Poster | Thread | Graftedbranc Member
Joined: 2005/11/8 Posts: 619
| Re: | | Quote:
A number of Israelites did go back to Jerusalem. Apparently, they increased the number of groups. But actually, they did not bear the responsibility for divisions. It was those who insisted upon remaining in captivity and not obeying the command of the Lord to go back to Jerusalem who were responsible for the divisions among the Lord's people."
"If all of you will promise me to drop all the denomonational names and divisive elements and come together as the local church in the city, I will immediately ask the brothers to close our meeting hall. At this they shook thier heads and said that this would be impossible. So I said very strongly, "Who then is responsible for the divisions?"
Amen.
It is a strange logic that says that to renounce and come come out of divisions and meet on the ground of the oneness of all believers is divisive.
Rather it seems the logic is, "let us remain divided so that we can be unified in our divisions."
Or, "if we all agree to remain divided, then we have unity in our agreement."
Or, "Let us shake hands over our fences but let's dare not touch the fences. We all love our fences."
John 17:21,23 "That they all may be one; even as You Father are in Me and I in You, that they may be one in us: that the world may believe... I in them and YOu in Me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that YOu have sent me and have loved them even as You have loved Me."
Here the Lord prayed that we ALL would be perfected into one. And the basis of this oneness is our Union with the Triune God.
Can anyone really argue that divisions are the rusult of the work of the Holy Spirit? Is He the author of the divisnions which exist?
Or are divisions as Paul says in 1 cor. 3 the product of the flesh? Is it not our natural preferences? Our cultural preferences, our personality preferences, our doctrinal view preferences, our traditional preferences? All of which the scriptures testify were put to death in Christ on the Cross and in the One New Man there can be no Jew or Greek, Slave or Free, Baptist, Presbeterian, Methodist, Holiness, Pentecostal, etc. There is just Christ and His body and local churches as local experessions of the one body of Christ.
Graftedbranch |
| 2006/7/21 11:45 | Profile | y2daddy Member
Joined: 2003/6/20 Posts: 3
| Re: | | Quote:
It is a strange logic that says that to renounce and come come out of divisions and meet on the ground of the oneness of all believers is divisive.
Rather it seems the logic is, "let us remain divided so that we can be unified in our divisions."
Or, "if we all agree to remain divided, then we have unity in our agreement."
Or, "Let us shake hands over our fences but let's dare not touch the fences. We all love our fences."
But the Recovery has fences too. I have Recovery fences in my own backyard, with the churches in Cleveland and Lorain on one side, and the churches in Elyria, Medina, and others on the other side. All of this over the matter of one publication.
I would still be meeting with the church in Elyria, if it wasn't for the fact that with all the preaching they do about the ground of oneness, what they really mean is "oneness with all those who meet in this meeting hall." I can't begin to count how many anti-testimonies I've heard, along the lines of "boy, I'm sure glad I'm not like [u]them[/u]." That is not oneness! That is just another sect. Which is what the recovery has become- just another denomination. |
| 2006/7/21 18:43 | Profile |
| Re: | | If what you describe to be the case really is the case, then that description of oneness you heard is not my description of it, many others who meet on the ground of oneness' description of it, Brother Lee or Nee's description of it, or the Bible's description of it.
There are often some people that are too much and who don't understand things properly. That doesn't make the item that may be misunderstood any less valid or valuable.
Regarding "fences," someone can talk about recovery all they want, they might not be recovering what the Lord is recovering, and they can talk about the oneness all they want, it doesn't mean they hold the proper view, practice, or experience of the oneness, as many today [i]do[/i] practice properly, as Brothers Lee and Nee have presented properly, and as the Bible presets properly. That's not so much a fence going down the middle of the oneness, it's, quite simply, a group of people leaving the oneness and putting a fence up around themselves.
edit: I assure you, if you travelled a bit in some other areas of the country and the world you would not get the flavor of a denomonation [i]at all[/i]. In a few rare cases there are some hints of it. In those sort of instances, they're not really fully in the Lord's recovery in its essence. The word recovery is not meant to be used as a name or title, it is meant to be used as an adjective, hence it is lower cased except when it is a part of the heading in a book or something of that nature (times when words that are not otherwise uppercase become that way). If someone is not recovering what the Lord is recovering, they're not really in the recovery. |
| 2006/7/21 23:26 | | y2daddy Member
Joined: 2003/6/20 Posts: 3
| Re: | | Quote:
There are often some people that are too much and who don't understand things properly. That doesn't make the item that may be misunderstood any less valid or valuable.
You're absolutely right, of course, and I apologize for assuming that northwest Ohio represents the recovery as a whole. It's just that what [u]is[/u] going on out here is hard to deal with, which is why I just washed my hands of the whole thing. |
| 2006/7/22 11:00 | Profile |
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