Additional Quotes about the Local Church by Witness Lee and Watchman Nee

In order to build up the Body of Christ, we need to keep the universal oneness of the Body (Eph. 4:3-4). We should not only keep the oneness among the saints in our locality, our region, or even merely in the United States. We must keep the oneness universally with all the saints all over the earth.

(Witness Lee, Satanic Chaos, 116-117)

This transformation keeps us in the divine oneness. Do you think that we could be one by ourselves? If we are one in a muddy way, there will be a split among us when a storm comes. But I thank and praise the Lord for the transformation I have seen in a number of the saints. Through transformation many local churches have been raised up and built up. It is difficult for there to be a split among us when we are daily experiencing the Lord's transformation. The oneness among us is not something formed by certain teachings and doctrines or by a certain organization. The oneness among us is the issue of an inward transformation.

(Witness Lee, Living and Practical, 39-40)

By transformation we are knit together, and this knitting together is the building. Eventually, we all become one building. Not only in one city are we one church, but also in all the cities, we are one Body. Many halls in one city are still one church. Many churches in many cities are still one Body. We are one, not by being organized but by being transformed. Doctrinal teachings do not work to unite us. The more teachings we get, the more divisions we will be in. But the more Jesus we eat, digest, and assimilate, the more transformation we have, and the issue is the spontaneous oneness.

(Witness Lee, Living and Practical, 40)

An overcomer must be one who overcomes the divisions. To be divisive is easy. If two parties do not like each other, it is easy for them to meet in separate places. But to stay together for many years is difficult. To divorce is easy; to separate is easy; but to stay together for a continuous marriage life is not that easy. This is what it means to keep the oneness.

(Witness Lee, Training and Practice, 11)

In Revelation the churches, signified by the golden lampstands, are the testimony of Jesus (1:2, 9) in the divine nature, shining in the dark night locally, yet collectively. The churches should be of the divine nature—golden. They should be the stands, even the lampstands, that bear the lamp with the oil (Christ as the life-giving Spirit), shining in the darkness respectively and collectively. They are individual lampstands locally, yet at the same time they are a group, a collection, of lampstands universally. They are not only shining locally, but also bearing universally the same testimony both to the localities and to the universe. They are of the same nature and in the same shape. They bear the same lamp for the same purpose and are fully identified with one another, not having any individual distinctiveness. The differences of the local churches recorded in chapters two and three are all of a negative nature, not of a positive nature. Negatively, in their failures, they are different and separate one from another; but positively, in their nature, shape, and purpose, they are absolutely identical and connected one to another.

(Witness Lee, Genuine Ground, 133)

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