What is the point of control? What do they want?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

If the focus were simply loving and forgiving God’s children, then fine, but the focus was on the non-scriptural “ground of locality,” which creates a prideful arrogance of superiority regarding other believers.

If the focus is on the King, then you get the Kingdom and all its relations. If you focus on the Kingdom you get something else. In LC history, "Christ - only Christ" was a ruse, designed to separate believers from the relative safety of the flock. Notice how the songs from that era had "simply" and "just" in them - supposedly all other groups had deadly poisons in them, and unbearable impurities and we were returning to something pure. "Just by calling Jesus, Jesus, Jesus/We're finding its the way".

Now the LC started adding. The Ground. Calling. Drinking. Breathing. The Body. The Ministry. The New Way. God's Economy. All of these practices and concepts completely fabricated according to the temporal exigencies, i.e. whims, of one supposed Christian minister, and only tangentially related to scripture. Pseudo-Christian Cult 101. Works everytime, unfortunately. If you do a Google search of "True Church" and "Restored Church" you'll see a number who've pulled this off.

Suddenly you are in Taipei, getting your sock drawer examined by a Trainer. You have Philip Lee telling you to learn from the Red Guards. You hear of "golden opportunities" to "invest" in "God's present move" which is a for-profit company run by the Lee family.

Jesus is the mediator between God and man. By putting in other things as mediators between us and Jesus, we ended up where we are today. I'll never forget the meeting when the Anaheim contingent showed up with the latest word from the Guru. They had all the so-called elders of the church stand up front, wave their arms in synch, and sing, "PSRP/BNPB makes the eagle fly", to the tune of "Drink! A river pure and clear that's flowing from the throne". You should have seen the faces of the church members. Shock and disgust. But what could you do? It was "the church".

The point of control was/is to build up the Witness Lee guanxi network (WLGN). Once you see that, everything makes perfect sense. There was a purpose in everything. Even the "storms" were terrifically useful - they purged the system of any who weren't absolute for the WLGN.

Originally Posted by aron

But before 1956, the Little Flock had a lot of secular power in China. It's a different reality than what we were fed. Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China, by Joseph Tse-Hei Lee. Church History; 2005;74(1)

I learned from this paper that WN had multiple church-related businesses going on, besides what we heard of, the pharmaceutical company run with his brother (!!) and that he was a large land-holder (!!). WL the Disciple learned well from his Teacher. Suddenly WN's post-restoration "Handing Over" phase takes an entirely new cast... and WL, fortified with this discipling experience, went right into the epicenter of the Jesus Movement in S Cal in the late 1960s. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, like taking candy from a baby. All those ignorant hippies, that just wanted Jesus.