Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
Maybe the better question is whether the NT supports the practice of two churches in one city?
|
The church is a spiritual entity. There's only one church, period.
Then, we speak about where it shows up. And what it is.
Were the judaizers, that disagreed with Paul, not the church in Jerusalem?
The early church was diverse, even within cities.
The church is the church wherever it is found.
And there is NO, I repeat NO, doctrine of one church one city in the New Testament. The New Testament doesn't make the same case for one church one city as Watchman Nee and Witness Lee developed. Nee and Lee made way more of it than the New Testament does. There is no such doctrine developed in the New Testament, anywhere.
The church is the church, and it's expedient to speak of it here and there, as in a city.
And as practiced by Witness Lee, one church one city is both divisive, and an expediency to centralized control.
It's like in Ft. Lauderdale. Before Witness Lee's one church one city came in Bob Mumford had declared the ground of the church in Ft. Lauderdale.
But that was dismissed. It had to be a Witness Lee one church one city to count. In other words, Lee had to be on top for one church one city to matter.
Yet there's really only one church in the whole world. And the head of that one church is Christ.
And you can find it everywhere, not just in particular cities. But back then, in the New Testament times, it was expedient to address that one world wide church as in places called cities. But never do we find it developed in the New Testament as a solid doctrine. It's just not there.
Nee and Lee embellished one church one city, similar to the development embellishment of the doctrine of transubstantiation. They made more of it than is found in scripture. And it turned into centralized control, with Lee the top CEO. And now a committee runs that corporation. To them, in reality, it's one corporation one city. And that brand, as with Bob Mumford, is divisive.