[Cal]

Originally Posted by OBW

Overall, I find it to have little merit.

But the most deleterious thing about it was that it was the reason supplied for many dismissal of the plain reading of scripture in favor of something that you just couldn't find there. I recall a thread that Steve I started back at the other forum concerning all the teachings of Lee that he agreed with. Seems that everyone of them invovled a novel reading, or ignoring of scripture to get there. When asked why, there was something in a Life Study Message where Lee said it was because of God's Economy.

Toss James. Reinterpret the early verses in Colossians. Pan major portions of the Psalms. All in the name of God's Economy.

And his source was one of these word games in which he essentially dismissed the plain meaning of the term, coupled with a logic error in which he insisted that it was God's economy that was the thing Paul instructed to be taught.

But it was not. It was the result of good, healthy teaching. It was not a construct or idea (or one ring) that would rule all others. It was the outcome of right teachings. But Lee used it as the rule to dismiss right teaching. So his teaching on the subject can hardly be seen as not deleterious. It is part of the system of error.

In fact, it is ultimately one of the primary tools of his system of errors.

Ohio, it depends on what you mean by God's economy. If you mean that God does things by his Spirit, and trying to do Christian things without the Spirit is an error, then I agree 100%.

If Lee had left it at that bit of advice it would have been fine. But he took that and ran off the cliff with it--leading to several major errors, including de-empasizing or downright denying the plain word of the Bible in favor of "God's economy," and creating a culture which did the same. This in turn led to other errors, such as doubting one's reasoning capabilities for the "feeling of the Body," and so forth. Add to that all the speculative details about spirit, soul, conscience, fellowship, intuition, heart, inner man, yada yada, which were more cases of Nee and Lee squinting at the Bible and seeing things that actually made them and us myopic. We thought we had an understanding of this "inner life/God's economy" thing that we really didn't have. We were hearing music that wasn't being played.

Christianity today has no issue with understanding that we need the leading of the Spirit. Maybe it once did, but that isn't an issue anymore. The teaching of "God' economy" was a bad fix for an old problem that has been better addressed by others. Time to move on and forget about it, except the hard lessons it taught.