Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
2 or 3 can do all those things but to be a biblical church they need a lampstand and they need to have the Lord's Table and baptize and plurality of (male) elders.
According to these biblical qualifiers of what is a church, 2 or 3 sisters having a prayer time together in a park does not qualify. I am not really stating a Lee or Nee doctrine here, that is what I believed and what many others believed when I was in denominations. Everyone knows that the idea of "2 or 3 plus Jesus is a church" is wrong. That is a lie based upon out of context interpretation of Jesus's words, when he was speaking about church discipline. He said tell the problem to your brother, if he won't listen, tell it to 2 or 3, and then if still no good, tell it to the church. So the church cannot be just the two or three, otherwise there is contradiction between Matthew 18:16 and 17.
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If you go back, I think you'll see that I never proposed two or three as a church. What I said were that two or three had the Lord's promised presence, which you deemed insufficient. You then proposed an ontological entity which had all the hallmarks, to me, of the Great Harlot. See e.g. One Publication edict, with no buying or selling unless it had the Mark of the Ministry (to avoid confusion, of course).
Two or three may have the Lord's name, His presence, His commission ("God forth before Me"), His binding and loosing, and His testimony ("Tell it to the church"). But all this seems insufficient, because, "It's not the church."
Then your alternative comes along, with the Seer of the Revelation, God's Oracle, who by Paul's word wasn't even qualified to be a local elder (see, Timothy and Philip Lee, His admittedly "unspiritual cooks"), etc. Forgive me if I'm nonplussed.
And Lee's benefactor Nee wasn't much better, if at all, basing his main teachings on the revelations of women, from the secret rapture to the three parts of man, all the while insisting that women aren't qualified to teach. And on and on; exceptions become rules and rules exceptions based on contingencies and whims, with the only constant being that Maximum Brother is always right.
We can "do church" with two or three or with a mega church. Or on a boat or a plane. Or along the highways and byways. Don't be narrow where Christ is broad. Your narrowness may indeed produce a gilded cup, but you can't guarantee it's contents. Lee said it had, "More God", but the testimonies of many say otherwise.