Originally Posted by byHismercy

This is a little bit of a parallel road but this conversation assumes the certain degradation of the church. I keep wondering what scripture says about that. Does Gods' word really say the church is degraded, even? I was reading through Matthew chapter 13, I believe....and Jesus is expounding on the parable of the tares among the wheat because His disciples pressed Him for explanation. My take away is that God is not worried about degradation in His body. In fact, the polluting tares He explicitly commands to be left right where they are, right alongside His planted saints! More damage would be done to His body by uprooting these tares, who were planted by Gods' enemy. He wants the tares left until His harvest. He does not seem to be concerned with this degradation.....but rather His solution to this mixture is already laid out. The tares will be burned at the Lords' appointed harvest time. It just seems to me that this matter of degradation in the body was possibly another Lee invention that I bit on and got hooked by.

Originally Posted by aron

Paul's word in 1 Cor 7:20 helped me tremendously. I was an inveterate church-hopper. But from then on, I stopped running. Wherever I was, there I was. God wants to meet me there.

Originally Posted by Jo S

Jesus is letting us know that no earthly congregation will be 100% pure. That's why I always say it'll be a work of God himself that'll one day coalesce his true church in the air and until that day comes no other man will accomplish this because it's just not written in scripture.

Originally Posted by byHismercy

This is a little bit of a parallel road but this conversation assumes the certain degradation of the church. I keep wondering what scripture says about that. Does Gods' word really say the church is degraded, even? I was reading through Matthew chapter 13, I believe....and Jesus is expounding on the parable of the tares among the wheat because His disciples pressed Him for explanation. My take away is that God is not worried about degradation in His body. In fact, the polluting tares He explicitly commands to be left right where they are, right alongside His planted saints! More damage would be done to His body by uprooting these tares, who were planted by Gods' enemy. He wants the tares left until His harvest. He does not seem to be concerned with this degradation.....but rather His solution to this mixture is already laid out. The tares will be burned at the Lords' appointed harvest time. It just seems to me that this matter of degradation in the body was possibly another Lee invention that I bit on and got hooked by. But what does scripture really say?? Do you have any insights, saints?

Also, I agree with untoHim and others.....God is unchanging. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the beginning and the end, invariable.

byHismercy

Originally Posted by JJ

strictly speaking “the love of the many growing cold” is a sign Jesus’ Kingdom is coming, and an exhortation to endure in spite of persecution, not “the church is degraded, leave it and start your own or join a better one”.

Originally Posted by JJ

Christian leaders from Luther, to some among the Brethren, and Lee pointed us to Revelation 18:4
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/revelation/18.htm as God’s call to leave “the degraded church” and join theirs saying Babylon the Great symbolized it mixed with the world, its antiChrist leaders and human government. Then they did things that abused their authority towards those that followed them at some point.

Originally Posted by byHismercy

This is a little bit of a parallel road but this conversation assumes the certain degradation of the church. I keep wondering what scripture says about that. Does Gods' word really say the church is degraded, even? I was reading through Matthew chapter 13, I believe....and Jesus is expounding on the parable of the tares among the wheat because His disciples pressed Him for explanation. My take away is that God is not worried about degradation in His body. In fact, the polluting tares He explicitly commands to be left right where they are, right alongside His planted saints! More damage would be done to His body by uprooting these tares, who were planted by Gods' enemy. He wants the tares left until His harvest. He does not seem to be concerned with this degradation.....but rather His solution to this mixture is already laid out. The tares will be burned at the Lords' appointed harvest time. It just seems to me that this matter of degradation in the body was possibly another Lee invention that I bit on and got hooked by. But what does scripture really say?? Do you have any insights, saints?

Also, I agree with untoHim and others.....God is unchanging. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the beginning and the end, invariable.

byHismercy

Originally Posted by JJ

Christian leaders from Luther, to some among the Brethren, and Lee pointed us to Revelation 18:4
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/revelation/18.htm as God’s call to leave “the degraded church” and join theirs saying Babylon the Great symbolized it mixed with the world, its antiChrist leaders and human government. Then they did things that abused their authority towards those that followed them at some point. What does the fornicating great Babylon really signify? And what does “Come out of her my children” mean in that verse?

Originally Posted by Ohio

The church in Thyatira surely was in error, even quite sick, promoting evil Jezebel, yet the Lord did not call on the other churches to condemn her. In fact, I always found it interesting that the Lord exhorted those who would hear to overcome where they were without leaving.

In his final letter, Paul acknowledged that the church of God was a great house with both honorable and dishonorable vessels, apparently side by side. His exhortation was to depart from unrighteousness, and to cleanse oneself, rather than to form a new church or forsake the old one.

Originally Posted by aron

Yes, this conversation has taken an interesting turn. The Lord to my memory never warned about degraded flocks of sheep, but rather about ravening wolves who disguised themselves as sheep.

Lord have mercy. Open our eyes.

Originally Posted by Igzy

I remember thinking people weren't asking the obvious important questions, but I was too young and timid to do so myself.

Originally Posted by Igzy

The Lord never tells us to discern churches or believers, and in fact commands us not to discern believers (Matt 13:29-30).

He does, however, tell us to discern apostles and prophets (Rev 2:2; Matt 7:15-20).

Now... isn't that interesting?

Originally Posted by byHismercy

It just seems to me that this matter of degradation in the body was possibly another Lee invention that I bit on and got hooked by. But what does scripture really say?? Do you have any insights, saints?

Originally Posted by awareness

I don't ever remember a question and answer segment after Lee's speakings. Lee wasn't to be questioned.

Originally Posted by Igzy

Lee had to be innovative to solidify his status as a modern-day seer. That he pushed against orthodoxy was considered by him and his followers a strength. Whether he was actually correct was secondary to his "gift" for wringing novel teachings from the Bible and elsewhere.

The problem is... what if he was wrong? Who vets him? How is his teaching validated? What is the fail-safe? How does one protect himself against any of his mistakes?

If you are a member of the LR there is no good answer to any of these questions. Basically you've bet the farm that Lee was right about everything. If Lee goes down in flames, so do you.

You might just need an intensified God to save you from that.

Originally Posted by UntoHim

The bottom line is that this teaching of Witness Lee (God being intensified), like so man of his teachings, while ostensibly novel and insightful, is really just self-serving and mere conjecture (aka: an uneducated guess) Search the scriptures, and the teachings and commentaries of legitimate, recognized, orthodox Christian teachers, scholars and writers throughout history - you will be hard pressed to find any of them who have interpreted "the seven Spirits" as "God being intensified to produce overcomers".
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Originally Posted by UntoHim

you will be hard pressed to find any of them who have interpreted "the seven Spirits" as "God being intensified to produce overcomers".
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Originally Posted by Trapped

God is God, which is max intensity simply in His existence. He Himself in His person doesn't need to be "intensified", this implies the church's degradation is remotely powerful enough to worry or defeat God!

Originally Posted by JJ

Great points guys.

Some neat visual aids and commentary re Tabernacle as type of Jesus, including artist rendering of lamp stand are in this link:
http://www.emmanuelenid.org/index.ph...g-close-to-god
No Lee wasn’t the only one who saw connection to Christ and the Church. Just Google Exodus Lampstand and select Images and look how many articles there are.
The picture of the high priest lighting the lamp stand is very similar to what John saw the glorified Jesus doing and helped me relate even better to aron’s opening post.

Originally Posted by aron

Rather than exegetical formulae ("one Spirit, intensified"), I look to scripture. A text that WL cavalierly dismissed as "fallen human concepts" says that "The voice of the LORD is powerful/the voice of the LORD is full of majesty/the voice of the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon... the voice of the LORD cleaves out flames of fire" (Psa 29:4-7 RecV). The KJV says "The voice of the LORD divideth the flames of fire" and the YLT says "The voice of the LORD is hewing out fiery flames"

Originally Posted by JJ

Lee had coined the term “seven fold intensified Spirit” and the same explanation for it “to combat church degradation and to produce overcomers” by the time he gave the “Life Study of Revelation” “Training” in the 1970’s. And, local church saints had accepted it as true. Later Lee reiterated it during his “Consummation of the New Testament”, “Crystallization of” “Messages”, and “Elders trainings”. Again we see Lee was adding words we don’t see in the Bible and as aron pointed out missing the pattern of the seven lamps on the lamp stand throughout the Old Testament. He also was exhorting us to do and be something “intensified” scripture never exhorts us to do or be.

Revelation warns us that all the plagues written in it are reserved for those who add to or take away from it. Best to listen to what The Spirit actually says to the churches, give praise & blessing, honor, and glory to God for what is plainly stated.

Originally Posted by aron

But WL taught that God needed to be processed to consummate as the intensified life - giving spirit to overcome church degradation.

Originally Posted by aron

Then how did WL's teaching nullify our God-given common sense?

Originally Posted by Trapped

God is God, which is max intensity simply in His existence.

Originally Posted by aron

Have had long-time issues with the last of the "Processed God" theory, the part about intensification, and wanted to see what others think.

1. How can God be intensified? To me that makes no sense whatever.

2. How can God's intensification be rooted to church degradation? It seems we made God, by our failure, instead of God making us. How can the essential defining aspect of God's existence - "intensified" - be dependent upon our collective status or situation in time? Again, this simply makes no sense. Any common notion of what "God" is supposed to mean in our minds doesn't match the story behind the "Processed God" idea, that of being connected to our failures.

Now, action is different. In a moment in time, "God sent His Only Begotten Son" seems to make sense, as an answer to the failure of humanity, who were made at one moment in time, in His likeness. But not "The Processed God became Intensified to overcome Church Degradation". To me it looks like we made God what God is, not the opposite.

3. There were seven flames burning before the throne in Exodus. "See that you make all things according to the vision (or pattern) that you received on the Holy Mountain". The seven flames of fire were there for, what, two millennia almost, in Israelite history? Then when the apostle John sees them on Patmos, their existence was supposed to be the answer for church degradation? Such an interpretation probably gives a wee bit too much importance to the interpreter, and just a wee bit lacking for the Eternal One.

Originally Posted by Ohio

I hope that all the co-workers will see the three stages, the three sections, of Christ: incarnation—the stage of Christ in the flesh; inclusion—the stage of Christ as the life-giving Spirit; and intensification—the stage of Christ as the sevenfold intensified life-giving Spirit. These three stages are the three sections of Christ's history. This means that Christ's history is divided into the section of His incarnation, the section of His inclusion, and the section of His intensification. Therefore, we emphasize these three words—incarnation, inclusion, and intensification.....

Originally Posted by aron

Have had long-time issues with the last of the "Processed God" theory, the part about intensification, and wanted to see what others think.

1. How can God be intensified? To me that makes no sense whatever.

2. How can God's intensification be rooted to church degradation? It seems we made God, by our failure, instead of God making us. How can the essential defining aspect of God's existence - "intensified" - be dependent upon our collective status or situation in time? Again, this simply makes no sense. Any common notion of what "God" is supposed to mean in our minds doesn't match the story behind the "Processed God" idea, that of being connected to our failures.