[Freedom]

Originally Posted by OBW

And why did Nee start off by declaring that "Nothing is greater than authorityin the universe; nothing can surpass it" yet not have even referenced a verse with the word authority in it? And through the whole first chapter, he never does. He just changes power to authority and moves on. "For thine is the kingdom and the authority and the glory . . . ."

Then, having everyone eating from his empty hand, he has "established" that it is so and goes on to the next chapter. One by one he makes assertions as if they are fact, but if you stop at each one, you will say "huh? really?" and scratch your head in wonder. This was my first dive into one of Nee's books after leaving the LCM and suddenly I realized that Nee was every bit as much an abuser of scripture to make it fit a preconceived premise as Lee was. Nee just makes statements and expects everyone to accept them.

And so far, too many people do just take whatever he says. Many of them don't read the books like Spiritual Authority, but it is there in less egregious ways in the inner life books.

But the point is that he establishes his first principle based on reasoning which makes assertions that need support. But none is given. And I (an may be just I) can not see where that support comes from. Yet, having said it (without support) he just moves on to the next chapter to layer on another point. And point by point he makes bare assertion after bare assertion. Like saying that the sin of Nadab and Abihu was to go against God's authority (which was stated as being Aaron), therefore man cannot deal with their sin . . . only God. Eventually this gets switched around to where Nadab and Abihu also had some authority, and that is the reason that only God could deal with them.

Suddenly, whoever manages to lay claim to God's deputy authority is above rebuke by man.

It is a house of mirrors and veils.

I agree with you. It is significant that Nee didn't ever establish that authority in the Bible was important in the way he wanted it to be. I've seen this done in other books too. In The Latent Power of the Soul, Nee hastily jumps to a conclusion that based off of verses like Gen 1:26 that Adam had a power "a million times greater than ours", and he also makes the claim that this power was "immobilized" after the fall (but supposedly still remains "latent" within humans). It was quite a stretch. Because his conclusions are not verifiable, he introduced a dangerous teaching. Lee followed in Nee's footsteps as well, even making the claim that the subject of the entire Bible is "God's economy". Where does the Bible explicitly say that? It doesn't say that anywhere. So yes, Nee and Lee didn't give the necessary proof for the validity of some of their teachings.

The point that I have been trying to make, however, is that the issue is not so simple as debunking a teaching like deputy authority. That's the easy part. Yet it means almost nothing to those who are in the LC, or those who don't know to read Nee with a grain of salt. Those on this forum view Nee differently that anyone in the LC and also differently than Christians outside the LC view him. To outsiders, Nee is just a not-so-relevant teacher who they may have heard of before. Thus, if someone opens up one of Nee's books such as Spiritual Authority, they might approach it innocently. They are not necessarily approaching it with the intention of evaluating the teaching according to the truth. What that means is that the Nee's failure to prove his argument is not necessarily going to stand out to everyone, because they are not looking for that.

Spiritual authority might seem like a benign teaching to those who don't realize how it can be used. Someone might see a book on that subject and have their curiosity perked as it isn't a subject that is talked about much. I believe it's fair to say that Nee had certain intentions with his teaching on deputy authority. If someone doesn't understand those intentions or the way in which deputy authority can be used, then the problem still remains, regardless of whether the teaching has been debunked or not. I would draw an analogy to what Lee said about God's economy. He said that the whole Bible is about that. Okay, big deal, whatever. Most probably could have cared less at the time. But then he started saying things like the book of James was not written according to God's economy, the Psalms were not written according to God's economy, etc. That when it started raising red flags. When the intentions of the said teaching became clear, that's when debunking it became all the more important, and not just debunking it, but realizing the underlying purpose of the teaching and what its effects would be.