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Originally Posted by awareness
I agree. Was it megalomania? Narcissism? or other egotistical personality disorder? All such wondering's are speculations. But given our present benefit of hindsight, something of the sort was going on.
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When you look at the environment of Nee's China with the surrounding denominations and the outside imperialists which had been influencing Nee's world, his response is not all that surprising. Of course, Nee was also in contact with Pember’s writings, Margaret Barber (who introduced him to J. N. Darby, Madam Jeanne Guyon, Jessie Penn-Lewis, D. M. Panton, T. Austin Sparks) and others. He probably felt he hit the mother lode of spiritual insight with those books. I remember that WL once mentioned C.A. Coates and so I found and purchased as many of Coates books as possible which were Brethren books but more on the mystical side. I also found books by Pember outside of Earth’s Earliest Ages which were quite remarkable and very different than EEA. I am sure WN and WL were delving in those books and believed they found something special that Christianity couldn’t discover because Christianity was blinded and limited by Western culture. When you consider that Angus Kinnear from England published books such as “The Normal Christian Life” and “Changed into His Likeness” outsiders such as Kinnear were impressed by Nee’s spiritual insight. Also, WN’s books sold well in the US. I remember one of WN’s books positively reviewed by the Billy Graham association. His books were mentioned in Christianity Today.
You also have CLC publishing Nee’s books which provided legitimacy. In addition, you have a legitimate co-worker of Nee in WL who had established churches in Taiwan following the revolution in China. What was not to believe? They may have been like us at some point…believed they had found unique insight into the Bible because of their exposure to Christian writings which quite honestly were not “traditional fundamental writings” although they were certainly Christian but with a unique twist. Obviously the entire “local church” idea sprung out of Nee’s exposure to Darby and Brethren teachings, his surroundings (as I noted previously) and the 1881 "Little Flock Hymn Book" (Brethren).
Didn’t we all believe we had found something unique that was not available in Christianity when we first were involved with the LC? When I first became involved in the LC and was introduced to pray-reading and calling out “Oh Lord Jesus” I thought, wow, a practical way to carry out the message of WN in his books since I had already read them and shared them with whomever would listen. I was also introduced to “The Normal Christian Church Life” at the same time by WN and because of the other writings I had been introduced to by WN (via Angus Kinnear) I was willing to buy into the whole picture.
The craziness developed out of Lee’s insistence on controlling everything and some of his unusual practices which really didn’t accomplish what we all thought they would: the Normal Christian Life. It became the Abnormal Christian Life in kind of a crazy Church Life structure. Whether Nee or Lee were megalomaniacs is beyond the point. It is how these individuals affected us and overall they turned the "local church" experience into a cult like culture which is still going on today.