Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave
Ohio, you make some excellent points. What’s interesting to me is why it was thought that this (NCCL) was the blueprint to begin with—but we were under the WN spell. However, Nee raised an important issue-because he was a young idealist-a monumental issue: why do we have so many divisions in Christianity ad infinitum? Is there really a solution? In essence, Nee was asking a question but Lee tried to provide an answer which was really not an answer. It degenerated into something worse than what exists in Evangelical churches today.
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I guess that as a young man, Nee really felt like he wanted to find the answers to important issues, and he felt that he had the means to do so. I think what essentially happened is that his proposed solution (NCCL), when put into practice, didn't quite work out so well.
I've always understood that Nee never really had a solid opportunity to put his concept of the local churches into practice (Steve Isitt's recent writing on Nee provides insight on that), so the concept of local churches were left to Lee's imagination. Lee's version does not match what Nee conveyed in the NCCL, and I think Lee himself eventually realized that. He was quick to oust brothers when they pointed out the disparities between the current state of the local churches and what the NCCL describes. That's not even considering how "correct" Nee's view of the local church is.