Dear Ohio, Oregon, and Igzy,
I hope you will allow me to respond to you “en masse”. I would definitely prefer a personal response to each of you, but time is in very short supply for me this week.
Like dear brother Ohio did some time ago in a post related to dear brother Darby, I should “give credit where credit is due”. Of course, I am not the final judge on any matter, but my sense is that there is lots of “solid gold” in the later stage of WN’s ministry. Some of this "solid gold" includes the following books:
The Breaking of the Outer Man for the Release of the Spirit,
The Character of the Lord’s Worker,
Messages for Building Up of New Believers, and
The Ministry of God’s Word.
Having said that, I must admit that there are three matters in WN’s later ministry that I do not consider “solid gold”; rather, I consider them to be “dross”, or “chaff”. I fully understand that this flies in the face of the official LSM view of WN that we heard for decades. As such, this "official" view does not go away easily. Ultimately, however, should we really be shocked by the existence of this “dross”? After all, wasn’t our dear brother WN a fragile human vessel just like the rest of us? While he lived, didn’t he have to deal with the constant frustration of the sinful human flesh, as we all do? Obviously, if we are going to insist upon a “perfect” human ministry, then we are left with only the ministry of our dear Lord and Savior. And yet, our Lord and Savior has entrusted the continuation of the NT ministry to fragile, imperfect, redeemed sinners like us.
The case of “handing over” started off as a genuine concern by WN. He felt that when the vast majority of the brothers and sisters had received salvation in Christ, they did not have the realization that from that point on, they belonged fully to the Lord. In practical terms, they did not realize that they should be fully given to the needs of the gospel. Because of this, WN felt that a “make-up lesson” (his words) was needed. Hence, this matter of “handing over” all of one’s possessions to the church. One problem with this was that, like anything outward, a distinction started to exist between those who had “handed over” and those who had not. An even worse problem showed up in WN’s speaking in the book
Church Affairs where WN stated that “handing over” was needed before one could serve God and he also stated that the ones who had “handed over” should be “cautious” about those who had not “handed over”. A kind of human pressure was introduced into something that should have remained a spontaneous move of the Spirit. This seemed to become the root of all the subsequent cases in the LC where leadership insisted upon a oneness with the latest “flow”.
The other two cases of "dross" appear to have been more severe and appear to have been problematic right from their inception. The first was this whole matter of submission to “deputy authority”. As Igzy stated, the way to get clear regarding the LC is to firmly grasp what was taught by WN and WL regarding submission to “deputy authority”. The second matter is the idea of working according to “the Jerusalem line”. This involved concentrating the co-workers in certain localities and coordinating the migrations of the saints from these "centers", somewhat like Jerusalem in the book of Acts. This idea gave rise to regional, then national, and eventually
global centers of extra-local coordination and control. Anaheim never would have become “AnaRome” without this teaching.
By the way, I am very encouraged that the GLA leadership appears to be moving beyond these three teachings from WN's later ministry. I am especially fascinated with the repeated mentions of “Antioch” in the GLA trainings and conferences. Lord willing, the “Antioch line”, overlooked in the LC since 1948, will rise again!
