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Originally Posted by Evangelical
All of those rules and instructions you mentioned have their ultimate purpose in achieving Romans 8:29 and 2 Cor 3:18
2 Cor 3:18 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate[a] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
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These are all true verses. But they are not the starting point. They are the result of the things I mentioned. Lee used your verses to declare that you don't have to actually obey and/or do those things, just "behold and reflect." Sounds so simple. But reflecting is to cause the glory of the Lord to go outward. That doesn't happen when we are not actually hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being a doer of the word, loving neighbor as self.
Even you slip and admit that "God's economy" is the result of all those things that I said. Then it must be the result of many good teachings that are not, in themselves, simply "God's economy." That is the fallacy of Lee's use of the term. He used the term as being the teaching and the cause for negating even the teachings of Jesus. And of his more favorite teacher, Paul.
Let me explain my biggest problem with so many of Witness Lee's "simply" statements. Grace is "simply" Jesus. God's economy is "simply" God being dispensed into man.
In some aspects, those statements are true. But they are incomplete. In the case of "God's economy," it is the difference between the vast array of things that make it up and the simplistic statement that it is "simply" anything. The way Lee wields it, it is like declaring that the vast array of formulas and algorithms that make up the field of Physics are declared to be "simply" physics with no need to study and apply the independent formulas, processes, etc. "We don't need E=mc^2!! Just apply Physics!" he would declare.
No longer a need to care for the widow and orphan. No longer a need to care for right and wrong (especially since it is in the "wrong tree"). No longer a requirement for obedience to the law (not the ritual law, but the law that is summed up on love God and love your neighbor as yourself).
Lee works his way around the Bible dismissing things, or declaring them to mean something that the words themselves could not mean, all because of "God's economy." God's economy was the reason he considered James to be mostly an example of what not to do. And the reason that so much of the Psalms are not worthy of our reading, and considered just the natural concept of the writer.
Maybe it is the natural concept of the teacher that dismisses so much of scripture. It surely wasn't something that was actually found in the scripture that allowed for it.