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Originally Posted by googlelight
How do I make sense of this? Did the Lord use Nee and/or Lee in the early stages, and then they became disobedient? This is confusing.
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This is a challenging question. I'll offer my view. If you look at Peter in the NT, occasionally he channelled the divine, and sometimes he erred, even greatly. And David in the OT -same thing. These characters are representative of us all, and (so I believe) emblematic of humanity in toto. Only Jesus was, and is, without spot of error. In all cases of those who attempt to acknowledge, and confess, and obey, there's an admixture.
Luther "saw" faith as foundational to any work or act, yet his racist expressions towards the Jews was used by his countrymen to gird the holocaust. Billy Graham made mistakes, and he admitted. I've written things here with a bitter spirit, or adversarial attitude, or lack of grace. Everyone fails.
In the case of Nee, when he resumed his ministry, post scandal (sexual impropriety) he mandated centralization and absolute control, and effectively negated those generous and open statements you admire. It went by "the Jerusalem Principle" and "handing over". If you search you will find it. He overturned his earlier positions of localism and autonomy but subordinates didn't question the blatant reversal because their culture won't allow its leaders to lose face.
Likewise, Lee clearly had insight, at least in part. As he was a confessing believer, one can't say that he had no gifts. Again, his good work was marred by his inability to see the effect of culture on his organisational schema. If he as God's deputy wanted to set up a for-profit business with saints' $$ benefitting his progeny, that was his business. If he used 'training fees' to offset losses of said business, that was his purview. If he wanted to shuffle others' money between shell accounts, that was his business. If he wanted to characterise those who raised questions and/or objections as "rebels" that was his prerogative. And so on.
Again, his birth culture didn't permit openness or correction. If one's off by even a half-degree, and travels far enough, one's eventually off by a lot. And it's endemic to our species. Only Jesus never erred.
Today, their apologists try to brush it off with vagaries like, "Everyone makes mistakes" to cover Nee & Lee, and "There are bad people everywhere" to cover bad things which happen in their assemblies. But if that's sufficient to drop the complaints then why did Luther leave Catholicism, anyway? Why did Wesley speak up in the Church of England? Why did Nee and Lee leave their denominations? Those who critique should be critiqued. That goes for everyone, including me. Only Jesus is without sin.