In this chapter we want to continue our fellowship concerning the history of the Lord's recovery among us in the past fifty years. In the previous chapter, we shared how Brother Nee was saved and called in the same night. We have to remember that he was saved through a woman evangelist who was a native of China. The Lord raised up such a gift as Brother Nee through a native sister.
After Brother Nee's conversion, he came into contact with an older sister by the name of M.E. Barber. Miss Barber was about sixty years old when Brother Nee met her. She was from England. When she was young, around thirty years old, she was sent by a Methodist mission to Brother Nee's province in China. While she was there, her co-missionaries fabricated a case against her beca6use 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. At a certain point, the chairman of the mission board came to realize that she had been accused falsely. He asked her to tell him the truth. He said to Miss Barber, "I know you are learning the lessons of the cross and that you would not say anything for yourself. Since you have learned something of the Lord's authority, I am asking you as one of your authorities to tell me the truth." Thus, Miss Barber took this standing to tell the truth concerning her case. 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 into 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. In today's light, we can see that he was not so clear, on the positive side, concerning the proper practice of the proper church life, but he was very clear, on the negative side, concerning denominationalism. 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. She went back to China, in human terms, on her own. She went back on her own to work for the Lord, and she selected a very small town just outside of Brother Nee's hometown, Foochow. The suburban town where she stayed was called Pagoda. Miss Barber stayed there without traveling much and without any advertisement. She just stayed there and prayed day and night.