A Room Full of Regurgitators

@divegeester

There is no capital L, capital C "Local Church" group.

There are Christians throughout the world who have seen the vision of worhsipping God in spirit and standing on the ground of the local unity.

Many of them follow the ministry of the men who brought this vision to the Christian public - brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.

You will see in print sometimes captital L, captital C Local Church because of a couple of reasons:

1.) Book titles usually capitalize all important words in a title, at least in English -
"The Beliefs and Practices of the Local Churches". And there is it plural churches. But capitalization in that sense is customary in English.

2.) In some counties the civil authorities require a legal entity in order to determine civil and financial accounting. And when some churches in the US went to court to battle defamatory libel cases not involving doctrinal criticism but untrue moral accusations, the law required some form of legal entity to be formed.

But we do not refer to all the local churches throughout the earth as "The Local Church". This is the sometimes unavoidable reaction of sociological perceptions that spiritual unity MUST be the result of some form of business conglomeration.

The seven churches in Asia to whom Christ spoke were not a conglomerate organization called "The Local Church". They were -
"seven churches ... Ephesus and ... Smyrna and ... Pergamos and ... Thyatira and ... Sardis and ... Philadelphia and ... Laodicea ( See Rev. 1:11 )

They were not "The Local Church in Asia" but "the seven churches which are in Asia" (1:4) .

Yet they were in spiritual fellowship. What Jesus wrote to each church was to also be heard by the other seven. So they were intended to be in a fellowship.

" He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (2:7) See also the same thing said to each church - 2:11, 17, 29, 3:6, 13, 22

None of the seven churches were perfect utopias.
All were either rebuked or exhorted for something that needed to be overcome.
One was not rebuked but told simply to hold on to what they had.

Before God they were all the same - golden lampstands.
Their differences lay in things which were problematic.

In positive aspects of their essential nature they were identical.
In ensuing problems they were different.

Christ was as a high priest walking in their midst to trim the wicks of their lamps, provide oil, keep them shining and testifying and calling for those within them to hear and overcome various deficiencies.

The number of genuine Christians meeting in this way is a minority to the majority in the earth who do not. Some choose not. Some do not know about it. Some know about it, disagree and oppose.

The spiritual messages put out by the co-workers are available to all Christians whether they do or do not desire to meet on the local ground. Nearly everything spoken as public ministry or ministered is available for review and study by the general public.

@divegeester

Sonship, do you or your church leaders draw a distinction of any sort between Christians who are members of your Local Church group and those who are not?

In order to be saved, one must have a living faith in the Person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Every genuinely saved one has what the Bible calls the “common faith” (Titus 1:4), which includes what we must believe in order to be saved: we must believe that the Bible is the complete divine revelation wholly inspired by God; that there is a unique Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; that Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnated to be a man; that Christ died on the cross for our sins, shedding His blood for our redemption; that on the third day He was bodily raised from the dead; that He has been exalted to the right hand of God and made the Lord of all; and that He is coming again for His own and to set up His kingdom on earth.

Eternal salvation is by grace through faith, not by our works.

In order to be saved, one must have a living contact with Jesus Christ. Therefore, in bringing unbelievers to salvation, we emphasize prayer and calling on the name of the Lord. According to Romans 10:9 and 10, if a man is to be saved, he must believe in his heart and confess with his mouth.

Once a person has been saved, he may have both the assurance of salvation and the security of salvation. Once we are saved, we are saved forever.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Absolutely, especially when that ordinary man is a sandwich short of a picnic.

A reminder of his lunacy:

"The unique Creator, God, is triune, signified by the number three. Since the creation is represented before God by four living creatures (Revelation 4:6-9), the number four signifies creatures, especially man. Hence, three plus four means that God is added t ...[text shortened]... eation and then in the new creation, the church."

(The Recovery Version: Footnotes of Revelation)

@sonship said
None of the seven churches were perfect utopias.
All were either rebuked or exhorted for something that needed to be overcome.
One was not rebuked but told simply to hold on to what they had.

Before God they were all the same - golden lampstands.
Their differences lay in things which were problematic.

In positive aspects of their essential nature they were [b] ...[text shortened]... ing spoken as public ministry or ministered is available for review and study by the general public.

@divegeester

Do you or your church leaders draw a distinction of any sort between Christians who are members of your Local Church group and those who are not?

The number of genuine Christians meeting in this way is a minority to the majority in the earth who do not. Some choose not. Some do not know about it. Some know about it, disagree and oppose.

@SecondSon

There's more, but I must refrain for now, for I fear sonship may feel I've abandoned him and the truth of God's Word.

J. S.'s Misrepresentation of Brother Lee's Teaching

Stated succinctly, J. S. charges Brother Lee with espousing and propagating “the greatest and worst blasphemous heresy,” “the devilish heresy that man will become god (or God).” As quoted in the foregoing section, Brother Lee clearly and emphatically teaches that “the Godhead is unique” and that “He is the only One who should be worshipped.” Recall Brother Lee's balanced word that, on the one hand, the New Testament reveals that “the Godhead is unique and that only God, who alone has the Godhead, should be worshipped” and that, on the other hand, the New Testament reveals that we, the believers in Christ, have God's life and nature and that “we are becoming God in life and in nature but will never have the Godhead” (emphasis added). In speaking of deification—the process through which the believers are constituted with the Triune God to be made God in life and in nature—Brother Lee says that man becomes “God in life and in nature but not, of course, in the Godhead” (emphasis added). Of course, the Godhead is unique. Of course, we will never have the Godhead. Of course, God alone is worthy of worship. Of course, the believers will never become an object of worship. Of course, the believers will never be made God in the sense of having the Godhead. “Never have the Godhead” —this crucial phrase deserves the attention of every honest reader of Brother Lee's materials.

@sonship said
See The Truth Concerning the Ultimate Goal of God's Economy
https://www.ministrybooks.org/SearchMinBooksDsp.cfm?id=140102CDEA

@sonship said
@divegeester

What is it about this reply you don't understand ?

@secondson said

DEIFIED? Nowhere in the Bible is that taught. IT IS BLASPHEMY. There is not a shred of scriptural evidence to support that teaching. It's the doctrine of the devil.

I'm not going to waste my time addressing each sentence above since there's not one proof text supplied to support them.

I also perused the site your link provided and I found in the titles and topics ...[text shortened]... and phrases as foreign to biblical teachings relative to doctrine as I have ever seen anywhere.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The more I delved into Lee's writing the more I was aghast (genuinely) at how far he had strayed from scripture and how single-mindedly he strived for the deification of mankind (and de facto himself).

@sonship said
@divegeester
I corrected your misrepresentation of our thought of a "Local Church" group - capital L, capital C. You ignored it. You ignored and re-asked the question.

@divegeester said
I can’t get a straight yes or no response from sonship, maybe you can.

Does sonship or his church leaders draw any distinction whatsoever between Christians who are members of the local church, and other Christians who are not?

By the way, the controversies generated by the teachings of Witness Lee have their own dedicated page on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Church_controversies

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The more I delved into Lee's writing the more I was aghast (genuinely) at how far he had strayed from scripture and how single-mindedly he strived for the deification of mankind (and de facto himself).