Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
... the saints in the LC are obviously representing Christ to the rest of the world pretty poorly.
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There are a number of aspects of that representation. One is the "know-it-all" attitude, along with "we alone have the truth", which is embedded into fixations on certain verses, or parts(!!) of verses, whilst ignoring swaths of scripture as of no account, since it can't be used for the proprietary hermeneutics at the core of their know-it-all stance.
So that rubs people wrongly, as it should.
There's the "one revelation per age", which is located in one special "seer of the divine revelation", or "deputy God". Pretty questionable stuff. And if you look at Nee's reading list, he didn't ascribe to one sequential ministry per age, but picked and chose as he saw fit. Then, when he began to write, suddenly the age of picking and choosing was over. Then, 70 years later, when WL passed, the age of revelation was over and we had to gather round the Great Man's books and genuflect for the "riches" that God had blessed us with during that interregnum of blessing.
Don't you think most people would find that narrative to be creepy? It's wrong on so many levels!
But the main problem with the LC is their secrecy and deception. Let me offer two representative samples. First is a scene from the 1960s. A Chinese brother and an American brother are strolling down the street, thinking quietly. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the Chinese says to the American, "You have to watch out for Witness Lee's family". The American is startled out of his reverie... huh? Then it gets really weird. The Chinese clapps his hand over his mouth and says, "oooohh! I shouldn't have said that" and they both continue walking. Now they're quiet again, but the calm is broken, and another spirit has made itself known.
Again and again, when sin came into the LC, it got buried because of a culture of secrecy. No bad thing could ever be spoken, ever, of leadership, even when it was clearly wrong. This goes against the NT commands, both Jesus' and Paul's, and instead we heard, "Cover Drunken Noah" and so forth. We got, "I don't care about right and wrong, only for life". Really weird, non-biblical stuff. It got more and more contorted.
The difference between the LC and the Branch Davidians is that the first is Chinese and the second was American. The Chinese have a culture of covering and protection of group leadership, and the Americans have an open culture, and expose it. Sometimes the second is ugly but I prefer it to the first.
Both groups (LC and BD) are personality cults with mind control, paranoia, manipulation, and glorifying the group leader. The first now has training centres round the world and the second ended in a shootout with ATF agents. But they both glorified the Guru and hid his faults. But the LC's native culture absorbs secrecy and imbues it, whilst the BD had a culture that rejected it. So one group grew and another imploded.
Deception: Look at the proliferation of names, masking the parent organization. Bibles for America. They could care less about the Bible, or America. It's a front to get the LSM into your homes, and the LSM operatives to get your phone #. And so forth - I could name twenty LSM fronts, all pretending to be legitimate independent Christian endeavours but they're just waiting to take you captive, "inside the church life". That's all they care about, yet they won't say it. "Oh, we're just Christians". What bunk.
Secrecy and deception - those are my big 2. Unfortunately there are many issues, but those I think are the most glaring.