Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Only Christ can know his church. The brothers who presume to speak for the "feeling in the Body" are saying they know the heart of every believer on the earth today. This is nonsense. It is patently absurd.
Even in any major urban area, to designate the "church in Toledo" or some such is patently absurd. Can you say you have the name, and allegiance of every believer in Toledo? Of course not. God does, however.
So let God take care of the third entity. Take care of your own heart, love your neighbor (i.e. meet with them, "receive them as God received them in Christ Jesus [Rom 15:7]), and God will indeed build His church.
It is when we try to go to the third level that we go past our God-allotted portion, our mandate. We are then cast away from the heavenly realms.
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Amen, dear brother Aron.
My family and I recently attended the "Family Christian Conference" in Farmville, VA. The speakers at this conference were dear brother Stephen Kaung (the "other" co-worker of WN who has been in the U.S. since 1952) and some other brothers who labor with him.
I heard a very interesting comment by one of the brothers attending the conference. When I mentioned my background in the LC, he said, "One point where Stephen Kanung and Witness Lee diverged is that Stephen Kaung was never comfortable with any assembly calling itself 'The Church in such-and-such a city'. While Stephen Kaung agrees with the principle of the ground of oneness - which is standing for the oneness of all believers in any given city or town - since no assembly today includes all the believers in any given city or town, none should refer to themselves as 'The Church' in that place. We stand for the reality of oneness, and we practice it as diligently as we can. Calling ourselves 'The Church' in our locality can only lead to pride and separateness from other believers."
I thought this brother's remarks were very interesting. And yes, I saw the fruit of this attitude at the conference. There were many at the conference who were not part of one of the "official" assemblies which receives Stephen Kaung's ministry. I met several pastors at the conference. In fact, I had an absolutely delightful time of fellowship with a pastor from Syracuse, NY. We sat around a table and talked a long time about TAS's two books entitled
The Stewardship of the Mystery. Marvelous!