[OBW]

Now, gladly leaving that dead horse on the side of the road and moving on, I was reading back through some of the earliest posts and had an interesting thought concerning the raising of the ministry to take the place of the church as the cornerstone of anything (the "Lord's recovery," or whatever).

If the ministry is above the churches rather than for the churches, then it would appear that every song (whether we think legitimate or not) concerning the "church" could be rewritten to replace "church" with "Ministry" or "LSM," or something like that. You would get some interesting lines like the following:

"Christ and the Ministry, Christ and the Ministry . . ."

"Then one day, I found Him. He brought me to the Ministry."

"The Ministry's one foundation is . . . "

These could be seen as simply ridiculous, or even insulting. But it does show some of how the Ministry has exceeded its sphere and usurped the place of the church. And I'm not just talking about within the closed system of the Local Churches who hold to the teaching of the "ground of the church" as taught by Watchman Nee. Respect for the Ministry and the LSM's authority over the operation of churches has gone at least as far as the most heinous denominational structure. Its modus operandi is completely out of sync with its own doctrinal claims of church autonomy and authority (at least if you go with the earlier versions of autonomy and authority).

And its continual morphing of rules looks more like the development of the man-made religion of Islam.