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{{Infobox_Contents | topic_name ==the The local church| subtopics == [[Pelagianism]]"* [[Jehovah'''the local church'''" is a group s Witnesses]]* [[Holy Order of christains that practice meeting as the church wherever they live. They believe and teach that all who are genuine believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are already members of the universal body of Christ and are to be recieved into the fellowship as Christ has recieved them. The present day practice has its begining in the teachings of a christian teacher and author, Watchman Nee (1903-1972), it was brought to the United States by his co-worker, Witness Lee (1905-1997). This group has been called by verious names, including, "The Little Flock" and "The Local Church". They adopt no formal name and only veiw the term "local church" as a description of what they are. In the writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, the terms “local church” or “local churches” refers to the New Testiment model, pattern and practice of one church in one city. Both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, his closest co-worker, taught that in addition to its universal, mystical aspectMANS]]*, the church also has a local, practical aspect.[[Heresy]] |opinion_pieces = {{short_opinions}} |}}

==Teachings in Although its dogmas can be described accurately as ''Chinese folk-Buddhist'', the ministry Local Church of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee=====The Church=======Universal Aspect====Matthew 16:18 <br>couches these dogmas in Christian terminology while maintaining sharp antagonism to Christianity itself. It markets its own version of the [[Bible]] which it calls the "Recovery Version," a name that explains its pseudo- and anti-Christian beliefs as "recovering"the Buddhist doctrinal roots it believes underlie Christianity...I will build My church..."(NSAB)<br>*'''Watchman Nee''' Its founder, Witness Lee, in his Collected Works writesa pseudonym masking an unknown true identity,"The universal church includes all denied that the believers both past and presentorganization he founded had Buddhist roots. There is only one such church In the United States, and we cannot add another he Local Church continues to it. The universal church is unique." (2.43hold a majority of Americans in membership, although a substantial number of Mandarin-speaking Chinese transplants dominate the leadership.572)

====Local Aspect====Mathew 18:17 <br>"If Witness Lee hailed from the People's Republic of China (PRC) and, unable to secure a post in the official Communist Party, relocated to Taiwan (RoC), where he refuses claimed to listenhave been a co-worker of Watchman Nee, a relatively obscure Chinese Christian holding controversial beliefs...tell it Nee preached that every [[Christian]] should be absolutely submissive to persons appointed to "Christian leadership" who had the churchright to control every aspect of followers' lives, including their income..."(NSAB)<br>*Again ''' Since the PRC held Nee writesin prison incognito, Taiwanese Christians were unable to verify Lee''':"The local church includes all the local believers at a certain time and s association with him in a certain place1953. It is limited Within two years Lee attempted to time and place. It can be counted. This is why we see expressions take over Nee's Little Flock congregation in the Bible such as the “church” Taipei, Taiwan (Acts 9:31RoC). The attempt failed, but only after having split hundreds of its members into Lee's own group. Although Lee was now the “seven churches” (Rev. 1:4)head of his own splinter group, and leaders of the “churches” (1 Cor. 11:16; 14:33)". (Little Flock exposed Lee as a fraud with no connections to Watchman Nee, Collected Works, 2and forced Lee to flee the country.43.572)

*'''Henry Cotterill'''By 1962, bishop of EdinburghLee attempted to take over the Vineyard Fellowship in Los Angeles, authored the work "The Genesis of the Church" just as he had done in 1872Taiwan. He wrote:"We have observed that whilst, This too failed. But just as in the language both of Christ Himself and of the apostlesTaiwan, the whole body Lee was able to break off a large number of disciples or Christians everywhere is spoken of as “the Churchfollowers,” yet apostolic writers speak and these Americans had access to a great deal more capital than Lee's Chinese followers. Lee had for years listened to naive accusations against him of Christians in "splitting" and "creating a particular country as “the Churches” in that country. But whenever they would describe division of within the body of Christians in a single city,—even in Jerusalem where, shortly after Christ". His solution was simply to beat his hosts to the day punch and accuse them of Pentecostdivision. He argued that since only his doctrines were truly Christian, there his hosts were five thousand disciples, it is always “the Church,” never “the Churches,” creating division by continuing in that city: the use of the singular indicating that common corporate life of Christians dwelling in the same placetheir ways and refusing to follow him." (567)

*'''Augustus Neander'''In 1962, Professor under the advice of Theology his new American advisors, Lee was able to establish himself at the University head of Berlina new religious organization. In 1963, in "History his first line of business was to create his own publishing house to publish revisions of his spoken addresses using donations he had received from Americans and staffed by his advisors who had split off from their Evangelical churches and Bible studies. This was the Planting and Training beginning of the Christian Living Stream Ministry which would quickly become the mini-Vatican of Lee's new and financially lucrative "Local Church by the Apostles." ,1889, he wrote:

"But the Epistlets By 1974, Lee's advisory leadership had created an organization of more than 7,000 members worldwide. A house on several acres on prime urban real estate on Ball Road in Anaheim California was built and donated to Lee, valued at four million dollars at the apostle Paul give time, where he lived with his fourth wife. His favorite son lived in a similarly spacious complex on the clearest evidence that all same walled compound. Lee travelled throughout the Christians world free of one city originally formed one churchcharge several times a year to build membership and acquire donors, chauffeured wherever he spoke and toured."

<br>See:* [http://localLee stirred up controversy wherever he went and he never shirked from leveling the most basest of charges at whoever crossed him. Any writer who objectively publicized his eccentric pseudo-church-historyChristian dogmas quickly became the subject of unrelenting attacks launched from the full force of the LSM's war chest numbering in the hundreds of millions of dollars.org/local-church-2-aspects-a One such victim was Fr.htm Two Aspects [[Jack Sparks]], currently one of the most highly respected priests in American [[Orthodox|Orthodoxy]], the overseeing editor of the Church[[Orthodox Study Bible]]and the ongoing English Orthodox Bible translation project.

However, the enlightened leadership did not pursue any aggressive stance against Lee or his church. Through his LSM, Lee still controlled an immense tax-free war-chest, and Local Church activities once again continued. When Lee died in 1997, he was recognized by his church as God himself (attained through a "process" Lee called "Mingling"). A scramble among Lee's Chinese followers established a new leader of the LSM and its subsidiary Local Church franchises. ==Doctrine=====The Triune God/TrinityKey aspects===  * '''Anti-[[salvation]]''' - Lee taught that man's soul must be utterly destroyed. Since the [[soul]] is totally [[evil]], it cannot be saved. Instead, Lee taught that the soul must be replaced by an alien spirit through a process called "Mingling" and to effect what Lee called "salvation". Salvation was the beginning of the process. * '''Anti-[[redemption]]''' - Although nothing of man's soul can be retained, its destruction does produce a harvest. The alien spirit that replaces the soul grows inside the hulking space left behind in the destruction. Eventually this spirit is reunited to its godhead in a result Lee called "redemption". Redemption was the end of the process. * '''Soul-murder''' - The process of destroying a man's soul and replacing it over time with an alien spirit takes place by mixing the two natures together. The proportions of the alien spirit that Lee called "God " is both increased while the human soul is decreased. Ultimately so much of the alien spirit has been added that nothing is left of the man. The man is destroyed. That man becomes God. Lee called this process "Mingling." * '''Satanism''' - Lee taught that the "heart of the [[Gospel]]" is that "God became man that man could become God." This is the original sin that Satan performed before he was cast out of Heaven. That a created being should desire to become God is Satanism. * '''Bibliolatry''' - Lee taught that "God-inspired" meant "God's essence" and thus the very words of the Bible were God himself and worthy of worship. Since the words themselves were holy, only the version of the [[Bible]] that Lee approved and profited from could be worshipped as God. Furthermore, any of Lee's published messages and notes to that version of the Bible were required to be worshipped as God. Worship of the words takes place in a ritual Lee called "Pray-reading." (See comments on ''Praying meaningless words in repetition'' below.) * '''[[God]]'s head''' - Lee never acquired more than a limited grasp of English. During one of his three-hour sermons it became clear that he thought that the word "Godhead" (properly meaning ''Godness'' or ''divinity'') meant '''God's head.''' The audience immediately erupted into laughter, thinking that this was an honest mistake of a simple Chinese man and three; ''endearing''. Lee, however thought his audience was mocking him. So he created a new etymology of the Three word to show, as he said, that he "knew English better than you Americans." This was fitted into Lee's dogmatic scheme to explain how man became God but not part of the Christians' Trinity: man became God, but not the Godhead coexist simultaneously and eternally; man became the body of Christ but not ''God's head.''  * '''Emptying the [[mind]]''' - Lee taught that each the process of Mingling can only take place if the Three mind is fully emptied. Orthodoxy knows this as a very dangerous practice during which the mind enters the spiritual realms and is thus vulnerable to spiritual attack. [[Hesychast]]s teach analogous ''Christian'' practice only with extreme caution. Even saints could be subjected to attack when in meditative visionary states. Lee, however, directed his followers to empty their minds through two methods. This had the added convenience that a minded thus emptied could not be critical of nonsense and craven requests for money.*# '''Mocking the name of the Lord''' - Lee taught that salvation was a once and for all event that occurred only when a person shouted at the top of his lungs "O LORD JESUS!" ten times in public. This desensitizes the person to the Lord's name and trivializes salvation to a meaningless technique. When a person accustomed to shouting these words in Local Church meetings hears the Lord's name invoked with sincerity, it means nothing to him. Lee called this ritual "Calling upon the name of the Lord."*# '''Praying meaningless words in repetition''' - Lee taught that in addition to screaming the Lord's name, his followers must pick random words from the Bible, forget what they mean, and repeat them at least ten times prayerfully. Grammatical words such as "the", "a", "many", etc were particularly to be stressed. Lee justified this by saying that all scripture was "God-breathed" and thus literally the substance of God. The follower who did this was said "to eat the God" and thus continued the process of Mingling. Lee called this ritual "Pray-reading the Word" and "eating the Lord." * '''Chaos''' - Lee taught that his followers should lead a "spiritual life" that was spontaneous and free. Each Local Church meeting is a psychological (not literal) orgy of screaming, emotional outbursts, gasps, public confessions of personal weakness, recitation of official slogans, punching the air, and jumping up and down. This is chaos. To be sure, none of this is spontaneous; each meeting is a rehearsal of the next and only the correct words, phrases and ways of punching and jumping are allowed. This is strictly enforced. Followers will be shouted down or shouted to sit down and shut up if they do not perform the chaos correctly. Slow learners are shunned socially and humiliated until they get it right. In addition to the chaos of the meetings, followers' personal lives are likewise often in chaos: latent neuroses and fears come to dominate their lives and their finances often skyrocket out of control. * '''[[Christian]]s face a fate worse than Hell''' - Lee taught that a Christian was someone who had begun the process of ingesting God. Once a piece of God was "imparted" into the man, God could never destroy the man as easily as he could a non-Christian. The Christian who did not accept Lee's doctrine of Mingling would never become God. The alien [[spirit]] Lee called "God" could not reunite from the man to himself if there were still parts of the Three man in the man. The solution was that all Christians would be cast into outer darkness, where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth" until they accepted Lee's doctrines. If after a thousand years of eternity they still refused, they were then sent to [[Hell]] where their souls would be destroyed as Lee's God intended. Thus the fate of Christian is worse that of a non-Christian: he is rewarded with outer darkness and Hell too. * '''Christianity, the synagogue of [[Satan]]''' - Lee taught that those who had not heard his doctrines are neutral but that Christians are the Devil's own. * '''Amorality''' - Lee did not teach morality or ethics. Instead he said that preaching morality was the purview of "shallow Christianity." Members of his Local Church had no need of such talk, he said, since they were already the most moral persons on earth by nature of becoming God. * '''Unitarianism''' - Lee claimed he was "[[Trinity|trinitarian]]" but taught otherwise. To him, the persons of the Holy Trinity simply represented stages in the process he called "Mingling." [[Jesus Christ|God the Son]] was just God being born. The [[Holy Spirit]] was just the fluid whereby the mortal man Jesus became God the Father. [[God the Father]] was the end result of the process. ===Doctrinal summary=== Lee's doctrinal scheme was simply his folk understanding of the Buddhist notion of Nirvana. Lee did not believe in an eternalsoul that was separable from nature. Instead, he believed that every man's soul would be ''destroyed'' without exception. Humans have a choice whether to allow this destruction to lead to Hell or to lead to their empty hulk of destroyed soul returning to God. The soul becomes nothing, the soul joins God. This is Nirvana and bears no resemblance to the Christian concept of salvation. Further, God follows the same process. God's nature is not immutable and eternal. Since humans can become God, God undergoes the process at the same time as humans do. This means, in effect, that God is nothing more than the "All" of [[Buddhism]]. Since Lee's scheme requires that God is both Creator and the created, the individual and the all, Lee taught [[pantheism]].  Further, Lee taught that the process of soul-destruction and returning to God involved mechanical processes whereby definite proportions of God would replace the human's soul, destroy it and then return to itself, Lee was establishing materialistic mechanisms for the spiritual realm. This reduced the spiritual to the material.  In short, Lee was a pantheistic [[materialism]], which is essentially what Buddhism is. Lee did not possess the education to elucidate this, but on the other hand he was selling his understanding of the Chinese folk-Buddhism that he was raised under in China as Christianity to a Christian culture. He would not have sold this successfully were he up front about it. Lee's methods of emptying the mind with meaningless words are traits specific to Buddhism of the Far East and Lee's soul-destruction equates to the nothingness of Nirvana. ==According to the Local Church== Members of the "the local church" describe themselves as a group of Christians that practice meeting as the church wherever they live. They believe and teach that local churches include all of the believers in their respective cities; therefore all the believers in their respective cities comprise the Three coinhere inseparably; church in each city. They receive all believers in Christ just as God has received them ([[Romans 14:3]], [[Romans 15:7]]). The present day practice had its beginning in the teachings of a Christian teacher and author, Watchman Nee (1903-1972), and was brought to the ThreeUnited States by his co-worker, Witness Lee (1905-1997). This group has been called by various names, each distinct though never separateincluding, exist "The Little Flock" and "The Local Church". They adopt no formal name and only view the term "local church" as a description of what they are. In the writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, the terms “local church” or “local churches” refers to the New Testament model, pattern and practice of one church in one unique Godcity. Both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, his closest co-worker, taught that in addition to its universal, mystical aspect*, the church also has a local, practical aspect."

"Modalism is heretical. Modalism teaches that ==Teachings from the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are likewise finite, not eternal. It asserts that They are merely three temporary modes or forms works of activity through which God manifests Himself in time. Modalism claims that the Father's existence ended with the Son's coming and that the Son ceased to exist when the Spirit came. Thus, according to modalistic thought, the Father, Son, and Spirit do not exist simultaneously Watchman Nee and eternally. This view, of course, is contrary to the pure biblical revelation of the Triune God."Witness Lee=====The Church Universal===

(See: *[http[Matthew 16://www18]] &ndash; ".triunegod.org '''The Triune God'''].I will build My church..."(NSAB)

====Economical Trinity====God viewed from (See also the aspect of His economy (God in his actions[[Nicene Creed]].)

====Essencial Trinity====God viewed from * Nee writes "The local church includes all the aspect of His eternal beinglocal believers at a certain time and in a certain place. It is limited to time and place. It can be counted. This is why we see expressions in the Bible such as the “church” ([[Acts 9:31]]), the “seven churches” ([[Revelation 1:4]]), and the “churches” ([[1 Corinthians 11:16]], [[1 Corinthians 14:33|14:33]])". (Watchman Nee, Collected Works, 2.43.572)

==External Resouces=Information on the Local Church by the Local Church===

* [http://www.lsm.org/ Official site of the Living Stream Ministry, headquarters of the Lee Church]

Theological Journal published by LSMdirected at non-members and new-comers

* [http://www.ministrybooks.org/ MinistryBooksMinistry Books]