[aron]

There seem to be two key aspects to the arrangement of Witness Lee's Local Church hierarchy, and I'll capitalize them to avoid writing "supposed" or "so-called" before each use of the word. The first idea is of the Apostle. Today's Apostle is ostensibly the one most closely following the path of the original apostles, a la Acts 2:42: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers." So we have Lee continuing steadfastly behind Nee, who also closely followed (largely through literature) Mackintosh, Panton, Govett, Pember, Darby, Penn-Lewis, etc. Plus Nee had fellowship with notables such as at the Keswick Convention, of Andrew Murray, Hudson Taylor, T. Austin-Sparks, etc. So Lee was the Apostle, after Nee, who was after Somebody; we assumed a lineage stretching back.

The second idea is of the Oracle. Without the Oracle to guide you, the uninterpreted Word is missing something. The Oracle gives you the vision to see the intrinsic light and truth contained in the Word. Without the Oracle's speaking, the Bible is just a book. Look at Christianity, for example: they have the Bible but little truth or light. The Oracle could even show us where the Bible had natural human concepts: where the Bible and the Oracle's teaching came into conflict, the Oracle's revelation always won. Where Bible and Oracle agreed, the Bible was indeed revelatory, but when they disagreed, the Bible was actually the concepts of fallen men. So the Oracle had determined where the Bible was to be spirit and life to us, and where it was merely dead letters, to be be ignored.

The Oracle even revealed that eventually there's no Oracle! He'd looked high and low, and there were none of ability, so now the Oracle said that "one Apostle per age" was changing into "the age of small potatoes". There were to be no more spiritual giants. And we didn't need a Bible verse, chapter or book for this because it was from the Oracle. It seems as if our orientation, and vision, wasn't to the common Christian faith, nor even the "ground of the church". It was now to the Oracle, the Apostle, who was (surprise, surprise) the same person. The Apostle had invested the Oracle with authority, and the Oracle showed that the Apostle was God's man of the hour.

Combined in the person of the Maximum Leader, the roles of Oracle and Apostle created an identity and orientation for the Party, the Collective, the State, the Church, the Body, or whatever you'd call it. This collective orientation is probably just the instinctive social aspect of our species, seen here in a rather pronounced form, and an Eastern-tinged variety at that! Remember what they told us: "Be absolute". Our Maximum Leader, who the Oracle assured us was just a humble servant of all, had become the orientation point of group identity and culture. So when the Apostle asked us, "Who among you have I controlled?", we immediately replied in unison, "Maximum Brother, you have controlled no one!" We were for the Party, the Collective, the State, the Church, not for the Maximum Brother! But the Party/State/Church/Collective needed the guiding hand of Oracle and Apostle: without this firm hand at the wheel, the whole thing would fall apart! We told ourselves, "Even when he's wrong he's right"; if we kept that firmly in mind, everything would be fine. Just obey the Maximum Leader without question. It seems now, looking back, that the Local Church movement was a ruse to get our humble servant installed as the Maximum Leader. And if you don't see it, maybe you're still wearing culturally-tinted eyeglasses which were installed free of charge, back at your neighborhood Local Church.