[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

All of this indicates what a dark spirit of utter corruption and deception dominated the Local Church of Witness Lee at that point. -

Originally Posted by awareness

The problem is a system where one person is considered God's authority on the earth....
That's the kind of thing Watchman Nee's Spiritual Authority produces ... and that was produced in Lee's Recovery movement.

awareness has brought up one of the roots of the problems we are discussing on this thread.
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" Not a verse in the Bible but speaks of a universal truth nonetheless.

One of the main reasons that the Local Church of Witness Lee got nailed with the "cult" tag back in the 70s is the abject power invested in one man as the unquestioned "one apostle with the one ministry for the age". Of course Lee's off-the-wall home-brewed theology didn't help. Neither did their secrecy about what is really taught and practiced behind the meeting hall doors.

John Myer, in his book A Future and A Hope outlined this dynamic:
The most glaring of these was the stress on the group’s central figure, Witness Lee. I understood the concept of appreciation and respect toward ministers, but when titles like “the oracle,” “the minister of the age” and “the apostle” were routinely ascribed to Lee it struck me as being devotion of an unbalanced kind. According to my long-term observations, this issue alone raised red flags in more people than all the other questionable items in the Local Church Movement put together.
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