Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
..if the process of learning the lost teachings then opens us up to more and more new revelation, is that evidence of something of God, or of something else? When the result is that we come to believe things that are not soundly found in the scripture, and in some cases stand in opposition to it, do we need an overlay (like "God's economy") to allow us to assert that actual scripture does not mean what it clearly says, but something else?
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Bringing this from another thread. WL's reading of God's economy had supposedly been lost by Christianity, and the meaning behind Paul's words was now unveiled, or recovered, to the church via God's Oracle. Our recovered understanding of the divine economy was that it was God's household administration to dispense Himself as life, and life supply, and everything, to His believers to make them small-g "god", or godlike - pure, holy, glorified, reigning in life.
God had been reduced to an object, processed for personal use - mastication, enjoyment, assimilation. We had become the center and focus of the narrative. We fixated on our overcoming, or not... our "making it" versus being "in a dark room" for 1000 years. Witness Lee, at the center of the religious enterprise (really, a personal 'guanxi network' per cultural affiliation), manipulated us by making us introspective. He gave us a puzzle - ourselves - and the only way out is to regard the MOTA and his message. His version of "God's economy" was central to that exercise. It was all about you, exercising your spirit, enjoying, reigning in life. It is really a subjective maze, a hall of mirrors, manipulated by the MOTA... are you "enjoying" today? Or, headed for the "dark room"?
This deviation in focus can be seen in his treatment of scripture: where forced by NT usage, WL toed the party line - "I come to do thy will, O God, behold in the scroll of the book it is written concerning me" is understood to be Christ, per the epistle to the Hebrews. But where he thinks he can deviate, it is about WL and his putative NT believer. "Thy words were found and I did eat them" was now held as LC members pray-reading Bible verses. And yet where Jesus had show an alternative focus - "My food is to do the will of the Father", that was ignored. The "I" of Jeremiah 15:16 isn't Christ here, who'd been reduced to a cipher for our own manipulation. The focus had shifted from Jesus Christ to self. The "I" of Jeremiah 15:16 had now become the LC Christian: subjective, introspective, uncertain, manipulable.
Jesus had said, referring to OT scripture, "These things were written concerning me" - therefore, he was either deluded megalomaniac or really God's Messiah. There is no way to equivocate his claims. He had said, effectively, "It's all about me" - either myopic delusion or revelation of divine truth. Clearly the NT comes down on the side of the latter, as do subsequent Christian teachers. But it looks as if WN and WL made it about themselves, and their own personal events. Now, with this personal bias, WL looked at the OT text, and either saw the fallen human writer trying vainly to be good, or he saw the NT believer "enjoying Christ". But it missed the person of Christ Himself. There's a big hole in the middle.
God's economy is His household administration, His arrangement of dispensing, yes. But if the focus of the dispensing is you, where will that lead? I've shown the alternative reading of "dispensing" which follows Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Give, and it will be given to you" and so forth. Paul enumerated this in 2 Cor 8 & 9, and asked the gentile churches to participate, e. g., 1 Cor 16:1,2; Rom 15:25-28, &c. The Great Commandment was to love your neighbour, and Paul was showing them how.