[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Terry

As I was reading in The Ground of the Church and the Service of the Body which was from 1957, Witness Lee essentially said unless a gross sin has been committed, we must receive all whom God has received.

The problem here is that to Witness Lee, disagreeing with anything he teaches, with any practice that he establishes or approves of, or that his authority is absolute, permanent and final, IS A GROSS SIN. And this kind of attitude was not new to Lee when he came to America - there is ample evidence that this goes all the way back to Watchman Nee in Mainland China.

Spoken in 1968 from The Practical Expression of the Church on pages 66-67, Witness Lee had this to say:
God's receiving is based upon Christ's receiving, and Christ's receiving is in accordance with our faith in Him. Whoever believes in Him, He will receive. Whoever receives Him, He will never reject. He said, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37)...

An amazing word by brother Lee in 1968.

Yes, an amazing word....but this is the problem, they are JUST words. This kind of "receiving" was rarely practiced, and when it was it was with a view to get the received one to become a follower of Witness Lee and the religion he invented. Once you were firmly ensconced within the confines of the LC, your "reception" was always based upon your reception of the person and work of Witness Lee. Admittedly, it did not look like this when we were on the inside looking out, but now, looking from the outside in, it is painfully obvious. Lee may have spoken like this in the 60s, but we now know that he did not practice this kind of receiving even back in the early days in Taiwan, even less after he established the Movement here in America.

Now, all these years later, what is the fruit of Witness Lee's kind of receiving? What is the attitude and actions of his most close and fervent followers? Do they receive other Christians in the manner described in Lee's words? No, they do not. They do not because Lee never did either. They are doing what Witness Lee did. It is the old tried and true "do what I do and not what I say".

Notice that this is one of the main characteristics of those churches which find themselves breaking away from the LSM/LC Movement - they find that they can only return to biblical Christianity when they begin to practice the biblical mandate to receive all those whom Christ receives. Of course this immediately puts them out of the good graces of the Local Church faithful. After all, other Christians have a different "flavor".