Major Errors of Witness Lee’s Teaching

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

The operative word here is "WAS". There WAS one church in every city. There WAS one apostle Paul, who "did not receive the gospel from any man, nor was he taught it, but he received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." (Gal 1:12) There WAS one group of original apostles. There WAS one "Revelation" received by the apostle John. There WAS one group of church fathers who received the wisdom and knowledge to assemble the New Testament. Getting the picture? Even if one subscribes to be a "continuationist" (believing that there are apostles today), no serious scholar or widely accepted teacher has ever claimed that we have apostles today like the original scripture writing apostles, such as Paul, Peter, John etc.

That is correct that it was the situation only then, and it is a separate question about whether it applies today, in which case we would be discussing prescriptive versus descriptive text.

If we use the term "apostle" as meaning the original authors of scripture, I agree that there are no more apostles today who can write Scripture.

However the gift of apostleship continues, as God is still building His church. We might just know them by another name such as an evangelist or a missionary. Still, in a sense we are all apostles or messengers for Christ.

Originally Posted by UntoHim

Yes, it appears that there may have been only one church in one city in the infancy of the church. But it cannot be considered as something prescriptive - something for the church for all places and all times. Only baptism and the Lord's table were such prescriptive "commandments". We know that by the time of the end of Paul's life and ministry, many false teachers had already appeared on the scene. What if one of these false teachers had started/or taken over "the one church in anytown"? Were the genuine believers in this one particular city supposed to go against God and their conscience and meet with this false teacher and his followers? I submit that were not bound to do so. In fact, the apostles strongly urged the genuine believers to avoid, and even oppose, if necessary.

This was probably the first legitimate reason for "divisions" in the church. And the situation remains so all these centuries later. But there are still genuine believers who will hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and enter his fold. Amen. May it be so Lord.
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We can't rule it out just because it is descriptive. Lack of a descriptive command does not mean we can meet however we like.

Many things Christians do are only descriptively found in the bible (in fact, not even that, more pagan, if Viola and Barna's book is correct). A clear example would be our 6 day working week and day off on Sunday and going to church on Sunday. Christmas and Easter is another example. Tithing 10% of one's salary is another example.

Even a definition of marriage as between a man and a woman is based upon a descriptive interpretation of Genesis. There is no actual command that says marriage must be between a man and a woman, and many people use this argument to define marriage in a way God did not intend. We define marriage as between a man and a woman because we know that is God's intention.

Therefore when coming to the descriptive passages about the church we should consider God's intent. There's a reason why God told us what the early church looked like. The intent of the early church structure was unity. A denominational church model does not satisfy that intent. If God had no intention concerning this matter, then the description of the early church would likely be one of chaos and disorder without any clear pattern.