In 1942 and 1943 the church in the Lord's recovery began to see the need for migration. The first migration among us was from northern China to Inner Mongolia. Seventy adults with all their children migrated from my hometown to a city in Inner Mongolia. They all made this trip in one boat. At another time thirty adults from my hometown migrated to a town in the southern part of Manchuria. The migrating of the saints spread the church life to other parts of the country.
After the war in 1948, Brother Nee began to see that the church is local, but the work is regional. The church is a matter of locality, but the work is a matter of a region, a district. This truth is covered in the last chapter of Further Talks on the Church Life.
In all the suffering through which Brother Nee passed, he learned one basic lesson—the breaking of the outer man and the release of the spirit. There is a book published called The Release of the Spirit which contains Brother Nee's sharing on this truth. Actually, the title of this book is not so appropriate. What Brother Nee shared is more on the breaking of the outer man, whereas the release of the spirit is an issue, an outcome, of the breaking of the outer man.
In 1946 I was in Shanghai, and I stayed there close to three years. Whenever I was with Brother Nee, he always stressed that there was the need of the breaking of our natural man. Our outer man, our self, our natural makeup, has to be broken. All the things which happen to us are governed by the Holy Spirit to discipline us, and this is for the breaking of our natural man so that our spirit, in which the Holy Spirit dwells, may be released. When our spirit is released, the Holy Spirit is spontaneously released with our spirit.
Brother Nee told us that whenever we give a message, we need to give it with the release of our spirit. However, he went on to say that it is not so easy to have our spirit released as long as we are still living in the natural life. The natural man is like a shell containing our spirit. Therefore, we need the breaking of the outer shell, so that the inner spirit can be released. Then the Spirit of God with Christ will be richly ministered to others. This is the truth concerning the breaking of the outer man and the release of the spirit.
I am not so happy about some of the translations of Brother Nee's books, because they do not convey the exact meaning which Brother Nee wanted to convey. He explained to me his burden concerning the breaking of the outer man and the release of the spirit even before he gave messages on this subject. I am concerned that many readers of the book entitled The Release of the Spirit would think that the release of the spirit is the release of the Holy Spirit. This is not according to the truth. The release of the spirit is not the release of the Holy Spirit, but the release of our spirit. When our spirit is released, the Holy Spirit is also released with our spirit. In order to have this accomplished, our natural man, the outer man, has to be broken.