My Testimony: Olvin

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Friedel

I thought you might find this interesting:

1973 - Christian Literature Crusade

Alleged inaccuracies in The Ecclesiology of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee by James Mo-Oi Cheung resulted in threats of legal action against Christian Literature Crusade by the Local Church..... Interviews with the author and the publisher disclosed that the retraction was issued in the face of threatened legal action by Local Church officials and was not based solely upon the contents of the book. Their retraction, included as an appendix in the book, Understanding Watchman Nee by Dana Roberts (Logos), ...:

Please note that the "retraction was NOT based solely upon the contents of the book" and as I noted, "Certainly we would all disagree with some of the things written" and there are some exaggerations, at least, from my perspective. Common sense would need to be used in reading any thing of this nature. However, because of the nature of the LC in threatening legal action every time someone writes something against them I'll refrain from sharing any more from the book. Anyway, it has some remarkable history that I couldn't find anywhere else about Nee, his family, churches in China etc.

I'm sure the CLC nor Cheung wanted to spend time in court over the book which was based on letters and documents from China and, thus, probably difficult to clarify especially back in 1973. The book is well footnoted with a bibliography and includes the quotes from various leaders from China and Taiwan who probably did not want to get into the middle of any legal action.

Note that Dana Roberts was involved in the Appendix and has written a couple of books which are on Amazon, "Secrets of Watchman Nee (A Spirit-Filled Classic)" and "Understanding Watchman Nee". He was also involved in the writing of Lily Hsu's book about Nee which is where I first heard of him. I don't know much about him but he has been attacked at not even being a Christian etc. by the followers of Nee. Maybe he has been discussed elsewhere on the forum.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Dave

Maybe he [Dana Roberts] has been discussed elsewhere on the forum.

Yes, on the "My Unforgettable Memories: Watchman Nee and Shanghai Local Church - Dr. Hsu" thread.
http://localchurchdiscussions.com/vB...ead.php?t=3489

But UntoHim put a damper on discussing Dana .. for unknown reasons ... since the thread is on Lily's book and he's one of the credited authors.

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by awareness

But UntoHim put a damper on discussing Dana .. for unknown reasons ... since the thread is on Lily's book and he's one of the credited authors.

Nah, I clearly gave the reasons and you know it Harold. The thread was about the testimony of Dr. Hsu - She is the author of the book, not Dana Roberts. Some people on the thread were using Roberts as a way to divert attention away from the main theme of the thread. It's that simple.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

Nah, I clearly gave the reasons and you know it Harold. The thread was about the testimony of Dr. Hsu - She is the author of the book, not Dana Roberts. Some people on the thread were using Roberts as a way to divert attention away from the main theme of the thread. It's that simple.

Yes, it got crazy on that thread, thanks to Andrew Kelly. Thanks for not giving into Kelly ... still, Dana is on the cover of the book.

[Cal]

Mephi (I can call you Mephi, can't I?),

That a highly cognizant and experienced Christian like yourself can separate the wheat from the chaff in Witness Lee's teaching is not the only issue.

Another question is what about that Christian who finds one of Lee's titles like "The Mystery of Human Life" (one of Olvin's favs no doubt) or some other grandiose thing on Amazon.com and says to herself, "Oooh, he's going to tell me what life is all about!" So she orders it and reads it, and while Lee is telling her the mystery of her life he also injects "Oh, by the way, you need to join one of my churches and major in my ministry and submit yourself to the 'unique leadership' and reject 'Christianity' and burn your past or you won't be an overcomer and blah, blah, blah."

What about those people? Do they have the discernment? Thousands and thousands of people sidetracked by the LC say "no."

I'm not saying never read Lee. I'm saying you need to be careful when doing so. Reading Lee is like jumping off a cliff in a wingsuit. Lots of thrills but lots of risks.

[Mephibosheth2]

Originally Posted by Igzy

Mephi (I can call you Mephi, can't I?),

That a highly cognizant and experienced Christian like yourself can separate the wheat from the chaff in Witness Lee's teaching is not the only issue.

Another question is what about that Christian who finds one of Lee's titles like "The Mystery of Human Life" (one of Olvin's favs no doubt) or some other grandiose thing on Amazon.com and says to herself, "Oooh, he's going to tell me what life is all about!" So she orders it and reads it and while Lee is telling her the mystery of her life he also injects "Oh, by the way, you need to join one of my churches and major in my ministry and submit yourself to the 'unique leadership' and reject 'Christianity' and burn your past or you won't be an overcomer and blah, blah, blah."

What about those people? Do they have the discernment? Thousands and thousands of people sidetracked by the LC say "no."

I'm not saying never read Lee. I'm saying you need to be careful when doing so. Reading Lee is like jumping off a cliff in a wingsuit. Lots of thrills but lots of risks.

...yes, Igzy, you may call me Mephi...or, if you like, Meph (it has a hard, ungirlish edge to it that appeals to me)

I get the point you've made above. It's true, thousands stand in danger of getting sidetracked...but at the end of the day, how much of it all is really down to good, old-fashioned commonsense? It is actually more common than you might think. Actually, my educated guess would be that many more countless thousands have exercised their commonsense in relation to things spiritual than the thousands who haven't; sometimes to their profit, but sometimes to their loss (one doesn't enter the kingdom of God through their commonsense). How else would you explain the fact that the LC simply does not have the numbers that would justify either the high output of its printing presses at LSM, or the aggressive and relentless pushes onto campuses around the country, and just about basically all of its overall expenditure on evangelism in general...Ethiopia seems to be an exception.

A case in point: many years ago I was in a certain city in Africa. A locality had just sprung up. But many, many of the believers in that city refused to join that church. And the reasons they gave, though wide and varied, all reflected an 'uncommon' capacity for commonsense. Unfortunately, however, a good number of these believers, having seen through the LC, sometimes end up, if you will, running from one wolf to the next wolf and are, instead, routinely hoodwinked by unscrupulous pastors. Religion is, after all, an opiate; it drugs the masses; and oftentimes one's smarts serve as no insulation whatsoever. Any believer, young or old, should know that, and be wary. The key is the Spirit.

p.s. ..."highly cognizant"?...I laugh out loud...I hardly think so...

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Mephibosheth

It's true, thousands stand in danger of getting sidetracked...but at the end of the day, how much of it all is really down to good, old-fashioned commonsense? It is actually more common than you might think. Actually, my educated guess would be that many more countless thousands have exercised their commonsense in relation to things spiritual than the thousands who haven't; sometimes to their profit, but sometimes to their loss (one doesn't enter the kingdom of God through their commonsense).

I almost replied when you first brought this up. Your original comment seemed to be pointing at something that I have often said here.

At some level, it is reasonable to suggest that common sense will help you get through a book by Nee or Lee without becoming ensnared in the nonsense. But at the same time, a lot of people with really good common sense bought into it all for some period of time. And some still do.

And maybe getting rid of the really big stuff is good enough. But maybe not. The number of apparently innocuous things taught, like "just turn to your spirit" seem so harmless. And because of the words used, it is hard to say anything negative against it. But it is not my spirit that is the source of right and wrong. (And if there is a real issue with right and wrong, good and evil, that goes back to the fall, it is not that we ate the wrong tree, but that we took the responsibility of defining good and evil for ourselves rather than relying on God's definitions.) And while we refer to our spirit as regenerated, it is not God, or Christ, and is therefore not the correct source of revelation. In fact, what does it mean to "turn to your spirit"? To figure out how you "feel" about something? To pray? To say some words (even good words, like "Oh, Lord Jesus")?

Our concern here is not so much those who have never been hooked by Nee's and Lee's teachings. With a few exceptions related to a few of Nee's writings, no one is going to read either other them unless they join with the LRC. And those are the ones we are concerned with. They have already had a large helping of LRC Kool-aid. Their eyes begin with a fog in front of them. Their nostrils think the smell is normal but it is garlic.

And we were all there. The difficult thing is that there are little bits of nonsense stuck onto so much otherwise sound teaching. Human nature related to unlearning error was researched a little in recent years. What was discovered was that if something was learned in a vacuum and the result was that the meaning was not what should have been taught, when the context is introduced and the error becomes evident, over half hang onto the error as if it is still just as true as they thought before. In effect, we are prone to believing what we have already come to believe even when it is found to be wrong.

And while eliminating the tagalongs does not eliminate all of this kind of continued error, it at least helps. If you go in knowing that you are going to see something different, then there is a chance that you might see something differently. But as long as you keep looking in the same places, you will have little chance of finding something different.

And for that reason, I always suggest that you at least put your LSM library in boxes in the attic and don't get them out until you think you really understand things clearly without it. (Then it is probably better to just put it out with the recycling.)