The Local Church of Witness Lee

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by aron

Remember that he relied heavily on printed outlines. So a lot of it was cut and dried. The magic, though, lay in the extemporizing, a craft which he'd honed over the years: he went up to the podium not knowing what he was going to share, but knowing that he would continue to mesmerize us. And we played along.

As I've mentioned, there is a big weakness in the Charismatic position. It is lively and entrancing, but we get trapped in the entrancement. The sensual (sensory stimulus) nature of the experience becomes the focus. As long as Uncle Witness spun his charms, he could interpret the sockets and boards in the Ark of the Covenant however he saw fit.

The lure of the meeting was to get mesmerized, hypnotized, to get hyper-stimulated and put "into the Spirit".At the trainings in Anaheim an elder JJ from Berkeley would run up and down the aisles screaming at the top of his lungs and waving his arms, frantically windmilling his points at us. We in the audience would roar with laughter, and why - because it was funny? No, but because he made us nervous, and laughter was our natural nervous response. We laughed, and then told ourselves we were "in Spirit". It's the same reason people go to movies to watch the Hulk and Batman punch each other, or get on a Roller Coaster at Six Flags: it's stimulating. And we were addicted to the rush. The rest of it, what the silver sockets of the ark signified, whether "Christ" or "The Spirit" or "transformation" or "the Church" or whatever, was incidental. As long as we got the rush, we kept coming back.

I have just recently become aware of a book by Nee titled "The Latent Power of the Soul". This is not an LSM endorsed Nee book. I believe that Stephen Kaung possible translated it into English. I have skimmed through it, and it speaks out against charismatic practices. It leads me to ask the question, would Nee have endorsed Lee's charisma? Apparently not, as this book is not published by LSM. I don't have a particular view on charisma, however, I do think that the LC really only has themselves to blame for the things that were written about them by outsiders. With such peculiar practices, how could they not attract negative attention?

[rayliotta]

Originally Posted by Freedom

I don't have a particular view on charisma, however, I do think that the LC really only has themselves to blame for the things that were written about them by outsiders. With such peculiar practices, how could they not attract negative attention?

Some people come to enjoy being misunderstood. It can even become a kind of addiction, methinks.