Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
I think the motivation is easy to understand. If you conclude that there are no such apostles these days then you would be able to reject the ministry of WL and others with little effort. If you have a set of criteria, then at least you have a check list you can use. However, if it were that easy to discern false apostles then why does the Body need the gift of discernment?
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Don't get excited about my brief reappearance. But I stuck my two cents in, so I will complete its thought relative to your comments — specifically the ones about Lee.
If someone concludes that there are apostles today, and that the evidence of being an apostle is fully met by Lee, then I will point to specific teaching of one of the scripture-writing apostles — Paul — where he discusses the reasons for rejecting a teacher in general. Seems that Lee failed on several of those. So succeeding in someone's eyes at meeting their understanding of the marks of an apostle would only prove to me that either the marks could be faked, or it's not that easy.
In short, I don't need to discuss apostles to reject Lee. He can't get to local teacher. If you can't get there, you can't get to apostle. I believe that it would be hard to find any scripture that says otherwise.
And I return to some level of "not sure it matters" concerning whether apostles in the 1st century sense continue to exist today. Either they do or they don't. I don't need to find them and fawn over them. I just need to be open and learning from more than one isolated source. And vigilant to see the signs of personal and doctrinal error that suggest Paul's "he's not a valid teacher" rules in various places are being violated.
Seems that the people that I would be most suspicious about actually being an apostle are not trying to exert any kind of control over churches and believers. Just trying to offer their help. Those who
are trying to exert control over churches and believers almost uniformly are violating Paul's "reject them" signs. That includes (well, included) Lee. And it includes the BBs in general. "Move along. There's nothing to see here. No apostles here." (Well, who knows, there may be one developing inside. But they surely haven't emerged yet.)