Quote:
Originally Posted by Freedom
Evangelical, could you please provide some LC context to this topic? I'm assuming the tie-in is what you refer to as "law of the Spirit of life."
Secondly (and please don't take this as a sarcastic remark), but do you care to explain how you arrived at the conclusion from the portion of your post I quoted? Is this your observation? If not, do you have data to back this up? Or is this just your assumption about what various Christian groups are like?
|
By LC context I take this to mean you asking me to quote Nee/Lee about this? If so it is strange for you to ask for that, if you are supposed to be following the Bible only and are free from Nee/Lee's teachings. But since you are asking, yes it would be connected somehow with the teaching about the law of the Spirit of life.
The ones that "have no rules" are the ones such as these:
http://charismissional.com/how-to-get-stoned-on-jesus/
Would the Holy Spirit ever instruct a Christian to "get stoned on Jesus"? If not, this indicates they are not led by the Spirit despite their claims and "spiritual" experiences.
Regarding the majority of Christian churches, yes I have some personal experience about this. But I feel it is better to consider the numbers. Whether someone has done an academic study on this or not, I have not looked. But I have done my own approximate evaluation to see whether my claim about "the majority" might be correct.
I take the list of Christian denominational member numbers from Wikipedia, found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ber_of_members
I then add up the denominations which I consider to be following rules and practicing legalism. How do I know that Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican teach that we should obey God by following rules, that is, legalism? This is from my experience and the experiences of others that I know. This is also often a belief of Protestantism that these denominations, particularly Catholic, are "works based".
Going by the numbers in millions, we have Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican at
1200+300+86+85 = 1671 million.
Protestant are 800 million.
If we assume that all of those Protestants believe in obeying God by following the Spirit (or the law of the Spirit, as Law/Nee might say), and if we assume that all of those Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican obey God by legalism, then
the numbers show that:
1671/(1671+800) = 67% of denominational members try to obey God by following rules.
To me, 67% is a majority and therefore my statement that the majority of churches obey God by not following the Spirit, is factual.
This simple analysis I have done overlooks a few things. Firstly, not all Catholics, Orthodox or Anglican are legalistic. There are charismatic movements within these denominations that stress the importance of the Spirit. There are some individual priests or members who know the Spirit-led life. Secondly, not all Protestants are following the Spirit. I have attended baptist or Presbyterian churches which are very legalistic. Some, are quite sarcastic towards the worship practices and beliefs of the Pentecostals and charismatics, and their focus on the Spirit. In some churches you would rarely hear the word Spirit mentioned, and some do not believe the Spirit is a person, but rather a mysterious force or power.
So if you disagree with my view that the majority of denominations are not obeying God by following the Spirit, you are free to provide your own analysis or evaluation and disagree.
But I think it would be harder for you to justify that the majority of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican are following the Spirit, than it is for me to justify that they are not. It may be easy for a Roman Catholic to claim that they are following the Spirit, in their own way they are convinced this is true. But I think it would be particularly hard for a Protestant to admit or acknowledge that the majority of Roman Catholics follow the Spirit, would it not? To do so would be for a Protestant to infer that the Roman Catholics are led by God to offer prayers to Mary, venerate and pray to saints, and idolatry.
In my experience, the only denominations which make reference to or preach about the power of the Spirit or the inward dwelling of the Spirit for our ability to obey God, are the charismatics/pentecostals, and the Lord's Recovery, and probably certain house churches as well (I am only familiar with major denominations), depending upon their denominational persuasion.