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Originally Posted by aron
I categorically disagree. Look at the scenes where they're dispensing right and left, with no obedience. So what of it?
You have the Master giving talents to the servants, some of whom do business and some don't. What is giving talents but dispensing?
You have Paul writing, "Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." (1 Cor 4:2 NIV) There are faithful stewards and unfaithful stewards. Both get dispensing.
You have Jesus saying, "Don't be hearers only of the word, but doers". By contrast, the "God's economy" metric was sold such that we could just come in to the LC meeting, fall asleep in the back, and have the assurance that we left with "more God" than when we came in. I heard this. Of course it was spoken facetiously, to laughter, but the message was consistent: stay in the ministry and you'll get God dispensed into you. This kind of thinking breeds passivity and introspection.
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Frequently, in the LR people are admonished to pray, prophesy, exercise their Spirit, call on the Lord.
If anything there is "peer pressure" to participate than fall asleep!
So I know that what you say here is just your own imagination and not the truth.
It is well known and taught that without exercising the spirit there is no spiritual growth. Contrast that with the denominations where only one man, pastor or priest, does all the speaking, and the congregation stays silent.
To believe, pray and read the Word, admonish others, prophesy is also obedience.
But we may compare the practical side as well.
If there is "no obedience" as you claim, who has distributed tens of thousands of Bibles in Europe and other places?
Why are there many university students coming to the Bible studies on campus?
Why are new churches being planted and why are new people being baptized?
These folk are more active than I've seen in any local denomination and your average "pew sitter".
In fact I believe that when compared side by side, an average local church is "doing" much more than an average local denominational church.
And what it is doing is probably more in line with God's command to preach the Word and spread the gospel, than your average denominational church which is running the "Sunday raffle" to raise money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
How many Christians became spineless jellyfish, afraid to function according to the Spirit's lead, because they might stand out as independent, or rebellious? How many Christians became program robots, afraid to think because that might be the natural man? Only the Oracle can think safely, right? The rest of us merely have concepts. Just say, "amen" to the Oracle. God's economy passes through the Ministry.
This is also the fruit of the teachings.
How many millions on the mainland PRC are under the hellish teachings of the Lee off-shoots? This, also, is "through Lee/Nee's ministry" as much as everything read into the Congressional Record. Lee claimed several tens of millions of shouters (and yes that's a name, and he said it approvingly) in China; then it imploded into cults worshiping people as deity incarnate (including Lee as Lord Changshou, among others), and who kidnap, brutalize, extort and brainwash. That's also the fruit.
We shouldn't be selective in our judgment of what is fruit. We should examine everything.
Ignorance and zeal is a dangerous combination. Lee would sell us some oversimplified mash, "The Kingdom of God is just 'x'" and we all thought, "Gee, this is great! Somebody did all the hard work for us. Just stand two by two and declare the Catchphrase of the Day, complete with fist pump, and sit down and you now have 'more God'". Patent nonsense. Sorry to be so disagreeable but I just don't see it. It's a dangerous oversimplification. Yes it's convenient; far too convenient, I'm afraid.
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Your argument is flawed because one could easily say that Roman Catholicism and so many other heretical teachings and groups that came from the New Testament period and are based on the Bible, is evidence that the New Testament and the Bible produces bad fruit!