Christianity in China in the 21st Century

[aron]

I read a recent report that China will eventually surpass the U.S. in its Christian population.

http://www.slate.com/bigideas/what-i...g-yang-opinion

But my question is: what does this Christianity look like in China?

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Witness Lee denied that God was three persons. He considered the teaching that God is three persons to border on “tritheism.” Witness Lee preferred the term “Triune God” to the Term “Trinity” .He believed that the Father, the Son and the Spirit, though “distinct,” were one person. He believed that Jesus was the “Triune God mingled with man.” After Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus became the Spirit. Witness Lee always denied that his teaching was modalism (the heresy that asserts that God merely acted in different modes at different times and denies the three persons of the Godhead). Nevertheless, if it is not modalism it comes pretty close to it.

In China, Witness Lee’s quasi-modalistic teachings concerning the Trinity evolved into full-blown modalism. Witness Lee’s teachings underwent a number of mutations and transformations before becoming the Eastern Lightning doctrine that God was called “Jehovah” in the Old Testament, “Jesus” in the Age of Grace and now the “Almighty God” in the present Kingdom Age.

Leaving the Holy Spirit out of things for a minute, a pure common sense objection to complete modalism is that any person—believer or unbeliever—reading the New Testament gospels would see that Jesus and the Father are represented as two different persons. No one could honestly see them as the same entity. Jesus says he is sent by the Father (e.g., John 5:37) and he prays to the Father (e.g., John 17) and always speaks of the Father as though he is a separate person.

How does Eastern Lightning answer this objection? They say that when Jesus speaks of the Father he is merely speaking from a human perspective. When he prays to the Father, he does so from the perspective of a created being:……

This is remarkably similar to Witness Lee’s argument concerning the same issue. In Concerning the Triune God, Witness Lee addresses the question in the following way:

. . . if you say the Son is the Father, then how could the Son pray to the Father? . . . The Lord of hosts is both the Sender and the One sent. Since the Lord of hosts is both the Sender and the Sent One, why could it not be that the Lord is the Son who prays and also the Father who listens to the praying? The Father who listens to the praying is the Son who prays; and the Son who prays is also the Father who listens to the prayer. (Witness Lee, Concerning the Triune God—The Father, the Son and the Spirit [Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1976?], under “The Son Who Prays Is the Father Who Listens,”)This is clearly at variance with any kind of normal reading of the New Testament accounts.

Witness Lee and the Shouters

In 1967 Witness Lee started the “Calling Out” (or “Shouting”) Movement . He said that the Age of the Word had ended, and now it was the Age of the Spirit. Witness Lee taught that believers must “eat the Lord” (吃主) and the way to do this was by calling out or shouting his name . Calling out his name was the way to release the Spirit in this Age of the Spirit.

After Deng Xiaoping’s “opening up” of China in 1979, many foreigners visited China. At some point between 1978 and the early 1980’s, Witness Lee sent many followers from overseas to Wenzhou in Fujian Province to contact believers from Watchman Nee’s Local Church movement. They reportedly brought with them large amounts of Witness Lee’s books, pamphlets and recordings. Within a few short years, their influence had spread throughout Zhejiang, Fujian, Henan, Guangdong and other places. During their meetings they would shout “Jesus is Lord!” in an attempt to practice Witness Lee’s teaching about calling out the Lord’s name. This is how they got the nickname “Shouters” .

The “Shouters” and the “Local Churches”
The term “Shouters” is not a precise term. It is unfortunately the case that many true believers have been labeled as Shouters even when they are not Shouters. Many people who are called “Shouters” may be true believers. Not all Shouters accept Witness Lee’s teachings, and not all followers of Witness Lee are Shouters. In particular, many Local Churches that follow Watchman Nee and Witness Lee are law-abiding groups that reject the term “Shouters.”

Some Shouters and the Trinity
Some (not all) Shouters took Witness Lee’s strange doctrine of the Trinity one step further and became complete modalists. These groups held that the Father became the Son and was no longer the Father; the Son became the Spirit and was no longer the Son. That is, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are modes by which God manifests himself in different eras. They are not distinct persons.

The “Lord Changshou” sect
One branch of the Shouters held Witness Lee in such high esteem that they began to regard his authority and status as greater than Christ’s. They called Witness Lee, “Lord Changshou” (Changshou is Witness Lee’s given name). This, of course, goes far beyond the actual teaching of Witness Lee, who never proposed to set himself above Christ.

It has been reported that in 1995 this branch of the Shouters distributed 15 million tracts in 20 major cities in China declaring that Witness Lee was the living Christ and that he would become the new king of the universe. One can easily see how this cult became a pattern for Eastern Lightning.

This “Lord Changshou” sect believes that you must call upon the Lord Changshou to be saved; that Jesus is someone of the past and will not return to save the world; and that Lord Changshou will return to save the world.

http://www.facts.org.cn/ebook/201310...11_1137654.htm

This vague report, that the Lord Changshou Shouters distributed 15 million tracts in China in 20 major cities, is now 20 years old. What are they like now, and how many? Certainly when uses the term "Christianity" in China one must have a broader net. I daresay there is a LOT of stuff going on that is nothing like Christianity we know, or have known, in the West.

Isolation, zeal and ignorance are breeding what?