Quote:
Originally Posted by YP0534
even though brother Lee was fond of denouncing ambition and I heard him speak about the "power struggle" a couple of times, I'm not sure I ever heard him quite as clearly as this on this topic.
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Lee denounced ambition, he was referring to everyone else's but his. His ambition was okay, because supposedly he was pure, he was wholly for "the ministry", "the recovery", and what all. And the rest of us, as much as we could demonstrate both competence and being "sold out" for the program, were allowed to rise in its ranks.
But this only works when the "acting God" of the system is pure, while our system is populated with sinners (albeit redeemed and reborn ones), so really it's illogical, to me. Why put a human being, frail and fallible, at the head of the system? We have a perfectly good head, Christ, who was tempted in every manner like us, yet without sin. Everybody else sinned. That's an immutable principle. The only acting God is God, and that, for us, thankfully, is fully realized and fully operational with our own Jesus Christ the Nazarene. Any other intermediaries corrupts the process. The Daystar fiasco was inevitable, in some form, because the "local church" system had humans running things instead of God.
Now, qualifications are in order. In any bunch, as
OBW already pointed out and is basically self-evident, there's going to be some more qualified than others; differentiation is natural, and God-arranged. If I'm in a lifeboat with a bunch of 14 year-olds it would behoove me to speak up and say, "Listen up, folks: I've been in a few lifeboats before and this is how we get to shore." No problem.
But as I've said elsewhere, God's order is fluid, and immediate, and meets every need. Man's "structure" is dead, static, and tries to copy yesterday's solutions, and is today no longer valid. That is why the arrangements made in the first century showed such a marked and rapid move away from the teachings of Jesus Christ. If you don't believe me, read the book of Revelation again. It's there; the degredation is the rule, not the exception. What structure can we see surviving the first century? I see the "episcopal throne" of James. What do you see?
Now, the principles are always valid. They point to eternal realities and God Himself. That is why having an "elder" or two around is so incredibly useful. The cost of information is lowered dramatically for the newbies. But structures are "old wineskins" which can't hold new wine. Nee's NCCL was arguably a better wineskin than some of the others he saw in China and elsewhere, circa 1925. But it was still an "old wineskin", in my estimation.