Where Has All the Orthopraxy Gone?

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Terry

True. Visiting last July, the morning revival being covered had some content on fellowship. Basically you've covered it Freedom. Ones in the local churches are open for fellowship as long as it's according to LSM publications.
I'm all for oneness and fellowship. How about dropping the LSM publications and fellowship according to the Bible?

This is where I really get frustrated with the LC. The exclusive use of LSM publications is rationalized by saying that WL has put "everything together" in his works. They say that there is no need to go to any other books outside of LSM publications.

It always amazes me how uncomfortable everyone gets when a newcomer brings their own version of the Bible. These things should be red flags, even to those in the LC. And to think at one time I thought that exclusively using LSM publications was completely normal.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Freedom

The exclusive use of LSM publications is rationalized by saying that WL has put "everything together" in his works. They say that there is no need to go to any other books outside of LSM publications.

The idea that WN & WL scooped up everything worthwhile from 2,000 years of Christian writing is arrogant and patently absurd. And the idea that once WN & WL started giving messages, and putting pen to paper, every other Christian ministry was rendered null and void, is equally arrogant and absurd.

Yes there is a lot of dreck out there. A lot of chaff. A lot of opinions, ignorantly based, masquerading as teachings, truth, and even revelation. But that is where a spirit of discernment comes in. WL told us that WN had that spirit, and did all the hard work of sorting and evaluating and putting "everything together" so that we don't need to bother our pretty little heads with all that. Just enjoy the ministry of the age. Chant outlines and hymn choruses, and you supposedly get it all.

The whole thing is a farce of the highest magnitude. And it is a theft of the Christian polity, removing their birthright. Those writings are our Christian birthright, but instead we get HWFMR.

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by aron

The idea that WN & WL scooped up everything worthwhile from 2,000 years of Christian writing is arrogant and patently absurd. And the idea that once WN & WL started giving messages, and putting pen to paper, every other Christian ministry was rendered null and void, is equally arrogant and absurd.

Whoa! I tend to think just as with the Bible, WL used from WN's ministry that which was expedient. Just as portions of the Bible that doesn't conform to Lee's ministry, similar with Nee's ministry, it gets ignored or passed over. WL's aligning to WN's ministry, is a type of riding on the coattails of WN's reputation.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Terry

Whoa! I tend to think just as with the Bible, WL used from WN's ministry that which was expedient. Just as portions of the Bible that doesn't conform to Lee's ministry, similar with Nee's ministry, it gets ignored or passed over. WL's aligning to WN's ministry, is a type of riding on the coattails of WN's reputation.

This is the impression I get. Actually, since I started reading Philip Lin's book, I am starting to realize this is more the case than I had previously realized. It seems that this is a portion of Nee's ministry that LSM has largely ignored. I think Lee was particularly interested in Nee's teachings that could help him push his "ground of the church" doctrine.

To my knowledge, LSM has never published "The Normal Christian Life", which is arguably Nee's best known work. I think that the LC mainly focuses on "The Normal Christian Church Life", which ironically doesn't espouse the current views in the LC.

[Friedel]

Originally Posted by Freedom

To my knowledge, LSM has never published "The Normal Christian Life", which is arguably Nee's best known work. I think that the LC mainly focuses on "The Normal Christian Church Life", which ironically doesn't espouse the current views in the LC.

They did publish it as a single volume. It is also Volume 33 of the Collected Works of Watchman Nee.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Friedel

They did publish it as a single volume. It is also Volume 33 of the Collected Works of Watchman Nee.

I did not know that. I don't really hear them encourage anyone to read Nee these days. What I have also not heard mentioned is that LSM doesn't have exclusive publishing rights to Nee's materials.

[Friedel]

Add

Originally Posted by Freedom

I don't really hear them encourage anyone to read Nee these days. What I have also not heard mentioned is that LSM doesn't have exclusive publishing rights to Nee's materials.

I do not think they ever had exclusive rights since all of Watchman Nee's books, with the exception of The Spiritual Man which he had in fact written, were transcripts of messages and therefore in the public domain. The language was polished and then published as books. Steven Kaung has been described as an excellent translator and that is how many of Nee's "books" were published in English in the US. (Regarding publishing rights of Watchman Nee's material Witness Lee possibly had another story.)

In England Angus Kinnear published a couple of books in hard cover, including The Normal Christian Life. He must have started in the 1960s and probably at the behest of his father-in-law, Theodore Austin-Sparks, who had probably received copies of messages from people he had met in Taiwan and elsewhere.

Witness Lee often put down Steven Kaung and effectively isolated him on the east coast.

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by Freedom

This is where I really get frustrated with the LC. The exclusive use of LSM publications is rationalized by saying that WL has put "everything together" in his works. They say that there is no need to go to any other books outside of LSM publications.

It always amazes me how uncomfortable everyone gets when a newcomer brings their own version of the Bible. These things should be red flags, even to those in the LC. And to think at one time I thought that exclusively using LSM publications was completely normal.

When it comes to LSM publications, "everything together" is with the view of God's economy. I seem to recall a brother once telling me Lee's The Economy of God were based on notes from a conference T.A. Sparks gave.

By the way Freedom, when I go to a LC home meeting I bring my New American Standard version.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Terry

By the way Freedom, when I go to a LC home meeting I bring my New American Standard version.

They don't have a problem with that? In my experience LC home meetings mainly involve comprehensively reading all the footnotes to whatever chapter/verses we cover so if you don't have a RV, you're pretty much lost.