All Posts Tagged "recovery"

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 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.

God is moving today to recover what was lost by the historic Christian church. This article presents:

• the definition of recovery,
• the principle of recovery,
• how recovery relates to God’s purpose,
• the role of the church in God’s recovery,
• a picture of God’s recovery in the Old Testament,
• a brief history of God’s recovery since the Reformation,
• an overview of what God is seeking to recover today.

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.

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.

In this 1977 booklet, Witness Lee directly rebuts the accusation that his teaching is modalistic. He examines key verses such as Isaiah 9:6, 1 Corinthians 15:45, and 2 Corinthians 3:17, showing that some who twist these verses to avoid their obvious meaning end up in the heresy of tritheism. Witness Lee concludes by showing that the biblical revelation of the Triune God is not for doctrinal formulations but for His people to experience of the reality of God.