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Originally Posted by Ohio
At first, these matters seemed to benefit the church, at least while WN was in the leadership in China. Eventually, however, these very concepts, apparently scriptural, yet without solid verse support, became the root cause for our undoing. ...A generation of LC leaders, trained up on these errant teachings, in their mature years had lost the ability to go back and examine the scripture anew.
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The incessant string of controversies and fightings amongst the family of faith is the self-evident fruit of error.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I personally feel that scripture balances itself, by providing needed diversity. We in the LC seemed to get far too much "of Paul," and lacked the balance of John and James and Peter.
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Well put-- I never would dream of overturning Paul. The scriptural evidence is overwhelming that he was "of God". If we push Paul off the table, or even diminish his ministry, we end up in some twisted Koresh-land.
But if we are similarly unbalanced in obsessing on the "layout" of the NT ministry "blueprint" provided by Paul (see Ray Graver's "How to follow the Apostle" as Exhibit A), we will find ourselves somewhere like at present, with the GLAs & Brazilians being purged, with an unbroken history of fighting among ourselves, with little common ground with "christianity", etc., etc...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
As an aside, I heard that the recent GLA YP's conf. featured the message: "faith without works is dead." Imagine that!
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I was recently considering the idea of "works" in the context of this thread. It seems clear to me there are different works. One is the unique christian work, which is to believe.
John 6:29 "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent."
And there is the verse in Acts 2:22, where Peter says, "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know..." Jesus did great works of power, but it was God doing the works by Him.
Contrast that to the works of men.
Tower of Babel, anyone? So I am all for works. But God's works, not those of fallen humans. Big difference.
One of the last LC meetings I went to was several years ago; I had been out in "christianity" for some time & stopped by to see what was going on & to say hello. They were having a pep rally to "build the Universal Body of Christ." I was aghast. I had at that time no knowledge of these discussion boards, no idea of the Titus Chu problems, nor Timothy Lee, nor Daystar, nor details of past "rebellions" & purges. But I was instantly bothered. Whatever had happened to Jesus building His church, per Matthew 16? In this meeting I attended, it seemed as if God was at the finish line, waiting for us to "build". This is the kind of error that results from being unbalanced. This had all the appearances of a work of men. Nothing I have discovered in the intervening years has led me to change the strong impression I received that day.