Quote:
Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
So where can we look to see the Unfaithful spending a thousand years in outer Darkness? I heard the "punishment for non-transformed believers is a thousand years in outer darkness to ripened" many times. Where did this come from?
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Witness Lee would say something like "The whole Bible shows us. . ." then make a pastiche out of a few disparate verses and there was our 'present truth'. In this case, he cobbled together the 1,000-year "millennial kingdom" of Revelation (see e.g., "they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years" in 20:6) with gospel parables teaching responsibility and its consequences. But Jesus never spoke of a thousand-year prison in his parables, and John never wrote explicitly of a thousand-year prison (except for Satan) for "defeated believers" as a direct analog to his "wedding feast of the Lamb". This composite imagery was assembled by Lee.
In my case, I remember Lee in his spoken messages stressing to us the points "raptured or martyred". . . when I looked at the
RecV verses in Revelation 20, on the 1000-year kingdom, it seemed to agree with this, and the footnotes were explicit and categorical as I remembered. I then checked the references in the footnotes in Revelation 20 - taking the reader to Revelation 12 (the man-child), Revelation 14, Revelation 15, and the commentaries seemed to concur - see post #171. (
Drake says I put together a 'selective' reading but the verses were linked by
RecV footnotes and cross-references, and thus were 'selected' by LSM! And all showed this "raptured or martyred" theme.)
Yet Lee himself was neither raptured nor martyred, and I publicly asked where this left him. He'd stressed to us that Nee had been martyred, and thus had his ticket punched. But what of Lee, I wondered?
Now, this question doesn't mean Lee was either wrong or right, but that he put together a personalised view. I think that he, like Darby and others before, was sure that he'd be raptured anon with his close acolytes and this would validate all his special claims. Now that he's buried, why should we uncritically submit ourselves to his personal theology? "But it's in the Bible!!" That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses say, and the Christian Scientists, and all the rest. I can put some verses together and make any claim I want. Why should Lee's claim, based on his own subjective pastiche, own anyone else's psyche?
It's fear, folks. He used fear to control, and manipulate, and coerce others. He set his son Timothy repeatedly into the church coffers (1962 Worlds Fair, then the Daystar Motor Home Corporation), and both walked away scot-free. Is this an overcomer? We know about his injection of other son Philip into church leadership, and Philip's subsequent and repeated encroachments. . . by his own yardstick Witness Lee failed. I don't think we should cow abjectly before his theology. Like it's objective and unquestionable 'truth'.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of slavery. The "1,000-year prison" teaching should not be received uncritically as if it were from God. Question it - challenge it - test it - prove it.