ABrotherInChrist's Blog

[ABrotherInChrist]

I just posted on the other forum about this, but it's still running through my head. Bear with me.

Originally Posted by Matthew 23:8-12 (NIV)

"But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

I've been getting more and more burdened by people referring to Lee, Titus Chu and others as their "spiritual father". Jesus in this passage (read the chapter in its entirety) is lambasting the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and evil ways. As part of this he states:

1. We are not to be called "Rabbi" (or master)
2. We are not to call anyone on earth "father"
3. We are not to be called "teacher"

We need to take this to heart. If we disregard this plain teaching, we end up with us revering our "spiritual father" here on earth. We end up holding teachers in too high of regard (for instance, Witness Lee). By doing this, we are completely off track with where God wants us to be. God wants us to be following God, not other humans.

Originally Posted by 1 Corinthians 3:5-7 (NIV)

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

Paul has made it clear to us in this passage... The person that led you to Christ is immaterial. The person who watered the seed in you... immaterial. The person who shepherds you... immaterial. God made it grow The servant He choses to use are nothing, only God is important in this equation.

I know that this is a bit of a thought shift to some, but we need to stop venerating other human servants of God. Give God all the glory, only He is worthy of it.


Anyways, that's what's been bugging me lately.

[countmeworthy]

I didn't know where to put something I heard yesterday with my own 2 ears. ..very troublesome. I didn't want to start a thread but this is the perfect spot for it. Thanks ABIC.

Someone told me with great excitement yesterday that an LSMr sister who is very, very ill (not anyone well known), told some saints, she saw NEE & LEE TOGETHER holding her hand, telling her not to worry, she would soon be with THEM.
You read right.

Imagine an LSMr saying Pope John Paul II appeared to someone on their deathbed comforting them telling them, they'd soon be with him! Imagine someone telling an LSMr Pope John Paul II appeared to them with that message.

No need for a response....just wanted to find a place to put this in.

[ABrotherInChrist]

Originally Posted by countmeworthy

Someone told me with great excitement yesterday that an LSMr sister who is very, very ill (not anyone well known), told some saints, she saw NEE & LEE TOGETHER holding her hand, telling her not to worry, she would soon be with THEM.
You read right.

Oh my goodness... I only can think of one way to respond to that.

Originally Posted by Matthew 17:1-8 (NIV)

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah."

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. "Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid." When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

Now, substitute Nee for Moses and Lee for Elijah.

When we give too much honor and glory to man, this is the result... We act rashly like Peter, and we need to be schooled by God (yet again).

Oh, Lord, when I look up, let me see nobody but you.

I have no problems with acknowledging that God had blessed certain brothers with a gift to teach, but we need to be oh so careful that we don't turn that into venerating them. The Catholics did it with their "saints". I'm sorry to say it, but the LC has done so with Nee, and in a much greater way, Lee. They even went so far to make a cemetery for Lee complete with a gaudy mausoleum (from what I've heard, I haven't seen it).

Until the hearts and minds of the believers within the LC are turned from Lee to Christ alone, I fear things will just continue to accelerate downhill.

[SpeakersCorner]

Originally Posted by countmeworthy

Someone told me with great excitement yesterday that an LSMr sister who is very, very ill (not anyone well known), told some saints, she saw NEE & LEE TOGETHER holding her hand, telling her not to worry, she would soon be with THEM.
You read right.

cmw,

Very sad and a bit disturbing. When WL died I received an anonymous tape in the mail of a meeting in Anaheim. One person came to the mike and said, "BL's face shone like an angel just before he passed away" or something like that.

That was the moment when the LC "jumped the shark" for me. How ironic that we would have become more like the Catholics than the Protestants.


SC

AndPeter I heard that rather than resigning per se Dick Bright in fact was "recalled" by Lee because he and his wife wrecked so much havoc on the church. The locals were getting disgusted and complaining so Bright became a persona non grata in terms of leading.

[AndPeter]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

AndPeter I heard that rather than resigning per se Dick Bright in fact was "recalled" by Lee because he and his wife wrecked so much havoc on the church. The locals were getting disgusted and complaining so Bright became a persona non grata in terms of leading.

I cannot say if he resigned because he was asked to resign. I just know for sure that he resigned.

Steve

CMW I heard that someone in Anaheim said publicly at a service that she felt the presence of Lee. Of course Lee was dead. It's too weird for words. Creepy actually.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by ABrotherInChrist

Anyways, that's what's been bugging me lately.

ABiC, if you really want to get "bugged," you should read that chapter by Kangas/Robichaux where they questioned "can we really honor WL too much?" The book was a refutation of Ingalls et al "16 concerns" as elder in Anaheim, Response to Recent Allegations.

[IDon'tKnow]

I haven't read Response to Recent Allegations. I would be interested to know just exactly what was contained within it.

[ABrotherInChrist]

I'd be willing to lay a small wager that it contains lies, twisting of scriptures and self-aggrandization. But I haven't read it either. That just seems to be the LSM way to respond to real questions.

[OBW]

Is this little book of fiction available online? I'm sure I've seen it before, but my normal places to look do not seem to have it.

[ABrotherInChrist]

Doesn't seem to be on ministrybooks.org, but that really shouldn't surprise anyone. I doubt they want the public to stumble across such works of fiction easily (likewise with the Fermentation of this Present Rebellion). It may be available somewhere else, I dunno. Or you may have to ask friends/family in the LC to order a copy from LSM for you to borrow. Just remember not to burn it, or they may never supply you with books again

[ABrotherInChrist]

Every time I hear of the many changes throughout the history of Lee's followers, I think of this:

Originally Posted by Ephesians 4:14 (NIV)

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.

The instability and rapid changes in Lee's teachings make it all the more suspect to me. I've seen the evidence on the forums of young (in the faith) Christians being "blown here and there by every wind of teaching" in the "Lord's Recovery". It is truly sad that the believers didn't grow and mature enough to get a more solid grasp on the truth.

Also brought to mind:

Originally Posted by Hebrews 13:9 (NIV)

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them.

I can't help but think that many have missed these warnings (and others) in scripture, and followed a charismatic teacher instead. Sigh.

Originally Posted by ABrotherInChrist

I just posted on the other forum about this, but it's still running through my head. Bear with me.



I've been getting more and more burdened by people referring to Lee, Titus Chu and others as their "spiritual father". Jesus in this passage (read the chapter in its entirety) is lambasting the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and evil ways. As part of this he states:

1. We are not to be called "Rabbi" (or master)
2. We are not to call anyone on earth "father"
3. We are not to be called "teacher"

We need to take this to heart. If we disregard this plain teaching, we end up with us revering our "spiritual father" here on earth.... we need to stop venerating other human servants of God. Give God all the glory, only He is worthy of it.


Anyways, that's what's been bugging me lately.

So why did Paul say God gave some as teachers, and no one says a word? Why did Paul refer to himself as a "begetting father" to the saints and everyone looks the other way?

Why does Paul get a free pass here?

Paul was a christian, much used by God. But he was too "organizational" for my liking.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Paul was a christian, much used by God. But he was too "organizational" for my liking.

This was me, by the way, writing this. I wanted to do a drive-by shooting just for fun. I'm sure someone reading it said "That looks like aron's doing". Well, it was.

I've made this point before. But until I get what I consider to be a decent response, I'll keep making it. Paul was too organizational. No problem; none of us are perfect, but I make the point because the bureaucratic wanna-be's turn Paul's epistles into "Roberts Rules of Order". Hope's thing about RG's "How to follow the (A)postle" was case in point for me.

Now, dunderheads of all stripes are going to misuse the Bible. Paul gets the organizational johnny-come-latelys who want to put "order in the church". They turn it into a morgue. Notice they don't have much to go on with Jesus? Maybe where He had them sit down in groups of hundreds when He broke the loaves and the fish. Pretty much that's it. The rest of His teachings are stuff like "The wind blows where it wills...where it comes from and where it goes no one can tell." Or "The kingdom of God is in the midst of you". Or, "Neither [go to] Jerusalem (Anaheim) or on the holy mountain (Cleveland) but in Spirit and in truthfulness". Etc, etc.

Of course, Jesus' words get seized by the mystics. They want to hate their parents, to drink poison, to handle snakes and cut their own hands off. That also is probalby unbalanced application.

But Paul gets the bureaucrats. All the "teachers" and "fathers" line up behind Paul. They wave his scriptures in the air and they're ready to go.

[ABrotherInChrist]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

So why did Paul say God gave some as teachers, and no one says a word? Why did Paul refer to himself as a "begetting father" to the saints and everyone looks the other way?

There is a difference between being a gifted teacher (which we so desperately need) and being put in the position of "Teacher". Witness Lee was put into both that position and that of "Father" i.e. spiritural father, by many in the LC. This is what Jesus was warning against.

Let's see if I can illustrate here (I'm awfully tired today so this may not work well)...

Say God gives a person.... "Joe" the gift of teaching (as outlined in Ephesians). If he works the gift God gave him for the building of the Church (as is intended), there are likely to be some who start to regard him as a great teacher. He may well BE a great teacher. However, at some point, the regard as a great teacher takes precedence over the fact that his teaching is a gift from God. People start to follow Joe, and after time, Joe gets a swollen head and thinks "I AM a great teacher". At this point, we see the danger of not following Jesus' words. Joe's followers are no longer following Christ, who is the true teacher. They are now following Joe, whose source of teachings had always been Christ. Joe at this time is also likely to toss off any sort of accountability to his brothers, as he thinks he is so much better than them, and they should be listening to him, he has no reason to listen to them...

Sound familiar?

The problem in this story is not that Joe was a gifted teacher. It was not that people recognized the gift in Joe and were willing to be taught by him. The problem was when they put him on a pedestal, and he started to accept the credit for God's work.

The problem (similarly) with recognizing others as your spiritual father is that that puts credit on the vessel God chose to do work in you, rather than on God himself. Yes, we are blessed by having those who are in fact our spiritual fathers to the extent that God used them to bring us to Him. However, once we start to give those spiritual fathers more credit than is due to them, we fall into the danger of following their every move, whether it is of God or not. The accountability is once again lost on the part of the "spiritual father", and he is able to manipulate you into doing anything.

This is why Jesus taught us (in the context of speaking of the Pharisees)
NOT to call another Rabbi (or master)... we are all brothers, all equal...
NOT to call another father... our only spiritual Father is God the Father...
NOT to call another teacher... our only teacher is to be Christ.

Later, Paul mentions that we are not to be "of Paul" or "of Peter" or "of Apollos" or "of Christ". We are to accept teaching from wherever it comes, as long as we check that it is truly from God. We should not be followers of any man.

[ABrotherInChrist]

I'm sure many of you have seen the bru-ha-ha over in the other forum. I know many of the participants are also here.

I just want to say... Please do not take my musings as being 100% accurate, or necessarily 100% how I believe.

I was investigating my conviction that Witness Lee matched the qualifications of a false teacher as outlined by Jesus in Matthew 7. In the process, I managed to offend some here. I apologize for that.

I realize that it is not easy to consider that a man (and system) that you followed for many years may in fact prove to be false by their fruit. However, does this mean that we shouldn't judge them based on their fruit? Far from it. Jesus *told* us to do so.

Some are convinced that Lee was the best thing since sliced bread, and had nearly no error. I'm not one of them.

There are those who are convinced he was a false teacher right from the beginning. I'm increasingly starting to believe this, especially seeing that the core of his heresies (modalism, 4-in-1 God, mingling of God and man) were from his early days.

There are some who believe he was a good teacher gone wrong. I can see how this might be a valid option. However, then I read Jesus words... He says to beware of false teachers and that we will know them from their fruits. What he doesn't say is whether or not they were always bad, or worked into being bad somehow.

I have not much to go on but the fruit of Lee's teachings. It is predominantly rotten fruit. Hence, he was a false teacher. Did he *start* bad or not? I really don't know, and I'm still pondering over that. There's not much question though that he ended as a false teacher.

One brother mentioned that he didn't think Lee was a false teacher at the beginning as people had such wonderful fellowship with him and learned from him. This is where I offended some people by showing that just because you have wonderful fellowship at first doesn't negate that the teachings are false. I apologize for my choice of examples, as it came across more harsh than I had intended. Suffice it to say... pick a known false teacher... early on, his followers (almost without fail) had wonderful fellowship with him. Whether that false teacher was a "death-cult" leader or the leader of the Mormons, or of the JWs, it really makes no difference to what I was trying to show.

So how did good solid Christians get sucked in by a false teacher? Well, if the teacher is a "wolf in sheep's clothing", it should follow that the believers saw him as a sheep, at least at first. On closer examination as time went by, they may have started to notice some oddities. Eventually, they may have witnessed this "sheep" howling at a full moon, or devouring another sheep. One would hope that at this point the "wolfiness" would have become evident.

Lee's error started early on. I'm sure at the time, not many people really noticed that he wasn't teaching orthodox teachings. This likely was because they were too focused on the outwardly positive things that were happening. I can't for a minute deny that there were positive things going on at the time. However, I think that many failed to discern the good teachings from the bad as much as they should have in the process.

The recognition and rejection of false teachers is a common theme in the New Testament. Obviously, it has been a problem in the church right from the beginning. Jesus spoke about it. Paul spoke about it. Peter spoke about it. John spoke about it. It's impossible to overlook all of these without skipping entire books of the Bible in some cases.

I'm thinking that if I find the time, I might go off and write an article/paper on false teachers and what we are to do about them, etc based on the scriptures.

[IDon'tKnow]

So how did good solid Christians get sucked in by a false teacher? Well, if the teacher is a "wolf in sheep's clothing", it should follow that the believers saw him as a sheep, at least at first. On closer examination as time went by, they may have started to notice some oddities. Eventually, they may have witnessed this "sheep" howling at a full moon, or devouring another sheep. One would hope that at this point the "wolfiness" would have become evident.

Can I just say that I think this is the reason why distinguishing life/death instead of right/wrong is emphasized. Everybody has at least rudimentary understanding of right/wrong but nobody really understands life other than (supposedly) Lee and the ministry. As a consequence when Lee and the ministry did wrong, the saints ended up judging based upon the fact that Lee and his Ministry is full of Life. and Yet based on what I have seen this ends up as a dead system with only the appearance of life.

[countmeworthy]

Originally Posted by ABrotherInChrist

So how did good solid Christians get sucked in by a false teacher? Well, if the teacher is a "wolf in sheep's clothing", it should follow that the believers saw him as a sheep, at least at first. On closer examination as time went by, they may have started to notice some oddities. Eventually, they may have witnessed this "sheep" howling at a full moon, or devouring another sheep. One would hope that at this point the "wolfiness" would have become evident.

Great question ABIC.

Here is some food for thought:

There is an innate desire built into us to seek brotherly love companionship. We were BORN of GOD. He is our Spiritual and Heavenly Father who sent His Son, Jesus to redeem & rescue & deliver us from the curse of sin. So as born again believers & now the many Sons of God, we long to be part of God's Family. On the surface, the LC ministry of WL looked like the family we all longed for. The home gatherings, the 'love feasts' of the 70s, the fellowship, our prayer time etc...seemed like the 'perfect' haven as we grew & matured in Christ.

Many people praised the leader for his wisdom & insight believing only he was getting the revelation from God.

So........the CONTROL, the 'subtle' control of the LC under Lee's headship did us in. It started with our criticism of our Christian brethren. 'Poor, poor Christianity' became our mantra. We prided ourselves to look different from everyone too. And the leadership never stopped the train that was derailing from the tracks.

So how did we get sucked in by a false teacher ? In looking for the city whose builder & maker is God, we got duped. We got duped because we didn't keep GOD as Numero UNO. We were letting MAN teach us...not the Holy Spirit, who is our REAL Teacher of the Word of God.

[countmeworthy]

We should have realized early on that we were not allowed to read materials other than Nee & Lee & whatever Lee approved. In most Christian circles I fellowship with, they have books by various authors. Some good & some not so good. But they have the freedom to read whatever they want to read by whomever.

I think someone mentioned in the other forum we didn't have the 'freedom' to share in meetings or home fellowships what we got out of someone else's writings. In my day, it was "I thank the Lord for Brother Lee". Goodness, we never even got up and said, I thank the Lord for my wife, my husband, my kids, my friends, my roomies, for a particular elder. It was all 'Brother Lee'. Brother Lee never stopped the adulation. And no one stopped each other either. But as we grieved the Holy Spirit for placing our loyalty & trust in a man, His Presence left us. And those of us who noticed the absence of our Precious Lord from our fellowship knew He was not happy with us. So slowly but surely, we left that stronghold.