Perhaps it's all doctrine, and none of it's doctrine, all at the same time.
As a junior high school kid, I heard that Witness Lee was the Minister of the Age. I heard that kind of a lot. And I read
Life-Study messages in which Witness Lee allegorized the minute details of which parts of which animals were considered "clean" and "unclean" in the Old Testament, and the measurements of this type of wood, and that type of gold, in the tabernacle, et cetera, et cetera, with all the minutiae endowed with a particular, spiritual significance...
So then I learned about the
gopher of ambition, and next thing you know, there's yet another "Biblical type" in my head. Er, I mean, my spirit. Yeah, in my spirit. That's right. (Remember the doctrine of concentric circles? Wait, what? I'm getting dizzy...

)
But then, I think I know where Witness Lee got the gopher metaphor. I think he was on a plane. Watching
Caddyshack. Without the audio. Because he didn't want to buy the headphones.