Witness Lee and the Lord's Recovery Movement

@sonship said
@divegeester

I write a lot, and you come by and drop off some one liner you think is SO GOOD. I'm not having it. Read what I wrote if you want to talk with me.

What I write is relevant and meaningful. If you're too lazy to digest it then go find some better use of your time. Life is short. You owe it to yourself.

What you write is often hundreds of words of tangential irrelevant waffle in order to avoid addressing the point or question which has been put to you.

Which is exactly what you have been doing with me in this thread. If you think other people don’t see you doing this and draw their own conclusions, then you are deceiving yourself.

@divegeester

You just want to discourage people from reading carefully.

Fortunately, I don't think everyone here takes their marching orders from the likes of you.

@sonship said
@divegeester

You just want to discourage people from reading carefully.
Fortunately, I don't think everyone here takes their marching orders from the likes of you.

I am willing to help you get free from the local church cult if you are willing?

@sonship said
You may notice that there is one poster here who always tries to goad me to boast. This is his subtle attempt to maneuver me into self bragging. Can you see how very wicked this is?

I presume you are talking about my requests to you to substantiate your repeated claims that you are...

Becoming like Jesus Christ,

and that

Jesus Christ is flowing through you.

I am not asking you to brag or boast.

@sonship said
The next time you see FMF goad and taunt Christians Ie. - "Well how duplicated are you? Well, is living water flowing from you now? Well, have you arrived? Well, are you mature yet? What percentage are you like Jesus?"

Actually, the question was in response to a claim about yourself that you seemed to be making:

Do you see yourself as a "mass-produced" duplicate of Christ?

Now, you either want people to believe this is a process that is underway or you don't.

Incidentally, you are the ONLY Christian here who makes the claims that you do about how similar/identical you are to Jesus Christ.

If you don't want your claims to be scrutinized, perhaps you should post such claims on a blog and then delete reactions you dislike.

@sonship said
These are questions designed to entrap believers into boasting in themselves that they MAY be the fallen Laodicea. That is the skeptic is trying to entrap the believer into lukewarmness and self satisfaction. How unbelievably evil is the motive.

How unbelievably evil is the motive.

I don't think I am being "unbelievably evil".

I am not asking you to "boast".

What evidence is there in your behaviour and character, as seen in this community, that Jesus Christ is "flowing through" you, that you are "becoming like Jesus", and that you are in the process of becoming a "duplicate of Christ"?

Don't boast about it. Just offer some evidence.

At about 4:00-4:21 the speaker complains that we everybody else were denominations.

Actually Christians themselves say they are denominations. That is why the do not feel comfortable assembling together without letting the word know which division they are. We dropped the practice of that to go back to the New Testament.

And we found God's blessing on the oneness. So we desire to guard it.

Around 4:26 the speaker says "If we were led to believe God was doing something somewhere else it was just out of petty for the poor" [paraphrased]

Actually, in the recovery of Israel back from Babylon to the Good Land some very spiritual people were left there to help those who did not return. Daniel never returned to Good Land or Jerusalem or the rebuilt temple from Babylon. He prayed for the return. But he himself never had opportunity. How very spiritual was the prophet Daniel. And he actually was elevated by God in the Babylonian captivity to be a political figure. Of course God had him there to help the ones remaining.

I take issue with the speaker paining a general picture that in those days we recognized God as not doing ANYTHING anywhere else.

Many of the hymns in the LSM hymnal were taken from denominations. If God wasn't blessing Christians in denomination they would have included NO songs from them.

Did we sometimes offend? Yes. Once a car full of brothers stole a man's Catholic statue and drove down the road and chopped it to pieces. That was sinful to steal that man's statue. And restitution and apology should have been done to the offended person.

Mistakes were made by some young ones in those days. God didn't drop the twelve disciples when John and James asked Jesus to send fire down on a village that didn't receive them. And God didn't drop the church in Jerusalem when Ananias and Sapphire lied about not giving all their possessions to the communal distribution - which they were not bound to do anyway.

Before I came to the local church I apologized to some people.
I saw no need for the Holy Spirit to cease prompting me for the occasional need afterwards either.

It sounds to me that this speaker met for awhile and went away. They he returned and gave it a second try. And he left again. How do I know it was not some unfulfilled ambition in his own heart that he could not allow to be dealt with?

The church is the extension of the cross. By "the cross" I mean the gradual denial of the self replaced by the enjoying of Christ within. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. That is our destiny.

The practical church emerges as the old man is put to death for the enjoyment of the new man. Jesus told every single one of His disciples to expect to pick up their own cross and follow Him.

Little by little the transformation of the soul touches more parts of a man's being as Christ is wrought into him. Maybe the speaker just decided that NO MORE would he allow this sanctifying Spirit to permeate his soul.

So eloquent reasonings he concocts to put the blame on the church life.

The church in Corinth was genuine local church. One of the Corinthians having had enough of Christ filling him could have left with all kinds of reasons Ie. - "THEY did this. THEY did that. THEY did the other. So I am now enlightened to stop meeting as the church in Corinth."

I would tell the eloquent speaker in the video - A LOT of us went through similar tough times and continued to find grace from Christ to do so. We didn't quit. You have the freedom of conscience to throw in the towel. And we have the freedom of conscience to remain year after year learning to take Christ as grace through the work of sanctification."

Dariusz, plenty of us had experiences unpleasant. No local church in the New Testament was a utopia. But love covers the multitude of offenses. And through these very difficulties we learned to remain with the grace supplying Spirit to grow in Him.

" But holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ,

Out from whom all the Body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each oen part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love." (Eph. 4:15,16)

Around 5:12 the speaker says Lee claimed to be an apostle and claimed to be the minister of the age.

I never heard Lee directly say he was an apostle. I heard Nee say that some today are doing the work of apostles. I also recall Nee writing that missionaries for all intent and purposes were regarded as apostles. The Christians of today, I believe he said, just do not like to call them apostles but missionaries.

Now the ministry of the age matter. I agree that Witness Lee did refer to that. And I agree. But Witness Lee did not insist that only local churches that take his ministry could be genuine local churches.

If he was really considering himself as an authoritarian head of all he churches, then he would not recognize churches who said " We do not want to receive your ministry Bro. Lee" as genuine local churches.

However he did speak that local churches could become sects or become divisive too.

The
Local
Churches
Needing to Fellowship
with All the
Genuine Local Churches
on the Whole Earth
The local churches should fellowship with all the genuine local churches on the whole earth to keep the universal fellowship of the Body of Christ. Any local church that does not keep this universal fellowship of the Body of Christ is divisive and becomes a local sect. Some so-called local churches are not genuine and have become divisions; we do not need to fellowship with such “churches.” But we should have fellowship with all the genuine local churches on the whole earth to keep the universal fellowship of the Body of Christ. If not, we are no longer a church but a sect. A church is one that remains in the Body; a sect is a group of believers who divide themselves from the Body. When my arm remains in the body, it is a part of my living body. If it is cut off and separated from the body, it becomes a dead thing.

From A Brief Presentation of the Lord's Recovery
by Witness Lee

https://www.ministrybooks.org/SearchMinBooksDsp.cfm?id=22DCC8CB08

Lee said the standing determined the genuineness of a local church rather then the condition.

The Condition

The condition of a local church may fluctuate and may differ from that of all the other local churches, just as the conditions of the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 differed from one another. The church in Ephesus was in one condition, and the church in Smyrna was in another condition. All the seven churches were different in their conditions. However, although the conditions of the churches may differ, the ground of the local churches remains the same. Because the condition of a church may fluctuate, our recognizing of a local church should be based upon its nature and ground and not upon its condition.

A local church is preserved from being divided by its ground, not by its condition. The unique ground—the unique oneness of the Body of Christ, plus the unique ground of locality—preserves a church from being divided. The condition of a certain church may be good, but that does not assure that the ground of that church is right. A local church may be low in its condition, yet it is still a genuine local church as long as it keeps the genuine ground of the oneness of the Body. On the other hand, a local church may be high in its condition, but it is a division, a local sect, as long as it does not care for the genuine ground of the oneness of the Body of Christ expressed in its locality. We may use marriage as an illustration of this principle. The ground of a marriage is the chastity of the wife. As long as a wife is chaste, she has a proper standing, even though her character may be rough. She may not be loving or kind—this is her condition—but this does not annul the ground of her marriage. However, if her husband's name is Smith, and she begins to call herself Mrs. Jones, even if she is loving, kind, humble, and submissive toward her husband, her calling herself Mrs. Jones annuls the ground of her marriage. A wife's base in her marriage is her chastity.

I would add that the same is true of course for the husband - to remain faithful to his wife.

Any speaking from the speaker that Ie. "Well I was here and THIS wasn't very good. And that wasn't very good" may have some legitimate basis.

Before God, all the seven churches, regardless of condition in Revelation 2 and 3 were golden lampstands. The call for overcomers to overcome any residue of problems occurred in all SEVEN. What each church was told was to be heard by all the other churches.

The local church is still what it is. And having this vision we meeting as such allow the Lord to grow in us and finally have the last word concerning everything.