Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
Brother NFNL, we are on different wavelengths here.
So when I speak about discerning "the good from the worthless," (as in Hebrews 5.14) we are obviously speaking of different things.
|
I don't think we are, brother.
You had said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I also need to discern which of WL's teachings were leavened, so I can purge myself of those. Otherwise, by discarding my entire LC experience, I throw out the good with the bad.
|
You did not say, "I need to discern which teachings of Christ, of the Bible, of the Truth had been leavened." - you speak rather of Lee's teachings. You are saying that some of Lee's teachings were good, and that you can
somehow separate the good from the bad. That's a difficult if not
impossible task, and that's what 1 Corinthians 5:6 tells us.
Imagine the sum of Lee's ministry - his entire set of Life Studies, commentaries, messages, etc. etc. are likened to a loaf of Wonderbread. Now I come and place this loaf of Wonderbread in front of you, and say "Here my brother is food to nourish you. Only beware the leaven of the bread. That will poison you, sicken you, and kill you." Would that loaf be of
any use to you at all? HOW do you pick leaven - yeast - out of the loaf to eat the nourishing substance in that loaf? More importantly, do you not see that even if you were able to
exactly chemically separate what was left of the yeast from rest of the components of the dough, is it not still true that the presence of yeast in the bread earlier changed it's very composition and nature? No matter what you do, the dough was effected by that yeast, and it can
never again be the same.
I began reading this morning from an abridged edition of Jessie Penn-Lewis' "War on the Saints". What touched me immediately was the Forward to this edition -
please read this through carefully:
"
John Wesley, in dealing with overbalance and fanaticism, uses the word enthusiam, and says: "Enthusiasm is undoubtedly a disorder of the mind; and such disorder as greatly hinders the exercise of reason. Nay, sometimes it wholly sets it aside: it not only dims but shuts the eyes of understanding. It may, therefore, well be accounted a species of madness; of madness rather than folly: seeing a fool is properly one who draws wrong conclusions from right premises; whereas a madman draws right conclusions, but from wrong premises. And so does an enthusiast. Suppose his premises are true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake: his premises are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not, and therefore, setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way."
My God my God! Does this very word not speak to the nature of the LSM system in it's entireity, and to your own quest to discover and remove the leaven specifically? Lee's premises are false - and his ministry was built entirely upon one premise: That the Bible contains MORE THAN ONE GOSPEL - that it has a LOW and a HIGH Gospel... that there was a "different gospel" to be preached, that no one else on Earth was preaching: God's Economy! We are warned very specifically within Scripture to stay away from those who preach a different gospel (Didn't Paul say: " I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned." (Galatians 1:6-9) and also "..there shall be false prophets among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies... through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you." (2nd Peter 2:1-3 excerpted), and did He not praise the Church in Ephesus when He said "you have tried those who say they are apostles, and are not, and have found them liars." Revelation 2:2. In Lee's case, we ALL ignored Christ's admonition. I am not singling you out brother - far from it: we were ALL decieved. That's indeed a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it we must.
How were we so easily deceived? Because, I think, we were seduced. We were seduced by a man who really was
very gifted at writing and constructing clever arguments to make his case. We were deceived because he built a system that gave us something that many Christian groups don't have: a true community of fellow saints. That was sweet, I confess it - but the plan
behind that community was most foul: It was a plan that would see us isolated from our brothers and sisters in Christ, the True Body Universal, and would make us
more susceptible to the deception within, so that even when we heard troubling news, we immediately discounted it and determined that to even raise questions would be rebellious.
We became the
enthusiastic slaves of the system: we helped build a Corporation built on book publishing, funded by our donations, built up by our time spent constructing halls and housing... and all to do what? To reach the lost for Christ? To preach the gospel (even the so-called 'Low gospel') to the unbelieving world? To provide shelter for the poor and food for the hungry? To reach out to those in prison or those in distress? No. None of those things. The money and time we invested in LSM was used to build up it's offices and it's corporate profits and launch lawsuits against fellow believers to protect those assets and that income... and ultimately to raise first one man (Lee) and today a consortium of them up (the so-called 'Blended Brothers') on pedestals where they do not belong. Where no
man belongs, in the place we are to reserve for Christ and Christ alone (Ephesians 5:23b "
Christ is the head of the Church, His Body, of which He is the Saviour.")
Shame on us
all! We were taken in because we did not study enough of the The Word, because we were not able to discern for ourselves what was the truth. Because we failed to test every spirit. We failed to trust our own discernment. We came to imagine we were something that we were
not: the only true church, the only overcomers in a world full of perverse 'christians' who didn't know Him as we knew Him. The truth is,
we thought we were rich and increased with goods and had need of nothing. We thought we had it all. But we were poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked. (Rev 3:17-18).
The only defense against false apostles is found in staying in the Word. This is something each of us needs to do daily. And don't just study - obey. That's the part left entirely out of LSM's ministry: The need to obey Christ and the commands of the Father. It's left out because that would put you under the light yoke of Christ, and out from under the heavy and burdensome yoke of LSM.
In Christ,
NeitherFirstnorLast