Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave
I am just a newbie on this site but at first glance I am dumbfounded. My experience was that I was introduced to WN in 1965, "The Normal Christian Life" which completely impacted my life. In 1969, in Santa Cruz, when I met Karl Hammond, the editor of "The Normal Christian Church Life" which is when I first heard of WL I was enamored with it all. When WL in 1971 personally asked me to move to Detroit I immediately moved.
Why were we so impressed? Because of the influence of WN which was really the influence of Angus Kinnear who published his books in England. We had read WN, we were impressed and then we find someone who was a "co-worker" of Nee. Witness Lee..... Wow. We are caught in the net and our hearts and souls are open to all kinds of mischief. We can only reflect on what happened. So far, all the scripture quotes, greek interpretations, elaborations etc are simply working through the process of "what just happened" in our local church experience. Its great and helpful but let's not take all of this too seriously. As I have said previously, until one completely extracts themselves from this process it will go on and on with no end. It is not easy to walk away from all of this and go on with our lives.
Maybe we have spent so many years in the LC that we just can't stop talking about it or analyzing it or its interpretations of scriptures. I am not discounting Nigel or others who are trying to clarify some critical issues of scripture etc for former members of the LC. My point is simply that there seems to be some freight trains which are kind of running off track. I mean, I have a cousin who is a Christian but is heavy into the Israeli thing. I just don't see how that is relevant on this site but I am a newbie and maybe I just don't get it.
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Hi, Dave.
Thank you so much for your open honest question. I hope the following helps.
I had a similar experience through WN at the beginning. But before that I'd read the Bible. Reading the entire Bible a couple of times made me grieve. It made me ask, "Where are His Jewish believers?" It's written by Jews to Jews (and the world, ultimately). It's all about the Jews. It tells God's story from the beginning of His calling of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the nation of Israel. His giving of the law to them was because they were to be His representative people to the whole world.
But this story is just as much about Who God is. What kind of God He is. Though Israel failed as a nation and suffered all the curses He'd promised, His covenant promise would NEVER FAIL. His covenant with Abraham was one-sided. There was no contingency on Abraham. God will keep His word. We see His heart in all the words of the prophets who, over and over again, delivered His messages of grief, sorrow, pain, love, faithfulness, and promise of restoration. Even though, as a nation, they failed to receive their Lord Yeshua, the early church was the remnant of Jewish believers. That remnant has largely "disappeared" into the church over the centuries due to the persecution of the Jews in the early centuries and the proclamations, decisions, rulings, etc. of Constantine and others against them who made celebration of the Passover and the Sabbath illegal, among other things. THIS IS NOT LOVE AND THIS IS NOT GOD'S WAY.
God desires the oneness that is produced through love toward God and one another. We in the LCs have paid a high price to figure this out. We've seen that there are no cookie cutter Christians that please Him. He has made us all to fulfill the purposes He's given us. Malachi 4:5,6 says:
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."
The word of God came to us through the Jew first. Jesus spoke to the Jew first. Our gospel must go to the Jew first. The Jew has been delegated to bring about world redemption. Their believing will be "like life from the dead" for the whole world.
WL gave us the church life "Chinese style" with a mix of Western Civilization. He claimed it was "only Christ". We know better. He claimed there should be no culture. We now know that all are loved and appreciated by Him. All cultures, peoples, can worship and serve Him according to the way they were created. His times and seasons have placed us all where we are.
Paul says in Ephesians that we have now been made part of "the commonwealth of Israel". They had the advantage (Romans 3:1,2) of having the very words of God entrusted to them. Being joined to them their inheritance is now ours too. We have been grafted into their olive tree. We, the wild olive branches, are secure in His love and care.
But they are the natural branches. They must be grafted back in for Him to return. It's happening now. Over the last several decades there have been accelerating conversions of Jews and many, many, are returning to the land. This also must be for the end to come. There are even prophesies in the OT books of the prophets that speak of the gentiles bringing them back (this happened and is still happening), gentiles planting trees in the land (this happened and is happening) and of teaching them various agricultural techniques in the land(ditto).
Hatred of the Jew/Rejection of the Jew is the greatest tactic of the enemy to cause us to miss, God forbid, even fight against His purposes. He has chosen them and He will complete the work He began in them
with the help of those of us whose hearts are turned back to the fathers. But there's another deadly poison that has been spreading as rapidly and perniciously as any antisemitism. That is "Replacement theology". WL didn't come right out and say it but neither did he see or embrace the place of the Jews. After 25 years of his ministry I was pretty clear that WE replaced Israel due to their failure. (Calvin taught this; Dispensationalism implies this somewhat but not as drastically) Physical Jerusalem wasn't even important anymore. WE are the New Jerusalem. This just leaves out way too much of the Bible. WL just allegorized the literal interpretation right out of the Bible.
No, Dave, these freight trains are NOT running off track. We're getting back on track. I, for one, have come back to "my Jewish roots".