Putting to Test the Recovery Version

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

Even the authors of the Bible, and the compilers who decided on the canon, had "fallen" and "natural human concepts" of "right and wrong". Only the chosen few, the apostle Paul, John Nelson Darby, Margaret Barber and then Nee and Lee, cared solely for life. Everyone else, apparently, wasn't so clear, beshrouded by their concepts as they were. Yet there was an invisible 'lineage of life' running through the aeons, coursing through the space/time ether, and Nee and Lee had somehow tapped into it. . .

If you think I'm being hard on Darby, Lee held him as a 'pre-Nee' visionary of recovered truth, i.e. God's (sole) 'man of the hour', and history hasn't been so kind on Darby's inspirations, and the effect he had on his fellows.

Darby and his supporters clearly believed the 'secret rapture' would occur in their own life time and certainly before the end of the 19th Century. Looking back, Blair Neatby, writing his history of the Brethren in 1901 reflects,

"If anyone had told the first Brethren that three quarters of a century might elapse and the Church be on earth, the answer would probably have been a smile, partly of pity, partly of disapproval, wholly of incredulity. Yet so it has proved. It is impossible not to respect hopes so congenial to an ardent devotion; yet it is clear now that Brethrenism took shape under the influence of a delusion, and that delusion was a decisive element in all of its distinctive features."97

But the rapture did not occur. Whereas the leaders of Irving's Catholic Apostolic church refused to appoint successors, convinced that the Lord would return to Albury before the last one died, so that today the church there remains empty, Darby's dispensationalist ideas permeated beyond his narrow Brethrenism to a new generation of evangelicals in the 20th Century.

Professor Francis W. Newman was a contemporary of Darby and offers this assessment of his impact on those who came under his influence.

"For the first time I perceived that so vehement a champion of the sufficiency of the Scriptures, so staunch an opposer of creed and churches, was wedded to an extra-scriptural creed of his own, by which he tested the spiritual state of his brethren."98

"...this gentleman has every where (sic) displayed a wonderful power of bending other minds to his own, and even stamping upon them the tones of his voice and all sorts of slavish imitation. Over the general results of his action I have long deeply mourned, as blunting his natural tenderness and sacrificing his wisdom to the Letter, dwarfing men's understandings, contracting their hearts, crushing their moral sensibilities, and setting those at variance who ought to love, yet oh! how specious it was in the beginning! he only wanted men 'to submit their understanding to God,' that is to the Bible, that is to his interpretation."99

97 W. Blair Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1901), p. 3.

98 Francis W. Newman, Phases of Faith, or, Passages from the History of my Creed (London, John Chapman, 1850), p. 29.

99 Newman, Phases., p. 33.

Brethrenism "took shape under a delusion", as did the Lord's Recovery which followed it. The Bible became a vehicle for the concepts of men, and for their interpretations to be imposed upon others, smothering them and extinguishing the freedom of the Spirit.

http://www.christchurch-virginiawate...es/darby1.html

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

If you think I'm being hard on Darby, Lee held him as a 'pre-Nee' visionary of recovered truth, i.e. God's (sole) 'man of the hour', and history hasn't been so kind on Darby's inspirations, and the effect he had on his fellows.

Brethrenism "took shape under a delusion", as did the Lord's Recovery which followed it. The Bible became a vehicle for the concepts of men, and for their interpretations to be imposed upon others, smothering them and extinguishing the freedom of the Spirit.

Having read some of Anthony Groves' (the earliest of the Brethren) views, Brethrenism was nothing like what the exclusives under Darby had fashioned it into. Many, many gifted men of God flocked together around these noble and scriptural ideals. Though Darby had many redeeming virtues, he did hijack the movement, established new exclusive principles of practice, and then "slaughtered" any and all perceived "rivals."

His extreme views have permanently shaped both Nee and Lee. All three eventually followed the same course of action. Initially they all left the existing systems, returning to the plain verses of the Bible, loving one another in assemblies, operating as "a" minister among many. Eventually they each created their own systems, where they were MOTA, the "acting god," and the deputy authority, ready to crush any and all who protested.

W. Blair Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1901) is an excellent read for those having trouble understanding "what happened to the glorious churchlife," as I did years ago. (It was available free on line.) It is unfortunate, however, that my current "pay grade" prevented me from really understanding all he wrote. I would read some sections repeatedly with resource materials on hand, and I was just not bright enough to apprehend the complete import of his writing.