Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
Our Lord's own words in John 4.21 show us that this "ground" of the church, the place where the apostles have laid the foundation Christ, cannot be a place we can visit in our car. To those who think they can drive to the "proper" place to worship, the Lord would say to them, "You worship that which you do not know." (John 4.22) If there is such a proper ground of meeting and worship, then it must be as the Lord has instructed us "in Spirit and reality." (John 4.2-24)
It's also interesting to note that WL and the Blendeds loved to speak of the "oneness of the body," as if there was some scripture that spoke of this. Please note there is none! It may sound spiritual, but it is not scriptural. The Bible only speaks of "being diligent to keep the oneness of the Spirit." Someone needs to share this with the Blendeds.
|
WL shared in John chapter 12, Section 2
"In typology, the worship of God should be (1) in the place chosen by God to set His habitation there (Deut. 12:5, 11, 13-14, 18), and (2) with the offerings (Lev. 1—6). The place chosen by God for His habitation typifies the human spirit, where God’s habitation is today—Ephesians 2:22, “an habitation of God through the spirit” (KJV), should read “a dwelling place of God in spirit.” The offerings typify Christ; Christ is the fulfillment and reality of all the offerings with which the people worshipped God. Hence, when the Lord instructed her to worship God the Spirit in spirit and reality, it meant she should contact God the Spirit in her spirit instead of in a specific place, and through Christ, instead of with the offerings, for now, since Christ the reality has come (vv. 25-26), all the shadows and types are over. The Lord Jesus told the Samaritan woman that God is Spirit, that worshipping God means to contact Him, and that contacting Him is not a matter of place, but a matter of the human spirit.
If you compare what WL shared on these verses with WN's teaching you will see that the verses in the OT regarding the "Place" which were used to surmise that there is a "ground of the Church" are not referring to a place. This to me is the hypocrisy. Yes, the Temple is a shadow of the church. Yes, in the OT shadow the place where the Temple was built was very important. However, the NT makes it clear that the place is the human spirit indwelt by the Spirit. You can't have it both ways. You can't teach that Jesus was exposing religion in this chapter and pointing out that the shadow was done away with now that we had the reality of our spirit. And then on the other hand use this shadow as a basis for the "ground of the church" teaching. WL condemns this teaching with his exposition of John 4.
On the one hand there is no clear teaching in the NT to support such a divisive and critical teaching of the "ground of the church". On the other hand there is a clear word from Jesus condemning this teaching and lumping it together with all religions.