[Cal]

I think there are two ways of looking at something like this:

One is Nee was inventing new doctrine out of whole cloth and how dare he.

The other is Nee is using these passages and terminology to emphasize a teaching he would believe to be true even without the passages.

The second is more likely. Because when you get right down to it, what is "Ministry to the Lord before the House" but "Be a Mary before being a Martha?" Or as is more commonly expressed, take care of your personal relationship with the Lord before going out to work for Him. Or, more scripturally, "Abide in Me and I in you, for apart from Me you can do nothing."

Nee is attaching a lot of bells and whistles to it, but I think this is the essence of what he is saying. We've all seen teachers who take a passage of the Bible and slant it to support a teaching we know otherwise to be true, even though we may question if the particular passage is primarily supporting it.

My problem with Nee is he got so carried away with this kind of thing, when he could have kept it simple and straightforward and along a more conventional exegesis. I think he was a young man who lived for reading the Bible, and would sit up at night reading it, seeing things and the fireworks would start going off in him and before he knew it he would have tomorrow's message.