Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
...groups like the Latter Day Saints, the Jehovahs Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the Local Church all present their initiates with a "warped present world" scenario.. which they then contrast to their proposed "true recovery of the past"...
Unfortunately the initiate may at some point wake up, after going through the stages of.. the New and True Church, and find out that (s)he is still a "stranger in a strange land".
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The broader theme I see, and the warning which accompanies it, is going beyond one's station, or measure. Admittedly the present scenario is lacking. Protestantism is degraded, RCC is warped, Greek Orthodoxy is stale, and many "free groups" and post-Protestant spin-offs are indeed wild. But what to do? Start yet another religious movement? How to guarantee you won't become wildest of all, and drag many with you?
One over-arching theme in the OT is what I call "the three falls": that of Satan, humankind, then angels. All three erred in going beyond their station. It is one thing to see that the situation is hardly perfect, and another to present its solution. WN saw the splinter, and his proposal became a beam. We all do this, to some degree; it's easy to judge, hard to heal.
My template is found with the aged apostle John, who saw the Asian churches in disarray, and used this as a larger jeremiad against decay and corruption. "Blessed is he who reads and keeps the word therein; for the time is short"... just as Paul had told the Colossians to read his epistle to the Laodiceans and vice versa, John fully expected everyone to read his epistles to the seven churches. All seven epistles were together in the same book!
But did John go further, and propose a new movement, on "virgin soil"? If anyone could have declared it hopeless, and chucked it all and started anew, it would have been John, but he didn't. But WN was saved how many years before he started a new movement, and "took the new ground"? Two years? Two years saved, and he started his new movement? (Lee, Watchman Nee, a Seer of the Divine Revelation, pp. 41-43)
Jesus fully dealt with all 3 falls. All problems have been resolved. The Spirit of Jesus is here, and will reveal "this Jesus"! Don't move, no matter how degraded things seem to be... otherwise we're tricked into acting, and our last state becomes worse than the first. A strange land, indeed.