I wanted to try a kind of recap, starting with the first post and it's question:
Simple question: What does the Local Church mean with the Lord's Economy?
My answer is: the Local Church says God's Economy is that God got processed and is now within man as the Holy Spirit, and now man is getting processed to become God.
God went thru a process: incarnation, inclusion, intensification; and now man is processed: redemption, justification, regeneration, transformation, transfiguration.
But my question has been, how do we know that's what Paul meant when he used the words translated as, "God's economy"? It turns out there's no justification whatever for this explanation. There's absolutely nothing that in the surrounding text that indicates that Paul meant anything like what WL spent page after page of printed books to promote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
The Lord's economy, or "God's Economy" is taken heavily from the opening verses in 1 Timothy. Specifically 3 & 4. If you read the opening chapter of his book on the subject, Lee mentions no other verse and argues a peculiar meaning that is essentially not taken by any other. And he uses some tricks of argumentation to stop the listener/reader from questioning his certainty of position. For example, he says something like "a thorough investigation of the entire Bible will reveal that . . . ." Of course, no one is going to actually do such an investigation. And he has hinted that he has done it. And declared that it will reveal his answer. So you either go along or you have to start into just such an investigation.
In the realm of logical discussion, his method is designed to provide no actual information but suggest that the requirements to contradict are so difficult as to be impossible, thus shutting off debate. The astute arguer will simply reject such an assertion and ask for actual evidence that it is so.
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I use the quote above to say that I've considered alternatives and found that Paul may mean something quite different. I've outlined my conclusions at length in preceding posts and won't summarize. But I bring it up because one of the possible arguments of the Lee School is, "What else could 'God's economy' possibly mean besides what Brother Lee said it was?" Like
OBW says, it's presented as self-evident and the only option when it's neither. It's neither very defensible nor is it the only possible meaning to defend.
In order to keep a focus on "God's economy" as held by WL & Co, one must ignore other possibilities as if they didn't exist, even when the plain text of Scripture repeatedly suggests them. If the
RecV Acts 12:25, it says that Barnabas and Paul were "dispensing".... um, hellooooo??? Dispensing? What were they dispensing - Rainbow Booklets? (that's an inside joke: back in the day, our local meeting halls had boxes of pastel-colored tracts sent from Anaheim, piled in their attics and closets and basements).
Then, it's focused on self. That should be a huge red flag right there.
Then, it leads to other quasi- or non-Biblical motifs like "exercise your spirit" when the Bible never says to. Instead it says, "exercise unto Godliness" which probably means, visit widows and orphans and keep yourself unspotted from the world, a la James' advice.
Then, this "exercise" ensures that you don't think. Instead, you bark like a dog: "arf-arf-arf Rivers!"; and "amen-amen-amen Rivers"; and "praisethelordpraisetheLord RIIIVVERRRS!!!!" (Ayyyeeeemeeeennnnn!!!). All this yelling and sing-song makes one thoughtless which is held to be "in spirit". But now I think it's a clever conjurer's trick: the teaching leads to the yelling, which yelling practice distracts one from realizing that the teaching has no basis.
Lastly, if "God's economy" involves subjective, selfish enjoyment, why doesn't that "eating" and "enjoyment" lead to personal transformation? Why then are leaders so untransformed, so crafty and manipulative and bullying? Why are members so miserable and depressed? Why are teens leaving in droves? Why are we "covering drunken Noah"? I though Noah was supposed to be getting transfigured - why is he getting drunk? Even the Christian basics get upended.
Just look at the fruit. It's no longer 1964, and we've plenty of evidence to see where this unbiblical practice has taken people.