Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
WL continually reported that the entire blessing was due to one reason -- the saints were "absolutely one" with him and his ministry... Most of those in the Recovery today were never at Elden Hall, but they still are praying for the time when all the saints would be "absolutely one" with the ministry of Witness Lee, and then all the blessings of God would return to them. How else can they explain the continued loss of membership and staleness of the meetings?
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Supposedly the blessing was due to participation in the recovered normal church life by the Lee/Nee ministry. We all were on the proper ground, arranged and behaving as God revealed in the NT, and thus the life, light, joy, truth, etc poured out from above.
This ignores that around WL's Recovery were similar instances in the Jesus Movement, too numerous to count here. Simply look at Chuck Smith and the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa as an example. Explosive growth, continuous "manifestations of blessing" and so forth.
So when the "blessing left" us we were repeatedly exhorted to follow even more closely the supposed minister of the age WL. Only he could restore the glory days, and lead us to the last revival which would end human history. I remember a meeting where WL castigated us for our "deadness" and threatened to quit speaking. We all cried out with pain and fear.
This shows what happens when the focus turns from Jesus to the church, and from the church to a ministry. And we subsequently can see the trampling of "co-workers" like T.A. Sparks, B. Mallon, J. Ingalls, J. So, J.C. Anderson, M. Rappoport and any others who couldn't themselves up adequately with "the apostle".
And I didn't cite Jim Jones' church earlier as a wild and irrelevant notion. Jones began as a Midwest Methodist preacher who began deriding Christianity, and moved to California. Lot's of young, "open" people there, looking for something new. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:
"Within five years of the Temple's move to California, it went through a period of exponential growth and opened branches in cities including San Fernando, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. By the early 1970s, Jones began shifting his focus to major cities... He eventually moved the headquarters for the Temple to San Francisco... The move led to Jones and the Temple becoming politically influential in San Francisco politics, culminating in the Temple's instrumental role in the mayoral election victory of George Moscone in 1975. Moscone subsequently appointed Jones as the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission."
A lot of people have claimed "blessing" over the years. But if your focus turns from Jesus to the church, you are in the wrong place. The guy standing up front may not be named Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite, but you are still in the wrong place. Those anti-cult books of the late '70s don't look so paranoid to me any more.