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Originally Posted by Dave
zeek, well presented with many relevant sources. In the end, the theocratic government in the LCs was their undoing. There were no checks and balances and the LCs ran amuck. However, there is this thought from former members of the LC that it was because of Phillip Lee, his behavior or the way WL let him run the LSM...or other actions by WL. I haven't heard anyone state that it may have been their form of church government which may have opened the door to the problems in the LCs. Also, I think anyone who was involved in South Florida would agree that the leader in South Florida was not "spiritual" but his authority was directly from WL and this led to so many problems there. Also, I don't think it is clear as to the real reasons why WL left Tawain to come to the US but we know in part that it was related to the authority issue.
The implications from Cahn's message are troubling primarily because he is presupposing something that seems to resonate with a certain group of Christians from the LCs i.e. the US was founded on the Word of God and the US is going to hades in a hand basket...and the US needs to get back to theocracy and the rule of the Word of God over our government. To me, this is subjugating our personal individual spiritual responsibility and accountability but was reflecting in the way the LCs were governed as zeek pointed out.
If there is to be renewal it should be grass roots which is the way the NT developed, the history of the Great Awakenings and it is also the way it is/has developed in South America and other parts of the world. Of course, Cahn gave this message in January 2013 and I don't know the impact of his message other than a couple books he has published. Have things changed since he spoke? In the end, it resonated with Jane but it just didn't do anything for me.
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Sadly Watchman Nee and Witness Lee had little direct experience of democracy before Lee came to the United States. Nee's prognosis of the inevitable democratic failure mirrors the struggle of Sun Yat-sen to establish a democratic republic of China. But, Sun Yat-sen's dream was never fully realized and the Communists took over. So, Nee and Lee may be excused for their ignorance. We, on the other hand, should know better. If Cahn's aim is to transform the U.S. into a theocracy, we can look back at our Local Church experience as evidence of what a bad idea that is. His argument is based on the lie that the U.S. was a Christian nation to begin with. Thus, it is based on a false premise. The whole idea that we should roll back history to the New Testament in order to recapitulate the "Church Life" or role back the American experience to recapitulate the nation of Israel ignores the progress in political thinking that resulted in the establishment of our nation as a democratic republic. We took our freedoms so much for granted that we forsook them to get involved in the Local Church-- a top-down authoritarian organization where we had no rights. Our LC experience ought to be enough to motivate us to reject the peddlers of American Theocracy.