[VoiceInWilderness]

Originally Posted by awareness

Thanks Steve. Truth be told, if I hadn't already lost faith in Nee, Lily Hsu's book would have turned me into an atheist.

Thank you for your honesty. That is apparently what happened to Ruth Lee, and she influenced Peace Wang.

WL said that there were only 3 people who were absolutely one with WN: himself, Ruth Lee and Peace Wang. Lily Hsu's book bears that out.
This shows how destructive it is to follow a man absolutely like that.

What would have been a healthy reaction on their part to the exposing of WN would have been to realize that they were wrong to follow a man to that extent. They could have recalled the past when they started the local church with WN and were able to fellowship honestly and to disagree with him.

WN could have escaped to Taiwan, but chose to stay and suffer immensely.

Originally Posted by awareness

I'm still dumbfounded that, a man on the one side can be a powerful spiritual minister and leader, and then on the other side be, a man of the flesh. David does come to mind. Still, both had to pay for it.

I don't understand that either. I can only process what I saw with WL.
There was great blessing on the local church in the beginning, at least up to 1977, and I think up to 1988. Don Rutledge records it well. WL was not the center of the church before 1977, at least to us in Cleveland, and we felt we were one with all Christians, including those with different views than us.
When WL excommunicated all the ex-pastors and missionaries in the churches in 1988, the blessing had ended. We could not get any non-Chinese to join the church and stay. WL could still sometimes give a good message based on what the Lord had already given him, but the Lord didn't give him anything more. The new revelations WL saw after that were all destructive, as far as I know.

Originally Posted by awareness

I remember some time ago coming across Lee admitting that he did much of his ministry with the natural life.

I don't remember that, but I commend him for that because it is honest.
That statement was probably pre 1977, or at least pre 1984.

Originally Posted by awareness

So if we follow them, just remember that : the system you are giving all your life to is very much of the natural man.

Giving your life to a system is wrong, whether it is of the natural man or spiritual man.
I had done that until we had a church split in 2007 over the "one publication" edict. I had thought we were better than other Christians because I thought we were more dedicated to oneness, (at the expense of truth and honesty) and then we had a church spilt over something that other Christians would have fellowshipped about and handled maturely and been reconciled. We had an ex-pastor meeting with us then, and he said that he had seen many church splits, but never one that was so avoidable as this. And we had prided ourselves on Oneness. That told me that we were on the wrong road. The right road was what we had been on before WL became the center of the church - following Christ, the Spirit, the Bible and our spirit.

Originally Posted by awareness

We, and they today, made/make more of Nee and Lee than they deserve/deserved, or could live up to ... except as personality cult leaders ... that had to come from their natural man.

That is a terrible place to be in.
KJV 1 Corinthians 4:6 And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.

Originally Posted by awareness

Maybe the reason Lee saw the natural man in scripture is cuz he was looking thru his own natural man glasses.

I don't know. But I agree. When I look at scripture thru my natural man, I see lots of natural man stuff in it.

We do project our faults onto others and also onto the Bible.
I think the "natural man" teaching by WL was off and even more off how it was distorted in testimonies.
"natural" is "soulish". Adam became a living soul when God breathed into his nostrils. So he had a soulish or "natural" body before the fall. That is Adam had a body, soul and spirit, but he was dominated by the soul.
We human beings need to live by both our soul and our spirit, and we are going to be dominated by our soul. If we reject our spirit and live only by the soul, we cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. But until we receive spiritual bodies, we are still living souls in this age, and our dominant part is our soul. That is what it means that Adam became a living soul. To reject our soul as "natural" is to reject what it means to be a human being.