Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
In Witness Lee's case, he told us that people who didn't affiliate with others, or take another name, were useless "free groups" who did nothing to build the Body of Christ; he also said that those who did affiliate with others were divisive and sectarian. So the "recovered truth" of the LC was, essentially, that whatever WL did was right, and whatever anyone else did was wrong. Ultimately, this became the basis of LC identification and segregation: affiliation (and abject submission) to the ministry of WL. For example, if you see the "splash pages" of the group websites created in the 1990s under LSM oversight, the headers at the top say, "Lovers of Jesus affiliated with the ministries of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee."
Ultimately, this affiliation became the group's self-identification, and the basis of its segregation. The "present [LC] truth" was stated as, "Witness Lee: even when he's wrong, he's right." Anyone who didn't get this were "out" of the group, and those who grasped this ''present truth'' were "in".
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Self-identification we've seen in the LSM/LC fellowship can also be regarded as "making distinctions among yourselves" (James 2:4). Of course the pattern and means to make distinctions is not much different than we see in political advertisements. Putting down your competition in order to make yourself appear a preferred alternative. No difference from what has been uttered by LSM leadership and local elders. It's gone unchecked and unhindered that it's become normal in local church Lord's Day meetings to put down Christians outside LSM fellowship in order to make themselves appear better. It becomes popular to put down Billy Graham, Greg Laurie, Rick Warren, etc.
The practice of segregation is essentially the local churches cutting themselves off from the rest of the Body of Christ. This is contrary to the apostle's teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:14-21.