In spite of others' advice, one day in the middle of March, Brother Nee asked his brother-in-law, Samuel Chang, to send him to the railway station to depart for the mainland. He did this without letting any others know. Soon afterwards, on April 1, I returned to Taipei.
That was the last time I saw him. From that time we had no correspondence and, of course, never saw each other again. We only received indirect news regarding him from his relatives until he went to be with the Lord.
Through all the twenty-five years I knew Watchman Nee, from 1925 to 1950, I was deeply impressed with certain characteristics of his.
He loved the Lord as his first love. To him the Lord came first in everything. He never compromised regarding the Lord's interest, nor did he sacrifice any truth for the sake of convenience. He also did not follow the Lord halfway. His commitment to the Lord was absolute.
In knowing the Bible and in his church practice, he was very well-balanced. He did not follow any teaching or any practice in an unbalanced way as so many Christians in denominations do. He would frequently compare one view of a certain thing with other views that he might be kept from falling into some extreme. In his daily Christian life, he practiced the same principle.
From reading many classical Christian books, he picked up all the good scriptural points of many different Christian groups, gathering them all into the practice of the church life. He never rejected a good scriptural point simply because it came from the wrong source. He even picked up some good items from extreme Pentecostalism. In this way he was able to bring into the present practice of the church all the riches which Christ had given His Body in the past centuries. Through him we are now able to participate in all these riches in the local churches, not in a narrow way, nor in a sectarian way, but in an all-inclusive way.