Beware the writings of the Watchman

@sonship said
@Rajk999

You have elevated the teachings of a man above the teachings of Christ and the Apostles. That says it all about where you have placed this man.

No I have not. I wrote many posts with no mention of either. And I wrote plenty of posts referring to other people.

Of late the concerted attack on these two has resulted in their names being mentio ...[text shortened]... tion [/b] which some posters were quick to cease opportunity to derail and clutter up with protest.

It’s not the people sonship, it’s your positioning of their teaching. Isn’t the book thread where you stated that all the Christians had to read it to be saved or something?

I may be wrong but I think FMF was on about it also.

@CalJust

Caljust your experience is interesting to me and I am going to do some research into it.

There is no gathering of Christians I know to exist that could not furnish someone with an offended instance. Any and all denominations can produce someone with a sad tale somewhere that they were hurt or offended.

So I don't doubt you had some kind of negative offending experience. I have learned over the years that this in itself doesn't prove always what the offended party wants to use it to prove.

I don't say it excuses an offence. I just say being offended does not always prove the point the offended party wants to prove.

The twelve disciples of Jesus probably had misunderstandings, cross words, offenses, rivalries, hurt egos, turf controversies between them. The church life didn't fold because of that.

Look up any assembly of believers you want, and I suppose somewhere there is someone with a "they did me dirt" story to discourage any further consideration.

So I am sorry that you got hurt. It is not as if I myself had NEVER been offended or not offended someone in the many years in the Lord's recovery.

So I don't say the local church is a utopia. And the churches have gone through some darker times. No church in the New Testament was a utopia.

I am going to inquire a some more about South Africa.

@sonship said
@CalJust

Caljust your experience is interesting to me and I am going to do some research into it.

There is no gathering of Christians I know to exist that could not furnish someone with an offended instance. Any and all denominations can produce someone with a sad tale somewhere that they were hurt or offended.

So I don't doubt you had some kind of negative offend ...[text shortened]... church in the New Testament was a utopia.

I am going to inquire a some more about South Africa.

Nobody got hurt so there is no need to be condescending. People can identify where your organisation has failed without giving a rats behind ... got it?

@sonship said
@CalJust

Any and all denominations can produce someone with a sad tale somewhere that they were hurt or offended.

So I don't doubt you had some kind of negative offending experience.

So I am sorry that you got hurt. I am going to inquire a some more about South Africa.

Either intentionally or unintentionally, you totally missed the point of my post.

There is no question of me having been “hurt” . If that were the case, I would agree that it is appropriate to say: “ get over it, and don’t be so sensitive!”

The issue here is that a very clever man (and you can research it if you wish - his name is Dr Rolf Stumpf) suddenly was devoid of all logic. He suddenly saw “the light” which we all could see was totally ridiculous. That is, if the Bibles says there was only one church in Corinth, and Phillipi, etc, then that means there is only ONE church in Pretoria, all denominations were wrong and he was going to start this True Church.

But what was as clear as daylight to anybody and everybody else, was that he was starting JUST ANOTHER denomination in Pretoria.

I lost track of him, but after twenty odd years, The Church in Pretoria still exists, and has a handful (between fifteen and twenty) members in a city of some two million, where the majority would call themselves Christian.

How absolutely deluded can one be? Even today, it boggles the mind.

Edit: PS - if you do get to contact Rolf (he may well today be quite high up in the LCM hierarchy) please give him my regards and tell him I wish him and Adi well. My name is Dietrich Krueger.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Watchman Nee had a flawed view of man, practiced an allegorical approach to interpreting Scripture, believed denominations were sinful, and frequently called others to join him in his perpetual quest for the deeper spiritual life—a quest that smacks of perfectionism.

Lack of clarity
Perhaps the best way to describe Nee is to label him a confused Christian mystic. ...[text shortened]... iple times, I can’t really tell.


http://thecripplegate.com/beware-the-writings-of-the-watchman/

"In five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well”.

And how do you, Ghost, know that that isn't exactly what happened?

How do you know it's not true? Assuming of course you believe Nee is lying.

@CalJust

I lost track of him, but after twenty odd years, The Church in Pretoria still exists, and has a handful (between fifteen and twenty) members in a city of some two million, where the majority would call themselves Christian.

Was there no church in Corinth because some in Corinth said "We are of Paul" and others said "We are of Cephas" and others said "We are of Apollos" and others claimed "We are of Christ" ?

The church in Corinth did not not exist because in Corinth proto divisions were formulating.

Paul, a called apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Sosthenes the brother,

To the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, the caled saints, with all those who call upon the name of the LOrd Jesus CHrist in every place, theirs and ours." (1 Cor .1:1)

I think this salutation reaches those standing on the ground of oneness in Corinth as well as those choosing not to stand upon this ground.

Paul did not address four letters to saying "Paul and Sosthenes, to those in Corinth who are of Paul."

He did not write a second letter to "those in Corinth who are of Cephas".

He addressed it to the church in Corinth. And the first problem that he gives attention to is division of the Body in Corinth.

But I beseech you, brothers through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be attuned to the same mind and in the same opinion.

For it was made clear to me concerning you, my brothers, by those of the household of CChloe, that there are strifes among you.

Now I mean this, that each of you says,
I am of Paul,
and I of Apollos,
and I of Cephass,
and I of Christ.

Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? "

It could have been that adding up the number who wanted identify themselves as "Of ..." some servant of God or even "Of Christ divisively" the numerical number exceeded those who simply wanted to be "the church of God which is in Corinth".

That a minority had this vision of one city one church did not make their standing illegitimate. Nor would I consider that there could be no "church in Pretoria" in principle including all believers in Pretoria because the vaster majority of Pretorian Christians being unaware of resisting with awareness did not want to be in oneness there.

As long as they are ready to receive all other brothers and sisters in Christ in Pretoria. they can and should stand on the ground of the local church.

@CalJust

The Normal Christian Life" was a classic which was well received and circulated in the church in the '60s and '70s (and even later). It was followed by such books as "Sit, Walk, Stand" and "The Normal Christian Church Life" and "The Spiritual Man" which had three volumes.

All his books have value and deserve to be read. However, his later books become increasingly more radical and obtuse, meaning hard to follow and difficult to put into practice.

My reaction to reading a perhaps more difficult book by Brother Watchman Nee was different from yours.

Roughly, in early books I read were "Spiritual Authority," "Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things," "Assembling Together" portions of "Sit, Walk, and Stand," Further Talks on the Church Life" and other books.

Now when I came to "The Ministry of God's Word" I realized the audience intended for those messages were of a level of spiritual experience which was beyond mine. It became clear to me to put the book down because I did not have yet the capacity to grasp such experiential concepts.

I did not dismiss the book as "getting to weird" or "getting too radical". I did not count the deeper nature of the book as a sign "Watchman Nee is kind of going off the weird zany end."

A spiritual teacher can go along with a spiritual pupil easily. But there can be a point where the pupil has not yet the maturity to apprehend further explanations at the command of the teacher. And then fellowship becomes incoherent. The less mature is not able to go along with the older one.

The AUDIENCES of some of the books of Watchman Nee were trainees of more experience to whom he could relate some deeper thoughts which could not be as easily grasped by some others.

This is simply a matter of timing and maturity. The same held true for portions of "The Spiritual Man" say the third volume, but I recall not as much as "The Ministry of God's Word."

So my response to progressive exposure to books by Nee was different. I followed the Holy Spirit when I had the sense "These messages are not for you right now. Put them aside."

The sense of life and peace cautioned me often about premature knowledge.

Even portions of the very first book I read of Nee "Spiritual Authority" I didn't digest well. Other portions were quite helpful.

@CalJust

As happens with many such (lets call them) radicals, revolutionaries and visionaries, he, and particularly his disciple, Witness Lee, became obsessed with the idea that they ONLY had the full truth and that they were sent by God to revive the Church, or at least save a Remnant out of the church.

Some years ago in a long discussion with sonship I related my personal experience with the Local Church Movement (LCM).
We had over many years hosted a Home Church consisting of some six families from various backgrounds and denominations, who met weekly for fellowship and worship.

Home meetings are of vital importance. Every Christian has the right to open up a meeting for spiritual edification in their own home.

A man or woman has sovereignty over their own home and need no permission to to gather with others to worship God and build each other up.

But if every home meeting in Jerusalem was a church (and there were probably hundreds of home meetings) then the Holy Spirit would have said "the churches [plural] in Jerusalem."

So I became clear from Further Talks on the Church Life that the church in the house of someone in the New Testament is not exactly the same as the concept many have of the house being the boundary of every church - Home Churches.

Now let me hasten to say a lot of mistakes were in the enthusiasm of Christians who got a hold of these books.

Somewhere in "The Normal Christian Church Life" Watchman Nee said that writing this book of his resulted in him having two fears.

One was that Christians would quickly dismiss it as unworkable, unrealistic, unpractical, and impossible to practice.

The other fear was that some people would use his book as a manual for service like in an ambitious way devoid of the leading of the Holy Spirit.

He said he feared that latter problem more than the former one. (This is in essence and not a direct quote).

It is a fact that the books of Watchman Nee in the hands of some people have caused some bad problems. Of course the same is true of the Bible itself.

In the hands of some people counter productive troubles have been stirred up by misuse of a couple of those books. Like "Spiritual Authority" has been used by some people misunderstanding the book as a manual to boss Christians around.

I don't fault Watchman Nee for these abuses.

@CalJust

Now they are so exclusive that they openly proclaim (as sonship does repeatedly) that THEY ONLY are the true church, everybody else is wrong, and they use Bible words about apostasy and separateness to justify this.

There is a difference in a group of Christians in a city saying:

"We are the only church" and them saying "We are only the church".

To say "We are only the church" is to say that Christians in the locality are merely the church. The other names lifted up brought over from tradition to divide the saints are extras, unnecessary, not merely indicating the simplicity of what we are.

The extras have become man-made attempting to improve upon what God through the apostles ordained.

We are ONLY what we are - the church in the city. All of us who name Christ as Lord. We merely are what we are - the church in this locality.

It is true that a local church could degenerate into another denominational "church". This is related to their receiving. If they received whomever Christ has already received, what else can you call such a gathering?

The test is in the receiving of all brothers and sisters should they want fellowship. You Christians brothers and sisters in Pretoria are simply what you are; merely what you are - the church in Pretoria.

@sonship said
It is true that a local church could degenerate into another denominational "church". This is related to their receiving. If they received whomever Christ has already received, what else can you call such a gathering?

Are you aware of any branches of the Local Church that have become "Satan's organizations" [like, you tell us, Protestantism has]? Is there an exchange of information within your 'movement' about which Local Churches have, according to its own ideology, have become "Satanic"?

@FMF

Are you aware of any branches of the Local Church that have become "Satan's organizations" [like, you tell us, Protestantism has]? Is there an exchange of information within your 'movement' about which Local Churches have, according to its own ideology, have become "Satanic"?

I don't about the "Local Church" other than some people and some legal entities cannot understand anything but denominational labels. And titles of booklets of necessity contain capitals as a custom in English prose.

I don't know about "branches of the Local Church". I know about local churches each administered locally. You think "branches of the Local Church". The local churches understand each church has a local administration.

I am aware of problems in churches. I have experienced serious problems in churches. I don't feel to list problematic situations to you.

I believe there is a move of the Holy Spirit which is not the same as a "movement."

Lastly though you want to portray certain ways of addressing the problems of Christianity as hate speech, I never heard it or understood things said as hate speech.

For the rest instead of jumping at every glibly fired off comment or question of yours, if you want to get into the controversy more you can do some reading on your own time.
Spend some time and read about it.

Sample and source follow:

Criticism of Organized Christianity
Harvest House Publishers and its authors, John Ankerberg and John Weldon, have endeavored to make Living Stream Ministry and the local churches repulsive in the eyes of the Christian public by portraying us as anti-Christian, that is, against Christians and against the faith. They create this deception by placing our words in a foreign context, making our Scripture-based rejection of unbiblical teachings, practices and institutions appear as though it is a rejection of Christian believers and of the faith. The perpetration of this falsehood is an exercise in hypocrisy, as their own books claim that the church today is filled with occultism, is sick, and has compromised the truth of the gospel. Furthermore, some of Harvest House’s own writers echo the core of our critique of the state of the church today. Instead of truthfully presenting or responding to that critique, Harvest House and its authors have instead chosen to expand upon their misrepresentations in the Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions (ECNR) by completely distorting our teaching in postings on the Harvest House corporate Web site and documents filed with the courts. Such disregard for the truth is shameful, particularly for Christians, and even more so because they were provided with thorough documentation of their distortions in 2001.

https://contendingforthefaith.org/en/criticism-of-christianity/

[My bolding and spacing]

Organized Christianity’s Shortcomings

However, what we see today in Christendom in the organized system of “Christianity” falls far short of this reality and is characterized instead by the mixing of many foreign elements into the pure divine revelation that is found in the Scriptures. These non-biblical elements change the normal Christian life from a daily enjoyment of Christ as life to creedalism and Christ-less religious duty. They deform the normal function and expression of the church from that of the Body of Christ to a mere organization of man, cheating God’s people of their function and damaging God’s testimony of oneness. Thus, our criticism is not of the Christian faith or of our fellow believers; our criticism is of the “anity” that has been added to Christ, the system of Christianity as it exists today.

The Bible records that Christ “loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25), not for any “ism,” whether “Judaism,” “Catholicism” or “Protestantism.” God did not save us for any “anity” or any “ism;” He saved us to be the Body of Christ. While concepts such as these are not universally held among believers today, neither are they entirely foreign. They certainly should not be foreign to those putting themselves forward as Christian scholars and Christian publishers.

https://contendingforthefaith.org/en/misrepresentations-on-the-harvest-house-corporate-web-site/

@sonship

Please don’t write anything more about the justification for one church in one locality. I know your reasoning backwards.

The crucial point is that we cannot turn the clock back 2000 years to where we have a clean slate - no churches. Of course, then one would form, and cultivate, only one church in each locality.

But just open your eyes and see the reality of the 20th century, when WL operated. You cannot wish away the current groups of believers, nor can you be so naive or arrogant as to require that all the faithful saints in whatever groups they find themselves, should now resign and join YOUR “new and improved” denomination.

THAT is the absolute height of cultism.

@secondson said
"In five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well”.

And how do you, Ghost, know that that isn't exactly what happened?

How do you know it's not true? Assuming of course you believe Nee is lying.

Perhaps you missed this post:

'As Suzianne indicated, the only thing any of us here really know about Watchman Nee and Witness Lee is what you (sonship) tell us about them. These threads, therefore, are intended to readdress the balance and examine their teachings from a different perspective.'