PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “WHAT SHALL THIS MAN DO?”
Back in 1971 I was a student at Missouri Baptist College of Hannibal, Missouri. We had a group of students that were seeking for the deeper Christian life. They began to have weekly fellowship groups that were reading and discussing the teachings of a Chinese Pastor by the name of Watchman Nee. They studied his books The Normal Christian Life, Sit, Stand, and Walk, and the book What Shall This Man Do? Having been led to Christ by a Fundamentalist Pastor, and having focused my early ministry on books by John R. Rice; Jack Hyles; and Simple Sermons by Herschel Ford, as my Pastor taught me, I looked upon anything new like a cow looks at a new gate! (Later in life while putting up a new gate for our barnyard I found out that horses share that same suspicious look at anything new added to their environment!). Being given copies of the Nee books, and invited to the fellowship, caused me to read the books. Now I have since learned that you do not grow much but only reading those authors who reinforce your own prejudices and beliefs! All TRUTH is God’s truth, and though we must be discerning in what we embrace theologically, we need to be familiar with what teachings are circulating in our environment and culture. Paul was very aware of the Greek Mystery religions, and the practices of idolatry that permeated the Greek and Roman religions. He was very familiar with the Jewish Legalistic religion that offered only an outward conformity to a religion, that was bankrupt of any inward spiritual reality. He found that truth out personally, later calling his progress in Judaism as “refuse”. The Greek word he chose to describe it, “skuballa”, was a very “graphic” word! The Apostle John, fighting off the wolves of false teachers that Paul warned would come in Acts 20, was very familiar with the Gnosticism that was gradually drawing members of his Churches into the web or their errors! As a matter of fact, that is one of the reasons why he wrote I John. So, I read the books by Watchman Nee. I must admit that they left me scratching my head, and with mixed emotions theologically. So much of what he wrote really spoke to the desire to walk with the Lord in a deeper way! To surrender yourself more fully to love the Lord, and to give all of yourself, to all of him. To Nee that was to be the norm, not the exception in the Church of Jesus Christ…i.e., the message of his book The Normal Christian Life. Our Greek professor, Dr. John A. Burns, did his best to give us guidance, without restricting freedom, or dissuading us from pursuing a deeper commitment to Christ. He warned of a “false spirituality”, and preferred we read books like True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. He warned us that Nee was influenced by British missionary Margaret E. Barber with her Keswick Theology, and the mystic theology of Catholic mystic Madam Guyon. He warned us that Nee had a very vague theology, that embraced Salvation by Grace through Faith, but was very unclear about how the second level of the Christian walk was embraced, and leaned heavily toward “perfectionism” and even “baptismal regeneration”. He encouraged serving our Lord in “deeper walk” and certainly “surrendered commitment” but was concerned where this “new wind of doctrine” might lead. Indeed, it did cause a bit of a division among the Christians on campus. Some walked about with an air of superiority for having embraced and discovered the secret of a closer walk, that so many others somehow did not have spiritual eyes to see. Fortunately, the new Nee-fad was short-lived. But Watchman Nee books are still as popular as ever. He was martyred for his faith by the Communist regime in 1971. His books, properly understood, have some value if they are read with discernment. One of his books, What Shall This Man Do? is based upon the question that Peter asked Jesus, after being told that he would eventually be martyred for his commitment to Jesus, he asked Jesus about John’s future with these words, “what shall this man do?” (John 21:21). Of course, Jesus answered Peter with the words, “what is that to you? If I will that he lives until I come again, that doesn’t involve you…YOU KEEP ON FOLLOWING ME YOURSELF!” (John 21:22). Watchman Nee took that question “What Shall This Man Do?” and wrote an entire book about how God calls people to various types of ministry to fulfill the commission and edification that Christ gave to the Church. He points out that when Jesus called Saul of Tarsus to join the ministry of the Church, that he was a “tent-maker”. Likely that was a trade that he had learned from his father from a young age, and F.F. Bruce, in his book Paul: Apostle of Freedom, sees this profession as more than building temporary dwellings for recreational purposes, like we might think of today. He feels that Paul’s father may have been key in providing military dwellings for regimens in the Roman Army, and might have been honored with Roman Citizenship for such service to his country. Of course, the Hebrews were known for their Bedouin tendencies too, and often used tents as their dwelling places. Paul, and Priscilla and Aquila were gifted in this profession. Nee went on to conclude that since this was Paul’s giftedness at the time of his calling, that he became a “master-builder” (I Cor. 3:10- Greek word is “archetekton” “archetect”-) which Paul became in the work of the Lord, building strong Churches, all over the Roman world. Nee then draws on the example of Peter. Peter was casting his fishing nets for fish, when Jesus, walking the shores of the Sea of Galilee, called him to forsake those nets, and come follow Him, and he would “become a fisher of men!” (Matt. 4:19). Nee points out that the ministry of Peter, in the Book of Acts, is casting a net out in evangelism, and gathering converts into Christ’s Church. The third example chosen by Nee concerns the Apostle John. At the time that Jesus called him to follow Him, John was in the ship “mending his nets” (Matt. 4:21). He then shows how that the Apostle John seems to fulfill Jesus’ prediction of living until he comes, by seeing the coming outlined in the Book of Revelation vision, and then spending the rest of his elderly days mending the theological tears that had entered the Church, and helped mend the Church back to truth and usefulness in its ministry for the Lord. While I think that Nee, as he often did, takes a thought and goes well beyond the limit in developing it with his own imagination, there is definitely truth in the fact that our Lord did call the Apostle John to do a lot of theologically mending of the tears of error that left holes in the Churches evangelism nets, as they ministered in the last days of the first century. I John is one of those mending epistles that was desperately needed by the Churches of Asia minor, as they faced the onslaught of this insidious Gnosticism that was wreaking havoc with the Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, and with His Incarnate Life in the Lives of His followers. We will study how John, mending the nets, writes to distinguish truth from error, light from darkness, righteousness from sin, reality from pretense, and encourage his little children to keep on walking in Life, in Light, in Liberty, in Love, and in Loyalty, not by trying harder, but by taking each step in the power of the incarnated and indwelling Christ Jesus, as they partner with Him, in showing the “real Jesus Christ” to the world around them, by manifesting the eternal life that knowing Him makes a reality in them, for all the world to see. A key verse of I John is I John 4:17 “As He is, so are we in the world”. I John 2:6 is another key verse, “He that saith he abides in Him, ought himself so to walk as He walked”. The Church of the 21st century has some major “holes in our nets” of theology and practice. An in-depth study of John’s first epistle will go a long way in “mending our nets” and returning us to useful ministry in these last days. I hope you will join me in this exciting study that begins this morning, will go on Wednesday nights, and the next several Sundays. The question isn’t “What shall this man do?” but “What shall we, this Church do?” I John will give us some “real” answers, if we will heed the “Apostle of Love”, and his edifying words to “his little Children”.
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