Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Lee's system was derived from that [Asian] culture, and to some degree reflected that culture. But since he assured us it was "heavenly", we took it.
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The quote above approaches what I'm discussing, and I want to continue this by considering a small portion of scripture. I've been writing about Lee's treatment of the Psalms; probably 3/4 of them are either ignored by him without comment, or rejected as "natural" and "fallen".
I'll cite one passage and make my argument.
Psalm 1 1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
Look at verse 3 "...a tree planted by streams of water... yields its fruit in season... its leaf does not wither". Does that perhaps suggest the vision seen in Revelation 22:2?
"...On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."
We probably can't definitively say whether this passage referenced Psalm 1 in any way, but in my memory Lee categorically rejected Psalm 1 simply because it had the word "law", and we post-Reformation Christians all know that salvation is of grace, not law! So the whole chapter, like much of the book, was simply dismissed out of hand. No attempt was made to discern any deeper, spiritual meaning. No consideration of whether Christ to some degree fulfilled the psalmist's vision. Nope; the text was "fallen", and nothing but "natural concepts".
Now, my point is this: whether Psalm 1 is related to Revelation 22 I probably can't 'prove' in some objective sense; but we saw Lee build a system where, if he didn't consider something, then we didn't consider it. We didn't have the freedom to think, to speak, to consider, and to reason in scripture with one another. It was, "Big Brother says 'X', therefore reality is 'X'".
If Lee shut the door on a portion of the Bible, then we weren't allowed to open it, and look, and consider. I say that this is wrong. I say that if the Spirit leads me to consider something in the Bible, I am going to consider it. And if the Spirit leads me to talk about something I see in the Bible, I am going to discuss it. And if that system rejects my desire to talk about Christ in such passages of the Bible, then I will reject that system.
I really don't know why Lee dismissed the Psalms. Perhaps because through them "degraded Christianity" was supplying the Local Church saints with fresh musical enjoyment, and this threatened his "local ground" hegemony. Lee therefore told us the Psalms were "low", in contrast to the "high revelation" of Paul in the NT.* And Lee said that David's visions were mostly vain, despite contrary evidence supplied by the NT writers. Nonetheless, in the Local Church system we knew that if Lee rejected something, then we must reject it. So we therefore rejected the bulk of Psalms because God's present oracle had told us to. We had to follow God's present oracle, in an absolute and unquestioning way, because we were convinced that this was necessary for us to be God's "heavenly army" that would take over the earth.
I don't know if this is making any sense, but looking back, that's what I see. It was a miracle that one day I walked away! I was immersed in a culture in which "the church life" was held as "a better way" (I remember a line from the song, 'We love the church life' -
"it may be with us you've found a better way"), yet after years of such strong conditioning I still walked out... I do thank God for His mercy.
Lee built a system in which, if he rejected a possible OT connection to a NT revelation of Christ, then we also had to. If we openly considered any scriptural meaning apart from Lee's directives, and persisted in so doing, then we would be considered a threat to the orderly functioning of his "church life" and we would be removed (as
Terry put it euphemistically, "steps were taken"). To me that is the orderliness of a museum, or a graveyard. It may indeed be orderly, and well-regulated, but it is also quite dead.
*And yet in Colossians and Ephesians Paul urged his readers to sing the Psalms!