Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesus4Me
Hello, brothers & sisters,
I am not nor was I ever a part of the Local Church Movement.
As far as their teachings goes, I may have come across it in some of the other christian forums, but my recollection is not good at the moment.
As for this forum, before registering, I have read several threads touching base on several "teachers" of that movement & the disagreements with their teachings & their "corrupt" leadership roles, but I'll decline from replying on that in this thread since it is for the introduction of myself to the forum.
I am a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ & that God raised Him from the dead; and by His grace & by His help, therefore I trust Him as my Saviour that I am saved as He has led me to trust Him as my Good Shepherd that He will help me to follow Him as His disciple in seeking His glory and not be a disciple of another in seeking the glory of the other in His name.
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By the way, as an ambassador of the Local Church Discussions forum, welcome. If you confess the name of the Lord Jesus Christ then you are welcome as a Christian member of the Body of Christ. Although the forum was created to discuss the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, I (speaking on my own behalf) think that it's open to all. "Receive those whom God has received in Christ Jesus" was Paul's suggestion, and I think it's well put.
Ultimately our focus is not the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, but Jesus Christ, and the discussion of the teachings is pertinent because the Nee and Lee programme was supposed to lead us to Christ, but it was through a supposedly "normal" church (Nee's term) that was in apposition to supposedly abnormal Christianity. And it turned out, for many of us, that Nee's "normal" church, as run by his supposedly closest co-worker Lee, was a charnel house, full of dead men's bones.
We are therefore here, discussing the teachings of these men, and trying to discern how it all went south, so badly. My own take is that Nee read the Bible with a cultural bias (we all do), and created a social structure which was "normal" according to his cultural presuppositions. So the idea of "losing face", for example, though oriental in source, was seen in the hierarchical workings of the LC church group - the Maximum Brother (MB), even if he made a mistake, couldn't be allowed to "lose face", because the integrity of the whole group rested upon the power and authority of MB as "Deputy God". Which means if he made a mistake, then those who witnessed the mistake got "disappeared". I am not kidding - they'd literally be written out of the LC record, as if they never had existed. The MB, like the RCC Pope, functioned
ex cathedra (with infallibility) and there was nothing anyone could do because "God put him there."
All of which led to a pretty corrupt system, and a lot of people got hurt. The Anaheim branch of the movement currently controls several hundred LC congregations throughout the world, another branch in the Midwest USA and Canada controls perhaps several dozen, and a Brazilian branch controls several dozen (perhaps over a hundred), including ones composed Brazilian immigrants in the USA and Canada. In some cities there are thus two (or three?) congregations, each claiming to represent Watchman Nee's normal church. But they don't talk to each other, or anyone else - each group claims the truth of the present age, under their MB. Many, whose Christian faith was wholly tied up in the LC movement, got so discouraged or confused that they abandoned the Christian walk entirely. Thus, we see the discussion forum here.
Anyway, welcome aboard. One hopes that the discussion of Jesus Christ would be compelling enough that those unfamiliar with the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee and the LC would be induced to participate.