Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
That's a good point. I know this thread isn't on the MOTA, but the city church and the MOTA are so intertwined and dependent upon each other that it is hard to talk about one and not the other.
It's interesting that Nee and Lee came up with the idea of MOTA. The people who they identified as past MOTAs never claimed the title, as far as I know. But Nee and Lee did. But once they did, after them suddenly God abandoned the MOTA effort. No more MOTAs. Lee was the last one. He comes along, invents the idea of MOTA which he applied to himself, and then after he is gone... no more MOTAs. How convenient.
Like Harold said, only blind fanatics could go for this stuff. I guess that's what we were.
I believe Lee had some good stuff. Some things were even superb. There is no denying. But the fact is he let it go to his head, he thought of himself more highly than he should. And, sadly and ironically, by so tainting his own ministry with doctrines specifically designed to pad his resume as a visionary and to lord it over others, he actually ensured that very few people benefited from the good things the Lord gave him. Quite sad.
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It was WE that inflated Lee's head. It was me, and you, and all the rest that flocked to Lee that made him believe that God was working thru him. WE are to blame.
And for good reason. I came out of a denomination. When I heard of one church one city it really tickled my fancy. The idea that all the believers in a city was in the church in that city really warmed my heart, and moved my spirit.
But that was their doctrine, not the practice. Cuz believers in the city that didn't meet in Lee's LCs weren't considered in THE church.
Others, and there were others, that caught onto the OCOC doctrine were taking the ground in other cities. When Lee ordered localities to converge on Ft. Lauderdale, Bob Mumford had already taken the ground. So we had a problem. According to the OCOC doctrine we were to meet with them. But they weren't following Lee. So we declared the ground anyway. And guess what? Mumford and his following weren't in the church in the city. That doctrine went out the window in order to keep Lee as the one and only apostle on the earth. The minister of the age doctrine overrode the doctrine of OCOC.
So the real purpose, turns out, behind the "recovery" of OCOC, was the recovery of the MOTA -- that never existed --- to elevate them to being the one and only authority of God on the earth.
OCOC only works when the church in the city is autonomous, without centralized control. So Nee and Lee's OCOC was a bait and switch.
And we were, and they are now, enablers and validators of the MOTA. We, when Lee was alive, and they, now that he's dead and gone.
And by the way, the Lord removed the Lee lampstand in Ft. Lauderdale, and one of Mumford's followers developed one of the largest Megachurches in America. So who was God with? Not with the one church one city bunch. That was Nee's and Lee's doctrine, not God's ... and certainly has no real Biblical support ... not blown in what Nee and Lee blew it into.