Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
I know much has been said of Nee's Plymouth Brethren roots. I think Penn-Lewis threw him out of whack the most.
Also, Jesse claimed her writings were inspired just like scripture. Maybe that's where Nee came by his god-complex.
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Nee was a bright young man. He read widely. Lee made a big deal about that and there probably was a kernel of truth there. So Nee was able to synthesize his readings and produce something new.
Actually, a bright young man, reading widely, accumulating a "treasure store of things old and new" is not unknown. That is what PhD programs are, for instance. The PhD dissertation should produce something that "is a revelation that no one else could have produced", as
OBW phrased it.
So why did that get so distorted, that we all just checked our discernment at the door? I bet I could go to a Local Church meeting today, and if I got up and prefaced my comments with, "Jesse Penn Lewis wrote..." then all the old-timers would stiffen up and the younger folk would look around with curiosity. Who?
Everyone there knows Penn Lewis influenced Nee, and of course Nee was "THE seer of THE divine revelation in the present age", so instantly my words would have credibility. Even if I said, "Mrs. Jesse Penn Lewis said..." and then said something patently absurd, people would still pause and consider. Maybe Penn Lewis was in the throes of some "holy madness" when she wrote that...
People become respecters of persons, contrary to the explicit and repeated injunctions in the Bible. We pretend it isn't so but it is. And it is perniciously rooted there in the Local Churches. They are, arguably, a textbook case of personality cult. Brother
awareness saw it laid bare, in all its fierce, unchristian reality.
Ohio saw it. Most of the rest of us saw it from a distance: I watched a video of WL and TC at a training once, with all the requisite bowing and scraping. There was no doubt who was Top Dog and who was Little Dog in that relationship.
At the time, several safe stages removed from this mode of discipling, I thought they were just maintaining good order in the church. They were, actually, but they were also maintaining a lot more than that. They were maintaining a system in which independent thought was forbidden. Nee had been the seer of the revelation, Lee was his closest disciple, and we were supposed to shut up, unless we were quoting Nee or Lee, or (judiciously) Penn Lewis or Darby or some other supporting work. It's a pretty effective system, actually, in that it has survived and spread.
Anyway, maybe all we need to mention is that Nee's thought process was strongly influenced by both Darby and Penn Lewis and simply leave it at that. That may be saying enough, right there.