Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
The truth about your statement "The Bible doesn't say we can't denominate." The Bible is the truth, so I gave you truth, because I gave you the verses about denominating.
If you stand in a denomination, stand absolutely. If you stand as a free group, stand absolutely. If you stand on the ground of the church, stand absolutely. Otherwise, you are in a marsh. If you give up the denominations, yet you are not absolute for the proper ground of the church, you are in a marsh. You may also be in the local church life and not be absolute. That is a marsh. Even the Lord cannot heal a marsh. A marsh is a neutral, halfway place, full of compromise.
The Visions of Ezekiel, by Witness Lee
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The people who stand in denominations stand in Christ, and for Christ. That is why they are there. I can with clean conscience receive them in the name of Christ, and be reciprocated. Witness Lee offered a swamp. You couldn't even stand in his presence in a plaid shirt, without getting ripped up. "That was disrespectful! Don't you know, we owe him our lives!" The man was either an egoist and bully who used the "ground" to grind his minions into mincemeat, and that's the positive view, or a delusional megalomaniac, a less sanguine view.
And that's the only ground you could stand on in the local church programme. Pay lip service to Jesus Christ, pooh-pooh the "fallen denominations", and be abjectly servile to the Ascended Master. Everything else there, and I mean everything, was sinking sand. Only the Ministry and the Oracle were firm tethers on which to hang your hat. Everything else shifted weekly, even daily, as the Great Man leaned.
That's the ground of the local church. The rest is a shell game with words. Human theology, pushing verses this way and that. The local church is actually more of Lee than the Lutherans are of Luther. "But they don't take a name". Right. Sure.
The proverbial bloodletting in the name of local church oneness reeks to heaven. The metaphorical blood of the saints cries out. They were crushed by the "ground of the church" by the thousands, even tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands or millions if you count China (and we should). No thanks. I'll be absolute, against this teaching. Because this teaching is against our union in Christ, which is the name above every name. I categorically and unequivocally reject it.
And "no hierarchy" - please. As the FTT trainers put it so plainly, "If others do it, it's hierarchy, but if we do it, it's not hierarchy." Subjectivity completely off the rails. "What I do is good, what others do is not good." People usually get over this view by their pre-teen years. Those who hold it life-long are under the thrall of darkness. The fact that they brandish verses by the dozen makes it even more pernicious.
Again, I don't mean to disrespect
Evangelical, who may be far ahead of me in the race. I just see bad ideas and am trying to call them out. Sorry if my writing isn't seasoned sufficiently with grace.