Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
To me the basic way groups like this operate is to cause the members to mistrust anyone not part of the group or any word from outside the group. It all starts there. So any teaching that does come from the group is discounted and discredited. The result is the correcting help God would provide the group is rejected. The group becomes inbred and the errors are magnified. They become stranger and more extreme.
God's fail-safe is our remaining open to his speaking coming from anywhere. If you maintain that attitude (it's called "humility") you have a chance to avoid serious error. If not, serious error is practically guaranteed.
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Agreed. The LC rank-and-file might even concede that point, that they don't allow "corrective" speaking from outside the group's boundaries. And I believe that they won't admit any outside speaking, because the "truth" that Nee gave them about the "church ground" implicitly carries within itself that seed of rejection, exclusion and closed-mindedness.
Nee's followers might acknowledge an absence of external correction, even if the "seer" (Nee or Lee) is obviously human and imperfect, because their previous acceptance of this "recovered truth" forbids it.
When they realize that the supposed truth that was recovered by Watchman Nee was actually a self-contradictory idea, both internally inconsistent and at odds with the actual NT text, then its hold on them could be broken. I know ex-LC'ers who are bitter at being abandoned by the movement they gave their life to, but they won't seek help nearby in "Christianity" because the recovered truth of Nee forbids that. They still think that Christianity doesn't have the "ground", etc.
So they are cut off from fellowship in the LCs, cut off from openness to the Bible and the Spirit, and cut off from the rest of the Body of Christ. They are alone at home with their bitterness and the teachings of Watchman Nee firmly embedded in their brain. They have never thought to critically examine Nee's supposed truths. So they are stuck. Their body is outside of the LC but their brain is stuck.