Quote:
My first encounter with the “Lord’s recovery” occurred in May 1967 as a member of The People’s Church in Toronto, Canada. Oswald J. Smith, the Senior Pastor, had invited his friend Witness Lee to address the annual World Missions Conference. I remember wondering what this short, quiet man who spoke English with a Chinese accent was going to say! His message inspired me to read The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee, and I soon realized that for those in North America it was perhaps describing “the abnormal Christian life.” Witness Lee’s wisdom had already begun to impact me.
As a teenager in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church (C&MA), Avenue Road, Toronto, where A. W. Tozer ministered for a few years, I developed the deep conviction that Christ must be Lord of all, or He is not really Lord at all. I also developed at this time a deep love and gratitude for the great hymns of the Church, many of which providentially found their way into the hymnbook used in the local churches—indeed, thirty-nine of C&MA cofounder A. B. Simpson’s hymns (more than in the C&MA’s own book, Hymns of the Christian Life). Combined with Oswald J. Smith (who has two hymns that he penned in Hymns (LSM)) and his teaching that “no one should hear the Gospel twice until everyone has heard it once,” and that “One in twenty of our members should be engaged in full-time service,” I was a prime candidate for the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee! Like many believers who have encountered the local churches, however, I also encountered severe critics of the move of the Spirit through these devout gentlemen and was influenced to avoid further affiliations with them or their fellow followers of Christ.
http://an-open-letter.org/testimonies/#14
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The above quote is the testimony of Paul Young of the CRI (and now the local churches of Witness Lee). He was associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance church as a youth. It's interesting how much of a background he actually had with Lee, having seen him back in the 60's. It does make me wonder, just how could he have engaged in
objective research with the CRI on the local church?