Permanency of Marriage

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by bearbear

Jesus said in John 12:47-48 that his words will judge us in the day of judgment:
“If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.

I feel you are touching an important point on the marriage covenant.
Question I have, why in the local churches is the marriage covenant considered secondary to loyalty to Lee's ministry?
I'm sure there are many cases of divorce in the local churches that occurred because one spouse was absolute for Lee's ministry and the other spouse wanted no part of it any longer.
If the marriage covenant is truly regarded as sacred, a husband and wife would place their marriage above Lee's ministry.
How many elders in the local churches have you known that were divorced? If they were elders, I had known three.

[bearbear]

Interestingly, the recovery version has the more accurate translation of porneia in Matthew 19:9 just like the KJV and older bible translations:

Mt 19:9 But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries her who has been divorced commits adultery.

Fornication is defined as pre-marital sex which is different than adultery which means sex outside of marriage.

Yet in the life study of Matthew, Witness Lee allows for divorce on the grounds of adultery. It seems like Witness Lee did not grasp the difference between fornication and adultery in his own bible translation and thought they were interchangeable!

https://bibleread.online/life-study-...of-matthew/19/

According to the word of the Lord Jesus, the only cause for divorce is fornication. Only two things can break the marriage tie: either the death of one of the parties or fornication, adultery. If either party commits adultery, the marriage tie is broken. This is the principle. Therefore, the Lord Jesus said that there must be no divorce except in the case of fornication. But you should not take advantage of this as an excuse to remarry simply because an act of fornication has been committed. This also is a matter of motive. If possible, the offending one should be forgiven. However, it is different if the guilty party refuses to repent and lives in that kind of sin or marries someone else. In such a case as this, the marriage tie is broken, and the other party is free.

This is evidence that Witness Lee was not qualified to be a bible scholar.

Here is an example of an exhaustive study on the exception clause in Matthew 19:9 by a real bible scholar:

https://www.danielrjennings.org/exce..._version_1.pdf