All Posts Tagged "Open Letter"

The teaching of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee concerning the proper standing of a local church.

What the Apostle Peter and Athanasius say about deification.

Witness Lee’s teaching of deification is actual a biblical view.

Witness Lee and the local churches “are bringing a correction to a problem within Western evangelicalism” concerning the Trinity.

How the “open letter” signers got it wrong.

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

A series of articles addressing various deviations from biblical truth and false and hypocritical statements in an article posted on the Internet by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. That article attacked the “We Were Wrong” issue of the Christian Research Journal and defended a 2007 open letter.

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.

The Christian Research Institute published videos to accompany excerpts from radio broadcasts of Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, discussing the findings of the Christian Research Institute’s six-year primary research projects into the local churches and the ministry of Witness Lee.

In December 2009, the Christian Research Institute (CRI) published an edition of its Christian Research Journal dedicated to CRI’s reassessment of the local churches and the ministry of Witness Lee. This reassessment caused CRI to withdraw its earlier criticisms and endorse the local churches as “genuine New Testament Christianity.”

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.

This 2011 book is one of a series of four addressing criticisms by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. This book addresses various points of truth concerning the Divine Trinity, including:

• the use of the word persons to describe the Three of the Godhead;
• the coinherence and co-working of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit;
• whether Isaiah 9:6 prophesies that the “Son given to us” is the “Eternal Father”; and
• whether the Apostle Paul said the Lord Jesus Christ is the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17.

A list of excerpts from respected scholars who affirm that 2 Corinthians 3:17, 1 Corinthians 15:45, and other verses identify the Lord Jesus Christ with the Spirit.

Elliot Miller, Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal, and Hank Hanegraaff, President of Christian Research Institute talk about deficiencies in the scholarship and biblical understanding of Christian leaders who signed a 2007 open letter criticizing the ministry of Witness Lee and the local churches.

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.

After the end of The God-Men case (Lee v. Duddy) in 1985, Dr. J. Gordon Melton, one of the expert witnesses in the case, wrote and published An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee and The God-Men Controversy. Dr. Melton demonstrated conclusively that The God-Men had misrepresented Witness Lee teaching and recommended that it, and any other writing based on it, be discarded.