Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
I've read that at one point Lee had a scheme where he thought the local churches would take over the whole world in 10 years.
Are you saying Lee wanted to set up a theocracy?
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Theocracy? I don't think so but if you have a link to this 10 year scheme I'd like to read into it.
Rather, his theology seems to be in line with Kingdom Now thought which could be an explanation for the effort behind the LC's worldwide church growth.
Kingdom Now is a type of spiritual dominionism which teaches that Christianity has to be setup a certain way in order to usher in Christ's return to earth.
In the case of the LC, Christianity has to be organized in a one church per city model believed to be shown in Revelation. This ideal would be considered a sort of preparatory stage of the "bride" and precursor to Christ's second coming.
It's also a theology many Christian leaders use on the basis of an emotional appeal to justify personal ambition, IMO. It starts with the mindset that Satan forcefully took the dominion that belonged to God so now we as God's "overcomers" have to take it back. Essentially this is setting up Satan as a scapegoat for a leaders own ambition for church growth in their own name.
From Lee's belief that the body of believers are the "bride" with a need as the bride to get ourselves ready for Christ to believing Satan usurped God's dominion of the earth in which "overcomers" will eventually defeat him leads to a works based religion fueled by man's own efforts that, perhaps inadvertently, ignores God's sovereignty and the work already accomplished on the cross.