Does LSM Hold to Apostolic Succession?

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

Seriously, if you mean by many waters all the believers sharing what the Lord has shown them and what they experienced of Christ then I agree with you in principle. But then, you are using a different working definition of christian scholars than Ohio used. He meant a class of intellectual Christians, what we call scholars in the traditional sense of the word, who validate minister's credentials. I disagree with him on that because it suggests academia is the qualification for the validation and it also usurps the authority of the Holy Spirit Who alone is responsible for the special commissions in the church.

How do you know what I meant? Did you even ask? I was actually referring to the collective learned and mature ones in the body of Christ. I don't care what credentials they have. Some are in academia, some are in pulpits, some are writers, some are teachers. The Bible says, "and He gave some teachers and shepherds." Are not these ones considered the respected scholars of the body of Christ? Could not we also call them "counselors" as aron has done?

Obviously you have rejected all of these brothers because your MOTA has condemned them all as "poor, poor, Christianity." What a shame to you! You take the word of just one man and condemn all others. Lee said that since 1948 there has not been one valuable book written in the whole of Christianity outside of his own books. Why do you swallow such arrogance, Cassidy? Why do you reject the whole of the body of Christ and cling to a man who cannot be trusted?

[Cassidy]

How do you know what I meant? Did you even ask? I was actually referring to the collective learned and mature ones in the body of Christ.

Ohio,

Don't be silly.

You know what you meant and I know what you meant. You said:

"Show me one acceptable Christian scholar who will agree that sister Jean Guyon in France was the 17th century "Minister of the Age?"

While we are on the subject, show me one acceptable Christian scholar who will agree that John Darby was the 19th century "Minister of the Age?"

How about one that says Luther was the 16th century MOTA?

Or one that will even consider Nee was the 20th century MOTA?

Listen Cassidy, I am hard pressed to find even one Christian scholar who even respects Lee, let alone nominate him as the mother of all MOTA's.

Maybe you don't like the sound of it played back or maybe you just lack the conviction of your beliefs so you want to change your definition in the middle of the argument. Alright. If you go with the more general definition of "christian scholar" or for that matter we can just agree on aron's definition of christian scholar, that is, most any believer (christian scholar if you prefer) can exercise this discernment about a minister with a commission, so then there are thousands, wait, tens of thousands of Christians that have confirmed the special commission and apostleship/ministry of both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.

And that my friend is how it is done.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

...there are thousands, wait, tens of thousands of Christians that have confirmed the special commission and apostleship/ministry of both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee...

Our recent discussion of Nee and his place in the church, and where Nee implied his place was in the church (without saying it directly), reminded me of the above quote. According to some, Nee and Lee have "special commission", which according to their teachings was from the Holy Spirit.

But what if there are hundreds of thousands, wait, millions of Christians who have NOT confirmed the special commission and apostleship/ministry of both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee? Do we have a vote? Do we divide along "yea" and "nay" lines, with those churches who say that they have been "helped" by the ministries of Nee & Lee separated from those who have not? And for that matter, how about those assemblies that are "absolute for the ministry of Nee and Lee" versus those that are merely "positive"?

Does the fact that Watchman Nee has been read into the Congressional Record help us? Or the fact that Billy Graham has a Hollywood Walk of Fame star? Of course I am being facetious, but really the fact that Nee sold a lot of books doesn't do it for me. We might then say that Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyers or Rick Warren might have that "special commission", too. Perhaps Lee should have gotten in line behind Warren or Osteen.

And if this choosing, this setting aside is of the Holy Spirit, then how are the saints supposed to discern? We are back at square one, with a popularity contest. And so we yet again remember the scene in Mark chapter 9, "And they all were arguing among themselves as to which of them was the greatest." The devil isn't stupid. If he can get a successful ruse going he will keep it going. Why invent new tricks when you can still use the originals?

I keep thinking of recent poster amrkelly's remarks that he had 'sight', or 'discernment', to understand Nee's gift to the Body. Don't we all? I mean, we all agree there is the Holy Bible, that reveals to us God's Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. He is truly the savior of the world. We all see this, and hold it to be true. When the apostle Paul wrote that "there are apostles, prophets, and teachers" in the assembly of the faithful, how are we supposed to discern? Should we simply agree with ones who are adamant that their favorite writer/teacher/speaker is God's anointed, special vessel?

Again, it plays back into Mark 9 for me. I'd rather that we dispense with jawing over titles and positions. Just minister. There are lots of poor out there, lots of scoffers, unbelievers, sick, confused, and those who are addled by winds of teaching. Just minister. Whatever you are is what you are. At the 'Bema' God will pronounce judgment, and place you exactly where you belong; no higher or lower. What I find ironic is that we here in the flesh today are also placed exactly where we belong. If we spend our time & effort focused on church hierarchy and whatnot we simply confirm of what spirit we serve. We are convinced that we have to suss all this out for "good order in the church", even while ignoring the long trail of wreckage associated with such fixations.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by aron

I keep thinking of recent poster amrkelly's remarks that he had 'sight', or 'discernment', to understand Nee's gift to the Body.

Andrew stormed out here making audacious claims that he was going to do an extensive study of Dr. Lilly's book, to prove that it's fallacious.

But he never got to it. Before leaving, what he reduced to was calling the book, and me, names ... like evil and wicked.

Maybe Andrew is just a big talker, like his hero Watchman Nee.

[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

Andrew stormed out here making audacious claims that he was going to do an extensive study of Dr. Lilly's book, to prove that it's fallacious.

But he never got to it. Before leaving, what he reduced to was calling the book, and me, names ... like evil and wicked...

An interesting parallel with Andrew and some Lee-ites I interacted with a few years ago: when I responded to their posts in a regional church forum in England, and I demonstrated a less-than-reverent attitude to Witness Lee's work, and called them on their incessant use of voluminous quotes from Lee versus writing one simple sentence of their own, they began to get pretty nasty. They said I was an evil person with a dark heart, etc. They told me I had been ambitious in the Local Churches but had been thwarted and now I was out spewing venom, and seeking to stumble others and draw them after myself and so forth.

I was kind of shocked. I mean, I had no idea I was such an evil creature! Simply because I had disagreed with Lee's theses, and treated his ideas critically like any other author, suddenly I was, to them, the most vile of men, and a despiser of God's authority.

My point is that perhaps both Andrew and these Lee acolytes held that their particular author held some special position, above our ability to critically appraise it. So to Andrew, as to them, it was "plain" that everything put out by this person was self-evidently true, and all which critiqued it was patently absurd, and anyone who persisted in "not getting it" was therefore willfully obtuse, and immoral, to some degree.

In other words, if the author was perceived by them to be God's special anointed oracle, then by treating that author's ideas like that of any redeemed and fallible sinner (think of Peter's repeated and well-documented failures, even AFTER the day of Pentecost) we were actually rebelling against the throne of God Himself.

Or so I suppose. Anyway, I was struck by the parallel experience of how an attempt at mature and civil discussion of the theology of the author in question, on its own merits, quickly degenerated into name-calling, in both cases.

[awareness]

Aron, some years back trying to see if the local church had changed I joined a local church forum on yahoo groups.

For a couple of months I was just a lurker. Then I started posting innocent teaser posts, to see what would happen.

But all I got was cut and paste answers quoting from Life-Studies.

So I got things stirred up when I asked if the forum was a computer generated algorithm. Then we had some real discussions.

Things went well until I revealed I was an ex-local churcher. Then I got banned from the forum.

I went round and round with the forum moderators, one of them putting me back on the forum, and the other kicking me off.

I even reached out to Ron Kangas thru email, who said he tried to help me but had no power over the forum.

The good moderator told me that local churchers were told to stay away from ex-local churchers ... and that's why I got banned.

So I joined to find out if the local church had changed, and found out that it hadn't.

[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

But all I got was cut and paste answers quoting from Life-Studies..

Now I remember why I wanted to write the earlier post! Let's think about Peter, our template for the fallible believer. I love Peter's story because there I see something of us all. As I've said, Peter didn't fail more than the rest, but his failures were simply well-documented.

Let me give four representative samples: "Lord, this will never happen to you!" after Jesus foretold His death and resurrection.

Then, seeing Jesus walking on the waves and asking for His command to come, and looking down once he'd gotten out of the boat, and becoming frightened.

On the mountain of transfiguration: "Lord, it is good that we are here. Let's build three booths, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!"

Later on, going fishing with the brothers, and ignoring the Lord's hungry and lost sheep.

In each case Peter had seen something, then took his eye off the ball, and whiffed. I was thinking that maybe there's a pattern here. First, let's say we get a revelation from God. In Matthew 16, for example, Peter realized that Jesus was the promised Christ of God. In my case, like the prodigal in Luke, I was on my hands and knees fighting with pigs, when suddenly I got a revelation of my Father's house. I heard the name of Jesus, and recognized the call of the Shepherd, and got up and began to return home.

Good, right? But then what happened? Then, inevitably, at some point, I took my eye off the ball, and whiffed. I stumbled, and failed, again and again. The light became darkness, and how great was the darkness! Suddenly I heard, "Get away from Me, Satan!"

I think that to some extent this is a good picture of our spiritual journey. Arguably only the Lord Jesus Himself had a journey of pure, untrammeled light. The rest of us as redeemed and reborn sinners have struggled with residual darkness, at least in part. We had to see what we were apart from God -- helpless and hopeless failures -- before we could know and appreciate the phenomenal depth of God's mercy and grace toward us who believe.

And this is where the fellowship of the saints really comes in. In the assembly we get exposed and we repent to each other; we can be 'right-sized', and can be restored to the narrow path of life. But Nee & Lee built a system immune from correction. The system's revelation was supposedly not from the word, but rather to God's so-called 'oracle'; for example, Lee called Nee "The seer of the divine revelation in the present age". Their program was built on a necessary infallibility of this seer; whose vision was accountable only to God -- "even when he's wrong he's right", was the slogan I heard. So correction became impossible, and even when we sensed that the emperor had no clothes on, we just shouted all the louder, How fine they are! Such garments! Fit for the King's wedding! Etc.

I joined to find out if the local church had changed, and found out that it hadn't.

What I've begun to understand, years out of the Nee & Lee system, is that the word of God is a blinding light, greater than we can bear. The Spirit, given without measure, is more than our feeble vessels can contain, and easily overwhelms our faculties. Paul wrote, "We can only see dimly, and in part", and if Paul acknowledged this, how much we all! We're redeemed sinners, reborn from the death's darkness, and in our emergence to the light we may occasionally lack in perception. At some point we're like Peter: our eye strays from the luminous path and back to more familiar terrain. In effect, once we've gone to the light, we may stumble, somewhat, back to darkness.

And so the Bible becomes a book of knowledge; telling us merely something of God's attributes, or His move in history. Instead of the blinding light of life we have dull shadows of knowledge. We still think we're okay, and are contented, until God corrects us, like when Jesus rebuked Peter. But, suppose we build a system which necessitates our immunity from correction? What then? Then we won't change. We might get some light, and then retreat to the shadows, and simply stay there. I think that Nee & Lee had surely some light; they were believers. But they subsequently built systems predicated upon not being corrected. And if no correction, then no change. And the "local churches of the Lord's recovery" system was likewise unable to change.

When Nee said he wanted to evangelize China, and presented to his listeners an organizational plan for its accomplishment, he was taking his eye off the ball. When Lee said that if we just did such-and-such we'd each gain two new ones in a year, and within 19 years of taking this "new way" we'd recover the whole earth, he was taking his eye off the ball. In both cases they looked to what men might do for God, instead of looking at what God had already done. Instead of seeing the kingdom of God shining in His Holy Word, they instead tried to build a facsimile. Like the young man in Luke 15 who remembered his father's house, suddenly they interposed their idea upon God's revelation: "I know what I'll do: I'll go and become a servant. I am not any more worthy of being a son." The church became a place where we tried to do something for God, instead of a celebration of what God had already done for us in Jesus Christ. And mere knowledge replaced the ineffable glory of the coming Spirit.

Again, we all do this. We all occasionally superimpose our familiar concepts upon God's blinding light. We all end up in the shadows, sometimes. The problem with the Nee & Lee system is that it was dedicated to avoiding this inevitable fact. Supposedly they had a special commission straight from God's throne and were exempt from human adjustment. And thus their inevitable errors, immune from correction, became great.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

I keep thinking of recent poster amrkelly's remarks that he had 'sight', or 'discernment', to understand Nee's gift to the Body. Don't we all? I mean, we all agree there is the Holy Bible, that reveals to us God's Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. He is truly the savior of the world. We all see this, and hold it to be true. When the apostle Paul wrote that "there are apostles, prophets, and teachers" in the assembly of the faithful, how are we supposed to discern? Should we simply agree with ones who are adamant that their favorite writer/teacher/speaker is God's anointed, special vessel?

The program was designed to neutralize any discernment within the saints. I often heard the phrase, "Titus Chu (or WL) sees things, we don't." That was a neutralizer, if I ever heard one. Since he could, "see things, we don't," then we all just checked our ability to discern at the door of the church. Think of the license we had just granted our leaders. Church elders just laid down their discernment at his feet.

Every storm in the Recovery could be distilled down to this statement, "he sees things, we don't." Instead of Jesus Christ being the "Knower of hearts," we gave that honor to our leader, hence even the Lord Himself was neutralized, and unable to speak through the members of His body, which He desperately tried on a number of occasions. Hence, Recovery leaders became the defacto "vicar of Christ," speaking for Him in every instance. Thus Lee could supposedly "see" John Ingalls' heart -- ambitious, destructive, conspiratorial, rebellious, leprous (pile it on Blendeds, because now you can "see" too.)

The Catholic church became what it is primarily because every member had abrogated their discernment to the Bishop of Rome, the "Holy See." That course of action is dangerous for sure, as history shows us the slippery slope down which the church slid under the reign of Rome. Even the so-called Recovery Move of God followed that well worn slide of Rome, with Darby, Nee, and Lee all leading us down. Throw discernment to the wind, we're following The Man who leads us to God. Unfortunately that man is not Jesus Christ our Lord.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I often heard the phrase, "Titus Chu (or WL) sees things, we don't."

Was Witness Lee really a visionary?

Did his vision work out to be true? Was God really doing what he claimed?

In the end wasn't his vision really about making him an acting god?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

The program was designed to neutralize any discernment within the saints. I often heard the phrase, "Titus Chu (or WL) sees things, we don't." That was a neutralizer, if I ever heard one. Since he could, "see things, we don't," then we all just checked our ability to discern at the door of the church. Think of the license we had just granted our leaders. Church elders just laid down their discernment at his feet...

Nee was a bright guy, and he read books that his peers had not, and put out things they hadn't considered. How much of it was original, how much of it was distillations of folk wisdom, and how much was 'reformed Christian theology' of the past centuries is irrelevant; the point is that Nee saw things his peers didn't.

And Lee brought this to the U.S. Suddenly we were talking about Pember, Mackintosh, Darby, Kittel, Alford. None of these I'd heard about in my Congregational church, so arguably Lee "saw things we didn't".

BUT, we also saw things Lee didn't. And that's where the Nee/Lee system brought in corruption. Sight was held to be a one-way stream: the only thing we were supposed to 'see' was that Lee was the one with nearly unfettered access to God's light. So our only revelation was supposed to come when we stood up in the meeting, after some sharing by the Maximum Brother, and exclaim, Suddenly it was all clear to us! Praise God for this speaking! The Lord is meeting all my needs through this timely word from our brother! Etc, etc.

Our job was to shout slogans which had come from the dais. That was it. Shout it until you get it. Our ability to think independently was frowned upon as the dangerous seeds of ambition and division.

I believe today that every believer has sight. Yes, Lee had it, and so did Nee. But so do you and I. And our buying into the program of Nee and Lee "nullified the function of the members of the Body", as Lee put it so succinctly.

The author of Hebrews urged us to "see Jesus" in the text. I think we could spend all our lifetimes doing just that. There is an uncertainty in that invitation, which could be dangerous to some, because what you see and what I see might differ somewhat, and we just have to learn to live with that, and each other. I have learned that what I see can separate me from others. Do I insist on my view being the 'feeling of the Body', or the new interpretive truth? Or is what I see simply what I see?

An interesting thing about both Nee and Lee's ministries, is that as time went on both of them saw things that led to organizational centralization, and the accumulation of temporal power. Nee went from promoting local churches free from external (read: foreign) control, to "the Jerusalem principle" and the need for coordination & control; "God's deputy authority" and all that. Lee also went from "local churches on local ground" to "the vision of the Body" and so forth. In both cases we departed from looking away unto Jesus, and moved toward looking away unto headquarters. And in both cases our 'sight' got reduced to "Big Brother is right". That was the extent of our vision. Beyond that, as one of the Blendeds proudly declared, we were going to be like ostriches, with our heads firmly planted in the sand.

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I often heard the phrase, "Titus Chu (or WL) sees things, we don't." That was a neutralizer, if I ever heard one. Since he could, "see things, we don't," then we all just checked our ability to discern at the door of the church. Think of the license we had just granted our leaders. Church elders just laid down their discernment at his feet.

Two or three years ago, when I was reading some of Nee in response to discussion about things he had written, I came across his preface (or one of them — I think there were two or three of them) to The Spiritual Man in which he somewhat "back-doored" the same about himself. Seems that he was sure that no one else could have arrived at the revelation that he provided in that book.

And he was only in his 20s, I believe.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by OBW

Two or three years ago, when I was reading some of Nee in response to discussion about things he had written, I came across his preface (or one of them — I think there were two or three of them) to The Spiritual Man in which he somewhat "back-doored" the same about himself. Seems that he was sure that no one else could have arrived at the revelation that he provided in that book.

And he was only in his 20s, I believe.

I remember reading that Nee drew Spiritual Man from Jesse Penn-Lewis. Which means that when Nee wrote that book he was just being an exceptional student. And wasn't getting revelation (of the supernatural sort) but was instead, as a kid, just getting the big head about himself.

[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

I remember reading that Nee drew Spiritual Man from Jesse Penn-Lewis.

Not sure that Penn-Lewis is someone you'd want to emulate too closely. A lot of Christians don't like her very much.

1. She is credited with derailing Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival.
2. Her holiness teachings are held to be quite subjective, imaginative, and unbalanced. As one commentator remarked, "The worst form of self can be the delusion that there is no self".

http://www.pfo.org/pennlews.htm

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I was actually referring to the collective learned and mature ones in the body of Christ.

I remember, for instance, when Lee would cite Kittel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Kittel

I would think how impressive, how careful and all-inclusive Lee's scholarship was. But in hindsight he was just occasionally using Christian scholarship as a prop, and for a patina of legitimacy. Look at how quickly he would denigrate anything and anyone as "poor" and "deformed" which he couldn't use. Which happens to be about 99.5% of Christian scholarship.

And that is just the learned ones. The mature ones he could use even less.