Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I've read thousands of posts by aron, and have never seen this.
You, on the other hand ...
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Maybe I “slice and dice” the word to make my point to my satisfaction but do grievous disservice to truth. I'm probably at least partly affected by a combination of self-interested prejudice and ignorance, which can be dangerous. But when did I claim to be error-free? And more to the point, what of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee? Were they not also affected by bias and ignorance? The only assurance we have that they didn’t also occasionally stumble hermeneutically was their own bland assurance which they offered to us, that it was so: we in turn fell for their confidence game. Today, older but wiser, we realize the need to critically examine everyone who makes claims for "what the Bible says".
LSM apologist
Drake (post#108)admits that the “thousand year punishment” isn't found in the Bible but is rather an amalgam put together by human imagination.
Evangelical (post#186) likewise says that its purpose is to correct deficiencies in theological overlays such as OSAS/Calvinism and Arminianism. But how sure are we that this corrective overlay isn’t also lacking, as it claims its predecessors were? How sure are we that this is actually what Jesus and the disciples believed and taught?
There’s a reason I keep bringing up prodigal son Timothy Lee and his desire for church funds, and son Philip Lee's predations upon the females in the LC: they show that father Witness Lee was unqualified for NT church leadership, according to the "whole Bible" (see, e.g., Titus 1:6). Yet he remained there as not merely LC elder but Top Dog, largely by exploiting culturally-derived shared normative expectations (i.e. ignorance, bias and self-interest). And yet there was no bias in his hermeneutics?
For instance, in one place the psalmist declaring that he’d crush his enemies’ skulls and dip his feet in their blood was a type of the victorious Christ according to
RecV footnotes; elsewhere such violent sentiments in Psalms are panned as “natural” and “fallen” and not according to NT principles. When I pointed out the glaring discrepancy, the best LSM operatives could reply was, “Perhaps this is so.” Well, perhaps it also isn't so! We should critically examine LSM teachings, and not assume that the bland assurance of truth (i.e. objective reality).
Even when I was a die-hard, I had little confidence in the “thousand years in jail” notion. To be sure, the NT teaches not only salvation by grace, but also responsibility to obey. The great picture of disobedience and its consequences, so vividly depicted in the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, was thoroughly covered by NT expositors in Hebrews 3 and 1 Corinthians 10. And with that in mind, Jesus' gospel parables depicting responsibility and the consequences of disobedience are stark, and sober.
But the “thousand years in torment” idea, like many of Nee’s ideas, is crude, simplistic, and arbitrary. It simply doesn't satisfy the narrative nor common sense: Moses fell in the wilderness, but is later seen in glory on the mountain of transfiguration. His death on Mount Pisgah, in sight of the Promised Land, is clearly qualitatively different than if he’d died on the shore of the Red Sea.
My own analogy was, suppose there was a country where every infraction got the same punishment by law. Spit on the sidewalk, drop trash as litter, run a red light, you'd get two years in jail. But commit homicide or rob 3 banks, also get two years in jail. No proportionality – just arbitrary punishment. Satisfying? No. Yet the NT clearly shows reciprocity in proportion: “to whom much is given, much is required” &c. Many stripe vs few stripes. Prison until the fine is paid. There's not some arbitrary cut-off and all outside are doomed.
Now, having said that, there are cases where “a miss is as good as a mile” – if you were 6 feet outside of Noah’s ark, you were as doomed as being 6 miles away. You were either in, or out. But it’s debatable how relevant that is to conversations of reward and punishment.