Jeffery James

Yeah, there are very good reasons why Christians neither emphasize nor bother to teach this doctrine in America, unless you are learning church history.

Concerning Lee's teaching. Its a downright poor understanding of what the Orthodox church preserved over the years. They SOUND the same, but they are definitely different, which is why Lee's teaching of man becoming God bathes in heresy.

My personal interpretation of why Lee went off the wall here was for multiple reasons.

First, he needed a "come-back" teaching to distract the Local Recovery (LR) movement from the dangerous aftermath of the "God Ordained Teachings" era, which did not sit well with many churches, families, and Christians in the 1980s. (In fact, even this year, I heard about coworkers being suppressed for wanting to continue practicing these extremist teachings)

Second, maintaining influence within an organization like this requires constantly "loading the language" to shape the followers’ thought patterns. A key aspect of the totalistic teaching of the "Minister of the Age" is the claim that this "Minister" uniquely reveals and recovers some aspect of God’s truth in their time. Implicitly, the "Minister" must perpetually do this to maintain their reputation and authority. All this to say, "God became man so that man could become God" was the shell, but Lee's inaccurate theology and controlling ideology were the content.