[OBW]

I just scanned through the whole of Nee's booklet that is the subject of this thread.

If there was ever a writing that had so little to support it, this was among them. In the online ministry books it takes 9 "sections" to get through the whole thing. Not too much. Until you arrive at the very last section, there is virtually no scripture other than Ezekiel 44, and there only really two or three verses. And even those are hardly truly mentioned. Even when he does mention them, he treats them as if they are talking about something that is not there. Mostly that the most important thing is ministering to the Lord. He begins the book by saying this. He says that it is so over and over.

Then quite some way into the thing, finally comes this story of reading through it with the older woman (Barber?). Somehow this little mention in Ezekiel is driving some revelation of the primacy of "ministering to the Lord" over anything else. It is so central to Nee that any kind of even good Christian work is not hardly relevant. We should be all about ministering to the Lord, then eventually a little bit to people (the house).

There is never a basis given for this insistence on its primacy. He just says it is so. Over and over for many paragraphs.

And when I say there are no other verses, it is essentially true. He mentions one verse in Isaiah in about the middle, but it does not have any bearing on his assertion that "ministering to the Lord" is the central and primary thing to do, exclusive of other ministering.

In the last couple of sections, he does finally mention a little more. And even that is mostly in the last section. The first part is in Hebrews, related to "outside the court." I really don't see the point of that portion relative to what he is trying to say.

Then he comes Luke 17:7-10 which he insists is about God having his servants (us) serve him his dinner before we get to eat ours. In context, this is a difficult position to support. It is immediately following an assertion that our faith can tell a tree to be replanted in the sea. Reading these next verses as relating, without reference to God insisting on us doing our work, then coming in and preparing his meal and serving him before we eat is based upon something not actually found in the passage. And since he makes no effort to explain how he came up with it, I find that it is virtually without support and can therefore be rejected.

On the whole, the ink (and now electrons) used for this booklet are proof that men can say a lot of nothing and people will buy it because of their opinion of who said it. If the opinion is missing, then there needs to be a foundation for what is said. So far, I find no such foundation. It is a lot of opinion based on nothing but that opinion. The claimed scripture references are of no benefit in figuring it out — unless you accept anything that Nee says because he says it.

Then who needs scripture?