Quote:
Originally Posted by PriestlyScribe
Another way to look at the fall of many modern church leaders and even para-church organizations like RZIM, Bill Gothard's IBLP or The Shepherding Movement is that Witness Lee may actually share some amount of direct responsibility for their failures. Let's imagine for just a moment that the horrible book Authority And Submission never actually came into existence. If Witness Lee had failed in his mission to hide Watchman Nee's sins from the rest of the world then leaders like Ravi Z. & Bill G. might never have gotten away with harming as many innocent people.
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Another question: What if ME Barber had succeeded at warning people away from her now apparently rogue protégé Watchman Nee? She wrote DM Panton in London, asking him not to receive nor encourage the young man, who was bright, relentlessly ambitious and headed for much trouble, because of his enthusiasm and inexperience. Those were perhaps some of the most prophetic words penned in 20th century Christendom.
She'd told "Henry" to stay away from Jessie Penn-Lewis, perhaps knowing of the influence of Freemasonry (J P-L had been a youth leader in the group*), but WN not only got into it but republished much of it verbatim under his own name. The publisher acknowledged this outsized debt, in the preface to the 2nd edition of
Spiritual Man, but by then the die was cast and the putative ministry of WN was well underway.
*Mary N. Garrard and Jessie Penn-Lewis, Mrs. Penn-Lewis: A Memoir (London: The Overcomer Book Room, 1931), 1–4.