[OBW]

I have been saying for some time that there is something seriously wrong with so much of Nee’s teaching. It was not just a Lee thing to be so ridiculous in devising teachings.

But somehow we too often just can’t see the problems with Nee.

Since the issue of Deputy Authority has once again risen its head within the discussion concerning the book by a former member of Nee’s church in Shanghai, I once again started looking into it.

At the same time, on the other forum it was suggested that we try to determine if Spiritual Authority (aka Authority and Submission) might be in some way responsible for causing the external designation as a cult by others. The person who opened the line of discussion then scanned through the book and discovered that all of the parameters seemed to be sound and scriptural. The character and demeanor of the authority. Their position as a servant. And so on. And at one point it seems to say that they are accountable to God.

And that would be 100% true.

But when you slow down in your reading, you discover many things that undermine the apparent spirituality of the teaching. The church must absolutely obey. They are unable to make any accusation against the authority. And in one place, Nee actually says that the authority is not subject to correction because of sin, but only because of rebellion (or something like that). It is derived from an example of the sons of the priest who were judged by God for doing what was not allowed. Can’t remember if it centered around Eli’s sons, or Nadab and Abihu. But these were similar issues. Nee asserts that it was not because they sinned, but because they dared to do something not under the headship of the high priest. I never figured out where he got that. It was true that it was not under the HP’s headship. But there is nothing that I could see that made that the reason for their deaths. Rather, it was for their wanton sin being brought into the holy place.

Yet this is a point of error that stands strong in Nee’s mind to insist that a church cannot challenge a “deputy authority” based on sin.

And when I back away from this one inquiry, I even see that so much of the book is just full of conjecture and misdirection (intentional or otherwise). But it is all spoken/written in such pious and spiritual terms that it is easy to be fooled into believing that you are reading the word of God itself. And this may be one of the most insidious things about Nee’s writings. From my limited research in the past few years, I have found him to be consistently sloppy (being generous) with handling and interpreting the scripture. He replaces words to achieve a goal without even making a case for the correctness of the replacement (and in the case of the book we are discussing here, he was not correct). He declares things to be the most important thing. But he does not even bother to give a reason. Just says it.

Yet it could be argued to sound so right that it is too easy to just take it as truth.

And a whole lot of people have. Fortunately, most readers of Nee are not from with in the LRC, so they have not been exposed to the worst of them. But even some of his more popular inner-life books dance around the errors that Lee eventually lead us into. Sit Walk Stand, his short book on Ephesians sets you up to accept “wait for the dispensing.” I read it again several years ago and it stuck out to me like a sore thumb. That was my window into the questioning of Nee. But it was a couple of years after that when someone was spouting quotes from one chapter in Lee’s Economy of God that I first saw the scriptural mishandling coupled with declarations that things not even supported were settled so we could move on. Near the same time, there was some study into Nee’s Further Talks on the Church Life in which he set out to better settle his church = city rule. Seems that he had not yet dealt with the house churches. So he simply said that it could not mean that because it would violate the church = city rule. And so the rule that needed proof became the evidence to refute the evidence against it. Standard circular reasoning. Begging the question.

I recall Max R coming to Dallas one time back in the 70s (of course he was only around in the 70s). He was poking fun at some new “maharaji” of some sort that had set up shop in the Astrodome. He said, “all you have to do is say ‘up is up; down is down; the hands of the clock go round and round’ and you will have a following.” Pretty funny. And too true. We just didn’t see that we were being lead astray by less foolish-sounding words, but they were nonetheless in error. They just sounded good.

I recall times when some would stand in a meeting and declare to Christians that they should “come out of her my people” as if they (now we) were in the whore of Babylon. I’m not sure that I would characterize the LRC as the whore of Babylon. But its inhabitants really need to come out. They have been inhaling garlic fumes for too long. They have become befuddled by the smoke of an opium den. But, unfortunately, it seems that it is too much like crack cocaine or methamphetamine. They need fix after fix to keep going. They long for the leeks and garlic of he LRC.