I can appreciate that people have different ideas about things. But on these two I find either no basis to understand your agreement, or little reason to care. In order, they are:
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Originally Posted by VoiceInWilderness
11. Nicolaitans - I agree with WL and WN.
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Hard to agree with such targeted, but unstated, error that would seem to fly in the face of the very system of order and structure that the church was born into and then was more directly commented on by both Jesus and Paul.
Jesus never disparaged the existence of structure and leadership. He even instructed his disciples in how they were to be as leaders. Just because they were to be servant leaders did not remove their place as leaders. When Jesus complained about the Pharisees wanting to be exalted and demanding the best places, he did not say to his disciples to not be leaders, but to not be as the Pharisees. Jesus never said that the actual teachings of the Pharisees were bad. In fact, he seemed to suggest that they should be followed.
In the meantime, most of the kinds of "clergy" that Nee and Lee complained about were essentially equivalents to apostles, evangelists, elders, etc. I would agree that there is the potential for problems with hieracrchies of leadership, just as was effectively instituted just a generation later, but the potential for problem was never the reason provided for avoidance. Jesus did not tell his disciples to not be leaders because it was a slippery slope that would get them to be like Pharisees. He pointed to the errors of the Pharisees and said point-blank what was wrong.
Now he gets really heated about it in the midst of talking about the deeds of Balaam and then covers this old item in code?
I seriously doubt it. Seems more like a specific and localized problem that there was no reason to clarify for everyone else. Given the nature of all the other problems for all of the 7 churches, it is relatively safe to say that none of the others were anything actually new or unexpected. They were problems that were spelled-out and would have been understood as in contradiction to the living of Christ's followers.
So the omniscient God of the universe gave us a coded message for the one thing that Lee was sure was the biggest problem of modern-day Christianity? Doesn't add-up.
Seems that if this was about bossy leaders ordering people around, they would have been likened to Pharisees. If there was ever a class of Israelites lording it over the rest of them, it was the Pharisees. Creating some phrase that never otherwise meant what Lee claims it to have meant is a stretch when nothing in the vicinity provides any such hint at the problem he wants to find.
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Originally Posted by VoiceInWilderness
15. Holy, holy, holy implies the Triune God. I agree with WL.
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"Implies" is such a weak word that it is hard to disagree that it could be true. God is triune. So many things are in threes. Probably a decent chance of being right.
But what does it mean if it does imply the Trinity? That there is a symmetry in much of the writing surrounding the person of God? If it does or does not imply the Trinity, is there anything of real importance in it that should change our living here and now? That is one of the most important things for us to be finding in the Bible.