All Posts Tagged "oneness of the believers"

In practicing the church life, our attitude toward fellow believers is an important matter. To aid the saints in understanding this matter more thoroughly, we offer the fellowship in this small book, which is based on the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.

An index to responses written by members of the local churches to criticisms of the churches and of the ministry of Witness Lee.

The articles on this site responding to criticisms of the local churches and the ministry of Witness Lee are centered around three primary issues—the Trinity, God’s complete salvation, and the practical expression of the church. The first round of responses were published in the 1970s in response to the criticisms of inexperienced apologists who had a limited understanding of biblical truth and even less of the ministry of Witness Lee. After an interim in which many additional resources presenting Witness Lee’s teachings were published, beginning from 1999 Harvest House Publishers and others associated with that company raised the same issues again, essentially repeating those earlier accusations without regard to the responses or other writings already published. Those renewed criticisms called forth a second round of responses.

In 2007 an open letter appeared on the Internet calling on Living Stream Ministry and the local churches to “disavow and cease to publish” certain statements by Witness Lee. The two books in the series A Defense of the Gospel: Responses to an Open Letter from “Christian Scholars and Ministry Leaders” (1) and 2 answer the concerns raised in that 2007 open letter and show the defects in its handling of important biblical truths.

A 1978 booklet by Ron Kangas refuting the charge that the local churches are exclusive. It discusses:

• our attitude toward fellow believers,
• our practice of receiving all genuine Christians,
• our fellowship with other Christians, and
• our testimony concerning our practice of standing apart from division and receiving all believers in fellowship.

This 2009 book contains a statement prepared by the LSM editorial section addressing key issues in dialogues with a panel of Fuller Theological Seminary professors regarding the Trinity, the Person of Christ, God’s full salvation, and the genuine ground of oneness. It also contains a copy of the Fuller panel’s conclusions from their study.

Harvest House and its authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon sought to make the local churches repulsive in the eyes of the Christian public using out-of-context quotation and misrepresenting our Scripture-based rejection of unbiblical teachings, practices and institutions as a rejection of fellow believers and of the faith. In doing so, they pervert Witness Lee’s plea for recovery to the biblical standards of life, service, and testimony among Christians.

The local churches seek to return to the biblical standard concerning the subjective experience of Christ, the function of every member of the Body of Christ, and the practical testimony of the oneness of the Body of Christ. Harvest House, John Ankerberg, and John Weldon misrepresent Witness Lee’s biblically-based critique of organized Christianity on these three lines, even though they and their associates acknowledge the same deficiencies in Christendom today.

Harvest House has attempted to turn Christians against the local churches with a series of out-of-context quotations posted on its corporate website. This article contextualizes those quotes and exposes Harvest House’s unfaithfulness to the Bible and to the Lord’s church in misrepresenting the teaching of Witness Lee.

This article gives brief rebuttals to accusations in the pamphlet The Teachings of Witness Lee and The Local Church concerning:

• division,
• the Triune God,
• the Spirit in John 7:37-39,
• the Body of Christ,
• the practical oneness of the church,
• the Bible,
• the flesh of man, and
• the church as the manifestation of God.

Those who desire to return to the “historic Christian church” should consider the epistles to the seven churches in [Revelation chapters 2 and 3]. The prophecies there trace the historic development of the church and its degradation from the New Testament standard.

A booklet published by Living Stream Ministry in 1978 outlining:

• the faith, standing, mission, and hope of the local churches;
• the meaning of the expression “the Lord’s recovery”;and
• some basic truths regarding salvation, the Christian life, and the church life.

This booklet also answers some questions raised at that time about the beliefs and practices of the local churches.

Witness Lee used the expression “four-in-one” to express the marvelous reality that the Triune God and the believers in Christ mutually indwell one another (John 14:20; 17:21, 23). However, some have misrepresented this “four-in-one” mutual indwelling to falsely claim that Witness Lee makes the church part of the Godhead.

An answer to Walter Martin’s accusations that Witness Lee and the local churches practice “dividing the Body of Christ,” “proselytizing among other Christian groups,” and “sheep stealing.”

In this statement Witness Lee responds to criticism of his teachings by explaining three reasons for different understandings of the Scriptures:

• The profundity of the divine revelation in the Bible;
• The two aspects of the truths in the Bible—objective and subjective; and
• The Lord’s progressive move to recover the truths in the Bible.

Witness Lee closes with an appeal for conduct becoming of Christians in disagreements of understandings of Scriptures.

A brief survey of the truth concerning the oneness of the church, both spiritually and practically, and of the truth that the church is God manifested in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:15-16).

A return to “historic Christianity” and a creed-based faith would bind the church to the church councils that brought in many deviations from New Testament Christianity. The second and third parts of this post address the truth concerning Babylon and denominations.