[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Paul told Timothy: Avoid such people!

So what did Witness Lee do? Excused all of this, by saying, "Philip, of course, is not perfect."

In Witness Lee's hands, "abusive, disobedient, boasters" became "nobody's perfect." Rebranding par excellence, which of course is part of the marketing scheme, for those who merchandise the gospel. And while I see no evidence that Witness Lee enriched himself at the saints' expense, the same can't be said for his immediate family, who evidently got free rein at the till, and even at the saints themselves.

Originally Posted by Ohio

Great point!

Look at the results:

Proud leader becomes like megalomaniac, accountable to no one.

I'd argue that there are two big themes behind the megalomania of Lee, which allowed it to flourish and grow in the "recovery" and the "local churches".

The first theme is the social setting of the initiation of Lee setting up shop in the USA, circa 1964-69. And I'll pose it by asking a question: what prompted some 900,000 young people to convene on a farm in upstate New York in the summer of '69? Clever marketing? Superior organization?

No, I'd say that they all went because that was where everyone was going. As soon as the word hit the street that 'everyone' was going to Max Yasgur's farm, they all hopped in their Impalas, Mustangs and Darts and headed East.

Here's a testimony of what it was like to be a young person in the '60s, getting sucked into Lee's maelstrom:

Originally Posted by Arthur M. Casci

Zealous and Misled: I Once Lost My Way

Our Lord Jesus said, "If you continue in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." This verse still rings in my mind when I think of my experience more than 10 years ago.

It all began when a friend shared the Gospel with me. Though raised in a church-going family, I had rejected Christianity at age 18. When Jeff told me about the forgiveness of sins, I said, "Flake off." But a few weeks later I attended a Bible study and the Holy Spirit put faith into my heart. I repented and believed the Gospel; after 21 years of living, my new life began.

The "Jesus People" movement was at its peak, and I enjoyed the informal atmosphere of sitting on the floor, singing, and studying the Bible. I attended different churches but felt that they were dead and had abandoned Jesus. Like many my age, I was rebellious and distrusted any organization run by comfortable, middle-class adults. Zealous for Jesus, I could not understand why others were not as enthusiastic. This attitude, combined with my lack of a Biblical foundation, left me wide open to false doctrine.*

One evening I stopped to visit a Christian friend who had some unusual visitors. They were young, "on fire," roving evangelists from an organization called "The Children of God." They did not believe that a Christian should hold a normal job, but rather should leave job, home, family, and goods to preach on the streets.

The next thing I knew, I had quit my job and prepared to leave with these young street preachers for Dallas, Tex., one of their outposts. Fortunately, some dear Christian friends I visited stopped me from going, thus preventing me from joining a cult (at least for the moment). But I was still plagued with a burning desire to serve Jesus wholeheartedly-and now I had no job.

Another friend, Randy, invited me to go with him to Akron, Ohio, to introduce me to another zealous organization. So, once again, I packed my few belongings and left. This time no one stopped me.

I will never forget my first encounter with this organization. In a meeting, they sang loudly, shouted out verses of Scripture, danced, and one by one gave strong testimony about what Jesus meant to them. I saw young and old, black, white, and Oriental people.

I immediately joined in the singing and shouting. Mentally I maintained a few reservations, but emotionally I was caught. The love, unity and volume of the service overwhelmed me. I thought to myself: Here are people who truly love Jesus and are not afraid to show it.

That night after the meeting, Randy introduced me to many of them. They immediately welcomed me and showed great concern. I asked to stay for a week or two as a trial period, and was housed in a large duplex with about 10 members, who said I could stay until I decided whether to join the group.

Nobody forced me to join. Nobody needed to. I was ripe for the picking.

The organization is known as the "Local Church." lf such a group were in St. Louis, they would call themselves "The Church in or of St. Louis." They take the name of their locality.

So Lee, after soiling his nest in China, Taiwan, and the Philippines, found "virgin soil" in the USA in which to ply his wares. And they came in by the busload. So surely his ministry was responsible for the increase, right? Right?

The '60s was a time when they would all pile into whatever was "happening", without regard to the sense of it. If everyone else was doing it, okay fine, let's go! Eventually this thinking changed, in the '70s, when things like Jim Jones and his People's Temple occurred.

Joe: "Hey Bob, what possessed you to go into the jungle and drink poisoned Kool-Aid?"

Bob: "I dunno, seemed like a good idea a the time. Everyone else [900+] was doing it, so I figured, what the heck? Why not?"

But at its heyday, something like the "Elden Hall experience" was able to occur with little help from Lee. He was just this weird, inscrutable Chinese guy, but hey, he was Watchman Nee's closest co-worker! Let's all just love Jesus!

The second thing feeding Lee's megalomania was oriental culture. The (oriental) collective needed a strong center. Lee figured, if not me, then someone else has to do it. In this he was a pea in Watchman Nee's pod. Absolute and unquestioned authority was the conceptual center, the actual and ultimate "ground", of Nee's "Normal Church" model. Not coincidentally, Nee didn't articulate this principle until he was free of both the Western church, and all "senior co-workers" by his "local ground" discovery. Ultimately, the "local ground" was merely a preface for the "deputy God" thesis, which Nee used well, and which allowed Lee an open door to his own fiefdom, and then followers of Lee such as Benson Philips, Ray Graver, Mel Porter and Titus Chu. Anyone with ambition in the LC found out, just publicly grovel before the Ascended Master and you'll be given your own little satrapy. I saw Chu do this before Lee in the big meetings: "Lose Face" and the kingdom is yours. And from what I hear, Dong also followed suit in Brasil: he got to examine, expose, and "prove" everything, but his own business arrangements (for example, his son getting exclusive operational rights in Estancia Arvore outside of Campinas, Sumare) were a "black box" per his deputies. Because Dong, like Lee his mentor, always has to be right. Social coherence (i.e. good order in the Lee/Chu/Dong church) demands it. Don't question the Master.

Now, by contrast we can look at Stephen Kaung, another Nee peer who evidently didn't have a pathological need to dominate the assembly thus. Probably cultural reticence forbade Kaung from ever publicly critiquing the Nee model, but obviously his leadership style seems in contrast with those found in the Little Flock & Lord's Recovery.

Another contrast is provided by Leland Wang, one of Nee's initial co-workers and who started the independent (local) Shanghai Assembly group, before Nee pushed him out. Wang showed no evidence of "lording over the saints", that I can see. So this is not necessarily a Chinese/Asian trait, but oriental culture clearly filtered through what I saw in LC life: "Witness Lee is always right" and "cover the drunken Noah" and "questioning leadership is akin to rebellion, the most heinous of spiritual crimes" and so forth. To me that's human cultural imperatives dominating scriptural exegesis, and thereby also opening the way for complete control of the assembly bought by Christ's own blood.

(*This was also the assessment of recent LSM apologists CRI, regarding the Mainland Chinese Christians, characterizing them as "zealous" and "ignorant" - what a great combination, eh? Along with their innate, conditioned deference to strong centralized authority, it made them ripe for machinations by the supposed 'ministry of the age'.)