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Originally Posted by Evangelical
About the locality, I bring your attention to the logical and rational argument I made from the Bible about useage of the word church and churches in the Bible. This shows majority useage for the word church in connection with city, not house, is 86% compared to 14%. Found in Post #40 by myself in this thread:
http://localchurchdiscussions.com/vB...ad.php?p=50465 |
Yes, I see that. But here is where I am having trouble. I was in the church in Odessa in 1983. We met in a house for a year and we were a "local church". Witness Lee fully accepted us, Texas elders fully accepted us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
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Yes, I see that, but here is where I am having trouble. There have been two different cities in the US where the Local church took the ground, set up a church in that city, and then a few years later set up a separate and independent church in the exact same city. So you can understand my confusion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
It is not Witness Lee's OT teaching, it is Nee's and is also based upon Jesus's words in the New Testament (not old) in Revelation that addresses only 7 churches in Revelation, one per city, and each city has only one lampstand.
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Yes, it is true that Witness Lee uses these verses to "support" his teaching. However, he makes the teaching based on Old Testament verses concerning the Temple, then uses Ephesians to show that the Temple is a type of the church.
Once he has made the teaching he then "proves" it by showing that every instance of the use of the church fits his paradigm (except for the 16% of inconvenient instances which he ignores).
But there is no New Testament teaching concerning the "ground of the church". The New Testament does teach us about every key doctrine, but somehow skipped this crucial one. How is it that something so critical as this was ignored by Paul, and Peter, and John, etc.?
This doctrine has been used for over 60 years. Has it really caused believers to be one? The Local Churches that I knew and experienced were completely cut off from fellowship with all other believers. If you value oneness with all believers it is a very strange way to show it. So strange in fact that I started to examine if there was something else they might be valuing instead. Bottom line they are double minded, trying to serve God and mammon.