What is the church?

[aron]

Given that I don't want to crowd OBW's blog, I thought I would make some comments on something I read yesterday on his blog in a separate venue.

OBW's comments were on the Living Stream Ministry's teachings on the church, and I would like to quote this part:

"...the day that the core of a sermon is something like what was in the Church in Bellevue’s [which is a Living Stream Ministry franchise] May 20, 2012 “Ministry Reading Portion” is the day I seek a new source of ministry.

... when the core of [the sermon] really has nothing to do with me, or to the extent that it does, it is all about me getting lost in some larger group that has all of these ethereal attributes, I find it useless."

Then he posted from the Church In Bellevue's publication. The church is, according to the C In B's publication, the wife, the warrior, the body, the dwelling place, the city.

Like OBW I find such teaching, while not absolutely untrue, and not without some basis in scripture, to be useless. My reasoning is thus: such statements are tautological, and reflexive. They don't really tell us anything. It's like saying, "The church is the church". Such a statement yields nothing of value, in and of itself, absent further information.

Now let me explain why I think thus. If you look at the usage of the word translated "church" in English, that word is "ekklesia". I think most of us know this. Now, how was the word "ekklesia" used in conversation? What was an ekklesia to the NT writers & readers? What did the word mean to Greek-speakers in Palestine, Asia Minor, and further regions (i.e. Africa, Rome, Gaul) in the first century, when the NT was being composed?

So if Paul or a gospel writer equates the church with a bride, or a warrior, or a body, he may be giving us some information about some aspect of the function of the church, but he is not, as the Church In Bellevue seems to assume, actually telling us what the church is. Absent further definition, it's an "ethereal attribute", as OBW put it, and is quite useless.

It's like saying, "My car is a great way to get to work". So we can ask, "What is a car?" and answer, "It's a great way to get to work." But that doesn't tell us what a car is: typically an enclosed vehicle composed of a metal chassis and shell with an engine and a steering wheel and four rubber tires, manufactured by Hyundai or Ford or whomever. A canoe can also be a great way to get to work, or a skateboard or a trolley or a hovercraft or a pair of sneakers. So some statement about some aspect of something's function does not actually inform us what that item actually is. It doesn't define the thing per se, as the Church In Bellevue seems to think, at least by my reading of the portion which OBW provided.

Okay, back to context: what is the church? How is it used in the NT, and the Greek OT, the Septuagint? Again, many of us know how it is used. The "ekklesia" is a gathering together. It's what we might call an assembly, or a meeting. It is a group of people convened for some express purpose. You can have an "ekklesia" to elect a town mayor, or to praise God, or to remember Jesus, or to decide whether to raise funds for a new school building.

Let me give a scriptural basis from the NT. Acts 19:41 "And with these words, he dismissed the assembly." What is the word for assembly here? Yes, it is "ekklesia". It means "meeting" (In the Greek OT "ekklesia" also meant this: "In the midst of the meeting I will praise You" (From Psalm 22, quoted in Hebrews 2).

The focus of our ekklesia is Jesus. Our focus is not the meeting. So if you go to an "ekklesia", and the teaching is about "the ekklesia" (as the wife, the warrior, the bride, etc), then I posit that you have lost your focus. If you focus your gathering on Jesus you will probably fulfill some aspect, as His designated "ekklesia" (i.e. church meeting), of being His body and bride here on earth, and fighting for His interests and His kingdom, etc. But if you fill your meeting with teachings about your meeting, then you are doing nothing but running around in circles looking for your own tail.

Here is a portion from Deuteronomy 32, where Moses warns the Jews,

"15 Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food, he became heavy and sleek. He abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior.

16 They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.

17 They sacrificed to demons, which are not God— gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.

18 You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

19 The Lord saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters.

20 “I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.

21 They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.

22 For a fire has been kindled by my wrath, one that burns to the realm of death below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains."

When your focus is "The Church", you have forgotten the God who brought you forth from bondage in Egypt. You are now focusing on a "god who has recently appeared (v. 17)", and "what is no god (v. 21)". Secondly, your teachings make no sense, nor yield profit, because you are saying that "The focus of our meeting (ekklesia) is the meeting (ekklesia)." Your statements yield no informational value, and your meeting yields no spiritual issue.

If we recognize Jesus as God's sent Lord and Christ, then we immediately have Jesus' assurance that He will build his church. He will surely gather His called-out ones together. But when we focus the attention of our gathering together on the meeting itself, then we take our eyes off Jesus, and disaster inevitably ensues.

Remember, dear readers, that Satan loves to divide. He is the prince of division. What is the issue of all Watchman Nee's teachings on the church? Division after division. How many thousands of christians are no longer associating with one another, because of Mr. Nee's teachings? I believe they have been duped to take their eyes off of Jesus. Faith in Jesus makes us one. No church will ever unite us.

Peace to you all.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by aron

The focus of our ekklesia is Jesus. Our focus is not the meeting. So if you go to an "ekklesia", and the teaching is about "the ekklesia" (as the wife, the warrior, the bride, etc), then I posit that you have lost your focus. If you focus your gathering on Jesus you will probably fulfill some aspect, as His designated "ekklesia" (i.e. church meeting), of being His body and bride here on earth, and fighting for His interests and His kingdom, etc. But if you fill your meeting with teachings about your meeting, then you are doing nothing but running around in circles looking for your own tail.

I don't see a problem with occasionally reminding believers what the church is. But I definitely agree that making it an ongoing focus means you've lost your proper focus. I mention this in my thread here, where I say:

I think this is the reason Jesus did not talk about the church much, because to him the point is God and people, not God and some ideal institution.

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.

I bought into this idea. I thought I'd seen something above and beyond. How would I have known though? I was just a young man with no training. But THE VISION OF THE CHURCH was impressive. So I bought into it. Why hadn't "Christianity" seen it? Because it was a "hidden" truth. Unfortunately, you court problems when you start placing the Bible's "hidden" messages above the clear and plain ones.

Some of the clear messages of the NT are:

Believe in Jesus for salvation.
Love God.
Love people.
Live in relationship with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Live a holy, humble, joyous, peaceful, serving life.
Tell others about the gospel.
Live in community and meet with other believers for mutual edification and service.

Nowhere does it say that our lives should be devoted to building up the church.

When the NT talks about us building, it talks about building up each other, not the church. I believe this is intentional. We build up each other; God builds up the church. Why is this distinction important? Because focusing on THE CHURCH leads to focusing on an institution, rather than people, and can cause us to treat people as a means to an end. History has borne this out, particularly in the LRC.

The Church is important. But Nee/Lee took it so far that the result was a mindset that made people a means to an end, and therefore disposable. This is not the message of the Bible.

[OBW]

A little off of the actual topic, but there is something I read recently that applies to many assemblies, both within and without the LRC.

So many people think that the evidence of spiritual victory is outward joy and exuberance. This is something that was a significant sore spot for me back when my mother died. The dear friends from the LRC basically turned the time of legitimate mourning into (for them) a time to celebrate. Everything was upbeat.

Now I'm not saying that there is no place for recognizing the joy and hope of our faith even in the face of death. But there is a time to mourn.

And in regular meetings there is a time to be solemn, confess your sins, reflect upon the sacrifice of Christ, etc. Meetings are not simply places to bring the "sacrifice of praise" (meaning upbeat joy). If your meetings are only upbeat and victorious, they are probably often manufactured and hollow.

I find that the meeting of the church is a time to better focus myself than anything I can do alone. It is in the presence of others I discover that my wonderful "revelation" is either commonplace or in error. It is where I once again reflect upon the greatness of God in all his attributes in the midst of the congregation. I have less opportunity to wander into my contemporaneous babblings.

And on that last one, there is some evidence that our wonderful, contemporaneous prayers are often just muddled messes. Too often self-centered. I don't suggest that God despises them. I'm sure he longs to hear our heart. But we probably could spend a little time taking advantage of what is already written down for us. Slow down and say "Our Father who is in heaven . . . ." Read some of David's prayers as recorded in Psalms, or of Elijah or Jeremiah.

The church that is seeking to always be "up" is missing a lot. Trying to concoct an original prayer on the fly is an opportunity for distraction. Take time and reflect in your heart. Consider the Word. Put it together into a different kind of praying of the scripture.

There may be a lot of problems with the more liturgical churches, especially the RCC. But actual content in their liturgy is seldom the problem. Sometimes it would be nice to find that much content in evangelical circles.

Then you could go out from a meeting having been established, built-up, strengthened, encouraged, etc. Instead, we too often go out with questionings. (Oh, no!!)

[aron]

Originally Posted by OBW

I'm not saying that there is no place for recognizing the joy and hope of our faith even in the face of death. But there is a time to mourn.

And in regular meetings there is a time to be solemn, confess your sins, reflect upon the sacrifice of Christ, etc. Meetings are not simply places to bring the "sacrifice of praise" (meaning upbeat joy). If your meetings are only upbeat and victorious, they are probably often manufactured and hollow.

Yes, there is a time to mourn, and also a time to repent. I noticed that repentance is a continual theme in the NT, from the first words of John the Baptist and Jesus the Nazarene, to the final epistles to the seven churches in Asia in Revelations 2 and 3.

Repentance is not just for "sinners in the hands of an angry God"; rather we are all, on this side of the judgment seat, those in need of repentance.

Originally Posted by OBW

The church that is seeking to always be "up" is missing a lot. Trying to concoct an original prayer on the fly is an opportunity for distraction. Take time and reflect in your heart. Consider the Word. Put it together into a different kind of praying of the scripture.

There may be a lot of problems with the more liturgical churches, especially the RCC. But actual content in their liturgy is seldom the problem. Sometimes it would be nice to find that much content in evangelical circles.

Then you could go out from a meeting having been established, built-up, strengthened, encouraged, etc. Instead, we too often go out with questionings. (Oh, no!!)

One of the last LRC meetings I went to, the theme was "building". I left with questionings. What assurance did I have that we were not building Babylon? Especially if you skip (i.e. ignore, downplay) the "Jesus" part?

[Ohio]

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.

It's one thing to be a "protestant," looking at completely unacceptable church practices, and voicing one's protests before checking out. Church history is filled with stories of those who grew up in degraded religious circles, and once they began to examine the scripture, felt compelled to leave that system.

It is something else all together to declare the entire body of Christ a complete failure, hopelessly sick and incurable, and then develop a new system based on obscure scriptures, heretofore hidden from sight, and declare to all that that you alone are faithful to the original scriptural pattern of the church.

Personally I must be the most gullible Christian on earth. I grew up believing that only the Catholic church was the one true church, and only the Pope was qualified to speak for Christ. Then I got saved thru random happenstance and landed in the LC one day. Soon I was believing that we alone were the one true church, and that only WL was qualified to speak for Christ.

Where's that head-scratching smilie face when I need it? SMH

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I grew up believing that only the Catholic church was the one true church, and only the Pope was qualified to speak for Christ.

Then I got saved ...landed in the LC one day. Soon I was believing that we alone were the one true church, and that only WL was qualified to speak for Christ.

It is no small irony, and not coincidental, I believe, that a ministry which made so much hay out of pointing out the failures of others eventually created such a close copy of what they claimed to detest.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

It is no small irony, and not coincidental, I believe, that a ministry which made so much hay out of pointing out the failures of others eventually created such a close copy of what they claimed to detest.

Years ago my mother made a comment about the Church in Cleveland that it was "filled with ex-Catholics." I remember thinking to myself, "who told her that?" But as we all have learned, "mom knows best."

[alwayslearning]

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.

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.

[aron]

Originally Posted by alwayslearning

... 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?.

Who we are is sinners, repentant and believing into the Son of God, Jesus the Nazarene. Any "special sauce" added to that does not help.

Originally Posted by alwayslearning

... 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?" ?.

My argument is, if you say that someone else is "in Babylon" then you are in Babylon. As you judge others, so are you judged.

But when you admit that you are in Babylon, then you can begin the (usually long, slow and painful) process of extricating yourself from the mess. When you proudly proclaim "We are in the Good Land!" you really are the furthest from it.

Originally Posted by alwayslearning

...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. .

That was my point. You think you have arrived somewhere, by comparing yourself to some, other, "failure", but really you've been tricked and you are going nowhere. That is why the aged apostle John had to repeatedly tell the churches to "repent" in the epistles to the Asian churches. That's why the Epistle to the Hebrews is so full of remonstrations and warnings. The recipients think they are 'safe', and have arrived somewhere good, and this puts them in grave danger.

Originally Posted by alwayslearning

... 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.

Jesus said, "You think you can see; therefore your blindness remains." Who could put it better?

[OBW]

Originally Posted by aron

As you judge others, so are you judged.

This is an interesting shorthand of an oft-quoted snippet. Unfortunately, something I recently heard seems to have captured the spirit of this particular phrase best.

The point is not as is often said, that you should not judge, but that you should judge righteously. (And it is quite possible that this is exactly what you meant to say here.) If you judge righteously and are, yourself, righteous, then you should be able to withstand righteous judgment. But if you judge unrighteously, expect that you will also be judged in the same manner and, consistent with most cases of unrighteousness, fall.

Of course unrighteousness is exactly the kind of judgment that WL and his remains have been judging the Christian community with for so many years now. They have called Christians and their gatherings whores, mooing cows, fallen, reprobate, etc. They declare that they are all part of the same church, but that church is only the one that they attend (the LRC) and not any other (those were Nee's words in The Orthodoxy of the Church, about 9 paragraphs from the end).

As for the comments about Babylon, it would seem that if Babylon is a legitimate type, it is of a worldly system that is opposed to God and God's people. It is not and was never associated with God in any way shape, or form. It was used as a means of discipline for wayward Judah, but it did not escape discipline itself for its part, being overrun by the Persians who eventually allowed the Jews their freedom.

No, Babylon is not a legitimate type for anything related to Christianity or the church. Babylon would be among the places from which people escape to become Christian, not the place the Christians go to congregate and escape their duty to God.

But there is another place where Christians can (and sometime do) go. That place is Laodicea. That is where they go to declare that they alone have received the best that God has to offer and that others have not. They are the kind that are enamored with remnant theology and recovery. Enamored with the idea that they have discovered what almost 20 centuries of Christians have failed to understand. That have found the decoder ring that makes red into grey and yellow into white (and, of course, they are the ones who decide which is right and which is an illusion).

[alwayslearning]

Originally Posted by OBW

But there is another place where Christians can (and sometime do) go. That place is Laodicea. That is where they go to declare that they alone have received the best that God has to offer and that others have not. They are the kind that are enamored with remnant theology and recovery. Enamored with the idea that they have discovered what almost 20 centuries of Christians have failed to understand. That have found the decoder ring that makes red into grey and yellow into white (and, of course, they are the ones who decide which is right and which is an illusion).

And at least in the case of the LC system's decoder ring it's mostly about the way of doing things. For example, we don't have "pastors" we have elders, how we meet, outward practices, etc.

Added to that is the use of some extreme theological language for shock value: we are becoming God, etc. Which they consider a high peak of God's divine revelation that they discovered while in fact it is an ill-advised way to discuss transformation which was first used by one church father.

To me the fundamental flaw with "we are the remnant" churches is it creates a feeling of superiority solely based on saying and believing you are special in God's eyes above all other Christians - regardless of spiritual condition and expressions of the condition in outreach and care to others. If their spiritual condition/maturity really is "superior" there would be certain manifest outcomes and one of these virtues would be the feeling that they are not superior but have true humility in attitude and actions towards others.

BTW I agree with you that they misapply the "type" of Babylon/Jerusalem from the OT to fit what they want it to say about themselves. But for the sake of argument let's say it's true. I don't read anywhere that those who went back to Jerusalem were instructed to brag about their superiority and trash talk those who didn't return with them.

[alwayslearning]

Originally Posted by aron

My argument is, if you say that someone else is "in Babylon" then you are in Babylon. As you judge others, so are you judged.

But when you admit that you are in Babylon

My view is that using the Babylon/Jerusalem OT as a type to support a remnant church theory focuses the attention on place instead of the true problem addressed throughout the NT of spiritual immaturity. So to make one change in a line you wrote I would say: "But when you admit you are Babylon..."

[aron]

Originally Posted by alwayslearning

...to make one change in a line you wrote I would say: "But when you admit you are Babylon..."

Correct. I think your phraseology is more precise than mine was.

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

Remember, dear readers, that Satan loves to divide. He is the prince of division. What is the issue of all Watchman Nee's teachings on the church? Division after division. How many thousands of christians are no longer associating with one another, because of Mr. Nee's teachings? I believe they have been duped to take their eyes off of Jesus.

Now, it may seem ungrateful, and disrespectful, to equate Watchman Nee's teachings with Satan. Surely the Mr. Nee was a dear brother, the latchet of whose shoes I may be unworthy to unloose, to quote John the Baptist. True.

But what was the basis of Mr. Nee's understanding of the church? Was he not looking through the lens of a corrupt history? Was not his understanding warped by centuries of "church tradition"? Or was his understanding of the word he translated "church" the same as the understanding of those first century believers, whose "church life" he sought to emulate? I daresay no.

Let me give two examples for my thinking. First, at the close of the Medieval Period, with the simplistic idea of "Heaven" versus "Hell" guiding their labors, the early Bible translators into English ran into problems. What to do with words like "Sheol", or "Hades", or "Paradise", or "the pit", or "the grave"? Not so easy. Your pre-existing concepts may force you into uncomfortable linguistic compromises in order to render the ancient parlance into your own.

Second, what about the word translated "saints"? The centuries-old Catholic tradition of "sainthood" affected (distorted from the original) the modern understanding of the word. To be a saint in the 20th century meant something rather different from what it meant to the recipients of Paul's epistle to the Corinthians. So Witness Lee tried to "recover" the word back to its original meaning, and usage.

Likewise, the word "ekklesia", I suspect, meant something different to Watchman Nee from what it had meant to the people who wrote, and read, the New Testament. Mr. Nee's understanding of the "restored" or "recovered" or "normal" New Testament church got distorted by the lens of history.

Therefore I disagree with his attempted recovery, and his teachings probably helped fuel further divisions among the saints, which we label "Great Lakes churches" and "Brazilian churches" and "Living Stream churches" and so forth. The supposed "recovery" was merely a continuation of a long-standing trend of Satan dividing the believers into separate, adversarial and antagonistic groups.

A church is just a meeting of believers, no more and no less. The meeting may be for prayer, for Bible study, for exhortation, to preach the gospel, to remember the Lord, or some combination thereof. The church is a temporary confluence (assembly) of redeemed sinful humanity for the purpose of rememberance, of acknowledgment, of following and serving, for instruction, and praising of the resurrected and enthroned Savior Jesus, to the Father God's glory, through work (operation) of the Holy Spirit. To hold the church as something in and of itself to be an object of one's attention, affection, focus, teaching, labor, or affiliation, is to raise up an idol to compete with God. This is why I quoted Deuteronomy 32, with "gods recently arrived", "which are not god". Only the Lord Jesus should be equated with God. Nothing else.

"And with those words he dismissed the 'ekklesia'". Acts 19:41

[OBW]

I note that among Nee's books on the church is The Orthodoxy of the Church. (Of course there was also The Normal Christian Church Life, Further Talks on the Church Life, Church Affairs, and The Assembly Life.) While there are surely things to be said about problems in the church, there is nothing in scripture that suggests that we need to have a right belief ("orthodoxy") about the church. We are told to believe and obey Christ. To believe in God.

It is interesting that the church simply is. It is the body of Christ. It is the assembly. It is the pillar and base of the truth.

And there is nothing that suggests that only certain versions of the church fit this criteria. Only the Calvinists (or Armenians). Only the Evangelicals. Or even only the Baptists. Or the Church of Christ. Or the "Local Churches."

And nothing says that the worst of the problems in Revelation 2 and 3 were not the church. Even the one we like to declare (based on Miller's version of reading the passage) to be the Roman Catholic Church (and the whore of Babylon if we listen to Lee).

Seems odd that the one about to be spewed out was really so nearly perfect according to "orthodoxy." They had all the right teachings. They were as orthodox as you can get.

Seems that orthodoxy is almost unimportant to God. Yes there is a requirement of belief. But it is in Christ, not the church. And it must be coupled with orthopraxy — with practice. It does take works to actually please God. We can do nothing to gain salvation. But doing nothing after that . . . well, you've seen it too often.

[aron]

Originally Posted by OBW

... there is nothing in scripture that suggests that we need to have a right belief ("orthodoxy") about the church. We are told to believe and obey Christ. To believe in God..

And to love our neighbor. Not to love doctrines, works, teachings, ministers or their ministries, or the organizations which tend to cluster around these.

Originally Posted by OBW

... It is interesting that the church simply is. It is the body of Christ. It is the assembly. It is the pillar and base of the truth.

And there is nothing that suggests that only certain versions of the church fit this criteria. ..

My reading is that "the version of the church which fits this criteria" is simply the one which Jesus calls "His" -- "on this rock I will build MY ekklesia". The church is not based on local ground, on a ministry, a minister, the output of a 'publishing house', or anything else. It is simply the assemblage of the repentant sinners who have, by faith, gathered themselves together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Originally Posted by OBW

... Seems odd that the one about to be spewed out was really so nearly perfect according to "orthodoxy." They had all the right teachings. They were as orthodox as you can get...

They were probably good at straining out gnats. You know the rest of the story.

Originally Posted by OBW

... It does take works to actually please God. We can do nothing to gain salvation. But doing nothing after that . . . well, you've seen it too often.

I agree with you about the works part, as necessary evidences of our conversion from darkness to light in the name of our Lord Jesus.

And I personally believe that one of the greatest, foundational christian works, is to receive on another in Christ Jesus, to the glory of God our Father, even as He has received us sinners by our faith in His Son.

And I further contend that when we receive on another in the name of the Lord Jesus, that is in fact the assembling together if HIS ekklesia. The local ekklesia of Jesus is not necessarily 'affililiated with the ministries of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee', as the Living Stream Ministry franchise churches stated in 1999 on their internet website banners. Rather, our assembling ourselves together is based on the Lord Jesus, and our faith thereof, and is not further improved by "church affiiliation", or "ministry affiliation", in my view.

The ekklesia of Jesus is affiliated, through faith, with Jesus. There simply is no other name for us. Now, we may add names to identify ourselves -- "the church which meets in Prisca and Aquila's house", or "the Thursday night college meeting", or "the First Baptist church on Elm Road", but it is still the ekklesia of Jesus. It is just simply a meeting of believers, no more and no less.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

Now, it may seem ungrateful, and disrespectful, to equate Watchman Nee's teachings with Satan. Surely the Mr. Nee was a dear brother, the latchet of whose shoes I may be unworthy to unloose, to quote John the Baptist. True.

But what was the basis of Mr. Nee's understanding of the church? Was he not looking through the lens of a corrupt history? Was not his understanding warped by centuries of "church tradition"? Or was his understanding of the word he translated "church" the same as the understanding of those first century believers, whose "church life" he sought to emulate? I daresay no.

He was strongly influenced by the exclusive Brethren, but in the preface of his book TNCCL, which btw rebukes the church practices developed under WL, he stated his greatest fear that someone would take his fellowship and use it legalistically.

WL on several occasions seemed more concerned about facing WN in the after life than the Lord Himself, knowing that what he produced was exactly what WN warned about.