Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
The point, for me, is to go forward. Where you are in relation to some benchmark of "approval and reward" is up to God. E.g. John 21: "What is that to you? You follow Me."
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This exortation: "just go forward" is not vague and generic to me but it came from the Bible, specifically the teachings of Jesus. The unrighteous steward in Luke 16 was praised for acting prudently. What was prudent? He went forward: he made the best of a bad situation. When it was all said and done he was improved in position. In economics this would be called "acting on the margin", and we do it all the time. If we can get a car for $1,200 dollars less by going to another dealership we'll do so, and congratulate ourselves that 3 hours work (going elsewhere else and bargaining) saved us that amount. In other words, we still owe, but we don't owe
as much, and that, my friends, matters.
But the Nee/Lee version of "Purgatory" (sorry, "promise and warning") that I heard just gave a vague presentation of an "overcomer" which I guess is tantamount to being "mature" according to
Cassidy. Of course maturity is important, but remember that only God has the scale in His hand. Only God can say, "Approved" or "Disapproved". The same goes for "mature". Nobody can say, "Now I am mature; ripe and ready for harvest". Anyone who thinks they have arrived, in this body of flesh, is most deceived. All we can do is go forward.
The young believers seeing this vague and probably distant "overcomer" being dangled in front of them often just give up. They don't know where it is nor how to get there. So if they slip up, they give up. They are still nominal believers, i.e. they still pay lip service to the Lord Jesus as God's Christ, but they have resigned themselves to "outer darkness". The darkness becomes comfortable and the Promised Land just seems so far away.
But the message of the Gospels is "turn and repent". It doesn't matter if you are the thief on the cross, it doesn't matter if you are Peter who's denied the Lord, it doesn't matter if you are the unrighteous steward or the creditors who owe a hundred measures of wheat or a hundred measures of oil. If you are going backward, turn around and go forward. If you feel that you are making some progress (e.g. Romans 2:15 says that our conscience either "accuses" or "excuses" us), then keep going forward. Just keep going. Let God worry about the "big picture" of whether or not you have crossed the "overcomer" line. Just go forward.
To some extent one may argue that "a miss is as good as a mile", as they say. If you look at the image of being shut out of the wedding feast, when the door closes you are outside. Ten feet from Noah's ark and ten miles away both got flooded. But I note that Moses got to Mount Pisgah and that seemed to matter. "Many stripes" versus "few stripes" seemed to matter to Jesus (Luke 12:47-8). If the judge sentenced you to 2 years instead of 5 years you wouldn't say, "Well, jail is jail. 2 years or 22 years doesn't matter." No, you'd appreciate the fact that 3 years got shaved off your sentence.
Now, I am NOT saying that "This is the way it is." I am a believer trying to make sense of the teachings of Jesus Christ. And it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a person with interest in these matters might look at these teachings and draw at least somewhat similar conclusions. Typically, however, we look at this in the post-Luther world and shrink back: "No!!! Purgatory!!! Aughhhh!!!" and we flee from the room. But they arguably didn't flee the room in the first century because they didn't have the RCC distortions (yet) to repel them thusly.
My concern is for the young people. I don't think they are being helped much by the LSM gospel, at least as I remember it. I don't know what the the "serving ones" and "laboring ones" are telling the college students on the campuses (campii?) these days but I imagine it's the same old Nee/Lee song and dance, which I deem insufficient. They will lose a great many of them, over time. This gospel may attract them for a while, but I doubt it has the power to keep many.
We shall see. As I said already, the sample size of my observation (one local church after 10 years away) may be too small. But I remember during my time there, of speeches bemoaning the great "exodus" (pun intended) of the youth. I remember Gene Gruhler's "pipeline". And I believe that no pipeline is going to cover, ultimately, for an inadequate gospel message. And because Lee was supposedly the "minister of the age" and "God's present oracle" who delivered the "high peaks", I doubt they have the capacity or inclination to address the shortcomings. The words "shortcoming" and "Lee" probably never make it into the same sentence.
I don't know what my word count is, but it's probably over some arbitrary line.
