By 1948 the number of attendants in the church in Shanghai had greatly increased. It was, therefore, necessary to build a larger meeting hall, and a piece of land was purchased for that purpose on Nan-Yang Road. The cost was two hundred ten gold bars, equivalent to one hundred five thousand dollars in U.S. currency, to be paid in three equal installments. At that time the church had on hand only half of the initial installment.

One day Watchman asked me to come to his home. After I arrived he handed me thirty-seven gold bars, the equivalent of eighteen thousand five hundred dollars, which was more than sufficient to pay the other half of the initial installment. He told me that he had purposely kept that amount of gold aside to be applied on a meeting hall site for the church in Shanghai.

Also at this time he realized that the Lord's recovery would spread to Taiwan, and he was burdened to buy some land in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, for this purpose. A brother who was a businessman in Taipei promised to take care of this matter for him, and Watchman sent that brother some money for this purpose. When that brother attended the conference in Shanghai, Sister Peace Wang and I were deeply impressed that he might not be faithful in money matters. On a certain day when Watchman invited me to help him send a further amount of money to that brother, Peace Wang and I took the opportunity to express our feeling to him concerning that brother. He replied that the Lord knew that Judas was stealing from the purse, but He still allowed him to care for the money. I responded, "I cannot understand this point." But he gave no explanation.

Later, when I was sent to Taiwan, Watchman instructed me to visit that brother, and he gave me full authority to settle the account with him. I took one of the Taipei elders with me and asked the brother about the account. He presented a bundle of interest bills to us showing that Brother Nee still owed him a good amount of interest. I sent the report of this conversation back to Watchman in writing, but I received no further instruction from him regarding this matter.

One day while fellowshipping about the Lord's work, he asked me why I had gone to a certain place. My answer was that I wanted to help the church there solve its problems. He said that that was playing politics. He continued by saying that to do anything with a purpose, regardless how good, spiritual, or scriptural it might be, is to play politics. Only to follow the Lord's leading is not politics. As long as you are unable to say that your going there is following the Lord's leading, you are playing politics. In this same year, 1948, because of the heavy responsibility of the church in Shanghai, he appointed me as an elder there to help the situation.