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Originally Posted by aron
Three more comments.The shattered and divisive fruit of the localism idea as promulgated by Nee and Lee has been exposed today as the British Brethren were a century before, and its traction is mostly limited to Chinese, who like the culture, and college students who're ignorant and easily swayed by emotionalism. (In a nearby "locality" LSM church the Chinese and the non-Chinese meet in separate meeting halls, and have no connection with each other).The reason I say this is because if you told an EO-affiliated believer about the need to "recover the oneness" they would look at you in bewilderment. Recover the oneness of the faith? They already have it! No, this need has emerged from divided Protestantism. Just google "one true church" or "true church" or "recovered church" or "restored church" and you'll see a dozen post-Protestant splinter cells, all trying to do what Nee did, and the Brethren before him.
The key for me was Paul's advice to the Corinthians. "In what you were when Christ found you, there remain". I accept history. I was born into a Protestant culture, and "born again" in a Protestant meeting, under their gospel. I don't need to form a new group, to leave one group and join another. I need to repent of my sins, to confess, to live a new life in Christ. And whomever I meet on the way, may the blessed joy of salvation cover us, and fill our hearts. There's no need to get hung up on "church" as a litmus test of fellowship.
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They have oneness of their faith, they don't have oneness of "the faith" (what they call their faith, to the exclusion of all others). They do not consider believers of other churches to be of "the faith", so they are divisive.
Your application of the verse in Corinthians is misapplied. The context is whether or not a person needs to be circumcised (or do anything for that matter, such as divorce their spouse, or leave their master, if a slave) to be considered part of the church. The verse does not mean that we should remain in Babylon.