Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Your view ignores God's sovereignty. To a Christian, Christ and the cross is the center and purpose of everything. There was never a plan in God's mind that did not require salvation. God knew what He was doing when he put the tree of knowledge there, and the serpent. Everything was prepared beforehand.
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While not denying that it could be true, the claim of it is something that is only guessed at. We think we know what all those characteristics of God mean and yet we really don't.
God's sovereignty is something that he is able to wield. It is not necessarily a declaration that all outcomes are predetermined, as some of the most extreme Calvinists believe.
The center of everything is God. That is a given. But you are looking at it all from the perspective of a plan that has at its center a failure and a cure. What if the plan was that man would bear the image of God? Would glorify Him in all that we do? The addition that Lee makes to insist that it was the fall of man that was preordained so that Satan would be caught in man and sentenced to die with man is nothing short of imaginary. It makes for a good story. But it is not supportable.
And there is another whole thread on Lee's Satanology. We'll leave it for that thread.
I find it so odd that everything is about the cure and not about the purpose.
Man had a purpose defined by God. He was thwarted from achieving that purpose. God provided a cure for the problem. Now may can fulfill his purpose.
For man to achieve the purpose, the cure is absolutely imperative. But it is not the Center. Well, if you consider crossover from death to life to be the center-point between the two sides of the spectrum, then Salvation is at the center. But the goal is not salvation. Salvation is not the center. It is the means.
While we need an ongoing salvation to continue, the goal is people who choose to accept that salvation and then go on to fulfill their purpose.
I find it funny that the group that demeans the gospel of the rest of Christianity as the "low gospel" would insist that the salvation is the center. That would be true only if salvation has been redefined to cover everything about the Christian life. And given the propensity for redefinitions, I guess that is just possible.
But if that is the case, then you have once again wandered into the realm of fanciful redefinitions that only serve to separate you rather than unify you with respect to those of the household of faith. You are proud to have a "better" version of everything so that you have a basis for exclusion of everyone that does not follow Lee.
Believe me, you are of Lee. There is no way around it.
Back to the topic of the thread. God's economy was a term used to generically refer to all that God has and does. It is what all good teachings will lead to. It was provided as something very different from "questionings," which was the result of teaching so many pointless things like endless genealogies.
Sort of like peace. You do not define peace so concisely as to eliminate examples of peace, Rather, peace is what is found where there is no war or strife. It is the opposite of what it set off against.
But Lee chose to simplify God's economy down to something that might legitimately be a part of what is in the whole of God's economy. But if that were not enough, we then chose to take that definition and use it to redefine too much scripture.
The fact that you are steeped in Lee's teachings to the exclusion of healthy teaching is clear evidence that you are of Lee. You are not someone that is not a Christian. Your group is not unchristian. It is not a false church. But it is not, by itself and apart from all others, "the true church." That is the dreaming of someone who is "of" someone and excludes all others.
If there are denominations of the type and manner that Lee declares, then the LCM is one of the only denominations. It is more exclusive, sectarian, and focused on a single man (other than Christ) than almost any of the groups you so freely denigrate.
And not a single verse to support your position. Just a statement that it is so.