All Posts Tagged "mingling"

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.

This 2011 book is one of a series of four addressing criticisms by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. This book addresses three key issues:

• the error of making creeds, not the Bible, the rule of faith;
• the twofoldness of divine truth; and
• the infinite God becoming a finite man through incarnation.

Norman Geisler criticized an article by Ron Kangas in which the latter said, “God is infinite, and man is finite, yet in Christ the two became one.” In his criticism Geisler both misrepresents what Ron Kangas said and deviates from the biblical revelation of both the Person of Christ and of the Divine Trinity.

Dr. J. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and author of the standard work Encyclopedia of American Religions, testified that SCP had completely misrepresented Witness Lee and the local churches and had made many false and damaging accusations in its book The God-Men. [Note: Dr. Melton is currently Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at the Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University.]

Dr. Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, formerly Professor of Biblical Languages in both the Episcopal Theological School and Philadelphia Divinity School, testified that The God-Men intentionally misrepresented Witness Lee’s teachings on the authority of the Bible and morality and that the members of the local churches were “extremely family-oriented.”

The full text of Dr. J. Gordon Melton’s booklet An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee, and The God-Men Controversy, written and published by Dr. Melton after the conclusion of Lee v. Duddy. After giving a general background of the local churches based on Dr. Melton’s research as the leading authority on contemporary American religious groups, this booklet shows The God-Men‘s twisting of Witness Lee’s words in four key areas—propositional revelation, morality, rationality and use of the mind, and personal versus biblical authority. Based on SCP’s blatant misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s teaching, Dr. Melton recommends that The God-Men and any writing based on it be discarded.

The writer of this article called on Walter Martin to correct errors spoken in public concerning Witness Lee, the local churches, and vital biblical truths.

A consideration of mingling as the most accurate term to describe the union of God and man based on 2 Corinthians 3:17, 2 Timothy 4:22, and 1 Corinthians 6:17.

A short article showing the basis for the teaching of the mingling of God and man in both the Old and New Testaments and how mingling is the most appropriate word to describe the relationship of the divine and human natures in Christ.