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Originally Posted by Ohio
Of course, I am more familiar with the "storms" of the 70's, 80's, and 00's, but the pattern seems justified. IIRC, the Taipei storm of the 60's was supposedly over the Lord's new move of "calling on the Lord," when actually it was an outcry over the sale of church property to finance WL's business debts.
KTS, no model is perfect, and all are subject to critique, but to me it has introduced this new topic of what "really happened" behind the scenes, and how was "history rewritten" for all the faithful. What were the real reasons for the downward trends and the subsequent storms? The actual facts of the latest storms has changed everything for me. Without some integrity, and an unreproachable critique of the ministry, all the teachings I have heard are suspect.
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Dear brother Ohio, you bring up a lot of points worthy of consideration. It certainly does seem clear that it was the "storms" and the subsequent heavy-handed reaction to these "storms" that always moved "the recovery" another notch towards exclusiveness. "The recovery" would go on, more or less unchanged, for years or even decades, but when some "new way" was insisted upon, in the aftermath of the resulting "storm" the nature of things would always change for the worse. I think you have hit upon a very important point here, both for the Brethren and for the LC.
While apathy and inertia are always a danger due to our fallen flesh, in the case of the Brethren and the LC, the "church life" did not slowly degrade due to apathy and inertia; rather, the "church life" "morphed" more and more into exclusiveness in the aftermath of each "storm". This is a kind of "discrete" model as opposed to a "continuous" model.
I can not remember if it was Nee or Lee who said this, but one of them said that once a group reaches the "high peak" of Philadelphia, the two dangers facing that group are either a sliding back to "dead religion" (i.e. Sardis) or a descent into "Christless" Laodicea. Here is something interesting: We mentioned Zinzendorf and the Moravians earlier in this thread as a group that surely touched "Philadelphia". My family and I had an opportunity to attend a "Moravian" church service not too long ago. May the Lord guard me from a harsh spirit of jugdment! While the sermon was actually quite good, and they had "small group" Bible Studies before the service, I do have to say that the service was very "religious" (i.e. a set liturgy, clergy/laity, not much passion in the singing of the hymns, etc.). From what little I know about the later history of the Moravians, they were not beset by "storms". While it seems that their committees and their "synods" prevented "storms", these could not prevent the gradual and ever-increasing drift away from the freshness of the Spirit they once knew so well.
This gradual drift did not happen to the Brethren or the LC; rather, periodic changes of course dictated by those in the lead would cause a reaction, this reaction would be labeled a "storm" and a "rebellion" and would be strongly counteracted, and then the "teachings" that came out to vindicate the LC leadership always become yet another set of heavy baggage that those in the LC had to bear. The end result was surely not Sardis, but Laodicea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
For example, after each Brethren excommunication, a whole new set of teachings and tracts were released to justify and explain to the faithful for their "learning." Many times these teachings became abstruse and recondite to the saints. In other words, "I don't know what Darby is talking about, but he must, and it sounds pretty bad, and I trust him because he is our leader." Over time, the interpretation of scripture for the Brethren (so many O.T. allegories) often times superceded the plain word of the Bible. Sound familiar?
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Exactly! Sad to say, dear brother, but this sounds all too familiar.
May God have mercy on us all.