The Gospel Versus "God's Economy"

[leastofthese]

Originally Posted by awareness

Methinks the LC will die if they can't laugh at themselves, and at Lee. I mean : C'mon ... he was just a man. And it turns out, that one way or another, hither or thither, some times at least, all we human beings are laughable. Why should Lee be different? He was just being Lee the entertainer when he cooked up the notion of a processed God. He was just being cute. And that's laughable. Lee the comedian.

Laughing at Lee is a big “No-No” in the LSM churches. No wonder you got the boot.

The first rule in the LSM, don’t question Lee. Questioning Lee is antithetical to the recovery. That should be the first red flag.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

Laughing at Lee is a big “No-No” in the LSM churches. No wonder you got the boot.

The first rule in the LSM, don’t question Lee. Questioning Lee is antithetical to the recovery. That should be the first red flag.

LofT,

Do you have any substantive contribution to this topic? Or just a typical drive by shooting...

Just sayin....

Drake

[aron]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

The first rule in the LSM, don’t question Lee. Questioning Lee is antithetical to the recovery. .

Originally Posted by Drake

Do you have any substantive contribution to this topic? Or just a typical drive by shooting...

I think this is relative to the conversation. Questioning Lee is essential to the recovery's survival. People can't do it in person, and so are forced to do so online. Thus, this forum and this thread. None of this questioning can be done live in the LC. One is called "negative" and "rebellious" and given the boot.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Drake

Well, I believe it too aron... but there is a very big difference between what transpired in Christ's resurrection and that of others who were resurrected in the NT.

Christ's resurrection entails more than just God having raised Him from the dead. That is why "became" is used for the divine processes... so, its the "became" that is relevant.

We have a dilemma, then: my Bible says God raised Jesus from the dead, and your Bible says God [the Word] became flesh and this God [incarnated Word as Last Adam] became the Life-Giving Spirit. And you then surmise that this Life-Giving Spirit “became” seven-fold intensified. The Bible doesn’t say “God became intensified”, and one strains to understand the “intensified” God (God wasn’t intense in Exodus?); nonetheless your logic train demands it. Okay. What to do?

I see three options, here. First option is what I call the “Two Bibles” option. You have “your” Bible with “your” verses, and I have mine. You recite “your” special verses, and I recite mine. We both tacitly ignore the other one’s verses. Believe it or not, I see this occasionally: I'll cite the “wrong” verses to a dogmatist, and they'll just stare blankly ahead, and not respond.

Another option is to relegate some of the Bible to “lesser” status; you know, “fallen” and “natural” and such. The so-called “low gospel”. That way one can at least acknowledge its existence, while still treating it as irrelevant, meanwhile adamantly waving one’s “proof text” verses, which “show” that such-and-such is so-and-so. One has their "high peak theology" which is "clearly shown" by a few key verses (even parts of verses[!!]) and what scripture can't be aligned gets dismissed as irrelevant to the conversation. Unimportant and ignored.

My option is to try to reconcile it all. The whole thing. I believe that the writers and compilers of the NT thought the whole of scripture was revelatory, and contained a seamless reality. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” “All scripture is God-breathed….” Etc.

So I see God acting in the Bible through agents, intermediaries, who are God from an operational perspective. One place, the scripture says the Angel of the Lord spoke to Moses, and elsewhere that God spoke to Moses. Manoah and his wife saw the Angel of the Lord; they also saw God. God said, “I will go before you” in Exodus; also God said, “I will send My Angel before you”. Same thing. You continually see "God" and "God's agent" used interchangeably.

No one has ever seen God (John 1:18a), yet through the Special Intermediary one may operationally see God(John 1:18b). God says to Moses, “I will make you (Moses) God to them”. (Exod 7:1) When Pharaoh sees Moses, he operationally, or economically, sees God. Moses is, economically-speaking, God; not essentially of course, but from a “practical” or job-carrying out perspective one may say that “Moses is God”. The idea of agency is rife in the NT, look how many parables Jesus taught on "masters" and "servants". There is the Sender and the Sent One. "God loved us so much that He sent His Only Begotten Son", and "The Father has sent me" (John 20:21; 17:18 etc).

The Roman Centurion therefore told Jesus, “I also am a man under authority” (Matt 8:9; Luke 7:8); as such, the Centurion spoke to others and Caesar spoke through him - “I tell this one, ‘go’, and he goes; and this one ‘come here’, and he comes over…” Just as Jesus said, “When you see me you see the Father”, so the Centurion could say, “When you see me, you see Caesar”. Because Centurion was a man under Caesar’s will, and carrying out Caesar’s desire. Centurion was Caesar personified, made flesh operationally. When the servants saw Centurion, and heard his voice, they obeyed as if Caesar himself were there, speaking. (Note that Jesus marveled at ''such faith").

Jesus is both First Born of Creation (Col 1:15) and the One through whom God created all things (Eph 3:9; Col 1:16; cf Heb 1:2; John 1:3).

Thus also is with God: no one has ever seen God, yet God can be seen through His intermediaries. So angels, for example, are interchangeable with God from an operational perspective. The Angel told Philip to go down the South Road out of Jerusalem to preach the gospel; the Holy Spirit told Stephen to run up to the Ethiopian chariot. Which was it? Economically, it was the same thing. (Acts 8:26,29)

So “God made Jesus both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36)… not “God ‘became’ Lord and Christ”. Yet Jesus could say, “When you see me, you see the Father”, just as Moses could say to Pharaoh, “When you see me, you see the LORD”. In other words, "I [Jesus the Messiah or Special Covenanted Agent] come to do Your [God the Father] will, O God; behold in the scroll of the book it is written concerning me [the Obedient Sent Agent]" (Heb 10:9; Psa 40:8). And conversely, Jesus could say, “You [believers] shall be one [economically], just as I am one [economically] with the Father”. I and Ohio are one economically, not essentially.

I think Witness Lee got it backwards: Jesus is economically, or operationally God, but not essentially the Father. Lee said Jesus was essentially the Father but operationally a man Jesus. I think he got it backwards. The Centurion was operationally Caesar; Moses was operationally the LORD, or God (to Pharaoh). But they were not essentially the same as the sender. Likewise, I'm operationally one with Ohio and awareness and ZNP, not essentially one.

Paul, even, as a Sent One (apostle) of Jesus Christ was from an operational point of view, to the Galatian believers, Christ Himself. Paul was the Emissary of Christ to them: "and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself." We should all receive one another this way; even the "lowest" among us, should be "covered with grace and glory" (cf 1 Cor 12:23); as Christ himself. . ."No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." (1 John 4:12)

Sorry for the length, but we're talking "God's economy" here.

Originally Posted by Drake

Something changed... a marvelous thing. What could it be?

Drake

God didn't change. God is the same forever. (Heb 1:12; 13:8) Jesus is still King of the Jews, and King of Israel. He is still both Lord and Christ. Still Saviour of the world. Still the Name above every name.

James wrote, "With God, there is no variability; no shadow cast by turning." I believe that he means, with God there is no change. It is we who change, and thus God may appear differently. "To to pure You appear pure, to the perverse You appear distorted." But God is never distorted. I believe first-century Jews, who composed the NT, thought this way. But some of them believed into the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead, and to those God gave the authority to become the children of God. It was centuries later that the mental gymnastics were required to become a believer. And I see the "processed God" as exemplar.

[Drake]

-1

Thank you aron.

I agree with a lot of what you say in this post. Some I don’t to be sure, but before drilling down on your thoughtful treatise please advise whether you agree with R.C Sprouts point of view concerning the differences between the ontological and economical Trinity. If you differ with his point of view, please explain precisely where and why.

Thanks again,
Drake

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by aron

We have a dilemma, then: my Bible says God raised Jesus from the dead, and your Bible says God [the Word] became flesh and this God [incarnated Word as Last Adam] became the Life-Giving Spirit. And you then surmise that this Life-Giving Spirit “became” seven-fold intensified. The Bible doesn’t say “God became intensified”, and one strains to understand the “intensified” God (God wasn’t intense in Exodus?); nonetheless your logic train demands it. Okay. What to do?

I see three options, here.

I see a fourth option. When Edison invented the lightbulb did he invent a single bulb, a dim bulb, an intense bulb, a lamp with seven bulbs, etc? Does this really have to be either/or? Wasn't a lamp with seven bulbs one of the original options?

If the church is a lamp set on a hill, why wouldn't seven churches in seven localities be a lamp stand with seven bulbs?

If we are the light of the world, then why wouldn't this light become more and more intense as the church grows?

Jesus grew in strength and grace, why wouldn't the church also grow in strength and grace?

[aron]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

I see a fourth option. When Edison invented the lightbulb did he invent a single bulb, a dim bulb, an intense bulb, a lamp with seven bulbs, etc?

There were seven bulbs in Exodus when God told Moses, "See that you build everything according to the Vision shown you on the Holy Mountain." If God needed seven bulbs, they were there already.

Originally Posted by Exodus 25

"Then make its seven lamps and set them up on it so that they light the space in front of it.

This would have been plain to any first-century reader. Our theology, created centuries later, required us to see "the intensified third of the Trinity". Huh?

This is what I meant by the gymnastics later needed. Lee was the master of this. "This means that". . . as soon as you start tugging on the threads of his fabric it unravels right in front of us.. but we're trained, "Never tug on those threads, there!" So instead of questioning the hermeneutics, we do gyrations to stay inside them. And don't look at the "wrong" verses! Then it really becomes troubling.

So in my local church we were told, "Don't think". We were told it would just make us confused. "Don't be hardened, just be simple, drop your concepts..." Yet all I see in Lee's teachings are concepts. Most of them barely supportable, if at all.

I also have concepts, and opinions. But suppose I started a website and chased off any who didn't agree with my every "jot and tittle"?

Originally Posted by Ohio

One notable action which Lee and LSM has taken is to remove and neutralize the gifted members of the body from ministering according to the anointing Spirit. The list of gifted and fruitful ministers around the globe, who once labored to establish churches, and have been expelled by Lee/LSM is just incredible. This forum is filled with their accounts. They were used by Lee, then were discarded. None of them ever parted peacefully. They were always nasty "divorces." Why would Lee/LSM do this? What was there motive? Just to remove "any individual distinctiveness" from the churches?

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Drake

LofT,

Do you have any substantive contribution to this topic? Or just a typical drive by shooting...

Just sayin....

Drake

Excuse me! I'm the drive by shooter around here ! (I call it interloping). I come from down under.

And I think LofT was very substantial. My problem back then ... before the door ... was that I was very serious.

And I would have never thought of laughing at Lee. Maybe you don't know, or don't remember, but, I was accused of "using Witness Lee's works to destroy Witness Lee's works."

Forget about any taboo of laughing at Lee, in those days we couldn't even use old Lee to point out a flaw in 'new flow Lee.'

And that's substantial. It got me the door. I was processed ... right out the door. And it was a long drawn out process. Now ... I'm a processed little 'g' god. Amen! Thank you Lord! Lee was right! But tho it certainly can be debated, I doubt God went thru something like that.

Still, don't stop trying bro Drake, you haven't prompted a belly laugh yet (that I know of - I'm behind - this thread is work to keep up with). So peace in the valley right now.