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Old 07-24-2009, 05:40 PM   #16
YP0534
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 688
Default Re: Comparison and Contrast - Witness Lee versus The Blended

Quote:
Originally Posted by UntoHim View Post
Tah dah! See that wasn't so hard now was it! Thanks Mike - good observation of what I was trying to get at here. Not only do these guys teach exactly what Lee taught they carry out their business exactly how Lee caried out his business.
Well, since Mike honored me with lauds (thanks, Mike!), I'll add a couple of pennies worth.

Here's the difference as I see it:

Lee was a flawed brother who I believe did his best to be faithful to what he had seen in the Word, at least up to a certain point in time. The New Way teachings, to my perception, as the imagined steam engine behind the Leeite version of the Universal Church, are primarily what has become the fabric of the organization. But I maintain there was a practical difference up to a ceratin point.

Lee published the pitiful Truth Lessons at the same time as he popularized the phrase "Ti-ti Ta-ta" in connection with the home meetings, which as I understood it, was a Chinese phrase that meant "messy" or something like that. There's a HUGE tension (to say the very least!) between saying that a certain way of practice is "God's own best" and saying that we shouldn't control anything and just let the children play however they please in the home-sweet-home-meetings.

To give it more of the varnish of the day: Ti-ti Ta-ta was Tai Rung Lyao Le (Too Glorious!)

These days, that freedom-based part of Lee's ministry is pretty solidly neglected by the organizational experts at the helm at LSM.

So, concisely, this much I see as different: while still advocating uniformity, Lee at a minimum paid lip service to diversity and being spontaneous to follow the Lord up to a certain point in time. The bold new leaders? I don't see that they even consider it necessary to pay such ideas lip service.

And, in accordance with my other rants against "Universal Church," these who do share with him nearly identical concepts about how to go about building that organizational system have realized, perhaps only institutionally, that the parts of what Lee said that lead to uniformity and conformity are the parts you need to work on to build up the "Universal Church" imagination that they share. Freedom and diversity are of no use and in fact are much too much trouble for ANY institution interested in its own perpetuation, as most are, actually.

You can't have a "Universal Church" any more than you can have an Anarchy Club. The human notions of universality that define denominations such as the Local Church require enforcement of norms that just don't exist beyond their own walls and usually rather quickly degenerate into absurdity inside those walls. The assembly of God in Christ is differently composed in every place where it might be found and it will never have the same complexion, other that with regard to the inward reality of Christ. (Yes, I know that nearly sounds "universal" but you have to FIND it!)

Think about this: Lee loved that Hymnal. Now, nothing against those hymns, per se, but put yourself back 1000 years in the Middle East or Europe and try to imagine everyone throughout "The Church" utilizing a single hymnal! Sure. Print them in China, ship the boxes to Anaheim and then UPS them throughout the Christian world. The only way you could get there is the route that Roman Catholicism took. And folks: Been there. Done that. Let's move on.

Thus, I could envision a Mirror-Mirror Local Church which emphasized only the sweetness and the spiritual and the freedom parts of his ministry and neglected all the organizational stuff, while still perhaps overly stuck on Lee himself. Because I think such a thing is at least theoretically possible, I'd argue that since it's NOT possible under the Big Brothers, then, that's a difference.

I'll concede this much: Lee essentially criticized those brothers, who also left China like he did but didn't count him boss of them, of wanting to only take the "spiritual" part of Nee's ministry and not the "practical" part. And, in fact, the "New Way" was EXPRESSLY designed to be Lee's antidote to that problem, as he saw it. These Big Brother guys could be accused of being just the same in that sense, pushing forward Lee's interpretations of Nee's "practical" ministry for the production of the same practical "Universal Church." I'm not even sure they'd disagree with that characterization. But Lee also did his own thing, for which he was sometimes criticized by those other brothers from China who didn't follow him, and he didn't merely play follow the leader.

What's going on now is just much sicker, it seems to me.

Lee's errors were just Lee's errors.

The Local Church leaders don't merely add to his errors by carrying things out as they do or even as he did - they multiply the errors.

And now I'm back to my "no leaders without followers" soapbox so I know I've gone on way past a pair of pennies now.
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Let each walk as the Lord has distributed to each, as God has called each, and in this manner I instruct all the assemblies. 1 Cor. 7:17
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