[JJ]

Originally Posted by Baruch

I came across a book with some interesting claims about Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, and the local churches in mainland China and Taiwan. The book is "Religion and Democracy in Taiwan" by Cheng-Tian Kuo, SUNY Press, May 8, 2008.

Watchman Nee founded the Local Church in China in the 1920s. He was influenced by western evangelists, but "developed an indigenized theology critical of the principal churches but accessible to ordinary Chinese". Witness Lee was his "right-hand man".

"The ecclesiology of the Local Church was a mixture of supreme mastership, equality of all believers, and a centralized decision core with strong local autonomy. Ni was the supreme master of all church members, including Ni's successor, Li Chang-shou, who served Ni as his own son. Ni's writings were the main, if not the only, instructional materials in Bible study sessions. His leadership and biblical interpretation was beyond challenge by his members; those who dared to question were driven out of the church.

"The Local Church headquarters makes important decisions about church activities and personnel. Local churches cannot but obey; otherwise, they would be excommunicated from the church, as occurred in the 1960s. Among the various charges against these saboteurs, Li (Lee) mentioned that they challenged his leadership in general, including refusing to sing the eighty-five new hymns composed by Li for all member churches. These saboteurs were first suspended of their elder positions and left the Local Church one year later to establish independent churches. The Living Stone Church in Taipei is one of the remnants of this split".

I was floored by the part in quotations, because from 1978-2015 I never heard anything about that event..... except Witness Lee did talk about composing 85 new hymns (about 1962), and how they uplifted the Lord’s Table meetings after a while.