Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
This whole line of reasoning is predicated on the presumption that the meaning of the word when mentioned with respect to a city can only be "assembly" as in a single collection of actual people meeting together. Yet we see the word clearly meaning more than that in other contexts, therefore it is presumptuous to claim that it means universal when it is OK to mean that, but standalone assembly when a city name is invoked.
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I think one other thing that Nee didn't take into consideration is that a supposed existence of a single assembly in each city could really have only worked in the 1st century church. I'm no church historian and I don't know what speculations have been made about the various churches in ancient times, but I think it's fair to say that city populations were smaller, but more importantly, Christianity had yet to spread on a larger scale.
In 1 Cor 14, Paul speaks of the whole church coming together in one place (which seems to be implied to happen non-regularly). So at least in Corinth, it wasn't impractical for everyone to assemble together. The single assembly was a matter of feasibility, and probably also because they all were already familiar with each other. In other of Paul's epistles like Philemon where the assembly is identified by a house, it tears the notion of a single assembly in a city to shreds.
So Nee seemed to latch on to a certain pattern that he saw in the NT. He was unable to see the exceptions. He certainly didn't see the consequences. Others have fallen into the same trap. I hear about various people/books advocating for a return to the practice the early church. Sad to say, I already know how such an endeavor is going to turn out. There are just to many unknowns to build a church model rooted in the past.