God's Eternal Purpose

[OBW]

Originally Posted by zeek

I think you would agree with me that the footnote is an interpretation that many protestants could accept without reservation if it were not coming from a preacher who was consistently against Christianity. That Jesus made these statements outside of the context of his last supper, argues against the conclusion that he is referring to the Eucharist. That he doesn't follow the statement with instructions about how to pray-read the Bible argues against that interpretation.

One can have a precise detached knowledge of another person, his psychological type and his calculable reactions, but in knowing this you do not know the person, his centered self, his knowledge of himself. Only in participating in his self, in performing a break-through into the center of his being, will you know him in the situation of your break-through to him. John 6:54 may be advocating that through faith we participate in Christ's existence with our own.

I don't know about what you say in the second paragraph (and I do not see anything hinting at me that you are obviously right or wrong). And I probably will simply note it as a reasonable understanding.

But on your first paragraph, I have to agree. If this were consistent with all of Lee's teachings, he would likely have had at least some respect in the Christian world. But his constant rants against everyone else, coupled with his penchant for novel, and even heretical teachings, makes this one footnote almost the exception to the rule. And no matter how many "good" footnotes we can find, they are the groundwork for being a good Bible scholar in the eyes of his followers so that he can provide all the others. It is as if teachings like this one are almost too low for him — especially since they are essentially in agreement with other Christian teachers — but they are necessary to prepare the flock for the fleecing.

You have to start the pot with room-temperature water, then turn up the heat a little at a time.

But people will point to people like me who came from other branches of Christianity and assert that it was the special teachings that were attractive. And I would agree. But they were still underpinned with the existence of these normal, everyday truths. Without those, we would never have let him get to the part where he pulls a word equivocation, or provides some spiritual-sounding story to assert something novel.

He needed to look like he had studied the whole Bible quite thoroughly to be able to convince us that he knew what he was talking about when he said that "if we would make a thorough and careful study of the Scriptures with spiritual insight, we would realize that God’s economy is simply His plan to dispense Himself into humanity. (The Economy of God, Chapter 1, paragraph 5, second sentence)" Note that in these various books both Lee and Nee would spend a whole paragraph (sometimes one of the longer ones) just making fact statement after fact statement, each with a verse reference provided, then follow-on at the end with a ridiculous statement that we just took as being as sound as all the others before. I saw this some years back when we were looking into a few of Nee's and Lee's books on these forums. It struck me as pointless to have some whole paragraph of factual statements that did not have any bearing on the topic at hand. Then I realized that the whole thing appeared to be a setup for the last sentence which was not a factual statement. But it was included as if it was just like all the others before it.

And we bought it. And probably those who were in the meetings where it was first spoken were shouting "amen" louder and louder with each fact provided. Once the stinker came, we weren't even looking. We just said "amen" louder and accepted that it must be the truth.

I will admit right here and now that I recall that this was quite an interesting discovery at the time. And I started noticing it in several other books that I just opened up to look into. But I cannot recall which ones those were, so I do not have an immediate example. But if someone just has to have it, I can eventually find one. And probably more than one.