Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Tozer was fond of saying, "I refuse to allow any man to put his glasses on me and force me to see everything in his light." He literally burned the midnight oil in his quest for truth. Giving himself to the study of the great classics in religion, philosophy, literature, poetry, the church fathers and Christian mystics. His special love for poetry and the hymns of the church gave wings to his preaching and writing. A voracious reader, he would read a bit, then think and meditated on what he had read. He often said, "You should think ten times more than you read." He never read a book merely to say he had read it. Always a book was to lead him on in his quest for God. In an editorial on the subject Tozer said that the best book was the one that starts the reader on a train of thought and then bows out, its work finished.
from
http://www.awtozerclassics.com/page/page/4891821.htm
So Tozer refused to put Lee glasses on, and be forced to see everything in Lee's light. I say, good for him.
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There is probably more truth to this than we even realize. The actual specifics of the Lee and Tozer encounter can only be speculated upon, but I can't escape the idea the Lee's purpose in meeting him was simply to determine his views on the local church model.
Interestingly, the narrative about the encounter does not include Tozer's response to Lee's question. The way it's worded, it almost sounds like Lee asked a rhetorical question. I'm 99.9% certain that Tozer gave Lee a response. Why isn't that response included? Probably because they had a discussion about the reasons that Lee's local church model wasn't so feasible.
Let me put it this way. There have been situations over the years where I've had to explain to outsiders why I meet with a church called "the church in X". Almost invariably, the response is that of taking up the issue of having a church with no name, rather than saying that it sound like such a great idea, or that they can't believe they never saw that in the Bible before. In other words, the doctrine that Lee though was so great was likely something that was met with much skepticism.
I believe that in the encounters that Lee had with those like Tozer and TAS, they called him out, or challenged his teaching. I think I saw something posted that Lee and TAS had such a discussion at one point. In the LC, they will say that those like TAS were "against the ground of the church". What I think would be more fair to say is that they were against Lee pushing his teaching and even making it into a divisive issue.