The Lord burdened and commissioned Watchman Nee with a specific testimony of Christ in His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, return, and kingdom. His ministry, therefore, was focused on Christ's death and resurrection for the producing of the church in life to experience the victory of Christ that His kingdom might be ushered in. For this reason, he considered messages on these matters as the central messages. His burden to hold the overcomer conferences and to publish The Present Testimony was to present such central messages. He also translated books in this same category into Chinese. All the books in the other categories mentioned in the first part of this chapter were intended by him to prepare the believers to apprehend these central messages, which were mainly contained in the following twenty-two books:
1)The Details of Spiritual Cultivation (original English title: The Christian Life and Warfare) published in June 1927. This book was the initial step to writing The Spiritual Man.
2)The Spiritual Man in three volumes was published in the fall of 1928. This book was not only the central one but also the greatest one among Brother Nee's writings. It covers the following main points: 1) the three parts of man—spirit, soul, and body; 2) the distinction between soul and spirit; 3) the fleshly Christian; 4) the soulish believer; 5) the subjective aspect of the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit; 6) the spiritual man; and 7) the spiritual warfare.
After publishing two editions of The Spiritual Man, Watchman Nee realized that many of his readers became introspective. He also felt that the book was too perfectly written and too detailed. For these reasons he decided not to publish further editions. This was especially true after 1939 when he saw that spiritual warfare was not an individual matter but a corporate one. He told me that his view of spiritual warfare in The Spiritual Man was based mainly upon the writings and experience of Evan Roberts and Jessie Penn-Lewis. Roberts and Penn-Lewis saw only the individual aspect of spiritual warfare, and thus they presented it as a difficult matter. But over ten years after the publication of The Spiritual Man, Watchman began to realize that spiritual warfare, according to Ephesians 6, must be carried out by the Body of Christ in a corporate way. For this reason he made a final decision to discontinue the publication of this book. However, having later realized in Taiwan that with the exception of the chapter on spiritual warfare, this book could be quite helpful to believers in the matter of spiritual life, we decided to reprint it. Anyone who reads this book should keep in mind the above remarks.
3)Having Been Made Dead to the Law (Rom. 7:4, 15-19).
4)The Extent of the Believer's Salvation. This book tells us that God's salvation extends into our conscience (Heb. 9:14), heart (Matt. 5:8; Phil 4:7), soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30), thought (2 Cor. 10:5), speech (James 1:26), the lust of the body (Rom. 8:12-13), the members (Rom. 6:13, 19), and the ego (Gal. 2:20).