Ron Kangas Message

[awareness]

Originally Posted by zeek

I quoted Ohio's post because I agree with it heartily and anybody who reads Alt Views knows, Ohio and I rarely agree on anything. So I thought it must be significant.

I listened to the first 15 minutes of Ron Kangas' message and basically it's a cargo cult appeal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_...es_of_the_term

In other words, the idea is that if you replicate the New Testament form of the church , you'll bring the Lord back. Witness Lee and his followers must make the case that the Bible implies that because it doesn't teach it. What it teaches it that what counts is authentic love and compassion, as the verses Ohio quoted above show. When love is present, Christ is present.

Now, let me add that there were many brothers and sisters in the Local Church who did show genuine love and compassion as individuals when I was there. But, the official position of the group as epitomized by Mr. Lee himself was sectarian and exclusivist and contradicted the true spirit of Jesus which is love.

This must be fake news. Zeek and Ohio never agree.

All seriousness aside, Ohio and zeek are knocking it outta da park.

But Lee could easily discard the "Jesus is the ground" claptrap, as Lee would likely call it. Lee was a little more crude. When T. Austin Sparks made the very same point as bro Ohio, Lee said Sparks "was passing gas," unwittingly calling Christ gas.

And that's what Kangas, who once I was close with, sounds like to me today ... like passing gas.

Zeek introduced the Cargo Cult primitive kind of thinking. Clearly we in the modern age aren't free of that kind of thinking. Maybe it's hard-wired.

At any rate, isn't this effort to replicate the early church, in all its forms, aka, The Recovery, The Restoration, and even The Reformation, just that kind of thinking? The thinking that if we can just get it exactly the same as the early church the Lord will send the cargo, aka, The Bridegroom, in Recovery-speak.

Let's say it's true, that a Cargo Cult effort will work. Then we're in serious trouble. For one we can't replicate The Pentecost. For two, we're missing important data necessary to be sure we're getting it exactly right. That data is between Jesus and Paul. We don't have any.

We have data from Paul, that's in the 50s and 60s of the first century. We have data that comes decades after Jesus in the form of the gospels. We don't have data, or in other words documentation, between Jesus and Paul, between a.d.30 and a.d.50 or 60.

How then, if the Cargo Cult effort works, will we know how, based upon necessary documentation, to replicate the earliest Christians?

In any case, thinking in Cargo Cult terms, Nee's & Lee's ground of the church doesn't get us there. Sorry bro Kangas. I was mistaken when I thought you were smart. You're really no smarter than any other personality cult follower.

In the end, the big question is : Does the Cargo Cult method work? As Christians are we really suppose to be replicating anything, other than Jesus? Didn't Christ say, "I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH?" Why are WE, namely Nee and Lee, trying to build it?