous shall have life and live by faith.” Receiving this revelation and being influenced by the legacies of Huss, Wycliffe, and other reformers, Luther began to develop the main ideas of the Reformation—the centrality of the Bible and justification by faith. On October 31, 1517, Luther published his 95 Theses in Wittenberg on the corrupt practice of selling indulgences. In 1520 and again in 1521 at the Diet of Worms, he refused to recant. His famous response in 1521 was, “Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.” The next day he said,

Unless I am convicted by the testimony of the Scriptures and clear reason—I do not trust the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen. (Quoted from Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, Lion Publishing, 1953, p. 185)

After this trial Luther was kidnapped by his friends and brought to Wartburg Castle, where he translated the New Testament into German. Luther’s translation and his stand for the truth revolutionized Germany and Europe. His close relationship with the German princes who protected him, however, linked Lutheranism with the German state church, and this practice spread throughout northern Europe.

Regarding Luther’s legacy, Brother Lee says, “Eventually, the Lord used Martin Luther in the sixteenth century to unlock the Bible, to release the Bible from ‘prison.’ The interpretation of the Bible advanced during this time of the Reformation with the recovery of the truth concerning justification by faith” (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 29).

The Reformation began around 1517. Martin Luther had no intention to rebel against the Catholic Church. His writings show that his intention was only that the doctrine of justification by faith would be made clear to the people. However, after Luther many reformers began to leave the Catholic Church. Luther made a mistake when he supported the establishment of state churches in Germany. This mistake resulted in the formation of many state churches in Germany and abroad. The state churches separated from the Catholic Church, yet they kept many organizational aspects of the apostate church, especially the hierarchy of the clergy. This organization kills the function of the members. Today in the Catholic Church and in the state churches, the members do not all function. Hired clergy carry out spiritual functions for the lay people. (The Recovery of Christ in the Present Evil Age, p. 35)

One of Luther’s contemporaries in Germany also recovered important truths. Caspar Schwenckfeld, originally from Silesia (a region that covered Poland and small parts of Germany and the Czech Republic), emphasized the need of the subjective experience of the truths. He saw that justification should not be just a doctrine but should result in life. He even used the term the life-giving Spirit and saw the truth of transformation by God’s life.

Portrait of Caspar Schwenckfeld | SourceUnknown Illustrator. de: Caspar Schwenckfeld. In Zweihundert deutsche Männer in Bildnissen und Lebensbeschreibungen, by Ludwig Bechstein, Leipzig : Wigand, 1854. In Visual Library. Accessed on October 06, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

Regarding Schwenckfeld, Brother Lee says, “Although Schwenkfeld was not as famous as Luther, he did see something along the line of the Spirit and life” (Perfecting Training, pp. 35-36).

Caspar Schwenckfeld saw that justification must result in life. He may be regarded as one who touched not only the “skin” of the revelation in the Bible, but also began to see the “meat” under the skin. One day I was very surprised to learn that Schwenckfeld used some of the expressions we use today to speak of life. He even spoke of the life-giving Spirit. My point in referring to Luther and Schwenckfeld is to say that the Lord wants to recover not only the skin, that is, certain fundamental doctrines; He also wants to recover the meat under the skin of the Word. (Life-study of 2 Corinthians, p. 166)

Philipp Jakob Spener and the Pietists continued the recovery of the experience of Christ as life in the late seventeenth century. Reacting against the deadness of Lutheranism, the Pietists emphasized the experience of the Holy Spirit, the functioning of the believers, and the gathering in homes.

Portrait of Philipp Jakob Spener | SourceUnknown Illustrator. Philipp Jacob Spener. In Zweihundert deutsche Männer in Bildnissen und Lebensbeschreibungen, by Ludwig Bechstein, Leipzig : Wigand, 1854. In Visual Library. Accessed on October 06, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

Brother Nee says of Spener,

At this time in Germany, God raised up Philipp Jakob Spener. He became a pastor in a Lutheran Church in Frankfurt in 1670. By that time the Lutheran denomination had fallen into a kind of formal religion. By reading his Bible, Spener found out that the church at his time was full of human opinions, something forbidden by God. He saw that the believers should return to the teaching of the New Testament. For this reason he began to lead others into the practice of 1 Corinthians 14. In his meetings he began to teach others to reject the traditional formalities and to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, his practice did not last long. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, “The Present Testimony (4),” pp. 846-847)

Spener was a godfather of Count von Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut. The Moravian Brethren were originally from Bohemia and Moravia, in the present-day Czech Republic, but fled their homeland because of persecution. In 1722 Count von Zinzendorf welcomed them to his estate in Saxony, which is in the eastern part of Germany. They built a small community at Herrnhut, and there they recovered the unity of life among the believers, returned back to the organic function of the church, and began overseas missionary work. In 1727 Zinzendorf asked all of the refugees to be in harmony, and when they broke bread together for the first time, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them. Moved by the Spirit, they were burdened for the spread of the gospel to the entire earth, and they began to pray continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This prayer lasted one hundred years and became the driving force for the sending out of hundreds of believers to preach the gospel. The Moravian Brethren also had a great impact on John and Charles Wesley.

The Lord continued to move in Germany in the twentieth century, when the ministry of the age brought many young believers into the Lord’s recovery. The church life began in 1971 in Freiburg, Germany, and in 1974 all of the saints migrated to Frankfurt. The Normal Christian Life and other books of Watchman Nee’s ministry had been distributed in Germany prior to this time, and small groups of believers were reading the books. The beginning of the church life in Germany reflected what was happening in Elden Hall in Los Angeles around that time. Saints testified of the rich enjoyment of calling on the Lord, pray-reading the Word, and the strong exercise of the spirit. Those who entered the church life at this time testified of the light and life they experienced. Groups of Christians began leaving their denominations and free groups to come into the church life. Many of the young people lived together in corporate living, where they had morning watch together. Several saints from a smaller town near the border of Switzerland and Austria called Friedrichshafen came into the church in the 1970s and began the Lord’s table in 1980. In 1976 many saints migrated to Stuttgart. This is where Brother Lee visited to hold conferences in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this time, he gave messages that became hallmarks of his ministry, such as The Kernel of the Bible (1977) and God’s New Testament Economy (1984). Stuttgart was also where saints began printing Life-study messages in German. The church life was also spreading to a number of other places in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

Several churches in Europe were helped by fellowship with Germany, since it had the most established churches and the most saints. Some of the brothers who eventually became pillars in the church life in London came into the church life in Germany.

In the early 1980s the church life in Germany was affected by the publication and the subsequent translation of The God-men (a book opposing the Lord’s recovery) into German. However, despite the persecution by some of the saints’ families and from Christianity, the saints continued to stand with Brother Lee’s ministry. But by the middle of the 1980s a turmoil began to brew in Germany, around the time that Brother Lee began the full-time training and began speaking on the God-ordained way. A number of saints from Stuttgart went to Taipei to join the training for forty days, but the leading ones in Stuttgart became negative, and their negativity affected many of the saints. Brother Lee sent six brothers to Stuttgart to speak with the saints, but trouble spread throughout Europe, with the result that about a thousand saints in Europe were lost at the time.

There was still a remnant, however. According to the testimony of a brother, a major factor of his and his wife’s remaining in the Lord’s recovery was their experience in Taipei and of blending with the saints from all over the earth. The continual visits of brothers from the US and London sustained the saints. Some of the saints went back to Christianity and to the world, but more than a decade later, the Lord turned them, brought them back in contact with saints and back into the church life. A small number of saints in Switzerland also remained, and they had regular fellowship with each other. The saints continued to go on, holding video trainings, coming to the live trainings, and meeting in their various localities.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany from 1989 to 1990, saints in the Lord’s recovery were burdened for the move of the Lord in Germany, and some saints were sent to serve and distribute the ministry in Berlin. A Lebensstrom bookstore was set up in Berlin in 1996. Along with the publication work in German, the church in Berlin was established between 1996 and 2000. Following a one-month migration training in late 2000, twenty saints from the US, the UK, and Russia came together with those meeting in Berlin to help further establish and build up the Lord’s testimony there. In addition to beginning to contact students on local campuses, a wide door was opened throughout the country to contact and shepherd those of German descent who had already been and were constantly being repatriated to Germany from the former Soviet Union. Most of those contacted were already believers, and many had been in the newly established churches in the former USSR. The Recovery Version of the New Testament and free ministry publications in the Russian language played a large role in gaining this increase. More than two hundred had been contacted, and around seventy had been gained by 2004, mostly in former West Germany, as the free ministry publications and the Recovery Version of the Gospel of John in German first became available. During the 2009 spring conference in Germany, there was a call for saints to pray and consider moving to Berlin to strengthen the church life further. A number of German saints, largely from among these repatriated ones, responded to the call for migration. One year earlier, in 2008, a cluster of FTTL graduates were sent to begin the church life in Düsseldorf. Several saints also moved to Frankfurt in 2011 for the church life. In addition to all the migrations, the German Recovery Version of the New Testament was published in 2010.

More recently, the refugee crisis, which began in 2015, has had a significant impact on the churches in Germany in relation to the Lord’s current move. From 2015 to 2016 Germany took in more than 1 million refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and other countries. They were fleeing from civil war, repressive governments, and economic hardship.

Map of the European migrant crisis 2015 | SourceEuropean Migrant Crisis 2015. In Wikimedia Commons. By Maximilian Dörrbecker. Accessed October 1, 2017. This file was derived from: Refugee crisis in Europe Q1 and Q2 2015.svg by Furfur [CC-BY-SA-2.0]

This sudden, large movement of peoples from the Middle East into Europe sparked a strong burden in the Lord’s recovery for Germany. Scouting trips were undertaken in the autumn of 2015, saints from Europe and the US migrated to key cities in Germany (Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart), and saints from all over the earth participated in gospel trips to these four cities. They visited the refugee camps, preaching the gospel and nourishing the new believers from the Middle East, and preached the gospel on the university campuses to German students. Shepherding trips (2016-2017) continued the initial work of these gospel trips, and more saints have since migrated to Germany.

A migration training was held in the summer of 2017, and in the autumn several saints will emigrate to Germany for the Lord’s move. They will first move to Düsseldorf for blending and language studies before being sent out to either strengthen existing churches or to begin new churches in Germany.

Austria

By the year 1545, shortly after the Reformation began in Germany, approximately half of Austria had been converted to Lutheranism, but as a result of the Counter-Reformation, the dominant influence of the Roman Catholic Church was quickly restored. Today the majority of the Austrian population is considered Catholic.

The development of the Lord’s recovery in Austria is still in the initial stages. In the 1990s a few saints migrated to work or study in Vienna. A couple living in Switzerland began to visit them in 1999, and they continue to visit the saints in Austria.

In 2002 a brother with his family moved from the Netherlands to work in Vienna. He had a burden for the church life and opened his house for meetings, until they had to move to Australia. The saints continued to meet at a young couple’s apartment up to the end of 2006. In the following years, there was no open home for shepherding, but a sister from Malaysia kept in contact with the other saints who were in Vienna.

In 2011 a sister brought her friend to her home to be baptized by two brothers from Switzerland and Bratislava. Since then, a few saints began to meet regularly on the Lord’s Day, and the Lord has added more members to the church life. In 2015, with the help of other saints, an apartment was rented for meeting. Today there are about twenty saints in Vienna, with a new Austrian brother having recently started to meet.

In 2011 a brother, who was a pastor in Salzburg, began to contact the ministry and brought his group into fellowship with the saints. They are now meeting as the church in Salzburg and have been participating in the annual conference and blending meetings in Germany and the one-week trainings in London. They are in fellowship with the saints in the other localities in Austria regarding blending together.

In 2016 a Romanian couple living in Graz (the second-largest city in Austria) were contacted by the saints. This couple began meeting with a sister in Graz, and later, a couple who were relatives of the Romanian sister also joined them in fellowship. In January 2017 some saints from Vienna, Switzerland, and Bratislava went to Graz for a blending meeting, and the sister’s son was baptized. The saints are praying that the Lord would strengthen His testimony in Graz.

Italian-speaking Countries

Italy
(and parts of Switzerland)

Map of Italian-speaking countries showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

Present-day Italy, the birthplace of the Roman Empire, has been crucial in God’s move throughout the centuries.

Brother Lee says,

For Christ’s great accomplishments to be carried out, there was the need for the Roman Empire to be established…It was during the reign of Augustus that Christ was born. Luke 2:1 says, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 10)

The Lord Jesus was born under the rule of the first formal Caesar of the Roman Empire. It was God’s ordination that the Roman Empire should be in control of the Mediterranean area during the time of Christ.

Brother Lee continues,

The order which Rome brought to that warring region made it possible for the Lord Jesus to be born peacefully into mankind. The Roman method of capital punishment, crucifixion, made possible the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning His death.

The spread of the gospel after the resurrection and ascension of Christ was greatly facilitated by the common language, the single rule, the roads, and the domestic order that Rome established.

The Roman Empire, then, was appointed by God to provide the situation in which redemption could be accomplished and the gospel spread. (The World Situation and God’s Move, pp. 11-12)

The Lord Jesus was born under the rule of the first formal Caesar of the Roman Empire, where the method of capital punishment—crucifixion—eventually fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Lord’s death. The common language, relative situation of peace, and convenience of travel within the empire facilitated the spread of the gospel. Within three hundred years of the Lord’s birth, the Christian faith conquered the entire Roman Empire. Today all that is left of the Roman Empire is ruins, but in contrast, the believers today exist all over the earth, proving that the life of God is the power that overcomes everything.

During the apostles’ time, a church was raised up in Rome. Regarding the apostle Paul’s first visit to Rome, Brother Lee points out the following in the Life-study of Acts:

The Judaizers had tried to frustrate [Paul] from going to the Gentiles, but the Lord sovereignly brought Paul to Rome. It was a great matter in the ancient times to make a journey from Jerusalem to Rome. But the Lord brought Paul far into the Gentile world, even into the capital of the Roman empire. Paul must have been full of joy when he arrived in Rome. Outwardly he was in bonds, but inwardly he was full of glory and unspeakable joy.

Paul’s being in Rome was a strengthening to the church in Rome, in particular because a good number of Jews had been saved. Paul came to Rome not too long after writing his Epistle to the Romans. A few years after writing this Epistle, he, the writer, came to Rome.

Acts 28:30 says, “And he remained two whole years in his own rented dwelling, and welcomed all those coming in to him.” During this time the apostle wrote the Epistles to the Colossians (cf. Col. 4:3, 10, 18), Ephesians (cf. 3:1; 4:1; 6:20), Philippians (cf. Phil. 1:7, 14, 17), and Philemon (cf. Philem. 1, 9). In Philippians 1:25 and 2:24 and Philemon 22 Paul was expecting to be released from his imprisonment. Probably after two years he was released. (pp. 619-621)

During Paul’s final imprisonment in Rome, he wrote the Second Epistle to Timothy (2 Tim. 1:16-17). It is also believed that Peter wrote his second Epistle from Rome near the time of his martyrdom.

The Journeys of Paul | © Living Stream Ministry.
Used with permission. Do not duplicate.

After this time the church degraded to the extent that it was joined to worldly political powers, specifically to the Roman Empire. Rome has remained the center of the Roman Catholic Church, and Vatican City, situated within Rome, is the headquarters of the pope. In Italy there were dissidents from the Catholic Church since the twelfth century, but most of them were eliminated through persecution. One of the most important ones, Savonarola, led a reformation in Florence a couple of decades before the raising up of Martin Luther. By the 1500s there was further development, involving Calvinism and Anabaptism, especially in northern Italy, in part due to the influence from Germany. It was during this time that the Bible was first translated into Italian from Hebrew and Greek sources by Giovanni Diodati. Unfortunately, the Italian Reformation collapsed after only seventy years of existence, because of the Inquisition instituted by the Catholic Church. However, a small group of Waldensians, a reformist group that predated the Reformation, survived in the Alps of Italy. There, they focused on the Bible, took Christ as the center of their faith, preached the gospel, lived a simple life, and met from house to house. Despite the constant persecution, they stood against the degradation of the church even in the Middle Ages.

In 1871 the diverse states in the Italian peninsula were annexed and unified into the Kingdom of Italy; however, the Catholic Church resisted incorporation into the new nation, even though their land holdings were greatly reduced. The Lateran Treaty was signed in 1929, which settled the “Roman Question,” a dispute concerning the temporal power of the pope as owner of civil territory. This created the state of Vatican City and guaranteed full and independent sovereignty over the state to the Catholic Church. Despite the close association between Italy and Catholicism, the Constitution and an agreement signed in 1984 allowed non-Catholics to practice their faith freely.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Lord’s recovery first reached the bilingual area in northern Italy through German-speaking saints. As a result of the rebellion in 1989, the fellowship between the churches was stopped. A couple from England had a burden for Rome and Italy, and with a brother, who was a native Italian speaker from Naples, they were also burdened for the translation work into Italian. However, before the burden could be realized, one of the brothers went to be with the Lord. The other brother continued with the translation of ministry books for a while but eventually had to move to another country.

From 2002 onward a couple living in Switzerland began to distribute free English Recovery Versions of the New Testament in Italy. They also visited saints in Milan, Verona, and Vicenza, who were mainly from South America, Africa, and Romania. Later, more saints from China, the Philippines, and Romania moved to Rome, Florence, Catania, Naples, and Turin and were contacted by them through different sources. Through this labor the church in Milan was raised up in 2009 with mostly native Chinese-speaking saints who had moved to Italy for work and business purposes. In 2008 this couple began to pick up the burden for the Italian publication work with the saints in Italy and other countries.

The ministry became available in Italian on the Rhema website in 2011. Around the same time several families migrated to Rome, along with a young brother. They began to practice the church life with a number of brothers and sisters who had been in the church life in their own countries and were now living and working in diverse areas of Rome but were not meeting regularly. The newly migrated saints began to shepherd these saints and to preach the gospel on the university campuses.

After almost a year of regular weekly meetings, the saints became very burdened to have the Lord’s table as the testimony of Jesus in Rome. After fellowship with the leading brothers in the UK and the US, the decision was made to begin to have the Lord’s table in Rome, starting on June 17, 2012. To celebrate the resumption of the Lord’s table meeting on the genuine ground of oneness, over six hundred saints from all over the earth came together in Rome for a conference.

After the book fair in Turin, a Christian distributor began to distribute twenty-one Italian ministry books of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee in ten Christian bookstores in Italy and Switzerland in 2015. In 2016, by the Lord’s sovereignty, an Italian brother in Naples, who had been reading Watchman Nee’s books, contacted the saints in Rome. Through him the saints were brought in contact with a group of Italian believers who are now enjoying the fellowship in the recovery. Currently, there are about two hundred fifty saints in many different cities of Italy.

The Lord has been moving further in Italy. Besides Milan and Rome, other cities such as Turin, Vicenza, Padova, Florence, and Naples, where saints have been meeting regularly, are looking forward to establishing shining lampstands through the fellowship and perfecting in the Body. Recently, many native Italians have been contacted by the saints, and the ministry has opened a door for the Lord to flow in various cities. The saints are in prayer, fellowship, and coordination regarding how to shepherd these seeking ones into the Body step by step. In order to reach out to more seekers and to supply the saints, the literature work plans to increase distribution of the ministry through more channels and locations. There are also plans to release more hymns as well as the first Life-study messages, and to prepare to translate the Recovery Version of the New Testament in the next few years. At this moment, there are about sixty children, young people, and college students who are in the church life. They need to receive care in the homes and more training in order to become useful vessels for the Lord in the future. For the coming years, there is a burden of prayer that the Lord will thrust out the workers into His harvest.

Baltic Countries

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

Map of the Baltic countries showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

The move of the Lord in the Baltic countries through the spreading of the ministry of the Lord’s recovery occurred mainly in the 1990s, after the fall of Communism. Of the three Baltic countries, Lithuania was predominantly Roman Catholic, and Latvia and Estonia were traditionally Lutheran; all Christians were persecuted under the rule of Communism. However, saints in these countries have sought for the deeper truths, and small groups, especially of young people, were raised up after the fall of Communism.

Even before the twentieth century, Livonia (constituted of both present-day Estonia and Latvia) experienced a spiritual revival through the prayer and labor of the Moravian Brethren in the nineteenth century. Missionaries were sent to Livonia, and the people were attracted by their sincerity, simple living, and faith. It was said that as a result of the revival, both prisons and bars were closed. The influence of this move of the Lord was also linked to the desire of self-determination of these countries.

A few decades after independence (1917), all the Baltic countries became communist within the Soviet Union, and Christian work was opposed by the governments. However, ministry books were still being circulated underground by believers and groups. For example, when the brothers first went to Estonia, a local Lutheran librarian showed them four Watchman Nee titles that had been translated and published (hand-typed and printed versions) into Estonian in the mid-1950s. These books sustained many believers during Communist times.

A few saints serving with Rhema were visiting Estonia in 2005 and spent a little time with the librarian of a Lutheran theology school. She brought four Estonian translations of Watchman Nee’s books for them to see. One was a local product, a hand-typed carbon copy of The Normal Christian Life, from a small town in Estonia. Another one was from the Church Book Room in Hong Kong. | © Amana Trust

All three Baltic countries declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Their revolution is commonly known as the Singing Revolution because of the mass demonstrations in each country that included the singing of national songs and hymns that were forbidden by the Soviet-sponsored governments.

Changes in borders after the Cold War | SourceAivazovsky. Cold War Border Changes. Digital image. In Wikimedia Commons. September 22, 2016. Accessed on October 01, 2017. [PD-user]

From 1993 to 1994 believers in these countries began to discover the ministry and come into contact with the saints in the Lord’s recovery. This was the result of the prayer of the Body regarding the Soviet Union.

A brother in a Baptist denomination in Latvia began to seek the truth more seriously after he was assigned to take care of believers who were being baptized. While studying Ephesians, he saw the expression God’s economy and asked his pastor what it meant. The pastor responded that it was a mystery and that they would not know until they got to heaven. Shortly after, he found on a friend’s bookshelf the book The Economy of God in Russian by Witness Lee. He was immediately struck that a man could write an entire book on a topic about which pastors could not say anything. The book was one of thousands smuggled into the Soviet Union given by the saints in the Lord’s recovery during Communist times. This brother ordered more books from Moscow, enjoyed the ministry to the uttermost, and began to encourage the young people around him to read the ministry.

These young people loved the Bible, and the ministry was, according to their testimony, like water reaching dry land. There was an explosion of life and experience. One brother testified that in 1989, when he was in his late teens, he spent one entire summer reading the Bible and accidentally touched his spirit. When these young people got in contact with the church life in Moscow and seven of them, including this brother, visited there in 1995, they saw many saints exercising their spirit. This brother testified that after seeing this, he called on the Lord loudly until he broke through and experienced great joy. They went back to Latvia and continued to meet with the Baptist denomination, but they were “ruined for Christianity” and left one by one. One brother went to the denomination, did not see the others there, and when he asked the Lord what happened, the Lord responded, “I’m not here.” The co-workers in Russia did not tell them how to begin the church life. Instead, the co-workers told them that there is a river of water of life flowing that is bright as crystal. If they kept drinking the river, they would become crystal clear regarding how to have the church life. Soon, almost twenty saints began meeting in a home, and in 1996 the church in Riga, the capital of Latvia, took the ground. In 1999 they distributed around 20,000 Recovery Versions of the New Testament in Riga.

In 1994 a brother in Lithuania got hold of The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit by Watchman Nee from a pastor in a denomination. The book had been brought from St. Petersburg, Russia. This brother was impressed by the truths in the book and began to seek out more books. He read The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee and The Experience of Life by Witness Lee and passed on these books to other brothers in his denomination. Some of the believers received and enjoyed the ministry; others opposed it, but the brothers (around ten of them) continued to read the ministry books for two years. The brothers realized that the way they were meeting was off and began to bring up the matter of everyone speaking. In 1996 co-workers from St. Petersburg discovered them through a sister in another city in Lithuania and visited them. After about a month of meeting and fellowship with them, around ten saints left the denomination and began to meet as the church in Jonava, Lithuania.

Estonia was the first place in the Baltics that the ministry reached when a brother passed through in 1989 on the way to Russia with a supply of ministry books. The books were in Russian, and even though most Estonians do not speak Russian, the first meetings and bread-breaking meetings occurred in the cities of Kohtla Järve (1997) and in Narva (2003), cities in northeast Estonia, where Russian is widely spoken. Saints from several countries around the globe gathered in Tallinn, the capital city, to labor together in the gospel for nearly one month during January 2007.

The same year, separate from the special intensified gospel labor in January, the Lord began to gain a number of seeking young native Estonian-speaking students, three of whom eventually graduated from the Full-time Training in London and who continue to serve the Lord in His recovery. The Lord continued His gathering of seeking ones through the free literature from Rhema between 2009 and 2012, leading to a substantial meeting, including the bread-breaking meeting, being raised up in Tallinn beginning from 2010. In 2011 the first ministry book, The Overcoming Life, was printed in Estonian, and in 2016 four of the titles distributed by Rhema—The Economy of God, The Knowledge of Life, The All-inclusive Christ, and The Glorious Church—were translated and published in Estonian.

Today there are several churches in the Baltic countries, with much of the increase coming from the distribution of the ministry. There are also a good number of young people being raised up for the church life, and several young saints from the Baltics have attended the Full-time Training in London.

Switzerland

Map of Switzerland showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

Switzerland was an important center of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was in Zurich that Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, first took a stand against the corruption and hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The Reformation swept through Switzerland, and a number of major cities and towns became Protestant, with their inhabitants destroying images and forsaking Catholic rituals.

Portrait of Ulrich Zwingli (Huldrich Zwingli)| SourceUnknown Illustrator. Huldrich/Ulrich Zwingli. In Zweihundert deutsche Männer in Bildnissen und Lebensbeschreibungen, by Ludwig Bechstein, Leipzig : Wigand, 1854. In Visual Library. Accessed on October 06, 2017 via Wikimedia Commons. [Public Domain]

John Calvin went to Geneva in 1536 and became the spiritual leader of that city, where he also founded a school of theology (currently the University of Geneva). Most significantly, Calvin recovered the truth of predestination. Regarding this, Brother Lee says, “Calvin saw that our salvation was not initiated by ourselves, but rather that we have been selected and predestinated by God before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5). This predestination is eternal and unchangeable; therefore, the saved ones will never perish…Calvin saw the revelation of God’s predestination, and this is right” (The Full Knowledge of the Word of God, pp. 43-44).

French-speaking Switzerland became a refuge for Protestant refugees and was important for the translation and printing of Bibles. The first French Bible translated from Hebrew and Greek texts (and considered the first French Protestant Bible) was published in Neuchâtel in 1535. Some Protestant refugees from England also produced and printed the Geneva Bible (1560), which became the primary Bible of sixteenth century English Protestantism. The Geneva Bible was significant because it was the first mass-produced Bible to come with study aids that included cross-references and maps.

The Geneva Bible, 1593 | © Amana Trust

Today the larger cities in Switzerland are predominantly Protestant (Swiss Reformed) and about one third of the population is Catholic. Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Switzerland is known for its political neutrality, and it is not part of the European Union.

Brother Nee visited Switzerland on his trip to Europe in 1938, but the church life began in the 1980s, when saints from Stuttgart moved to Zurich. In the 1970s two brothers in the flesh in Neuchâtel were invited by a Russian-American sister to attend a conference in Germany. They touched the Lord and discovered their spirit through calling on the name of the Lord and pray-reading the Word, and when they came back, a few saints were added in Neuchâtel. One of the brothers moved to Lausanne and helped to raise up a testimony there. A few young people were also gained in Geneva in the late 1970s and mid-1980s. The saints in Switzerland regularly went to Stuttgart to participate in conferences, where they enjoyed hospitality with the German saints.

However, the churches in Switzerland were badly affected by the turmoil in the late 1980s, and only a remnant continued to meet and have the Lord’s table in Regensdorf, outside of Zurich. A sister from Neuchâtel went to the summer training in Anaheim in 1987 and from there to the FTTT. After marrying a brother and living in the US for two years, they returned to Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1990. Although the situation was confused and difficult, the saints were helped through fellowshipping with one another and with saints from London. Zurich and Lausanne have continued to go on, being strengthened through the migration of saints there, FTTA gospel trips, and regular fellowship with saints in Switzerland and Europe. Saints in Lausanne took the Lord’s table again in 1999. More recently, some saints have also moved to Geneva, and there is close fellowship between Lausanne and Geneva.

In the 1990s a Swiss student studying at Berkeley walked into the Amana bookshop, spoke to the brothers there, and came into the church life. Through this contact, a number of young people from his denomination also came into the church life. These young people went to the FTTL and FTTA in the late 1990s and early 2000s and returned to Switzerland for the church life. Recently, these saints were burdened to migrate to Switzerland’s capital, Bern, for the church life, and there is now a church in Bern, with about twenty saints. The saints also operate a bookroom with German, French, and English books in front of the meeting hall. There is regular fellowship between Bern and Zurich.

The church life began in St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland near the border with Germany, Austria, and Lichtenstein, in the late 1990s. A sister from Zurich moved to work in St. Gallen, and after marrying a brother, they began to open their home for meetings with saints in their area. Through ministry distribution the Lord added to them, and now there are about twelve meeting there.

There are currently about one hundred saints meeting in Switzerland, including young people. The saints are in fellowship and coordination with Germany, France, and Italy, aided by the shared languages. There is a conference held in the Lausanne-Geneva area each year, during which the saints enjoy the blending with visiting saints.

Benelux Countries

Belgium, the Netherlands,
and Luxemburg

Map of the Benelux countries showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

The Netherlands and Belgium, though small countries, have been the context of religious and political events that have significantly affected the Lord’s move and world history.

The Low Countries played an important role in the Reformation. Desiderius Erasmus was a humanist Dutch professor, and his humanism meant that he supported the right to defend against the inappropriate power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church with proper logic and conscience. While being a visiting scholar at Queens’ College, Cambridge, Erasmus worked on and soon published the Greek New Testament, along with a Latin translation. Although Erasmus remained a Catholic, his work provided the basis for Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible and was probably used by William Tyndale for the first English New Testament and by the translators of the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible.

The Netherlands itself was greatly affected by the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lutheranism did not make great inroads, but the Anabaptists, who were against infant baptism, gained many adherents in the northwest provinces. One of the adherents was Menno Simons, who began the Mennonite movement.

Concerning these two groups, Brother Nee shares the following in Messages Given During the Resumption of Watchman Nee’s Ministry (2 volume set):

There were the Mennonites, who were the first group of believers to realize the error of a hierarchy. Among them, they recovered the title of “brothers,” and they addressed each other as brothers. Some of them went to Russia to preach the gospel. In addition to them, the Baptists were also raised up. They saw the error of infant baptism, and they taught that a man must first be clear about the truth of baptism before he can be baptized. They were called the Anabaptists, and they were much persecuted at the beginning. These are recoveries of the outward things. (p. 53)

In the 1540s Calvinism began to make great gains, especially in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking area of present-day northern Belgium. The religious conflicts at that time played into political ones and discontent with Spanish Habsburg rule, and the Inquisition’s persecution of Protestants erupted into the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648), resulting in the Dutch Republic gaining independence from Spain. In the midst of the Eighty Years’ War with Spain, there was a Twelve Years’ Truce, which saw the outbreak of conflict in the Netherlands between Calvinists and Arminianists, who differed on the matters of selection and security of salvation. Calvinism eventually became the dominant religion in the Netherlands.

However, the relative freedom of religion in the Low Countries in this period made it a refuge for many Protestant dissenters fleeing from persecution. Antwerp was one of the places that published William Tyndale’s English New Testament; Tyndale himself was captured and martyred by the Habsburg authorities in Vilvoorde, northeast of Brussels. The Puritans from England also emigrated to the Netherlands before going to New England in the early seventeenth century. The Puritans sought to “purify” the Church of England from Catholicism. They practiced separation from the state and believed that God’s word and revelation advances through the ages, and they were thus not bound by any single doctrine. However, they were strongly influenced by Reformed theology. A number of Puritans who had been in Leiden traveled on the Mayflower to America in 1620.

The southern part of the region remained mostly Catholic, and the Belgian Revolution in 1830, which had been partially motivated by religious reasons, led to the secession of the Catholic southern provinces and the formation of the Kingdom of Belgium. Belgium was the site of important battles in the great wars of the twentieth century. Following World War II, the early predecessor to the European Union was formed by the Treaty of Paris (1951) and signed by six European nations: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and West Germany. From that time, Brussels has increasingly functioned as the de facto “capital of Europe”. Today it hosts the official seats of the European Commission, European Council, and European Parliament, as well as numerous other European and international organizations.

Both the Netherlands and Belgium became increasingly secularized in the twentieth century, but the Lord began a significant recovery work in these countries in the 1990s. An announcement in The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, volume 32, “The Open Door (2),” states that decades ago, “Brother Watchman Nee left England last month for Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Then he will go to Belgium and France. Because of the need of the work there, he is not able to leave Europe now.” There was a church life in Belgium in the 1980s, but this testimony was lost, as were many other lampstands on the continent during that period of time. The church life in Belgium and the Netherlands began around the same time, from 1998 to 2000.

The church life in the Netherlands began with two families in The Hague in 1998. In the spring of 1999 all the subscribers of The Stream magazine in Dutch were invited to the first conference in Leiden. The saints began to gather with the seeking ones who had come to the conference and continued to contact more people by distributing ministry books and holding conferences. A meeting began in Almelo, followed by the raising up of the church in Ter Aar (2002), the church in Vlaardingen (2003), and the church in Spakenburg (2006). By the end of 2007 Rhema cards and the free ministry books distributed by Rhema were printed in Dutch, and the saints began to distribute them. In the same year, the churches in the Netherlands purchased an apartment in Delft near the campus as a base for the campus work, and in 2009 the church in Delft was established.

Today there are a total of seven local churches in the Netherlands, with about one hundred thirty saints who meet on the Lord’s Day. Two features of the propagation in the Lord’s recovery—the propagation of the truth and the gaining of the local people—are manifested clearly among the churches in the Netherlands, where about seventy-five percent of the saints are local people.

The newest church is in Utrecht, the fourth-largest city in the Netherlands. The church in Utrecht was established through migration and now five families and about twenty saints meet there. This is the first of the major cities in the Netherlands to have a lampstand, and one of the burdens of the saints is to spread to the three largest cities—Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. A student meeting was started in Rotterdam, and the burden is that this city will also become a lampstand in the near future. The saints are burdened for the propagation and spread, for the work among the children and young people, and for the migration among the saints.

Thus far, there is not yet a testimony in Luxembourg.

In 1999 a group of sisters in Brussels, some of whom had enjoyed the church life in Armenia, began to read the ministry of Brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and in March 2000 five sisters and one brother began partaking of the Lord’s table. A responsible brother from Holland was invited to come and participate in this beginning. In the same year these saints participated in the first conference in the Netherlands, and saints from Paris and London came to Brussels to partake of the Lord’s table with them. Since 2002 international conferences have been held in Brussels. By that time, there were fifteen saints, mainly Armenians. Rhema began distributing literature in 2006, and Bibles for Europe began to distribute in Belgium in 2014. Recently, five of the young people who were raised up in the church life in Belgium have gone to the Full-time Training in London. Today there are about fifty saints who meet in Belgium, representing more than ten nationalities.

Eastern and Central Europe

Hungary, Poland, Romania,
Czech Republic, and Slovakia

In 1991 Brother Lee shares in The Central Line of the Divine Revelation,

Romans 10 says that faith comes out of hearing, and hearing comes out of preaching (vv. 14, 17), and preaching comes out of being sent (v. 15). Recently I received a letter from a dear brother who had just returned from a trip to eastern Europe to visit Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary. The impression I received from this report is that there is the need for the preaching of what we believe. Those countries need our young people to go there to teach the people our belief, our faith. I do believe the Lord will afford us the way to go. We need to send a good number of young people to these countries. But where are the people who will go? The Lord said to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” (Isa. 6:8). Would you answer, “Lord, I am here. I will go”? You do not need to care for your living. Jesus will feed you. Some of you can go to those countries to teach English. As you teach English to the people, you can teach them the truth, the faith, the belief, and the holy word that you have heard. If you would go there and take care of just ten people, I believe that in half a year you would bring all these ten to the Lord and into the truth. (pp. 153-154)

Map of Eastern and Central Europe showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

The contents of this page are:

Hungary

Hungary has been a predominantly Christian country since the eleventh century. The Protestant Reformation had an important influence on the country in the sixteenth century. János Sylvester translated the Bible into Hungarian in 1541, Luther’s teachings reached Hungary by German settlers in the area that is now Slovakia, and later, Calvinism became widespread; however, the Catholic Habsburg Empire’s Counter-Reformation reversed these gains. The Battle of Mohács in 1526, largely seen as a turning point in Hungarian history, resulted in the division of the Kingdom of Hungary into three parts—the northwest was controlled by the Habsburgs, the central portion by the Turks, and the Principality of Transylvania to the east paid tribute to the Turks to remain semi-independent. The Turks did not enforce Islam on Transylvania with the result that there are still significant Protestant communities in the eastern part of Hungary. After the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War, Hungary became an independent country, and after the Second World War, it became a Communist country. Despite the government’s official policy of atheism and early persecution of Christians, a majority of Hungarians continued to believe in God.

The ministry first reached Hungary through a Hungarian brother who met brothers in Kent, Ohio, in 1985. He began translating ministry books in 1986 and continued to be supplied by Life-study tapes sent by a brother from the US. After the fall of Communism, two brothers from America and London went to Budapest in 1992 to find university students who could translate key ministry books, and the books began to spread through Hungary. Saints from Taiwan and the US migrated there in the late 1990s and early 2000s and acquired an apartment for office, meeting, and hospitality purposes. Rhema began free literature distribution in 2003, and in 2005 the first Hungarian brother graduated from the FTTL. More saints from the US migrated to Budapest in 2009 and 2011 to continue Rhema work and to strengthen the Lord’s testimony. In 2012 ten saints attended the first Lord’s Day meeting in Budapest, in 2013 weekly prayer meetings for the brothers and sisters began, and in 2016 the saints held their first Lord’s table meeting.

The testimony in Hungary has been strengthened by regularly blending with saints from the Czech Republic and Slovakia and with all of Europe in the International Conference in Baarlo, Netherlands. A number of Hungarian saints have also attended the one-week trainings at Bower House, London.

As for the near future, our burden is to extend the boundaries of blending within the region to include localities like Zagreb, Croatia; Novi Sad, Serbia; Kosice, Slovakia; Timisoara, Romania; and Vienna, Austria. Based upon the openness and interest of some believers in other localities in the country, that is, in Szeged, Békés, and Debrecen, we are pursuing to help them to start meetings for reading the free ministry publications together so that the Lord would have a way to raise up lampstands in these localities in Hungary.

Poland

Poland was Christianized from the time of the “Baptism of Poland” (the baptism of the first ruler of the Polish state, Mieszko I and his court) in 966. Since the thirteenth century Poland has been a predominantly Catholic country. However, a significant number of Jews historically lived in Poland until World War II, during which a large number of Polish Jews perished in the Holocaust. The Hussites from Bohemia (in the present-day Czech Republic) first introduced Protestant ideas to Poland and despite gaining a significant number of people, Protestantism in Poland was almost completely stamped out by the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Polish identity has been historically wrapped up with Catholicism, and even under Communism, Poland was never as atheistic as other countries in the Soviet bloc. Because the Catholic Church in Poland has been a major factor in dissent to foreign rule and also to Communism, national identity in Poland is closely identified with being Catholic.

However, the Lord found a good number of saints who chose the way of His recovery after the fall of Communism. Although many Poles are nominal Catholics, there are a number of revival groups and charismatic groups within the Catholic Church. In the late 1980s about twenty to thirty believers met in one of these groups in Lublin, Poland, and in their seeking eventually realized that they could not remain in the Catholic Church. They began looking for the right place to meet and discovered some Watchman Nee books, several of which had been translated into Polish. Through these books they realized that the genuine church was not in the Catholic Church or denominations. At the same time, they were also in fellowship with other groups of young people from different places in Poland.

In 1991 one of the sisters from Lublin ended up in the UK and found the saints in the church in London. From this contact, brothers from the UK began to visit the free group in Lublin and another one in Radom. Because of the regular visitation, the saints began to see more and became clear that the Lord is after local churches that are the expression of the universal Body of Christ. That summer a group of these Polish saints (mostly university students) from Lublin, Radom, Torun, and Warsaw attended an informal basic training on the church and God’s economy in London. This was a major turning point, and soon after that the saints began to break bread in Lublin and Radom.

The publication work in Polish began around this time, with the help and support of the saints in London. Everything was published in London and sent to and distributed in Poland. From the spread of the literature, believers in several localities were contacted and shepherded. The first conference was held in Warsaw in November 1992 for seeking ones and more than fifty attended from all over Poland. Six months later, the church in Warsaw began to break bread. The saints held these conferences every six months, and the church life began to spread in Poland.

In the 1990s young people from Poland started attending the full-time training in Anaheim and Moscow and, since 1997, in London. The first Polish graduates of the training started serving full time with Strumien Zycia (LSM) and on the campuses in 1997. In 1995 a serving couple from the US and a family from Taiwan (1996) migrated to Warsaw. From 2000 to 2001 there was a migration to Eastern Europe and Israel and in that migration, some came to Poland from the US, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Russia.

Each year until 1995, around sixty to eighty saints from Poland went to London in the summer for about a month to attend a training. These trainings were beneficial for the beginning stages of the church life in Poland, since they covered the truths and experience of God’s economy. By the end of the 1990s there were over two hundred saints meeting in seven local churches and around ten in three localities without a church. Also a good number of the saints, about eighty, from many localities in Poland, graduated from the 96 Lessons training. These trainings were held from 2003-2006 and 2008-2010.

Since 2001, in Poland there has been free distribution of the English Recovery Version of the New Testaments and also ministry books in Polish through Rhema. To date, there have been up to 85,000 (78,000 in the database) ministry books distributed to 50,000 recipients. From 2015, Bibles for Europe distributed over 300 free English Recovery Version of the New Testaments with the first set of Basic Elements of the Christian Life (in Polish) throughout Poland.

Since the 1990s, some localities in Poland have been added, and some have been dissolved because of migration or other reasons. Currently, there are eight churches and eight more cities with saints living there. In 2016 there was a migration to Kraków. The saints have prayed for Kraków for many years, and the Lord opened the way for three saints in Poland to migrate there. Three full-time serving couples from the UK also migrated there in the same year.

The European Young People’s Conference in Poland began in 1995 and has been a rich source of spiritual nourishment and fellowship for the young people in Europe. It is held for one week and has since grown exponentially. There are now four simultaneous conferences: senior young people, junior young people, parents, and children. In 1995 there were approximately 120 young people and serving ones from less than 10 countries. In 2017 there were 1205 young people, serving ones, parents, and children participating from 38 countries. Saints came from 25 European countries, 4 former Soviet Union countries, Israel, 4 Asian countries, Canada, the US, 1 Australasian country, and 1 Central American country.

There is also an annual international conference in May that is held in Warsaw.

The publication work has also been steadily going on, and over one hundred ministry titles have been published in Polish thus far. For a time, the saints also produced the Life-study of the Bible radio programs for the book of Genesis and the Gospel of John. The translation for the Polish Recovery Version of the New Testament is now completed and the proofreading project took place in August and September 2017.

The saints pray that the printing of the Polish Recovery Version of the New Testament will be completed as planned by the end of 2017 and that the first copies will be for sale. We pray also that a good number of the Bibles can be printed for free distribution. We pray that the people of Poland will be prepared to receive it, that many will be enlightened concerning God’s New Testament economy, and that many will be fed with the riches of Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ. We pray also that the saints in Poland will read the Word of God and will pick up the burden to learn, study, and apply the divine truths to be equipped to speak, teach, and spread them throughout the whole country. May the Lord gain many in Poland for His recovery and may His testimony be raised up in Kraków and in all the other leading cities in Poland.

Romania

There have been believers in Romania at least from the third century A.D., and a large number of believers were martyred under the Roman Empire. Romania became a predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian country after the Great Schism in 1054. The Hussites, followers of the teachings of Czech reformer John Huss, were active in Transylvania and Moldavia (regions in present-day Romania) in the fifteenth century, and the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century affected parts of the country. When Romania became Communist in 1947, Christianity was suppressed and subordinated to the state. However, by the 1980s Christians were able to meet, albeit secretly, without too much threat from the state.

The ministry first came to Romania in the late 1980s through Watchman Nee’s books, which were circulated underground during Communist times. A brother who met with the Brethren discovered The Normal Christian Life in 1987 two years after he had become a believer. He began to read and translate all the Watchman Nee books he could find. Although he did not know much English at the time, this brother loved Watchman Nee’s ministry and translated the English books into Romanian by hand, learning English as he translated. One of the books that he translated, The Normal Christian Worker, was published by Living Stream Ministry, and this brother wrote a letter to Witness Lee in 1993. In 1994 a brother from LSM contacted and visited this Romanian brother with another brother from London. They introduced Witness Lee’s ministry to this brother in depth, and although this brother was hesitant and at first decided not to remain in contact with the brothers, he was later convicted by the Lord and realized that, after rejecting the brothers, he had lost the Lord’s presence. Once he decided to go along with the brothers, the flow returned.

After attending the spring 1994 conference in Warsaw, this brother and a small group of saints in his hometown began to take the way of the church life in the Lord’s recovery. Through the ministry publication work, the church life began to spread and grow. The first two titles published in Romanian were The Economy of God and The Normal Christian Church Life. Because the translations were hand-written, British sisters transcribed the Romanian text onto computers. In 1996 the saints set up a small entity called The Stream of Life, which published and distributed the ministry. Through the publications and regular conferences, various people from around Romania began to contact the saints and enter the church life. Most of the churches were established after 1999 through the spread of the publications. In 1999 and 2000 saints emigrated from Taiwan and the US to serve in Romania.

Beginning from 1995 the saints in Romania have blended regularly with the saints in Poland and the rest of Europe, and since 1997 a good number of young Romanian brothers and sisters have graduated from the Full-time Training in London. Today there are eight cities and towns with saints meeting in Romania.

Since 1994, fifty-six titles of ministry books and thirty-three small booklets have been published in Romanian. In addition, the Life-studies of Genesis, Matthew, John, Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrews, and Revelation have been published. The regular publication of The Holy Word for Morning Revival has kept the saints in the up-to-date speaking of the Lord in His recovery. Since 2004, Rhema has distributed approximately 65,000 free copies of ministry books and booklets in Romania. Because the literature work in Romania is sufficiently mature, we feel that the time may be right to translate the Recovery Version of the New Testament into Romanian. This will add another European language and should open the way for the Lord to move more prevailingly in Romania in the coming years.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia

Prague, in today’s Czech Republic, was an important center during the initial stage of reformation in the fifteenth century. It was there that John Huss (Jan Hus) began to expose the degradation of the Catholic Church. Influenced by John Wycliffe’s teachings in England, Huss taught that the head of the church is Christ, not the pope, that the church needed to adhere to the Bible, and that all the believers could partake of the Lord’s table.

Huss was opposed by the Catholic Church, and he was martyred by being burned at the stake in 1415. As he was dying, he sang hymns to the Lord. Also, during his imprisonment, Huss prophesied that in one hundred years, God would raise up a man whose calls for reform could not be suppressed—that man was Martin Luther.

Concerning this Brother Lee says,

Martin Luther was a central figure in the Reformation, but he was not alone; the Reformation began long before Martin Luther was raised up. John Huss tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church before Luther came on the scene. Huss received light from the Lord’s Word and spoke the basic truths. Because his preaching contradicted the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, he was martyred. However, the seeds that he sowed in central Europe bore fruit a hundred years later. (Three Aspects of the Church: Book 2, The Course of the Church, p. 148)

Huss’s message resonated throughout the Czech lands, and groups of brethren were raised up after his death. While some Hussites eventually compromised with the Catholic majority, others believed that they needed to fight for their beliefs, and until the seventeenth century, this region saw a constant conflict between the Hussites and the Catholic Church. In 1620 the Catholic Church finally crushed the Protestant nobles at the Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years’ War, with the result that even today this area is predominantly Catholic. Another group of Hussites did not fight but went underground. Members from this group, known as Unitas Fratrum (“Unity of the Brethren”), translated the Bible into Czech in the last half of the sixteenth century. One of their leaders, Comenius, had a major impact in the formation of modern Czech education. It was from this group that the Moravian Brethren emerged in the eighteenth century. Originally from Bohemia in the western part of today’s Czech Republic, this group had fled to Moravia, in the east.

Regarding this group, Brother Lee says,

Their background was the seed planted by John Huss three hundred years earlier. At the time of John Huss, many people in northern Europe loved the Lord with a pure heart and could not accept the fallen religion of their day. They opposed the organized church and were driven out of their countries by fierce persecution. These believers moved to Bohemia.

Bohemia is north of Austria in the western half of the Czech Republic, a place which Hitler and the British fought for in the Second World War. When the brothers in Moravia were persecuted for loving the Lord, they moved to Bohemia…When they left their lands to move to Bohemia, they spontaneously broke off their relationship with the world’s political organizations and with the fallen organization of the church. (Three Aspects of the Church: Book 2, The Course of the Church, p. 153)

Portrait of Christian David (Kristián David) | SourceKristián David. 1900. In Wikimedia Commons. Accessed September 11, 2017. [Public Domain]

In the eighteenth century, led by a man called Christian David, they came to Saxony (in today’s eastern Germany), where Count von Zinzendorf received them. They created the community of Herrnhut, near Zinzendorf’s estate, and many persecuted Christian groups found refuge there.

Regarding this, Brother Lee says,

In the eighteenth century the Lord moved among the Moravian brethren under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf to recover something of the practice of the church life. These Moravian brethren suffered the persecution not only of the Roman Catholic Church but also of the state churches. They were persecuted because they stood for the truth, and they fled to Zinzendorf’s estate in Saxony for refuge. Because of Count Zinzendorf’s love for the Lord, he received many of these seekers who came from different backgrounds. These brothers began to disagree over their doctrinal differences. One day Zinzendorf called a conference, and he convinced them to drop their doctrinal disagreements. They signed an agreement to keep the oneness among them and to lay aside their differences in doctrine and in their religious backgrounds. Afterwards, while they were having the Lord’s table, they experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Among them there was the strongest revival in church history up to that time, and they became one of the most prevailing Christian groups on earth. (The History of the Church and the Local Churches, p. 32)

Out of their oneness, the Lord led them to evangelize and burdened them for the entire earth. They were the first Protestant group to send missionaries abroad. They prayed as a group non-stop for one hundred years and out of that prayer, they preached the gospel around the earth with strong impact. Today John Huss and the Unitas Fratrum still have a special legacy in the Czech Republic.

The Czech and Slovak regions, however, remained mostly Catholic under the influence of the Habsburgs, the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the Empire was dissolved in 1918, Czechoslovakia became a sovereign state. After World War II, Czechoslovakia became Communist, and Christians were suppressed by the state. After the fall of Communism, the country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 because of long-standing ethnic and political differences.

The ministry in the Lord’s recovery began to be translated into Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian in the 1980s, when an American brother with Slovak heritage made an offering to print these books for distribution. In the mid-1990s a couple moved to Bratislava, Slovakia, and another couple moved to Prague. The saints began focusing on the literature work and to make contacts with believers. The first Lord’s table meeting was held in 1999 in Prague. Serving ones were sent from the US and Taiwan to strengthen the work in Eastern Europe in 2001.

A couple from the US joined the saints in Bratislava in 2000. At this time a couple in a Catholic Charismatic group in Slovakia had received The Glorious Church by Watchman Nee from a pastor and contacted the saints, asking for all of their literature. This couple and a cluster of saints related to them came into the church life. From 2002 to 2003 three couples joined the full-time training (1 in London; 2 in Moscow). Saints from Prague migrated to Bratislava in 2005, and the church began that same year.

In 2009 the saints originally from the Czech Republic moved back to Prague. Today there are three localities in the Czech Republic with a Lord’s table meeting (Prague, Brno, the second-largest city, and the small town of Letovice). There are two localities in Slovakia (Bratislava and Košice).

The saints from both countries are strengthened by their blending together regularly. There is an annual international conference in Bratislava, especially for the saints from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia. The brothers from these countries also meet together regularly for blending fellowship and coordination. Many of the major books in the ministry have been translated, and the saints are also translating the Life-studies. The ministry continues to reach seeking ones, and a number of these contacts have come into the church life through seminars and visitations.

Balkans

Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia

Map of the Balkans showing lampstands | © Amana Trust
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)

The contents of this page are:

Greece

The first place the gospel was preached in Europe was in Greece (Acts 16—18). During the second journey, Paul and his co-workers went to Philippi in the Roman province of Macedonia, which today is in northern Greece. After Lydia and her household and the household of the Philippian jailer were saved, Paul and Silas journeyed to Thessalonica (current-day Thessaloniki) and Berea (Veria). Travelling south, Paul preached the gospel at the Areopagus in Athens and from there went to Corinth, where he met Aquila and Priscilla.

Paul and the brothers revisited Greece in the third ministry journey (Acts 20:2-6). The widespread use of the Greek language in the Roman Empire meant that the New Testament was written in Greek and also facilitated the spread of the gospel. Eight books of the New Testament were written in Greece: Paul wrote Romans, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, and Titus; and John wrote the book of Revelation on the Greek island of Patmos. Five Epistles were written to the churches in this region as well (1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians).

As part of the Roman Empire, Greece was Christianized after Constantine made Christianity the state religion. After the fall of the Roman Empire tensions between the eastern and western parts of the Roman Catholic Church culminated in the “Great Schism” or the “East-West Schism” in 1054, which saw the Eastern Orthodox Church (centered in Constantinople in present-day Turkey) split from the Roman Catholic Church. This was the first major division from the Roman Catholic Church. Greece has been, from that time, a predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian country and thus was not strongly influenced by the Reformation movement in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, some Calvinist teachings were briefly adopted. In 1638 the first translation of the New Testament into modern Greek was published.

In relation to the Lord’s second coming, Greece is a vital place. The prophecies in Daniel and Revelation reveal that it is likely that the Antichrist will come from present-day Greece, an area of the eastern Roman Empire. Thus, it is important to watch and observe the events in Greece. In the Life-study of Ephesians (1984) Brother Lee says, “The Lord began from Jerusalem and then spread the church to Greece and Italy. I believe that He will also go back to Jerusalem by way of Italy and Greece” (p. 665). Based on this fellowship, saints have been endeavoring to raise up small lampstands in Greece by going there to serve and to study since the 1980s. In 1997 two couples migrated to Thessaloniki and later moved to Athens. In the following years more saints moved to Athens and from 2014 to 2016 several families migrated to Thessaloniki. As of 2016, there are more than thirty saints meeting in these two localities in Greece.

Albania

Albania is a small country in the southwestern part of the Balkan peninsula. During Roman times, it was part of three Roman provinces, including the province of Macedonia. It is likely that Paul visited Albania on one of his journeys, since it was part of Illyricum (Rom. 15:19).

Although Albania was one of the first countries to have believers, it eventually came under Ottoman rule, and the major religion became Islam. However, a significant Christian minority remained. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Albania became independent in 1912, and after World War II it came under Communism. While under Communist rule, religion was banned in Albania.

Communism fell in 1990, and in March 1991, in fellowship with Brother Lee and Living Stream Ministry (LSM), three saints carried two thousand books and ten thousand tracts, along with postcards for requesting further literature, into Albania. In the weeks that followed, they received over seven thousand requests from five hundred one towns and villages. The response was so overwhelming that the saints sent a video presentation to Brother Lee. At that time he told a brother at LSM, “The Spirit is raining in two places on earth at this time—Russia and Albania.”

In October of 1992, again in fellowship with Brother Lee, one couple and a single brother (all graduates of the first class of FTTT) migrated to Albania. Using the principles of the God-ordained way learned in Taiwan, within 2 years there were twenty saints regularly meeting and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. The last major conference was held with a serving brother from Southern California in March 1996. There were thirteen baptisms and forty-five in attendance.

The next year, due to Albania falling into complete anarchy, the serving ones were airlifted out of the country, and the work stopped for some years. However, during the four and a half years there, two of the best translators in the country produced a good number of books and hymns. Some of the local saints remained in the country and faithfully pursue the Lord to this day. They have sent their children to the Poland camp yearly by means of the fellowship with the other European countries.

Presently there is a self-supporting serving couple (both graduates of the FTTA) with their two children in the capital city, Tirana. They meet regularly with some of the original saints as well as a number of new ones and treasure the fellowship with the churches in the Balkans.

Bulgaria

Since the apostle Paul’s journeys in the first century, there have been believers in this area. Southern Bulgaria constituted part of the Roman province of Macedonia, which Paul first visited in Acts 16. In A.D. 863 King Boris I established Christianity as the state religion of the Bulgarian Empire. Boris I used the tensions between Constantinople and Rome to set up a national independent church, which adhered to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In the fourteenth century Bulgaria was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Despite several forced Islamization campaigns, some Bulgarians remained Christians. In 1878 Bulgaria won independence from the Ottomans through military intervention by the Russian Empire. After gaining this independence Protestant missionaries from the US had free access in Bulgaria and, over the years, managed to gain a steady following. In 1871 the Union of Evangelical Churches produced a translation of the Bible into modern Bulgarian, which served as a basis for later Protestant translations of the Bible. After Bulgaria came under Communist rule in 1945, religion was brutally suppressed. From 1945 to 1989 all churches were closed and many spiritual leaders and believers were imprisoned by the Communist government. Many believers had to pay the ultimate price for keeping their faith. After the fall of Communism in 1989 religious freedom was re-established in Bulgaria. Currently, Orthodox Christianity is the country’s largest religion by number of followers, with a small minority of Muslims, Catholics, various Protestant denominations, and a significant number of the population not declaring any religious affiliation or belief.

For many years groups of believers in Sofia and Petrich have had contact with saints who were related to the Lord’s recovery. Starting in 2011, some Bulgarian saints from these two cities, from Portugal, and from the US began coming to the International Conferences in London and then to the one-week trainings in London. As a result of these visits and some saints visiting Bulgaria, many believers decided to pursue the way of the recovery. There is now an annual conference in Sofia and six Bulgarian saints have finished the Full-time Training in London. Today around forty saints are meeting in both Sofia and Petrich. Some books and The Holy Word for Morning Revival have been translated into Bulgarian. The saints’ hope is that many more books can be translated and spread to Bulgarian speakers in Bulgaria and abroad.

Croatia and Serbia

In the New Testament, a province in Croatia was mentioned by Paul in 2 Timothy 4:10, where he says that Titus had gone to Dalmatia. It seems that the gospel reached Croatia in the first century. Next to Split are the ruins of Salona, the ancient capital of Dalmatia, where the Roman Emperor Diocletian was born. It was an early center of Christian faith and also the site of major persecutions by the Roman Empire, especially at the hands of Diocletian. Later, under the rule of the Romans, Croatia became Catholic. In the sixteenth century, the work of Matthias Flacius Illyricus, a Lutheran reformer from Istria in present-day Croatia, influenced some to become Protestant, but Croatia remains mainly Catholic today.

Serbia was Christianized in the ninth century by the Byzantine Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius. Like the other Slavic countries, Serbia is a predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian country.

The entire Balkan peninsula was under the influence and control of the Ottoman Empire from the fourteenth to twentieth century, and today there is a Muslim minority in all of the countries, except Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Kosovo, where Islam is the majority religion. Slovenia, in the north, is mostly Catholic. Macedonia and Montenegro are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian countries. Religious differences have been a main factor in the regional tensions that resulted in violence in the 1990s.

During the Cold War, this area constituted Yugoslavia. Under Communism Yugoslavia was a strictly atheist state, but when the country began to break up in the 1990s, long-standing ethnic and religious problems resulted in a civil war from 1991 to 1995. The war was brutal and destructive, but the saints testify that it caused many to open their hearts to the Lord and also resulted in freedom of speech and religion in this region.

The ministry in the Lord’s recovery reached this area through free literature distribution. One Croatian couple graduated from the FTTL and by 2010 had translated the seven Rhema books for free distribution in ex-Yugoslavia. Since there was no distribution office on the ground and no saints living in the countries, the saints began to use Google Ads. The response was great, and thousands of people ordered the ministry books. Through the literature distribution the saints gradually developed contact with seeking ones from Serbia and Croatia. The first contacts the Croatian couple made was with seekers from Split in 2012, in Novi Sad in 2013, in Hvar in 2014, and in Osijek in 2015. This couple lived in Germany at the time and kept in touch with these seeking ones via Skype and email and regular visits from 2012 onward. In 2015 they moved to Split, initially for six months, because the hunger in the believers was quite astonishing. Eventually the saints in Split began to meet every day for the whole year. They took the ground and had their first Lord’s table meeting in April 2017. There are also saints meeting in Novi Sad, the second-largest city in Serbia. Today there are now around seventy ministry titles available in Serbo-Croatian. Last year in November the Croatian couple, who graduated from the FTTL, moved to Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, for the church life.

Iberian Peninsula

Spain and Portugal

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Spain

The New Testament mentions Spain twice, in Romans 15:24 and 28, where Paul expresses his desire to go to Spain, which was considered the uttermost part of the earth in his time.

The Iberian Peninsula was a province of the Roman Empire, and after its fall, Spain was invaded by the Visigoths, who had been Christianized as a result of their contact with Rome. In the year 711 Muslims from northern Africa invaded Spain and established a caliphate centered in Córdoba. Within a few decades they conquered practically the entire peninsula. However, a stronghold of Christians in northern Spain was left unconquered, and they eventually embarked on what is called in Spanish history the “Reconquista.”

After about eight centuries the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I completed the return to Catholicism in 1492. That same year Queen Isabella funded Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World. The Spanish Empire and Catholicism spread to the Americas, and Spain became the leading world power in the sixteenth century. Simultaneously, the Reformation was spreading throughout Europe, and it was the Spanish monarch Charles I, the grandson of Isabella I and a staunch Catholic (also known as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), who presided over the Diet of Worms in 1521, where Martin Luther was called upon to retract his writings and to recant its “heresies.” Luther refused and was declared an outlaw. Luther was saved from harm by a German prince who contrived a kidnapping and ensconced him in a castle where he translated the Bible into German in 1522.

Two decades later, when the Council of Trent convened in 1545, Charles V’s influence caused the start of the Counter-Reformation, giving rise to the period of Catholic resurgence in response to the Protestant Reformation. Major figures of the Counter-Reformation were Spanish, such as Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the religious order of the Jesuits, and the Spanish mystics Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, all of whom became important political forces during that time.

In 1588, after the decisive defeat of the large and seemingly invincible Spanish Armada by the smaller British navy, Spain lost its supremacy and declined in world influence, opening the way for the British to obtain imperial possessions all around the earth and to spread Protestantism through its missionaries.

Brother Lee says regarding this in The World Situation and God’s Move,

Until the close of the sixteenth century, Spain was the leading power on earth. If she had remained on top, the whole world would be under Catholicism, as is the case with Latin America. God could not allow this. Therefore, He raised up the small island of Britain, and in 1588 the British navy dealt a fatal blow to Spain’s supremacy by defeating the larger, seemingly better equipped, Spanish Armada. (pp. 13-14)

During the years prior to the Reformation, Catholic Cardinal Cisneros (the personal confessor to Queen Isabella I), using his own funds, convened scholars from all over Europe and prepared and published the first polyglot Bible in 1514. It became known as the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, after the university which was founded by Cisneros and continues to be the largest university in Spain today. The New Testament contained the Latin Vulgate and Greek texts, and the Old Testament contained the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and Hebrew texts.

With the onset of the Reformation and influenced by Luther’s teachings, a couple of Spanish monks in exile translated the Bible into Spanish and published what became known as the Reina-Valera version of the Protestant Bible in 1569. Due to the intolerance of the Spanish court and the Catholic Church in Spain toward any non-Catholic religion, the Reformation had very little impact in Spain and Portugal.

Protestantism in Spain made a comeback after the Glorious Revolution of 1868, resulting in the granting of greater religious liberties. These were rescinded under the dictatorship of Franco until his death in 1975. The 1978 Constitution of Spain and the Law of Religious Freedom of 1980 guarantee religious freedom. Therefore, at present there are an estimated 1.5 million Protestants in Spain.

In either 1981 or 1982 the recovery came to Spain through Gibraltar, after someone who had a pamphlet on the church caused some brothers to contact and fellowship with saints in Germany. Then a Spanish couple who found the recovery in Germany returned to live in Benalmádena, on the coast, and began meetings with those who had contacted Germany. At about the same time, a brother who was from Córdoba and working in Germany had met the recovery, and during a trip home, contacted two families in a Baptist group in Córdoba and shared with them about the church. Then this brother returned to Spain, and in 1984 they began meeting as the church in Córdoba. Because this brother knew those in Benalmádena when they were in Germany, the fellowship between Córdoba and Benalmádena began. There were by then about ten to twelve saints meeting in the church in Córdoba.

In 1985 an elder from a free group in Málaga went to do some work on a house of a brother in Benalmádena, and this brother shared with the elder about the Lord’s recovery. Soon after, the Málaga free group was having a retreat, and they invited the Benalmádena group. The saints from Benalmádena said that they would bring along a Chinese brother who was a follower of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee and that he could give the word, to which the Málaga group agreed. The subject of the talk was “The Full Ministry of Christ,” and the entire group was revolutionized. The result was that the two groups—Benalmádena and Málaga—came together to become the church in Málaga.

At about the same time, the recovery spread also to Huelva. A sister from Huelva met in the church in Málaga. She knew several families in Huelva who were believers, and in 1986 she and some other couples from Málaga went to visit them and to share with them about the church. The church in Huelva began with about three families.

From 1987 through 1989 there was a turmoil in the Lord’s recovery in Europe that resulted in divisions in Málaga and Córdoba. The saints in Spain were confused by what was happening and by the speaking of the brother from Germany, which initially had ministered much life but had now changed. Some of the saints then decided to detach themselves and meet again as a free group like before, but about twenty saints continued to meet as the church in Málaga, together with the saints originally from Benalmádena. Toward the close of the decade, all communication between the churches in Spain and Germany had stopped and at the same time, the saints in Spain were totally isolated from the Lord’s recovery in the US as a result of the negative speaking originating from Germany.

Just at that time, one of the brothers who went back to the free group attended a conference in Brazil where the Life-study of Leviticus was being shared. At the conference there was also sharing on what was happening in Germany and Europe. After this brother returned, he shared the audio messages with some of the brothers in the church in Málaga, and through these messages, the church in Málaga realized what was happening in Germany and Europe.

In early 1990 a sister from Anaheim was sent by Brother Lee to Málaga to find out what the situation was there. Upon realizing where this sister came from, one of the leading brothers invited her to his home for fellowship and asked her many questions. A couple from Córdoba was also present. This sister had brought with her literature of the ministry of Brother Lee and gave it to this brother. After reading the books, the brother testified that “the heavens were opened up again.” He realized that this was the same speaking that initially had come from Germany but which had changed in the past few years. After the visit by the sister from Anaheim, fellowship was established with a co-worker in Anaheim.

In the early 1980s, a Spanish brother, who was working in Mexico, was saved and came into the church life. In his past, he had been studying to be a priest but was not ordained because of what he saw in the Catholic Church. In spite of the opposition from his wife, who threatened to divorce him on account of his salvation and coming into the church, he remained firm in his newfound faith. In 1989 he returned to Spain with his family and joined himself to the church in Málaga. As a result of his steadfastness and testimony, eventually his wife also got saved and became a dear sister in the church life.

He and the leading brother who had invited the sister from Anaheim to his house decided to go on together and to faithfully follow the ministry. They began to study the book The Glorious Church by Watchman Nee, to follow the fellowship of the co-worker from Anaheim, to minister life, to only speak life and building, and to not enter into arguments. They invited the co-worker from Anaheim to come have fellowship, and he came, accompanied by two brothers from Puerto Rico as translators. Their speaking and visit greatly encouraged the saints. The brothers continued to blend and fellowship with the churches in Puerto Rico and the US, and in the 1990s a number of saints who had left the church life returned. The saints in Spain also began to attend trainings in Anaheim and conferences in London, which they do until this day. The young people also began joining the Poland Conference. A number of them entered the FTTL and became full-time serving ones in Madrid.

Currently about fifty saints meet in Málaga, with about another thirty to forty saints who are enjoying the ministry but who are scattered in the surrounding towns. In 1996, due to a gospel tract, the church in Marbella was raised up. As the result of some attrition, currently there are only four saints in Marbella. A meeting in Dos Hermanas, a town outside Seville, was established in 1997. In 1999 a family was gained through the radio in the coastal town of Guadiaro, and they started to meet with others in that town.

Around 2002 some South American, Chinese, and Ethiopian believers, some of whom had been in the recovery, immigrated to Spain and were living in Madrid. These ones were scattered but came in contact with each other and began to meet. Then co-workers from the US and London began visiting them, and the church life was established. Today about seventy saints meet regularly in Madrid. Around 2005 and 2006 the church life began in Valencia through some saints who were in the recovery in Bolivia. Currently about thirty-five meet in Valencia.

The church in Barcelona, most of whom are Chinese-speaking, took the ground in March 2008. Currently there are about forty-five saints, although not all are able to meet every week as many live in surrounding towns and have businesses that are open during weekends.

In May 2010 the church in Murcia was established through a brother from Moldova. He contacted friends and believers who were all from different Russian-speaking countries, and they began to meet together in Russian. Subsequently, others from Germany, South America, and Spain were added to the church. About twelve saints meet there.

The church in Girona was established in February 2011 with about thirty saints. Due to some saints moving away for jobs, right now about twelve saints meet in Girona.

There are saints meeting on the island of Mallorca, and scattered saints in the cities of Santander, Bilbao, and Pamplona in Spain.

Portugal

In 1988 a brother in Vila Nova de Gaia, who was meeting with the Assembly of God, received on loan from another brother in his congregation the book The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee. While reading it, he experienced something he had never experienced with any other book—his heart “burned,” just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus when the Lord opened the Scriptures to them. He read all he could by Brother Nee, and when he read Further Talks on the Church Life, he realized that he had to leave his denomination and stand on the proper ground of the church. He began meeting with his family in his home but sought to find out if other believers met according to the vision of the church that he had seen from Brother Nee’s ministry. Eventually, he got in contact with brothers in Brazil from an address on the Portuguese books and went to a conference there. However, nothing was mentioned to this brother at that time about the Lord’s move in Europe. In the meantime and through speaking what he had seen in the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee to some fellow believers, the number of saints in Portugal grew to nearly thirty saints. In 1998, nearly four years after the saints had started meeting as the church in Vila Nova de Gaia, through the Lord’s wonderful operation a sister who had just moved to Galicia (in northern Spain, two and a half hours from Vila Nova de Gaia) got in contact with this group of saints. She told them about the churches in Spain and led them to meet with the saints there. Contact with the saints in Spain was established in August 1998. In December 1998 the saints in Portugal attended the conference in Malaga and established contact with the saints in Europe and the US. At this time, there are saints meeting in Vila Nova de Gaia and São João da Madeira. There are also some Bulgarian saints in Cascai, and recently some saints from Brazil have immigrated to Portugal and are living nearby Lisbon who are in contact with the saints in Vila Nova de Gaia and São João da Madeira. Two saints are currently attending the Full-time Training in London, and over the past ten years five saints have graduated from the training.

The Iberian Peninsula today has brothers’ and sisters’ fellowships, young people’s conferences, a children and family camp, and the winter school of truth. There are currently ten localities in the Peninsula that have the table meeting and about three hundred fifty saints in total. Propagation continues to be carried out through radio broadcasting of the Life-studies and distribution through Rhema and Bibles for Europe.

Looking forward, we have a “pipeline” of children and young people whom we are shepherding on the need to pursue the Lord with their companions, to have a good education, and to learn English with a view to attending the full-time training. We currently have nine church-kid university students in two cities whom we hope to be candidates for the FTTL. We also have two current FTTL trainees and look to the Lord for their future usefulness to Him for His move in the Peninsula. We are also moving forward with fellowship to raise up some middle-age full-time serving ones to labor in the reaping of many radio, Rhema, and Bibles for Europe contacts, as well as to shepherd the scattered and isolated saints.

The British Isles

The United Kingdom
(England, Northern Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales)
and the Republic of Ireland

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United Kingdom (England, Scotland, and Wales)

The British Isles have a rich history in relation to the Lord’s move through the centuries. They have been the site of high revelation, deep spiritual experience, and absolute consecration. Discoveries of truth and patterns of spiritual lives from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were influential in the development of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’s ministry.

Scholars, like Wycliffe, Tyndale, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and John Knox (in Scotland), were instrumental in translating the Bible into English and standing for the truths of the Reformation. For most of them, their stance resulted in martyrdom during the religious conflicts in the sixteenth century. During Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, however, England’s break with Catholicism was more definite and resulted in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. From this point, world influence moved from Catholicism to Protestantism, and England rose in prominence as a great power.

Brother Lee says regarding the rise of Britain,

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Spain’s power declined while that of Britain rose. Gradually she became an empire, with colonies all around the earth. It was called the empire without a sunset. For more than two centuries the colonies were farms, providing her with the goods she needed and making her wealthy.

During the days of Britain’s preeminence, the Protestant influence reached to every continent. Most missionaries in the past were British. The money used for the spread of the gospel was largely in pounds sterling, not United States dollars. It was in England that many spiritual giants were raised up. Great teachers among the Brethren wrote hundreds of books for the release of the truth. Light was relead by the speakers at the Keswick Convention. (The World Situation and God’s Move, p. 16)

As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Britain used its technology and military and economic strength to acquire an empire upon which “the sun never set.” Beginning from 1795, the empire was sovereignly used by God for the spread of the gospel to every inhabited continent. Young people, like the Cambridge Seven, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael (from Ireland), and David Livingstone (from Scotland), were moved by the Lord to give their lives for the gospel in foreign lands.

The Cambridge Seven, 1885 | SourceCambridge Seven. In Wikimedia Commons. July 15, 2005. Accessed on October 01, 2017. [Public Domain]

Portrait of Hudson Taylor | SourceHudson Taylor. In Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: the growth of a work of God. By Howard Taylor. Princeton Theological Seminary Library. London and Philadelphia, 1918. Accessed on October 03, 2017 via Internet Archive Book Images. [NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT]

Photograph of Amy Carmichael (N. Ireland) | Source Amy Carmichael with Children. In Wikimedia Commons. January 18, 2014. Accessed on October 01, 2017. [PD US]

Portrait of David Livingstone | SourceAnnan, Thomas. David Livingstone. 1864. In National Galleries Scotland. July 23, 2009. Accessed on October 01, 2017 via Flickr The Commons. [No known copyright restrictions]

At the same time, a number of believers in this region were used by the Lord for His move. Oliver Cromwell, the Puritans, and the Dissenters stood firm against the influence of Catholicism; the Wesleys and George Whitefield recovered matters relating to the subjective experience of sanctification; J. N. Darby and the Brethren in Dublin, Ireland, opened up truths on the oneness of the Body of Christ and the need for the direct leading of the Holy Spirit; William Law, Evan Roberts, Jessie Penn-Lewis, and speakers at the Keswick Convention pursued deep experiences of the inner life; and William Govett and D. M. Panton proclaimed the matter of the kingdom reward. M. E. Barber was a crucial channel from whom Watchman Nee learned these truths. The Lord continued His recovery work in China, and Watchman Nee and Witness Lee visited Britain in the 1930s and 1950s, where they fellowshipped with T. Austin-Sparks and his group at Honor Oak.

For a little more than a decade, however, the ministry did not come to the British Isles. But in the late 1960s a small number of saints in Ipswich found the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee in Christian bookshops and came out of the denominations to begin practicing the church life. A few years later, while they were travelling, a couple from Blackpool were given a Stream magazine with an advertisement for a conference in Germany. They decided to go to the conference, and while they were there with the saints, they picked up life practices such as calling on the name of the Lord and pray-reading. When they came back and shared what they had learned with others, the group decided they would take this way. The saints in Blackpool later came into contact with a group in Winchester. The two groups from Winchester and Blackpool gathered together in 1974 in Winchester for the first conference of the Lord’s recovery in England. They enjoyed the subject of the New Jerusalem, and after this time the saints in Winchester decided to move to Blackpool to be in the church life. In 1975 a conference was held in Blackpool, and invitations reached the saints in Ipswich through relatives that had met the saints in Germany. In 1976 the saints in Ipswich took the ground.

In April 1977 the saints in the UK were greatly encouraged and supplied by a visit from Brother Lee. The content of the conference he gave during this time is published in The Producing and Building Up of the Church as the Totality of the Divine Sonship (2005). The move of the Lord in England was strengthened by visits from Brother Lee and co-workers, by blending with other European saints, and also by the spread of the gospel of the kingdom on the university campuses.

In the 1970s and 1980s saints were gathered in Blackpool and Manchester in the north, Ipswich in the east, Winchester in the south, and Paignton in the southwest. Many of the saints who came into the church life at the time were young, and a small group of students and believers were also gained in Cambridge in the late 1970s. The saints in the UK were richly supplied through the printed messages and videos of Brother Lee’s speaking.

The turmoil in the mid-1980s, which had begun in Germany, seriously affected the UK, and the saints lost the ground of the churches in the north, in Blackpool and Manchester. A number of ministry books had been donated previously by LSM and Taipei to the saints in the UK. Around this time the saints in Blackpool sent a letter to the others in the UK to say that they would be disposing of the ministry books. A small number of saints who had remained faithful to the ministry arranged to collect the books. They drove several hours to Blackpool and filled two vans. The books were stored for years at a sister’s home. The faithful saints also continued to duplicate and distribute the video tapes of Brother Lee from Anaheim.

The difficulties in the north of England caused many of these saints to move to London, beginning in 1986. The move to London was a great encouragement to the small remnant of saints as they began to meet from house to house. The first Lord’s table meeting in London was held around 1985-1986. In London the saints also continued the LSM duplication work, which led to the beginning of the video trainings. In addition, a young group of believers living in Norwich was introduced to the ministry by a brother who had received Life-studies from LSM. A family moved to Norwich to start the church life with these new ones.

At the same time, some of the saints became burdened for the young people in the church life. They began to invite the children to come for a weekend to one of the saint’s home where there would be activities, crafts, training in character, and lessons from the Word. There were around twelve children at that time who would come for the weekend; the majority of these ones are still in the church life, six of whom are serving full time. The care for the children carried on each year from when they were five years old until they were twelve years old, at which time, when they received the Lord, they would go for a weekend conference and be baptized. The children and young people’s work has steadily increased over the years, and there are now three annual young people’s conferences in the UK. In addition to the young people’s conference in Poland each summer, which has been a great supply to the young people, the winter school of truth is now held in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain. There is also a bi-annual university-age conference in the UK, which was held on the continent for the first time in 2017.

In 1990 the saints realized the need for a larger facility in London as a meeting place and means for making the ministry available to the saints in Europe. A property in Putney, London, was made available for this purpose and used for the meetings of the church in London and the continuation of the LSM duplication work and bookroom. The rescued ministry books were brought to London during this time, and some were sold in the bookroom. Eventually years later some of the books were brought to India and Africa to strengthen the churches there.

This recovery in Putney in the early 1990s was strategic for the Lord’s move in those years. Brother Lee also sent couples to the UK in the years following to strengthen the work in Europe. When Eastern Europe and Russia opened, Putney was used for translation and publication, fellowship and blending, and also for trainings, which were vital for those who had just found the ministry in Eastern Europe.

The London extension of the full-time training began in Putney in the autumn of 1997 with seven trainees. It was established in line with Brother Lee’s speaking in The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move “that Great Britain is very crucial for the Lord’s move throughout Europe” (p. 48).

The Lord began answering the saints’ prayers for increase in January 2000, when the Life-study of the Bible radio program began to be broadcast daily on the only Christian radio station in London. Then, in 2001 the Recovery Version of the New Testament was made available to the radio listeners. The radio listeners were invited to attend seminars, and at the first seminar in London, several hundred new ones attended. They were so hungry for the ministry that the book tables and stands the saints had set up at the seminar were left empty. Many of these radio listeners came into the church life through opening their homes and receiving regular visitations by the saints. Rhema also began distributing the ministry in 2003. The FTTL trainees have since been instrumental in joining with the saints to shepherd the radio listeners, Bible recipients, and Rhema recipients, through weekly, monthly, and bi-annual seminars, weekend trainings, phone calls, visits, and home meetings. This has brought in a large increase in the church in London, and in eleven years the church in London increased from one district to eleven districts, which now meet in six halls.

In 2009 the radio broadcast became available nationwide, and the saints began praying for several cities in the UK that had large numbers of contacts and major universities. From 2010 onward, saints migrated to these cities in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland and began to care for the new ones. Lord’s table meetings have now been established in Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, Cardiff in Wales, and Chelmsford, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, and Southampton in England. This move was sovereignly arranged by the Lord as preparation for the 2012 London Olympics Bible distribution, which began with the Torch Relay. The Lord poured out His blessing as tens of thousands of people received a free Recovery Version of the New Testament, especially in London and throughout the UK, many of whom requested contact. Since then the saints have been happily overwhelmed with caring for these ones.

For this labor, the full-time training and training facilities have been a great benefit. The training center and the offices for the work moved to Bower House in 2005. This facility is now also a place where many conferences and trainings for the saints throughout Europe are held. This situation affords many opportunities for the trainees to serve practically and to blend with the saints in the churches.

Since November 2010, there have been one-week trainings at Bower House for saints throughout Europe to come to be trained in the four great pillars of the Lord’s recovery: truth, life, the church, and the gospel. Despite the limited capacity, just over one thousand individuals from twenty-one European countries and another sixteen countries outside Europe have participated, many of them more than once. Groups of believers, both those who have been in the church life for many years and those who have only recently touched the ministry, have been able to spend time being trained under the perfecting of the ministry.

The trainings and conferences are attended each year by more and more people from both the UK and continental Europe, and for some time now the space at Bower House has no longer been adequate. Not only are more space and a more purpose-built environment needed for the existing trainings, but the saints would like to expand the capacity to have additional short- and long-term trainings and retreats for the seeking believers in Europe.

In 2016 full permission was granted from the local council to proceed with plans to build and expand the facilities at Bower House. Later in the year the local council also voted in favor of a proposal for Woodland Camp, a 17-acre site which is a nine-minute drive from Bower House. They approved the building of forty-seven cabins, including a manager’s house and a two-story meeting hall with kitchen, dining area, bedrooms, and ancillary facilities. With these facilities constructed, Woodland Camp would have permanent meeting and sleeping capacity for over three hundred people. Additionally, there is an adjoining property to Bower House—Bower Farm—that has recently been purchased by Amana Trust and will be ideal for integrating into the Bower House expansion plans in the future.

Woodland Camp 1:500 scale model (Phase 1, 2 and 3) | © Amana Trust
The first planning application consisted of three construction phases which includes 46 cabins and a two story meeting facility with dining and kitchen facilities. This proposed development could accommodate over 300 guests.

Since the Full-time Training in London (FTTL) began, 261 saints have graduated and over 60% of these graduates have served full time afterward. The FTTL has been a great encouragement and blessing to the Lord’s move in Europe, which would have been greatly restricted without these trained ones.

The establishment of the Full-time Training extension, Boston (FTTA-XB) in 2011 was to train saints to serve and labor in Europe. A number of these graduates have come to serve in Europe, with some continuing to serve in the UK and others going on to serve in continental Europe. Since 2012, there have been almost thirty saints who have come from the training in Boston to serve in the UK, with some later moving to other countries in Europe and a few returning to the US. The full-time serving ones in the UK, including graduates from FTTL, FTTA, and FTTA-XB, have been involved with reaching out to the tens of thousands of contacts made through Amana Trust since the early 2000s. More recently in May and June of 2017 there was a great burden to ensure that each Bible recipient with a phone number had been freshly contacted to see if they were still open to further contact. Around 43,000 people were telephoned resulting in over 4000 people requesting further email and newsletter contact, and over 400 people requesting home meetings in London and the UK.

In June 2016 the UK decided to leave the European Union. The implications of this step are unknown, but we worship the Lord as the Ruler of the kings of the earth (Rev. 1:5), are touched to give ourselves in prayer for the Lord’s move and the world situation, and finally, are burdened to continue perfecting the saints in order to activate their organic function for the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12).

The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

It is commonly thought that the country of Ireland includes two distinct regions: the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, it was in the early twentieth century that these regions were separated, when the Republic gained independence and Northern Ireland remained as part of the UK. Along with the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland will no longer be part of the EU as a result of Brexit. However, the Republic of Ireland will remain a part of the EU since the Republic is not part of the UK but is an independent, sovereign nation of its own.

Historically, Ireland was introduced to the Christian faith as a result of the spread of the missionary work of Saint Patrick in the early fifth century. The southern region of Ireland (now the Republic) was eventually brought under the strong influence of Roman Catholicism, but the northern region was not as influenced and eventually, through the influx of Scotch Presbyterians and others, became more oriented to Protestantism. From that time, most of the people of Northern Ireland have adhered to the Protestant denominations, including the Presbyterian, the Church of Ireland, the Methodist, and several others. The strong break between the two regions was on religious grounds and had much to do with the “Troubles” of the 1970s and 1980s, during which there was considerable terrorism in Belfast (the capital of Northern Ireland).

Beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century, a great revival began in Ireland. This resulted in the abolishing of the mediatorial class of the dead reformed church and was the beginning of a significant recovery of “the church in Philadelphia,” which prefigured the church of “brotherly love,” the recovery of the proper church life.

Watchman Nee comments on this revival through the recovery of God’s truth as follows:

In 1827 a group of people were raised up in Dublin, Ireland. Among them were men like Edward Cronin and Anthony Norris Groves. They saw that many things in the church were dead, lifeless, and formal. They began to ask the Lord to show them the church according to the biblical revelation. Through prayer and fellowship, they felt that they should rise up and meet according to the principle of 1 Corinthians 14. As a result, they began to break bread at a brother’s home. A short while later, a former Anglican minister, John Nelson Darby, began to join their meeting and to expound the Bible among them. Gradually, more and more expositors were raised up among them, such as William Kelly, C. H. Mackintosh, B. W. Newton, and J. G. Bellett. Through reading their books, I received light to see the error of denominational organizations and to realize that there is only one Body of Christ. The church should not be formed by human opinions but should be under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit. When we consider the present-day church organizations, we see many human traditions and opinions and little direct leading of the Holy Spirit. This is not according to God’s desire. In God’s will, the church should not be under man’s control; it should be directed only by the Holy Spirit. All those who belong to the Lord should learn to be led by the Holy Spirit and should not follow man’s direction. These are all truths discovered by the Brethren. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, pp. 850-851)

Portrait of John Nelson Darby
© National Portrait Gallery, London | SourceJohn Nelson Darby by Edward Penstone etching and aquatint, late 19th century NPG D11119. Given by Edward Penstone, 1903. In National Portrait Gallery. Accessed September 28, 2017. Used with Permission. [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0]

It is recorded that a brother received a “letter from Brother Nee saying that he has gone to Ireland to conduct meetings” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 32, p. 458). He had received his college education from Trinity College, Foochow (Fuzhou), in China, which was a sister college established by Trinity College, Dublin. Eventually, the ministry of the age reached Ireland.

Trinity College Foochow (Fuzhou) | SourceUnknown. Trinity College Fuzhou building. January 02, 1950. Fuzhou Foreign Language School. In Wikimedia Commons. February 20, 2016. Accessed on October 01, 2017. [PD China]

The Lord’s testimony through the local churches began to take root in Ireland in the 1980s, when a group of young college students in the church life migrated from Malaysia to study in Dublin. Thereafter, an Irish brother was strongly gained by the Lord from the medical school in University College Dublin (UCD) and is now serving full time. He also brought his best friend, another Irish brother, into the church life at that time. An Irish sister was also gained and attended the Full-time Training in London a few years later. The church in Dublin took the ground and established its first Lord’s table on February 6, 2005.

At present, there are approximately forty to fifty saints in the church, including several full-time training graduates who migrated from the US to Dublin to study at UCD and Trinity College, Dublin. There is no lampstand established yet in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but there are approximately fifteen to twenty saints, with young children, meeting weekly to enjoy the church life. Also, a sister from Belfast has been coming every Lord’s day to break bread with the saints in Dublin for the last 14 years. Furthermore, in the last year, a serving couple migrated to Dublin to strengthen the Lord’s recovery. May the Lord continue to bless and strengthen His testimony in Ireland by planting many church-trees to be His shining golden lampstands for the building up of the Body of Christ.

In the coming days we are looking to the Lord for the strengthening and perfecting of the saints for the building up of the church. We recently started a truth pursuit fellowship in which we study some of the crucial truths and have a time to share on these points in the Lord’s Day meeting. This also provides a means to strengthen the shepherding among us. In addition, there are a number of students currently attending a few of the key universities, and we are especially burdened to seize this opportunity to gain remaining fruit at these universities, especially among the Irish. We have several middle-aged Irish new ones among us and are looking to the Lord for their full entry into the church life. We have already seen that they provide wonderful “gates” for other Irish to touch the church. We believe the Lord intends to gain this nation for His kingdom. So we ask for prayers for our Irish new ones, the Irish students, the Irish people, and for the spreading of the church life to other cities in Ireland.

Conclusion

“The history of the church shows that the world situation is an indicator of the Lord’s move on earth.” (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 9)

Because “God’s move among men is wrapped up with the course of history” (The World Situation and God’s Move, Preface), we must have intrinsic insight to see the “kernel” of the divine history within the “shell” of the human history (The Holy Word for Morning Revival: Special Fellowship concerning the World Situation and the Lord’s Move, p. 23). According to Acts 17:26, the world situation is under God’s sovereign arrangement, and He is the One who determines the appointed seasons and boundaries for His move.

In the first century A.D., God used the Roman Empire for the first step of His move to accomplish His eternal purpose—for Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension and for the spreading of the gospel. God prepared Germany in the sixteenth century for the return to the Bible, and God used Great Britain for the recovery of the gospel, the teaching of the Bible and the proper meetings. Through Western missionaries, these truths reached China, and the flow of the Lord’s move reached our brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee in the early part of the twentieth century.

The Lord initiated His recovery among us in the Far East, and it is still growing there…It has been brought to and rooted in the United States for growth…In both the Far East and the United States, the Lord’s recovery is growing, but it is still in the stage of initiation in Europe. (The World Situation and Direction of the Lord’s Move, pp. 14, 17)

In 1991 Brother Lee said that the “Lord’s direction of His present recovery must be toward Europe” (p. 17). In the consummation of the fulfillment of the vision of the great human image in Daniel 2, Europe is “more vitally crucial than any other country or race” (p. 18).

Daniel 2 records that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which Daniel interpreted. In that dream there was a great human image. The golden head of this image signifies Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian Empire. The breast and arms of silver signify the Medo-Persian Empire. The belly and thighs of brass signify the Grecian Empire with Alexander the Great. The legs and feet of iron signify the Roman Empire. The feet of the image are part iron and part clay, signifying the nations in the period after the fall of Rome and before the second coming of Christ. This image shows the four great empires on earth with their governments. It is actually a prophetic illustration of the history of human government, sovereignly arranged by the Lord for the carrying out of His economy. (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 9)

The periods of history signified by the head, the breast and the arms, the belly and the thighs, and the legs have been fulfilled. But the ten toes have not been fulfilled. According to Revelation 17:12, ten kings will be raised up before the great tribulation in the revived Roman Empire. They will be one with Antichrist in opposing God and persecuting His people—the Jews and the believers…The ten kings typified by the ten toes of the great image in Daniel 2 will be under Antichrist, who will be the last Caesar of the Roman Empire (see Revelation 17:10-11 with notes—Recovery Version). All of this will transpire in Europe.

When the Lord comes to crush human government, He will crush the feet with the ten toes. This will be the crushing of the entire image from the head to the feet. Daniel 2:34-35 says, “You were watching until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the image at its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed all at once, and they became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” Christ is the great stone who will crush the two feet of the great image, which will be the crushing of the entire human image, the entire human government. (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, pp. 18-19)

As Brother Lee said in 1991,

We need to see this as a basis to understand the Lord’s mind. Before this crushing transpires, the Lord’s recovery must spread to Europe and be rooted there. The spreading of the truths of the Lord’s recovery will be a preparation for the Lord’s coming back to bring the recovery and restoration not only to Israel but also to the entire creation. (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 19)

The Lord’s recovery today is full of the divine truths. (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 37)

We owe so much to many teachers of the Bible who have gone before us, and today we are standing on their shoulders. I consider the notes we have published in the Recovery Version as the aggregate of the proper understanding of the New Testament. We are really blessed to be living in these latter days. We have received the aggregate understanding of the Bible because we are standing on the shoulders of many who have gone before us. Today we understand the Bible better than Martin Luther and J. N. Darby because we have inherited the truth they saw, and by the Lord’s mercy, we are standing on their shoulders and have gone on to see more. The Bible was spoken by God in the holy writings, translated by many scholars, and interpreted by the Body of Christ throughout the centuries. Today the proper understanding of the Bible has been collected in our writings in order for us to study, learn, and spread the divine truths. (The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord’s Move, p. 35)

Today the great need in Europe is for “the spreading of the translated, interpreted, and understood truths for the Lord’s recovery and restoration” (p. 31). The Lord’s charge to His disciples in Matthew was to “go and disciple all the nations” (28:19), to preach the “gospel of the kingdom…for a testimony to all the nations” for the consummation of the age (24:14).

In recent decades, saints have followed this charge to migrate to Europe, either to serve full time, to work, or to study. The first major move was in the early 1990s to the former Soviet Union and the former Eastern bloc countries. Through the literature, translation, and publication work, the ministry has been spreading the divine truths, and small groups of saints who are endeavoring to meet according to the way ordained by God are being raised up throughout Europe.

The goal and direction of the Lord’s move in Europe is for His return. Regarding this, Brother Lee says in the Life-study of Ephesians, Message 79,

I believe that in the coming years the Lord will spread the church life to England, Germany, France, and Italy. Furthermore, I believe that one day there will be a church in Rome and even in Jerusalem, where the church life began more than nineteen centuries ago. Acts 1:9-12 tells us that Christ ascended from the Mount of Olives, and Zechariah 14:4 reveals that Christ will return also to the Mount of Olives. In the same principle, the Lord began His church in Jerusalem and, I believe, will send the recovery of His church back to Jerusalem.

For years I was deeply troubled by the loss of mainland China. After more than twenty years of labor, in 1948 there were churches in all the leading cities of China. Then suddenly everything was lost. One day, after many years had passed, I saw something encouraging about this. I realized that in the 1920s the Lord desired to have the proper church life. However, because Europe and the United States had been spoiled by religion, the Lord was forced to go to a heathen country in the Far East for the recovery of the church life. Brother Nee once told us that the Lord went to China because it was virgin soil for the cultivation of the church life. However, the Lord knew that, primarily because of language, China was not the best place for the spread of His recovery. Much of what the Lord had revealed to us was buried in the Chinese language. Nevertheless, God used the virgin soil of China as a nursery. Watchman Nee was sown as a seed into this soil, and the church life began to grow. Then, through the loss of mainland China, the recovery was transplanted to the United States. However, the United States is not the goal; it is a stepping-stone for the spread of the recovery to Europe and eventually to Jerusalem. The Lord began from Jerusalem and then spread the church to Greece and Italy. I believe that He will also go back to Jerusalem by way of Italy and Greece. I long for there to be a church in Jerusalem waiting for the Lord Jesus when He returns.

Concerning the recovery of the church life, the Lord Jesus cannot be defeated. When the Japanese army took over the Philippines during World War II, General MacArthur was forced to withdraw. But he vowed to return. As we all know, General MacArthur did return to the Philippines. In like manner, no matter what Satan does to damage the church, the Lord Jesus will return, and His church will be waiting for Him. There may be a church in the city of Jerusalem. Perhaps the meeting hall will not be far from the Mount of Olives, the place from which He ascended and to which He will descend in His coming back. It would be a shame to the Lord Jesus to come back without having a church in Jerusalem ready for Him. The Lord will not suffer such a shame. For this reason, He is waiting for His recovery to spread to Europe and, ultimately, to Jerusalem.

May the Lord inspire us concerning His move in His recovery! May He spread the church life throughout Europe, the Middle East, and to Jerusalem. Perhaps one day we shall hold a prayer meeting in the Garden of Gethsemane, which is located at the foot of the Mount of Olives, and pray fervently to the Lord for His coming back!

We all need to enjoy Christ and to experience Him as the church-loving Christ. Because we also love the church, we are one with Him for the spread of His recovery throughout the world and back to Jerusalem. Oh, how Christ loves the church! He is in us as the church-loving Christ. His love for the church makes us willing to give our all for the recovery of the church life. (Life-study of Ephesians, pp. 664-666)

History of the Lord's Move in Europe

Introduction

New Testament Times to the Twentieth Century

The Roman Empire

The Context for Christ’s Great Accomplishmentsand the Spread of the Gospel

The Reformation

The Recovery of the Truth

The Mystics

The Recoveryof the Experience of the Inner Life

The Moravian Brethren

The Recovery of the Initial Stage of the Church Life

Eighteenth Century Britain

Revival and Missionary Work

Nineteenth Century Britain

The Brethren, the Discovery of God’s Truth, and the Overcoming Life

Twentieth Century

The Lord’s Move in China

Watchman Nee’s and Witness Lee’s Visits to Europe

Brother Lee’s Visit to Europe in 1958

Nordic Countries

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,and Sweden

French-speaking Countries

France (and parts of Belgium,and Switzerland)

German-speaking Countries

Germany and Austria(and parts of Switzerland)

Germany

Austria

Italian-speaking Countries

Italy(and parts of Switzerland)

Baltic Countries

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

Switzerland

Benelux Countries

Belgium, the Netherlands,and Luxemburg

Eastern and Central Europe

Hungary, Poland, Romania,Czech Republic, and Slovakia

Hungary

Poland

Romania

The Czech Republic and Slovakia

Balkans

Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia

Greece

Albania

Bulgaria

Croatia and Serbia

Iberian Peninsula

Spain and Portugal

Spain

Portugal

The British Isles

The United Kingdom(England, Northern Ireland,Scotland, and Wales)and the Republic of Ireland

United Kingdom (England, Scotland, and Wales)

The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

Conclusion

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The Context for Christ’s Great Accomplishments
and the Spread of the Gospel

The Recovery
of the Experience of the Inner Life

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
and Sweden

France (and parts of Belgium,
and Switzerland)

Germany and Austria
(and parts of Switzerland)

Italy
(and parts of Switzerland)

Belgium, the Netherlands,
and Luxemburg

Hungary, Poland, Romania,
Czech Republic, and Slovakia

The United Kingdom
(England, Northern Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales)
and the Republic of Ireland

Newsletter
Free Study Bible
Daily Radio Broadcast

Reports
Building Project
Woodland Camp
Donations