Witness Lee and AW Tozer

[Freedom]

In 1963, Brother Lee visited Toronto again. Besides visiting Oswald Smith, he also took time to visit A. W. Tozer, a famous minister in the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Brother Lee asked A. W. Tozer if he was aware of any Christians in Toronto who were practicing the church life according to the New Testament. Tozer responded by saying that he had looked into this very much, but had no knowledge of any such Christians or groups who knew the way of practicing the church life based on the New Testament revelation. Brother Lee asked further if Tozer himself knew the New Testament way of practicing the church life. Tozer replied that he understood. Brother Lee asked again - since Brother Tozer had seen this light, then why did he remain in the Christian and Missionary Alliance? In the same year, Brother Tozer passed away in Toronto.

http://lordsmoveincanada.org/witness-lee-visits.html

When I first saw this a few months back I was surprised to learn that WL interacted with Tozer in person (I just knew he mentioned Tozer here and there). I have listened to a few recordings of Tozer's sermons on youtube and as might be expected, his ministry and Lee's bore some similarities. There seem to be a lot of common themes.

Given their commonality, Tozer (and his group) were those that Lee hypothetically could have worked with. It's interesting though, according to this website Lee didn't feel Tozer was practicing the New Testament church life and made a point about it to Tozer. This is the same thing that Lee did with T. Austin Sparks. Frankly speaking, I think Lee missed out of great opportunities to work with like-minded individuals, by making such and issue out of his view of the church. He obviously thought his view was worth dividing over.

Something that's interesting to consider is that as Lee was ministering in this country, others were also ministering with ministries that were very similar to his. If you take "the ground of the church" out of the equation, there were other ministries covering the same themes as Lee was during that time. There may have even been commonalities on ideas related to the New Testament church minus "the ground". The conclusion that leads to is that Lee's ministry wasn't so "unique" after all.