Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
Nee and Lee convinced us that "Christianity" had missed something for 2000 years: That being the crucial, central importance of THE CHURCH. Nee/Lee stated that our focus and efforts should be on building up THE CHURCH. This, they said, could only be done practically by gathering as the church in the city, where we could pretty much ignore everything else that was going on in the world and in the rest of the Body of Christ (aka "Christianity"), and just focus on this "thing" we were in. This was the basis of the whole Lord's Recovery movement.
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Basically they (and especially Witness Lee) were caught up with the idea of being the remnant and used typology to prop up their theory. It went something like this: in the OT there was a remnant that left Babylon (Christianity) and went back to the "proper ground" Jerusalem (us). We are the NT reality of the type. If not us then who?
This kind of teaching breeds all sorts of strange attitudes and behaviors. For example, when someone leaves the LC system it is often difficult for them to meet with other Christians because "that's Babylon". "How can I go back to Babylon?" So they find themselves in a no-man's-land struggling with the mental hurdles brought on by accepting this kind of teaching for so long. If they do find a place to meet they may start to harshly judge it based on the criteria of the LC system -as if that system is the only legitimate benchmark.
It takes awhile to figure out that "the criteria" is just them saying that's the criteria and that there are many other churches with the same remnant idea of being the special "it" place and unique apple of God's eye.
For those who don't leave the "we're the special remnant" idea just continues to make them narrower and narrower and any failure of Christianity only serves to reinforce their attitude: "See they
are Babylon!" They become dug-in and form a spiritual and cultural ghetto. Whereas the same kind of failures within their own ranks would be covered up or dismissed or outside the realm of comment because "you can't touch God's anointed", etc.
Any particular church system who thinks they are God's favorite special place to the exclusion of all other Christians who are not part of their system IMHO don't understand the NT.