Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
What strikes me about this is how it has nothing to do with anything that is real.
The recovery doesn't exist. And it certainly doesn't exist as a quantifiable standard that is objectively measurable. It's an artificial construct that only existed in the minds of those in the movement, and then probably not in the same form. |
The concepts of both the Recovery and the lineage of MOTA's (
Minister of the Age) are inextricably connected. You can't have one without the other. Supposedly the Recovery began with Martin Luther, the first MOTA of the Recovery. Both constructs are examples of historical revisionism.
Witness Lee sold himself and his ministry as the
"MOTA Finale" and the consummation of the Recovery to prepare a bride for Christ and usher in the Millennial Kingdom. It all sounded so good to me when I was younger. I wholeheartedly believed in all of Lee's broken promises until what little common sense I had from God began to finally emerge.
Witness Lee was not supposed to die! This age was supposed to be already over!
My love for church history created numerous contradictions between the facts of history and my fantasy of church history (
or should I say Lee's fantasy.) Taking nothing away from the services of Luther, Guyon, or Zinzendorf, there is no way we can honestly conclude that they were Centennial MOTA's.
Andrew Miller, a diehard Darby exclusive, wrote an excellent church history. His work never cites Recovery/MOTA views of church history, though he was often with Darby, instead claiming that God always had a "silver lining" of grace among his people. Reading Plymouth Brethren history around the time of their first major split proved to me that Darby never was who Lee claimed he was. Reading our own history around the time of the quarantines proved to me decisively that Lee never was who I thought he was.