Final Recovery

[Freedom]

With each step that the Lord has taken in His recovery, the content of His recovery has become richer and richer. Today, it seems as if there is nothing more to be recovered. The recovery today has reached the stage of the Body. Perhaps this will be the last recovery. There may be other items of recovery, but as far as we know, when we reach the recovery of the coordination of the Body and the manifestation of authority, we have reached the final recovery.

(Messages Given During the Resumption of Watchman Nee's Ministry, Chapter 43)I saw the above post on Facebook recently and it caught my attention. According to Nee, the "final recovery" was reached as a result of two things that he alone uncovered: 1)the coordination of the Body 2)the manifestation of authority (the 2nd one is a real knee-slapper ). As is evidenced by this quote, Nee did indeed leave the door open for other so-called items of recovery, but he somewhat confidently stated that what he saw was what consisted of a final recovery. It is particularly interesting that the way in which Nee could characterize the final recovery is vastly different from what Lee characterized it as. The so-called manifestation of authority, though an important aspect of the LC, is not something that most members would included on a list of items that the LC has supposedly "recovered". This is the kind of discrepancy that needs some explanation on the part of LCers.

Since Lee himself called Nee a Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age, how could it be that Nee missed his "high peak" completely? Let's say a local church formed using Nee's two items of recovery as their basis, with no thought whatsoever being given to Lee's high peak. They wouldn't even be considered an official LC franchise by today's standards. Who knows if Nee himself would have ever been able to swallow Lee's high peak. At any rate, it is highly ironic that WN and WL both purported that something completely different as encompassing a final recovery.

Obviously, the real issue here is the very notion of there being a final recovery or even a recovery taking place today. With respect to the LC, the whole notion is absurd, but it's definitely not unheard of for people to become enamored with these notions of recovery/revival. I don't necessarily throw out the need for certain types of revival from time to time, you can really only place so much importance on these kinds of events.

The LC, in claiming to be in a state of final recovery, has encapsulated their whole and theme goal into a slogan, "God became man to make man God..." WL's high peak is now over 20 years old. There is nothing up-to-date about it (not that there was in the first place), and Lee effectively closed the door to what Nee calls "new items of recovery". I think that some in the LC must wonder that despite having the teachings that encompass the so-called final recovery, and having reached the "high peak", why that hasn't brought about the end yet? This question was in my mind for many years, and I can't say that I ever heard a good answer to it. I always heard people say here and there that if only such and such happened that it would bring the Lord back. They will run around in circles endlessly as long as they think that recovery is anything significant.

According to Colossians 1:20, the recovery (reconciliation) was something that happened almost 2000 years ago. With that in mind no one should be claiming that their man-made movement is somehow more important than the true act of recovery. Those in the LC like to use the church in Philadelphia as a metaphor for the so-called recovered church (I believe the RcV outline calls it that). I would ask LCers, where does it say in the text that recovery is a characteristic element of the church in Philadelphia? The church in Philadelphia is characterized by faithfulness and endurance, not recovery. Actually, recovery is a far cry from endurance.