Fifteen Became Twenty

“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.” — Revelation 2:10 (ASV)

We know less about Nee's prison years than we'd like. Public records come from the state that held him. Family memories preserve precious fragments. Later devotional books sometimes filled the silence with stories that can't be checked. The honest thing is to say what we know and stop there.

His confinement included prison and “reform through labour.” Others controlled where he went, what he ate, the work he did, his medical care and his contact with family. Long imprisonment is mostly made of ordinary days: waking on command, eating what you're given, working, waiting for news, watching years go by. Crisis gives you adrenaline. Repetition asks for endurance.

Recent scholarship says Nee generally kept the prison rules while refusing to give up his faith in Christ. He wasn't a constant rebel. He cooperated where he could and drew the line at denying Christ.

Meanwhile something strange was happening. While Nee couldn't preach, his words were travelling. His messages were translated and published, and The Normal Christian Life found readers far beyond China. Paul wrote from prison, “I suffer hardship unto bonds, as a malefactor; but the word of God is not bound.” That doesn't make imprisonment good. Freedom is good and persecution is evil. But God can turn an attempt to silence someone into something else.

In 1966 Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. Churches were closed, believers humiliated, and religious leaders persecuted again. Charity and other members of Nee's family were interrogated and publicly humiliated too.

Nee's fifteen-year sentence should have ended in 1967. He was not released. Accounts commonly report that release depended on renouncing his faith, which he would not do. The exact details may not be right in every retelling, but the larger fact is certain: he was not freed, and he did not stop calling himself a Christian. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” says Proverbs. He had taught about faith his whole life, and now the thing he surely wanted most, freedom, did not come. Faith remained when the answer was no.

His health declined, especially his heart. Letters with his family were limited and could be monitored. When she was allowed, Charity visited. There are reports that he came to regret how much of their married life she had spent alone while he travelled and ministered. We can't be sure of his exact words. If it's true, it shows a man still learning late lessons, and ministry is no excuse for neglecting the people closest to you.

We don't know what Nee felt every day. Faithful people in the Bible despaired, lamented and were afraid. Endurance doesn't mean feeling strong all the time. It means still belonging to Christ through the dark. Even Jesus, on the cross, cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

If you are in a long, dark stretch where hope feels sick, and especially if you've started to feel there's no point going on, please don't carry it alone. Tell a safe person this week: a parent, a pastor, a teacher, a doctor, or a crisis line where you live. That isn't weakness. It's one of the ways God holds people up.

One thing to do this week: send a message or a note to someone stuck in a long, hard season: sick, grieving, lonely, or far from home. Hebrews says, “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.” Tell them you haven't forgotten them.