[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Hodos

Hi Trapped,

Thank You.

You say:"Are you aware of the teaching of 'minister of the age'."? I can explain it some if it would help clarify what I said in my other post. However, if the minister of the age concept is not a prevalent one among the saints in Vietnam, then an explanation may not be useful or relevant.

In Viet Nam, all the LSM saints in Vietnam have idolised Witness Lee, not Watchman Nee. I see that they consider him as the head of one religion. Witness Lee cannot be in error. I heard some ones from LSM in US coming to VietNam to preach "the teaching of "minister of the age" many years ago. You should explain this false teaching clearly so that I can translated it into Vietnamese and help the blind saints in Viet nam. The LSM saints in Viet Nam are fervently welcoming "The New Man", "The universal Church", and the religion of LSM. Please explain this false teaching also. Thank you so much.

Hodos

Hodos,

Sorry it took me so long to respond to you regarding the minister of the age (MOTA) teaching. There is a lot I could say about it, but didn't want to drown you in words about it. What I will write will fall short, but I wanted to respond with at least something so I can keep my promise to you about it. I'm not on my best game today, so I hope this comes out clearly enough.

Lee/LSM teaches that in each "age" (whatever that is), there is one person called "the minister of the age" (MOTA) that God raises up, and that MOTA releases the "vision of the age" and also takes the lead in carrying out "the ministry of the age".

So there's:
-the minister of the age (MOTA)
-the vision of the age
-the ministry of the age

In the book "The Vision of the Age", Witness Lee traces through what he calls the ministers of the age, from Adam in the Old Testament to Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc....then through the New Testament with Peter, Paul, Jesus, John, then through recent centuries with Luther, Guyon, Zinzendorf, etc.

To be totally honest, if that's all he did, I wouldn't even have much problem with it. I wouldn't agree with it, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Why wouldn't I have a problem with it? Because none of the people in that lineage thought that they themselves were ministers of the age. They weren't telling anyone that they had to follow them or else God wasn't happy with them. The issue comes when Witness Lee finishes creating a lineage that the Bible does not speak of, and then says, literally, this:

"In the twentieth century the vision came to us. I am not 'selling' myself here, but..."

When someone says "I am not selling myself here BUT..." we all know what that means.

They are selling themselves.

Yep, Witness Lee was just selling himself. He goes on to make a declaration about the uniqueness of the Lord's recovery. The undeniable implication is that he's now "the minister of the age".

So what we've got is Witness Lee creating a long successive lineage of special, unique, singular people that everyone was "supposed" to line up under (a lineage that no other Christians teach about) so he could put himself as the endcap of the whole thing! That alone tells us just about everything we need to know about how little credence we should give any of his words. He built a fake throne so he could sit upon it. And we know that this is antithetical to what Jesus describes in the gospels. The apostles who wanted to sit on the right and left of the throne quickly heard from Jesus that this type of attitude and rule in the church should not be so with them.

Mark 10:35-45
35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
37They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
39 “We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with,
40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John.
42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.
43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,
44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

But Witness Lee created an entire doctrine that doesn't exist in order to set himself up as someone special in the church! Not just someone special, but the one, unique, special person in the current age, that saw every vision remaining so no one else could follow him as the next minister of the age even after he died! I mean.......Lord have mercy, seriously.

So there are a few issues with this MOTA teaching:

1. The teaching says that the MOTA "releases the vision of the age" to God's people in that age. The "vision of the age" is supposedly whatever God wants to reveal to His people in that age. Well....the problem is, there is certainly no record of Adam "releasing a vision" to God's people in Adam's age. Or Abel. Or Enosh, or Noah, or, or, or...... After the flood Noah tended vineyards; he didn't release visions to God's people. In some cases like the prophets in the OT we could grant it, but for this teaching to work, we have to clearly see that each defined MOTA carried out the MOTA work, and it's just not there in Scripture.

2. The teaching says that the MOTA releases THE vision of that age, i.e. one vision. Well, again, the problem with that is that when LSM extols Witness Lee, they will detail out a long list of visions Lee supposedly released. So, the principle of the teaching falls apart internally in their effort to exalt Witness Lee above all else. They have not only created an unbiblical MOTA, but Witness Lee (who self-proclaimed he is a MOTA) is apparently some kind of superpower MOTA to beat all MOTAs who didn't just release one vision in the age, but numerous. This contradicts the teaching itself.

3. I can personally let the idea stand that there is some kind of successive line of special people in the Old Testament that God used. But once Jesus came, that principle ended. Jesus is the fulfillment of the types and figures, and if there is such a thing as MOTA in the OT, then Jesus is the fulfillment of it. If we then go along with Lee's teaching that there were MOTAs AFTER Jesus, then we've just ripped away a glorious and revered status from the Son of God and relegated Him to just one minister among many. He's anything but just one minister among many. If there is a MOTA, Jesus is the MOTA to this day, not Witness Lee. This is what I meant in a previous post that if there were MOTAs after Jesus, then Jesus - who is the reality, the fulfillment - then Himself becomes just a type and a shadow in relation to the MOTAs who supposedly followed Him. It changes the Son of God, who is the truth and the reality and the way and the life, and makes Him just a shadow.

4. Lee also says that if you don't follow the vision of the age released by the MOTA, then "your service is not acceptable to God". His book makes it clear that in order to "follow the vision" you are supposed to "follow the minister". What this all comes out to in the end is "if you don't follow Witness Lee, God won't accept your service." In other words, Lee has just created an extra layer for right-standing with God in addition to accepting Christ as our Savior. He's saying that Jesus's dying on the cross isn't enough to grant right-standing with God; you also have to follow Witness Lee to get that.

I'm honestly amazed that God has had so much patience with the shocking implications of so many of Witness Lee's teachings.

There is more I could say on this teaching, but I wrote those four points just to show that the MOTA teaching doesn't stand on it's own two feet, even if we largely set scripture aside. It is inherently unsupported and breaks its own rules all over the place, as well as totally denigrates the status of the Son of God who came to save us when we had no hope.

As long as we have the book "The Vision of the Age" in mind, I want to mention something else from it regarding God's economy (this isn't related to the MOTA teaching).

In that book, Lee says:

"[Paul] told Timothy to remain in Ephesus to charge them not to teach anything different from God’s economy. This is the entire background of the writing of the first Epistle to Timothy."

What on earth could I have a problem with about these sentences? Well, a whole lot.

If we look at the actual verses, they say this:

1 Timothy 1:3-5
3 Even as I exhorted you, when I was going into Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus in order that you might charge certain ones not to teach different things
4 Nor to give heed to myths and unending genealogies, which produce questionings rather than God's economy, which is in faith.
5 But the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and out of a good conscience and out of unfeigned faith;

Read them closely. Witness Lee says that Paul charges Timothy not to teach anything different from God's economy. But that's not true.

What Paul charges Timothy is to not teach the different things that produce questionings rather than [produce] God's economy. The grammar is that God's economy is not what is taught but what is produced.

In other words:
teach different things = produce questionings
teach the right things = produce God's economy

Paul doesn't tell Timothy to TEACH God's economy. He tells Timothy to teach the right things, and THAT will produce God's economy.

And what is missed by Witness Lee is that in verse 3 Paul tells Timothy to "charge" certain ones to do this. And then in verse 5, he says that "the end of the charge is love". In other words, the whole point, the whole goal of the command to teach the healthy things is -- love!!

The healthy teachings, by the way, are a little later in the same chapter in 1 Timothy......it's the glorious gospel that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, which all of us are.

Witness Lee completely missed "love" when he taught his messed up version of God's economy. God's economy isn't related to dispensing or to a high peak or what should be taught. God's economy is related to love, and is something that is produced by our teaching the healthy teachings.

So we don't need to teach God's economy. We need to keep spreading the best news we could ever hear - that Jesus came to save us from the sting of death by laying His own life down for us broken, hopeless sinners. And THAT will produce God's economy, the goal of which is love.

We can't deny it. It's what the verses say.

Anyway, this post isn't as clear as I'd like it to be, but I'm going to hit "submit reply" just so I can get some of this information to you. If there is something specific that doesn't make sense, please let me know and I'd be more than happy to explain.

Trapped