Quote:
Originally Posted by UntoHim
Actually for "the nature of the Recovery" to change the nature of Witness Lee would have had to change. And this is my contention - Witness Lee had not really changed at all, he just had to keep his real intentions and motivation under raps...until he had amassed enough power and leverage to put his ultimate game plan into place.
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When all the Anaheim elders resigned, Witness Lee characterized it as, "People change", implying that they'd somehow "lost the vision" or deviated from the straight path of "recovery". In actuality they got close enough for long enough to see that behind the veil of spirituality and mysticism it was just fallen humans trying to meet their needs just like every other sinner.
UntoHim is right, that when Lee came to USA he was 60 years old with an established record that repeated when opportunity presented itself. The history went back past Taiwan and Philippines financial scandals, even to mainland China, with railroading the SCA elders to restore Watchman Nee; the behavior pattern was there, waiting to be picked up again.
But he wasn't a Machiavellian schemer trying to usurp God's headship more than anyone else; we're all fallen sinners (yes we're redeemed and reborn but we still make mistakes, i.e. sin). In Lee's case, he couldn't do anything but what he did: when a young church member got an inheritance and laid it at his feet, Daystar Motor Home Corporation was born and Timothy Lee got his cut. Or when Philip Lee became "The Office" at LSM. No different than Hank Hanegraaf with his-and-hers Lexus', or Joyce Meyer with his-and-hers Gulfstream jets. Dong Yu Lan got "Estancia Arvore Da Vida" for his family to run. And so on.
For them it's business as usual - it's their 1 Timothy 3:15: "if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household"; it's their 1 Cor 14:40: "But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way." In Lee's case, "good order in the church" and "how to conduct oneself" was understood via a guanxi network, with immediate family at the core, and social/religious life at the periphery. Even the NT couldn't penetrate and subsume Lee's native culture. Rather, his culture swallowed the NT.
And in Lee's cultural concept, there must be one untouchable Big Boss in every group, and if we didn't get that it was him, we were "rebellious" and "dark" and so forth; we didn't have the "vision". He believed the group identity cohered around such leadership; he really believed that he was God's Chosen Man of the Hour. That's how he could praise God in one moment and cover the sins of his children the next. God had chosen him, and that was it. To him, that was the "normal Christian church life". He was programmed to think this way.
And while Lee's Chinese culture wasn't inferior to any other, it's still "the way of the gentiles", which the gospels condemned. For a while, all the naïve American Jesus people were streaming to California and Lee could pretend to be something else. He had no power, and he didn't need to exercise his few options. But eventually the time and opportunity came, and "early Lee" was unveiled for all to see. And the Anaheim elders quit in disgust. But Lee said, "Sail on. Sail on."