Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
The fact that a new convert has to "choose a group", such as "your group" or "another group" after becoming a believer demonstrates the issue here. That is, being a born again believer and member of the universal body of Christ is not enough to grant a person connectivity with the whole body of Christ.
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Another strawman.
Even you admit that they need to join with Christians. And it is preferable that they are joined at least somewhat regularly with a constant group of other Christians. Not because they are better or the result of a careful choice, but because they are the ones you regularly meet with.
You miss that even in a large city with the LRC present, if there was enough members of your group, you would end up meeting in more than one place. and possibly never all together in a single place. While I do not deny that meeting at all is the most that you can get out of "do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together," it is equally true that this passage does not define who you assemble with other than others of the same status as Christians. But that cannot be used to state that it must mean that you join with all Christians because that is physically impossible in a city as large as Dallas, or even Austin — how small do you think you have to go before just the Christians in that city could easily meet as a single unit (assembly)?
If you are reading into this that the assembly must be connected with other assemblies of like thinking, then you are mistaken. There is no such statement. And if you are thinking that all in a single city must be in one assembly, you are similarly mistaken. Neither is even hinted at.
Being a born again believer and a member of the universal body of Christ must be sufficient to grant them connectivity to the
whole body of Christ. Unless someone else cuts them off. Unless some group declares that they cannot be connected with us as the body of Christ because they don't come our way. And that is what you do in spades. Cut everyone else off. They (including us here on this forum) do not state that the LRC and its members are not part of the body of Christ. We declare that the LRC's caustic rhetoric concerning everyone that is not part of their group is both poisoning its own members and establishing a wedge in the body that is of their own making.
The fact of any division at the extremes that you claim to exist can only be found due to your own excision of most of the body of Christ. You don't just not need a small toe, you don't need anything but a head. But that head does not appear to be Christ, but Witness Lee.