[kisstheson]

Hello dear brothers,

If I may, all of you have alluded to and implied a crucial issue, which is that the best concept of the church does not work without frequent applications of the cross. Without the cross continually working on our natural pride, any point that we feel differentiates us from other believers will become overly magnified and overly emphasized as time progresses. This will lead to the point becoming applied in strict legality (think of the history of baptism by immersion, head coverings, the ground of locality, etc.)

Examining the history of the "Lord's Recovery" as a whole in the 1900's, I see that what was at first a very slight and very gradual diminishing of the importance of the cross, ended up becaming a very big and very noticeable diminishing of the importance of the cross. In one of his last speakings before he went to be with the Lord, WL bemoaned the fact that he had been giving the LC "dumplings without garlic and vinegar", which he explained as giving the LC lots of rich "high-peak" truths without a balancing emphasis on the cross. He warned the LC that receiving the "high-peak" truths without the cross would only produce excessive pride and would end up greatly damaging the LC. Sadly, his words have proven to be very prophetic.

I really need to get back to that thread I started which was discussing TAS's books entitled "That They All May Be One, Even As We Are One". TAS's view on "the ground" was very simple - Simply gather, wherever and whoever you are, centered on Christ alone and outside all know divisions. This is what he saw in the NT as the reality of "the ground". While expanding upon this topic, TAS said something that struck me as very profound: He admitted that even his simple idea of the ground could not be maintained in a particular assembly unless the Lord had gained a group of "solidly-crucified" ones in that assembly. A group of "solidly-crucified" ones - this is what will guard against the otherwise inevitable pride, exclusiveness, and legality. These ones are not "super Christians" or puffed-up ones; rather, they are simply those who have known a lot of the breaking of the cross and thus have had their pride dealt with. Probably, most of their service to the assembly will be on their knees, in their private room of prayer. Their "spiritual noses" will be keen to signs of pride, exclusitivity, and legality whenever they might arise.