The Gospel Versus "God's Economy"

[Amcasci]

Originally Posted by awareness

Same deal:

1Co 15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
1Co 15:2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you

We weren't there for that preaching ... we don't have any record of it ... it's lost to us.

The best that we can hope to do to possibly determined what he preached to the Corinthians is to read writings that were written earlier, like Galatians and 1 Thessalonians. Which is what we end up doing.

So I'm taking bro Art that that is what you are doing, when trying to figure if Lee brought a different gospel. But we can't know it if we just use 2 Cor 11:4. Sorry.

Again I say that if your approach is accepted there nothing we can know for sure. Read the rest of the verses that I cited. In those verses he plainly says what he preached to them. Obviously not every last word of what he said but surely an accurate summary. "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and was raised on the third day according g to the scriptures." I believe it is a safe conclusion that the scripture he refers to is Isaiah 53 and perhaps the Levitical system which speak to christ's death for sins. Not only so but by the time Paul wrote this epistle he. Was likely familiar with the Apostles and their eyewitness accounts of Jesus.

Art

[aron]

Originally Posted by Amcasci

In those verses he plainly says what he preached to them. Obviously not every last word of what he said but surely an accurate summary. "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and was raised on the third day according g to the scriptures." I believe it is a safe conclusion that the scripture he refers to is Isaiah 53 and perhaps the Levitical system which speak to christ's death for sins. Not only so but by the time Paul wrote this epistle he. Was likely familiar with the Apostles and their eyewitness accounts of Jesus.

And Paul had his own personal record-keeper, in Luke the physician. Some of Paul's gospel speeches are recorded essentially verbatim in the book of Acts. So we have a good idea of the gospel which Paul preached.

[Lisbon]

Originally Posted by aron

And Paul had his own personal record-keeper, in Luke the physician. Some of Paul's gospel speeches are recorded essentially verbatim in the book of Acts. So we have a good idea of the gospel which Paul preached.

I guess I dare not say the LC preaches another gospel but...

When our young graduates of FTT go to campuses on our payroll, they make appointments and start trying to make LCers of those whom they contact. They maintain they are not an outreach of the LC but are merely Christians on Campus. The Lord said they that be whole need not a physician but they that are sick. I think it is quite clear to us all they do not look for the sick but for the promising ones to gain. Sin is not a problem in the LC. Lest you think I am guessing about the payroll, I passed out checks for quite some time in my past.

They are selling WL even though dead for if they win, he is the one they must worship in reality. You don't need to confess your sins to be a LCer just call on the Lord. The same is true of baptism, just call on the Lord. Believe me I am not averse to calling on the Lord, but... Admittedly I only really know the DFW area.

I don't know what the Mormons preach but I'm fairly sure they teach high morality, good family life, and maybe the Tabernacle Choir before Joseph Smith. I for one really like the choir. I didn't hear WL was an apostle til after a year in. Had I heard it at first I would never come back.

A different gospel? Yes. I think they preach a different gospel. Sorry
Lisbon

[awareness]

Okay, I'll go along with UntoHim and assume that we know the Jesus, spirit, and gospel, Paul was speaking of.

But if the good news Jesus brought is what Witness Lee produced then what Jesus expected of his followers has no attraction whatsoever, except for fanatics that want to be mindless.

Just stop and think about it. If the gospel Jesus brought meant that His followers gave their whole life to following one man, and going to meeting after meeting, and conference after conference, and training after training, and consuming books from just a couple of authors, and spending hours watching videos of the leading man, and if He expected His followers to go around calling "Oh Lord Jesus," and praying a book, all the time; and not caring for the poor, sick, outcasts, and the like, then I don't know if the gospel Jesus and Paul brought were the good news God intended.

Is all that what Jesus intended for His followers? Is that it? Is that the good news? Is that THE gospel?

It was certainly the gospel Lee brought. But is it a different Jesus, spirit, and gospel Jesus came to bring? If so Lee brought us a different Jesus and a different gospel.

Who would want it but crazy people. Of which I once was. But no more. Amen.

[Freedom]

I agree with Lisbon. To those in the LC, the whole goal of their “preaching the gospel” is to proselytize people. This is fairly evident, and I think those in the LC are the only ones who would really deny this. I don’t believe that the act of proselytizing automatically means that they preach another gospel, I think it means that they are more likely to preach another gospel. To be fair, many other groups are concerned with do this too, so it isn’t indicative of anything in particular.

When it comes the various LC “outreach” groups (Christians on Campus, BFA, etc.), the goal is always the same, to recruit new LC members. The common goal is obvious to anyone who knows anything about these groups. The problem that I see is that sometimes they make recruitment a bigger concern rather than actually preaching the gospel. I have seen situations where this is so much so, that preaching the gospel is hardly a concern at all.

An example that comes to mind is when a few of us were trying to invite someone to a home meeting. This person didn’t seem comfortable with the idea and asked if it was okay to come on Sunday instead. As per LC policy, “new ones” are not really supposed to come to a Lord’s Table meeting for their first meeting, so we told him “no”. This didn’t go over well, and eventually we said he could come to a meeting on Sunday. By that time it was too late, it was already a lost cause. The whole issue was pure politics, us trying to do things the “right” way, and we were trying to maximize his potential as an LC recruit, by starting him in the “shallow end”. I later realized that in all this I had never concerned myself with whether he was even saved or not. Obviously preaching the gospel should have been a primary concern, but it wasn’t, it had become the least important issue of all.

[InOmnibusCaritas]

Looking at the replies in this thread, I realise we have to take a step backwards on this one. We have to define the gospel. All over this thread, we have people talking about target audience, outreach strategy, and corollaries of the gospel (e.g., social concerns). We even have a contributor who doesn't think we can ever know the gospel that Paul preached!

Let's not put the cart before the horse. Let's first define the gospel preached by the apostle before we determine whether Lee measured up to it.

May I request that we all read the following articles before continuing this discussion:

Definition of the gospel: https://bible.org/article/what-gospel
God's plan of salvation: https://bible.org/article/gods-plan-salvation
The Roman Road (presentation of the gospel): http://www.gotquestions.org/Romans-road-salvation.html

Let's see if we can all agree these are the tenets of the gospel before moving on to whether LC preached a different one.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by InOmnibusCaritas

Let's not put the cart before the horse. Let's first define the gospel preached by the apostle before we determine whether Lee measured up to it.

Finally InOmnibusCaritas gets it. We have to first define what the gospel is before we can determine if Lee brought a different Jesus and or gospel.

Originally Posted by InOmnibusCaritas

We even have a contributor who doesn't think we can ever know the gospel that Paul preached!

I was merely pointing out that 2 Cor. 11:4, the verse were we get "different Jesus, different gospel" from, reveals that Paul preached to the Corinthians sermons that didn't come down to us. This shouldn't be a surprise. Obviously there was way more preaching going on back then that didn't come down to us and that we don't have in our canon. The canon even attests to this, in the GOSPEL according to John:

Joh_21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

The gospel was, or is, the real Jesus, not a contrived Jesus.

Paul was our earliest contributor to the books of the New Testament. And already, just a few decades after Jesus went on vacation to His Father, Paul tells us of different Jesus's (sic) and gospels.

What were these different Jesus's and gospels? And if they came along so early in primitive Christianity what are they today?

Today we have more than 33,000 different Christian sects. Are there really 33,000 different Jesus's and gospels?

The would mean that Lee brought us just one different one among many. Will the real Jesus and real gospel please stand up?

Personally I favor the OSAS gospel .... it's my only hope.

Thanks InOmnibusCaritas ....

[OBW]

Originally Posted by InOmnibusCaritas

May I request that we all read the following articles before continuing this discussion:

Definition of the gospel: https://bible.org/article/what-gospel
God's plan of salvation: https://bible.org/article/gods-plan-salvation
The Roman Road (presentation of the gospel): http://www.gotquestions.org/Romans-road-salvation.html

Seems interesting to me that the first link opens "gospel" up to much more than "salvation by grace through faith" then the other two pretty much shrink it back down to just that.

While the first is not so thorough in its discussion of all the aspects of the gospel, it does make one thing clear, and that is that the gospel was very full and robust at a point that there was no death, burial, and resurrection to believe in. While those are now surely included, it seems that limiting the term "gospel" to the telling of the plan of salvation is a product of Protestantism. We may have steered the ship away from some rocks over they years, but at some level we have steered it toward a different reef. This is especially true of the portion of Christianity that focuses on line-in-the-sand conversion. In other words, most of evangelicalism and fundamentalism (which is generally a subset of evangelicalism). We have spent the last 20 or so years trying to get all the peripheral theology figured out down to the way to describe and practice communion (the Lord's table) and still don't all agree on all aspects of even that one thing.

But we have simultaneously dismissed much of what is the gospel from mind as we distill it down to death, burial, and resurrection. Seems that the gospel really begins by being the gospel of the kingdom. Something that is appealing. Something that was well-defined and there to be preached prior to there being a death, burial, or resurrection to preach. Something that is out of reach because "my life" is not like that. So it is my desire to follow Jesus. To be obedient to the living that he commanded. To have the attributes that warrant being among the "blessed are the . . . ." And when we read right after those blesseds, we see that there is a law of righteousness that is higher than the one written down in the OT. It means living much better than just not stealing or murdering. That is where it becomes clear that we need something beyond us. We need sacrifice that sets aside God's wrath. We need the life that is raised in newness. We need access to the throne of God.

The gospel draws us in. It then shows us how we are not up to the task of living it. Then it shows us the way through the sacrifice of Christ and the help of the Spirit. Then we return to the part that drew us in as the instruction for our new life.

At the very least, it is in the refusal of there being any more law to obey, or command to obey anything, that Lee's gospel is different. No, his "how to be saved" may not be flawed, but that is not THE gospel. It is just part of it. Lee was fairly good on this part. But he essentially reject other parts.

I think we can eventually come to see that as a "different gospel." And if that different gospel is the one that Lee says Christ laid out, then he is talking about a "different Christ." At least at some level.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Amcasci

Again I say that if your approach is accepted there nothing we can know for sure. Read the rest of the verses that I cited. In those verses he plainly says what he preached to them. Obviously not every last word of what he said but surely an accurate summary. "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and was raised on the third day according g to the scriptures." I believe it is a safe conclusion that the scripture he refers to is Isaiah 53 and perhaps the Levitical system which speak to christ's death for sins. Not only so but by the time Paul wrote this epistle he. Was likely familiar with the Apostles and their eyewitness accounts of Jesus.

Art

Bro Art, if we're gonna argue over all the preaching that went on back then, that hasn't come down to us, we'll obviously be arguing until the cows come home, and we'll never come to certainty. Just one example will suffice, the apostle Barnabas. Half of the New Testament is by the apostle Paul, but nothing from Barnabas. All of that is lost to us. And according to Acts Barnabas was an apostle.

However we're talking about Witness Lee and what he brought to us. And we can use the two letters of Paul to the Corinthians to help us determine that.

Just two examples in his letters to the Corinthians determines that Lee brought the church of Corinth to us: sexual immorality (1 Cor. 5) and bringing lawsuits to unbelieving secular courts (1 Cor. 6). And both Paul condemned.

So we can safely say Lee brought us the church in Corinth, in all its ugly glory.

Was that the different Jesus, spirit, and gospel, Paul was referring to in 2 Cor. 11:4? If so, Lee brought us something different than the gospel Paul preached.

Thanks for your response Art.

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by awareness

So I'm taking bro Art that that is what you are doing, when trying to figure if Lee brought a different gospel. But we can't know it if we just use 2 Cor 11:4. Sorry.

Originally Posted by Amcasci

Not only so but by the time Paul wrote this epistle he was likely familiar with the Apostles and their eyewitness accounts of Jesus.

Originally Posted by aron

And Paul had his own personal record-keeper, in Luke the physician. Some of Paul's gospel speeches are recorded essentially verbatim in the book of Acts. So we have a good idea of the gospel which Paul preached.

Sorry Harold, your contention that we can't know the Gospel that Paul preached in not only nonsense, it is off topic. The question at hand is does the LC teach/preach another Gospel....the fact that there was a Gospel that was preached, and we know what that Gospel was, is not up for debate on this thread. Take your arguments over to Alt Views where they belong....or I'll do it for you.