Does LSM Hold to Apostolic Succession?

[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.