Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
This is extracted from John Ingalls booklet, "Speaking the Truth in Love." See Appendix B for complete text.
SIXTEEN POINTS
August 28, 1988
As the day drew near for special fellowship with the church as we had announced, Godfred, Al and I (Anaheim Elders) came together for prayer and fellowship regarding the content of the coming gathering. We only knew that we needed to clear up matters, and set a direction for the church, and we'd been praying individually for guidance concerning the specific points that should be covered.
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Why is it that the Anaheim elders, all hand-picked by WL and hard-core for his vision, got exiled for "rebellion"? Seeing the Anaheim case, and remembering how WN's hand-picked Shanghai Christian Assembly elders expelled
him from fellowship, one wonders why this supposedly normal church structure is accompanied by so much turmoil.
There appears to be something about this particular system of 'Deputy God' authority and abject submission that leads inevitably to abuse and then crisis and collapse.
You know, Watchman Nee reminds me of Karl Marx: he looked at the system as it stood, and then told us it was hopelessly flawed, and proposed a blank-slate, start-all-over system which could cure all those ills. Instead of the Workers Paradise of Marx, Nee gave us the Glorious Church.
Both social systems, one economic and political in orientation, and one religious, were reactions to the failures of other systems, and both were significantly worse than the ills which they proposed to remedy.
Today, I'd rather deal with the Lutherans and Baptists and Anglicans. I admit and receive every critique of Lee and Nee and the Blendeds; all true, or mostly true. But they're still preferable, than dealing with the Local Church system.