[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by A little brother

Taking a step back, it is interesting to see how the discussion is gradually diverted. We were talking about the claim of WL as MOTA and you now add the "former MOTA" Nee's works to Lee's credit.

Well Drake introduced Nee, not me. We are different people. But I'll take it , I can't see why Nee and Lee can't be considered given their ministries were so similar, and one being a continuation of the other. Like Elijah and Elisha, one MOTA passing his mantle onto the next. +1 to me for a bible reference.

Originally Posted by A little brother

Let me recap again:

1. You claimed MOTA is the one whose writing is in most circulation
2. I said Lee's works is not in most circulation
3. You claimed Lee is MOTA given his books is in most circulation
4. I provided estimates through available sources to show it is not the case.
   

1. About brandongaille.com.
   
   I'm considering world wide, even the corners of Asia, the non-English speakers.
   
   Firstly, it only features mainstream American? popular books, of which it calls them "inspirational fiction". Maybe they never heard of Witness Lee, don't know. To me, "mainstream Christian" anything is a warning sign anyway.
   
   Secondly, it only considers America. There's some huge churches in Asia - South Korea etc. The Pope, is he considered? I think he would have sold a lot of books.
   
   But we don't need a website to know that by volume, I think Lee has all of them beat. Hundreds of books, at even 100,000 copies each is a whole lot of books. Most of these guys mentioned had one or two hits. Lee has written many many more books - both volume and numbers.
   
   
   

   Originally Posted by A little brother

   You can't give any figures for Lee's books except for the Recovery Version Bible. Not to mention this version is just a minority among the distribution of all bible versions according to available statistics, no one should use the bible's distribution figure as credit for oneself.

   First point, you're confusing the difference between ministry material and bible version. If Lee sells 100,000 recovery bibles with his footnotes in it, and the KJV sells 1 million copies without footnotes, then Lee's ministry is more widely circulated in terms of ministry circulation. I mean, Zondervan etc are not ministries, they are publishers so not a valid comparison.
   
   Second point, the key words being available statistics. When raw data is unavailable, we can do statistical inference and still arrive at a good estimate.
   
   
   
   

   Originally Posted by A little brother

   You cannot provide me figures of a book by WL that exceeds the 30 millions copy of "The Purpose Driven Life".

   If we consider all of the books Lee produced versus Warren, I think Lee would be higher. Warren was a one hit wonder.
   
   
   

   Originally Posted by A little brother

   You said Rick Warren is not the MOTA because the contents (not circulation) of his book are not as good as Lee's.

   So far we haven't considered the value of the material. Lee definitely covers more ground than any of the others. I mean, life study of every book of the bible. Because you get much more out of a Lee book than a Tim Lahaye book for example, I think we could count 1 Lee book worth 5 Lahaye books or something like that. Example, Lee's life study on Genesis versus Lahaye's "What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality".
   
   
   

   Originally Posted by A little brother

   You referred to unknowns such as free online distribution. This cannot validate your claim they are in "most circulation". As a matter of fact, I can't either. That's why I relied on available figures in the very beginning to assess the position.

We know that anything put online for free gets much more exposure than otherwise. It's just the laws of the internet. Just because we don't know doesn't mean we cannot infer.

Originally Posted by A little brother

So let's get back to the discussion that MOTA is a bad idea. And Paul, Nee or WL were not MOTA.

Why not?