Quote:
Originally Posted by testallthings
In whatever situation, we have to share the word of God. Every time we can choose to speak like a donkey, repeating words that have never made roots in us, words that have never worked deeply in our beings or we can draw a little, however small it is, from our personal experience with the word and share that with an unbeliever, a child of God, or the church.
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In this there was a cultural element, in the mandate to be a "Witness Lee tape recorder". By drawing on many sources, initially, Nee to some extent by-passed culture; he used culture to negate culture (Europe/American/Asian/African etc). Eventually, consumed with domestic affairs, his ancestral culture dominated; his true roots came out.
With Lee, cultural influence seems to have arrived earlier and stronger in the ministry of God's word, and its effects were pervasive in LC experience. "I am nothing; God is all" became "I am nothing; LC culture is all". The Bible could only be considered through the filter of LC exegeses, and Christ could only be seen through the lattice, if at all (SS 2:9).
There's an interesting scene in Luke 24. Some women get a message from angels concerning the risen Christ: He is living, not among the dead. Jesus' prophetic words from Galilee are rehearsed before the astonished women. (vv. 6,7). They rush back to tell the apostles, and of course they're not believed. Peter, however, still wants to go and check it out. (v.12).
Where in the tightly controlled LC world can one have an independent experience of Christ thusly, and report it to the brothers, much less to the so-called apostle of the age? I saw it rarely, in trainings. Mostly we were limited to declaring, chanting, screaming, verbatim if possible, the words of "God's oracle." That was essentially the sum total of our experience of Christ. And the temporary excitement of shouting something in a public setting was supposedly analogous to the presence of the Holy Spirit.