Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
The sensation of my ego makes me feel that I'm the center. But that ego is supposed to be crucified with Christ.
Proving, Lee's "old man" was alive and well.
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We were sold on a couple of false ideas. First, that WL's "old man" had somehow been transformed away by years of rigorous discipleship. When moneymaking opportunities appeared, however, such as Daystar, WL's old man quickly reappeared. Eventually the LSM was simply a money-making machine for him.
Second, we were sold on the idea of the "deputy authority", which was a corollary of the "ground of the church". WN supposedly had recovered the True Church of God, and someone had to be in charge, right? So it was God's current Man of the Hour, who was a humble Chinaman named Lee. So even when he's wrong he's right, or so we told ourselves; WL has God's oracle, and so whenever he opens his mouth a pure stream of unadulterated God flows forth. It is all new creation, with no old creation. Because WL is the "top dog" in the unique move of God on the earth today, the Mota, so whatever he does is God's move. Somehow God positionally covers any residual oldness (of which there isn't any, anyway) because he is today's "Moses."
All of which was a bunch of pseudo-spiritual hooey. It was a fig leaf covering a big ugly toad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HERn
So, what are we to make of the following LSM hymn?
1
There’s a race for us to run—Hallelujah,
And a way for us the race to win.
To all those who have begun—Hallelujah,
God has spoken, “Look away to Him!”
Look away! O look away!
Look to Jesus now today!
Look away from everything unto Jesus,
Look away from everything to Him!
The hymn appears to be calling us to look to Jesus. Did Lee get it right here?
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Remember that WL & Co make every effort to appear to be a legitimate, orthodox Protestant sect, even while trying to be new and different. So they make a big deal about the standard Christian model, how they are faithful to the "rich heritage". And they are. We sing Fanny Crosby and John Wesley, Cowper and Newton. But simultaneously they have to be new, different, and better. And in these improvements upon the standard Protestant model of salvation begin to add things to look at, besides Jesus.
In the old days it was the knuckle bone of St Andrew, in a box. It was the blessed saint so-and-so, who was guiding college students or truck drivers. It was a rosary or a statue or a fountain in Spain which had healing properties. Now it is the "move", the "work", the "body", and so forth.
There is a Bride, arguably. Right? We see the imagery, repeatedly, right up to the end. The transformed Bride comes down from heaven, prepared for the Husband. "The Spirit and the Bride say come". What could be clearer, I wonder? But there are problems with going too hard on the metaphor, on the picture. First, the Bride is also the Body. How can a man marry his body? Oh, "they become one". The two become one. Okay... but still the metaphor has limits in explanatory utility. My wife is "one" with me, but not me. I don't marry myself. So it is a picture with limited value; it's not unlimited. This picture must be balanced, trimmed, by other pictures.
Second, the Bible also says, "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven". So we don't marry but we marry, right? Both statements have some limited value. Not unlimited. So don't take any picture too far. Everything needs balance. So God has not been restlessly pacing for eternity, waiting for His Bride, simply because God said in Genesis, "It is not good for man to be alone." That's getting carried away by your own argument, by your idealization, or model, or ideational picture.
The main problem, however, is this: we are endangered by looking away from God, to something else. This something may be a spiritual picture with its roots in the sacred text, even repeatedly entwined with the gospel narrative. But that picture, of itself, will quickly become a trap and a snare if we focus on it.
The Bride who eyes herself becomes proud, and looks around, and becomes a Harlot. It's that simple, and that nasty. "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning". The Bride and the Body as metaphors both live and have existence in relation to the Source, which is the Husband and the Head. As soon as the Bride or Body begin to regard themselves as a thing in and of themselves, they simply become a monstrosity. The Bride and Body only exist in and as much as they retain relations with the Head. And this I argue requires unswerving devotion. Any compromise in attention is simply disastrous.
Here is another way to look at it. The servant does something according to the Master's bidding, and the Master says, "Well done. Here is a reward." But the servant replies, "I was only doing what I was supposed to do: what You commanded." The servant doesn't look at what he did, but at what the Master commanded. The servant doesn't know "self", nor "doing", but rather "Master" and "Master commands". He simply has no room in his consciousness for anything else. See e.g. Luke 17:10 "So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"
The LC problem is that they look away from what God tells us to do, which is entirely centered on the person of Jesus Christ, and on to the doing itself. The danger is that we might find ourselves saying, "Master, we did this, we did that", and the Master says, "Go away. I do not know you." Of course I apply this to myself as well. How much of my writing here is vain puffery? I don't know. Perhaps most of it. So I reject it. I look away unto Jesus.