Major Errors of Witness Lee’s Teaching

[JesusLover]

Originally Posted by Drake

Unreg,

Thanks for your post. I'm going to respond in three parts. Otherwise a single post to cover different lines of thought will become too unwieldy. The three parts will be Israelology, interpretation of Revelation 12, and what Witness Lee actually taught concerning Israel. A fourth part concerning "allegory" has already been addressed in post #14. If you care to respond to that then please do so otherwise it stands as is.

Israelology: you have made the point several times that "83% of the Bible is related to Israel". At first I thought this was just a statistic you found interesting but since you are repeating it and placing so much value on it I see that it is central to your belief system. Let's have a closer look at that.

No matter how you calculate the 83% the way that you use it is a fallacy in argumentation. It is an Argumentum Ad Numerum and like the Tiny Percentage Fallacy that states "an action that is quite significant in and of itself somehow becomes insignificant simply because it's a tiny percentage of something much larger." Your argument is a Large Percentage Fallacy. By frequently referring to "83% of the Bible is about Israel" you are inflating it's significance based on statistics. For example, the word "law" is mentioned over twice as many times as the word "grace" in the Bible. What does that tell you? Nothing of significance because an argument needs to pivot on something that is relevant not on statistics or numbers.

Secondly, the church was the mystery hid from ages. Colossians 1:26 says "the mystery which has been hidden from the ages and from the generations but now has been manifested to His saints". There would be less references in the Bible about the church for that reason alone. Is the church any less significant to God or to us if it were mentioned only 17% of the time in the Bible? Of course not.

I agree on the points you made on how to approach the Bible through prayer study and multiple references. Yet, I think you miss something that is also extremely important. We should not come to the Bible with filters on our glasses. When you approach the Bible thinking that "83% of the Bible is about Israel" you will be looking for confirmation in all that you read. That will cause a bias in your understanding. I believe that you are reading into the scriptures references to Israel any and every chance you get. By taking that approach you will get to 83% whether it is really there or not because your mind directs you to confirm it.

If you believe Israel is the dominant topic in the thought of God, and therefore should be in ours, you should justify this based on the scripture not on statistics and numbers.

Drake

Finally I took the time to register.
My user name is : JesusLover. Hopefully this will make things easier.

Answer:
I keep repeating Israelology because you keep asking and I think you are not understanding. Remember the title of my post and the development of the points.

Here I am repeating myself again, because you asked. Israelology: Making very simple math (there are more sophisticated detailed calculations, you should check them out).
OT books 39: 59 %
NT books 27: 41 %
Total books 66: 100 %
[COLOR=black]Since the NT has 27 books (41 % of the Bible) [COLOR]

But, 58 % of the NT is from the OT.

If you put together the 59 % of the OT and the 58 % of the OT that is in the NT (or the 58 % of the 41 %), you get approximately 83 %.

You can see in every book of the NT, how many quotations are from the OT. After doing this exercise, we will realize why we need to be clear about the customs, habits, culture, practices, etc, etc, …. of Israel, so we can understand correctly the OT and with that correct understanding of the OT, we can understand correctly the NT. If we “ignore Israelology” our understanding of the Scriptures will be wrong. The whole Bible is deliberately engineered and perfectly designed by God as a UNIT. Remember the 66 books constitute the Bible.

The point here is that we should be AWARE of the big role that Israel plays (Rom 9:4; Eph 2:11, 12) in the Bible, why? Because, this very point (absence of Israelology), is one of the reasons why W. Lee’s teachings have errors. W. Lee, applies to the church what is for Israel and also freely allegorizes the Scriptures. It is not a matter to try to say who is more important? Israel or the church? Similarly, Eschatology is 33 % of the Bible. Under W. Lee’s teaching I barely knew Eschatology because he did not teach much, and the little that I knew, all of it was wrong. Then the Bible also has Ecclesiology, and W. Lee’s Ecclesiology also is wrong, because he ignores Israelology and his Eschatology is wrong. All we have to do is to “honor and follow” what the Bible is showing to us. For this, we need to get very familiar with the text, context, structure, where different topics or words are mentioned, recognize what is a parable, a type, an allegory, a pun, a figure of speech (there are over 200 in the Bible), a simile, a metaphor, an analogy, an idiom (which there are many in the Jewish culture used in the Bible), a hypocatastasis, etc., etc., etc., …. There are over 200 in the Bible. If you read Rom 9, 10, 11; you will see how Israel and the church are related. By the way, the one (Paul, THE expert of Ecclesiology) who wrote about the church (Eph 3:3,4); is the same one who wrote 3 chapters (9-11) about Israel in Romans. Israel and the church have different roles in God’s plan (please read Rom 9, 10, 11). It is not a matter to try to say who is more important. But to understand what the Bible is telling us according to the whole counsel of God (Rev 1:1; 19:10; Jn 5:39; Ps 40:7; Mt 5:17, 18; Rom 15:4; Acts 20:27). By the way, Israel and the church belong to God, but please understand, their roles are different. It will be very helpful for yourself, if you check with some “respected” theologians this matter of “Israelology”. I did not come up on my own about this topic. I was ignorant in this respect (because I was studying ONLY W. Lee’s teachings), but thanks to God’s Mercy and Compassion I got to learn some and I am still learning.

The proper way to study the Bible and to avoid to be deceived by following the wrong teaching or interpretation is: First to have prayer and relationship with the Author (God) of the Bible (Jn 5:39,40), then we need to take notes as we read and study the Bible (God’s Word), lastly we can check with the commentaries of the theologians; NOT just ONE author, but 3 or 4. And try to understand why the interpretations differ. We need to do our homework and NOT to blindly believe the commentaries, learn from the Berean believers (Act 17:10,11).

You agree with the above paragraph about being the proper way to study, but in W. Lee’s group most of them when reading or studying the Bible, the first thing they do, is to look at what the footnotes are saying and even many of their leading ones, if there is a verse without a footnote, they say: “I cannot comment on this verse because there is no footnote”.
Again, I am not trying to convince you. All I want to do is to point out some things and show “why” I am saying what I am saying according to the Scriptures. Now everyone should do their homework and come to their own conclusions. Otherwise we will fall “again” in the same deception of W. Lee’s teaching and practices, where only one person knows everything and everyone follows blindly, and only they know everything, and only they are correct. This is all I can do for you at this point, again I am not trying to convince you, I am not claiming I know everything, you don’t have to believe what I say. You make your own conclusions.