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'''The Local Church ''' of Witness Lee is an anti-Christian pseudo-Christian Buddhist organization headquartered in Anaheim, California, USA under the title the "Living Stream Ministry" (LSM). In order to protect the secrecy of the organization, the LSM does not take a name for its franchise cell-franchises and aggressively sues anyone who attempts to shine attention on its activities. Franchises of the Local [[Church]] can be located in phone books under the nondescript heading "The Church in" followed by the name of the city where the cell is incorporated for business.
Although its dogmas can be described accurately as ''Chinese folk-Buddhist'', the Local Church of Witness Lee 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 believed underlie Christianity. Its founder Witness Lee, a pseudonym masking an unknown true identity, denied that the organization he founded had Buddhist roots. In the United States, he Local Church continues to hold a majority of Americans in membership, with a substantial number of Mandarin-speaking Chinese transplants who dominate the leadership.
==History==
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 claimed to have been a coworker co-worker of Watchman Nee, a relatively obscure Chinese Christian holding controversial beliefs. Nee preached that every [[Christian]] should be absolutely submissive to persons appointed to "Christian leadership" who had the right to control every aspect of followers' lives, including their income. Since the PRC held Nee in prison incognito, Taiwanese Christians were unable to verify Lee's association with him in 1953. Within two years Lee attempted to take over Nee's Little Flock congregation in Taipei, Taiwan (RoC). The attempt failed, but not after having split hundreds of its members off into Lee's own group. Although Lee was now the head of his own splinter group, leaders of the Little Flock exposed Lee as a fraud with no connections to Watchman Nee and forced Lee to flee the country.
Lee flew to the United States and representing himself as a simple Chinese Christian fleeing Communist persecution, he was able to find audiences among less sophisticated non-denominational [[Evangelicalism|Evangelical]] [[Bible]] studies. Even so, Lee spoke only a halting pidgin English and his non-Christian sentiments quickly became apparent while increasing number of American hosts began rejecting his requests for speaking engagements and charity. By 1961, Lee was left with only a single Vineyard Fellowship in Los Angeles, California, who were willing to allow Lee to continue speaking among them. Lee continued to live off the charity of its members.
By 1962, Lee attempted a take over of the host Vineyard Fellowship in Los Angeles, just as he had done in Taiwan. This too failed. But just as in Taiwan, Lee was able to break off a large number of followers, 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 "splitting" and "creating a division of within the body of Christ;" his solution was simply to beat his hosts to the punch and accuse them of division. He argued that since only his doctrines (Chinese folk-Buddhist, see below) were truly Christian, his hosts were creating division by continuing in their ways and refusing to follow him.
In 1962, under the advice of his new American advisors, Lee was able to establish himself at the head of a new religious organization. In 1963, his first line of business was to create his own publishing house publishing only revisions of his spoken addresses by using donations he had received from Americans perviously previously and staffed by his advisors who had split off from their Evangelical churches and Bible studies. This was the beginning of the Living Stream Ministry which would quickly become the mini-Vatican of Lee's new and financially lucrative "Local Church."
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 4 million dollars at the time, where he lived with his fourth wife. His favorite son lived in a similarly spacious complex on the same compound walled off from prying eyes of the community. Lee travelled throughout the world free of charge several times a year to build membership and acquire donors, chauffeured wherever he spoke and toured.
==Key doctrines==
* '''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," iei.e., ''anti-salvation.'' Salvation was the beginning of the process.
* '''Anti-[[redemption]]''' - Nothing of man's soul can be retained; however, 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," that is ''anti-salvation.'' Redemption was the end of the process.
* '''Chaos''' - Lee taught that his followers should lead a "spiritual life" that was spontaneous and free. Each long 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 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 destoyed 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.
==According to the Local Church==
Members of the "the local church" describe themselves as a group of christains 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 church in each city. They receive all believers in Christ just as God has received them (Romans 14:3; 15:7). The present day practice has its begining beginning in the teachings of a christian 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 various names, including, "The Little Flock" and "The Local Church". They adopt no formal name and only veiw 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 Testiment Testament 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 aspect*, the church also has a local, practical aspect.
*'''Augustus Neander''', Professor of Theology at the University of Berlin, in "History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles" ,1889, he wrote:
"But the Epistlets Epistles of the apostle Paul give the clearest evidence that all the Christians of one city originally formed one church."
Also see:
* [http://thebereans.net/forum/index.php?board=21;action=display;threadid=3466 Forum discussing the Lee Church]
===Infomation Information on the Local Church by the Local Church===
Living Stream Ministry
* [http://www.lsm.org/ Offical Official site of the Living Stream Ministry, headquarters of the Lee Church]
Theological Journal published by LSM directed at non-members and new-comers
LSM Online Publications
* [http://www.ministrybooks.org/ MinistryBooksMinistry Books]
Recovery Version Online
