Fifteen Serious [Ignored] Warnings
You yourselves know... how I did not withhold any of those things that are profitable by not declaring them to you and by not teaching you publicly and from house to house..Therefore I testify to you on this day that I am clean from the blood of all men, For I did not shrink from declaring to you all the counsel of God.
Take heed
to yourselves and to all the flock..
Acts 20:18-28 Rcv
ONE''To depend upon others for a kind of Sunday school or any other kind of meeting to build up your children for you is altogether not healthy. From the beginning we have torn down this concept... The church is not going to build up your children... No meeting, no work is going to build up your children... So forget about the thought, the concept that you would depend upon the church to have a certain kind of meeting to build up your children. You have to drop this thought. This is a wrong thought.''
Witness Lee - From an unpublished message in Anaheim, CA. January 30, 1978 - Living Stream Ministry
TWO ''If we care for them in a thorough way from the time before they are born, I tell you, these children will really be something. Can you imagine the church life in 20 years? It will be glorious! We can forget about the campuses. We will have our own crop and they will be bringing them in from the campuses spontaneously. We won't have to have 40 year old students going to the campus. This is an emergency so we may have to do it now, but that is not the proper way. It is because we have dropped the ball over these years. We haven't cared for the children properly. Believe me, we realize we haven't cared for the children properly. We have missed this in the recovery. We have missed the matter of the children. We considered - just let the junior highers take care of the grade school kids and let the high schoolers take care of the junior highers - and it is all chaos. I am not pointing the finger anywhere because we are all short. But anyway, this is the shortage with us. There are too many children brought up by us going into the world. Too many 8 year old children saying "I don't want to go to the childrens meeting." There is something wrong. We need to start from the beginning.''
Excerpt from Page 8 "Fellowship Concerning the Children" given in Long Beach Calif. by Eugene Gruhler - 1/28/79
THREE"Please give me the liberty to say this word. Throughout church history, the greatest failure among Christians is the failure in parenting. This is something no one cares much about. The children are young; they are in your hands and can do nothing much themselves. If you are loose with yourself, you will also be loose with them. We must realize that parents must exercise self-control, sacrificing their own freedom. God has committed a human body, along with his soul, into our hands. If we do not exercise self-control and give up our freedom, we will have a difficult time answering to our God in the future."
Watchman Nee - Messages for Building Up New Believers (2) - (V49 CWWN) - pg 523 - Living Stream Ministry
FOUR''To be transformed by the renewing of the mind is to deal with this age, the practical world in front of us. We need to deal with ourselves, and we need to deal with our relationship with and concept concerning the practical world, which is today's age. We are deadened because we do not present ourselves to the Lord without any reservation. We should not keep any part of ourselves for ourselves. We must give ourselves to the Lord absolutely. Also, we should not secretly follow this age... We cannot conquer deadness if we follow this age even partially. The age is not hidden, but our following of it is hidden. We may still have a pretense that we love the Lord to the uttermost, but actually there is an undercurrent within us to follow the age, to love the world. If we are being secretly fashioned according to this age, how can we be living in the Lord? In the United States today there are two very negative things; sin and the age. These two things are deadening the Christians in this country. Our mind needs to be renewed so that we will not be fashioned according to this age.''
Witness Lee - The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups - pp 39-40 - Living Stream Ministry
FIVE''In the church meetings we may live Christ, but do we live Christ in our bedrooms or dining rooms and with our wives, husbands, and children? ...Many saints are very good in the church meetings and in the church service, but at home they may live the life not of a God-man but of a ''scorpion-man,'' exchanging words or quarreling. A certain couple may love the Lord and His recovery. However, at dinner the husband may criticize his wife for her attitude, and she may condemn him for his way of speaking. Then after dinner they attend the meeting of their vital group. But how can these two ''scorpions'' be vital? Because of such a daily situation, in this country it is very difficult to find a genuine vital group. According to my observation, in the vital groups I have seen only deadness, not vitality. All the vital members should be God-men, crucified in their natural life to live a God-man life by the divine life within them.''
Witness Lee - Life Study of First And Second Chronicles - Message 11 - Living Stream Ministry]
SIX''And this second thing you do: You cover the altar of Jehovah with tears, with weeping and sighing, so that He no longer regards the sacrifice or receives it with pleasure from your hand. Yet you say, for what reason? Because Jehovah has been the witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been treacherous; yet she is your companion and your wife of covenant. But did He not make them one? And the remnant of the Spirit was His. And why the one? He sought the seed of God. Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one be treacherous to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says Jehovah the God of Israel; and he who does it behaves in violence, says Jehovah of hosts. Take heed then to your spirit, and do not be treacherous.''
Malachi 2:13-16 Rcv Link to Related Life Study
''Confessing the Sin of Neglecting to Be the Head: What should a man do if he has given up the headship to a woman? First, before the Lord, he must know the reason that he has allowed her to become the head. He has to confess his sin of neglecting to be the head. It is a sin to instigate rebellion in a nation. It is a sin to be disobedient in the church, and it is a sin to relinquish the place of headship in the family. One must thoroughly deal with the Lord concerning such a sin and confess his sin.''
[Watchman Nee - Conferences Messages and Fellowship (V42 CWWN) - pg 270 - Living Stream Ministry]
EIGHT''We need to pray over the contents of our divine commission, asking the Lord to first make them our experience and reality so that we can bring others into this experience. We should pray these three points concerning ourselves - that our eyes would be opened, that we would be turned from darkness to light, and that we would be turned from the authority of Satan to God. Brother Lee told us that before we can bring others into this experience, we ourselves must have been delivered from the authority of darkness. We need to fast and pray that we could enter into this experience. We should not assume that we are fully free from the authority of darkness...There are degrees of being out from under the authority of Satan...Although it is good and necessary that we preach the gospel and pass out literature, we need to be persons who are in the reality of what we speak and distribute. We need to be in the reality of the gospel...We need to pray that the Lord would bring us fully out of the authority of Satan.''
Joel Kennon - First, Be Reconciled With Your Family - (4/14/02) - Short Clip (2min)
Message (26min) Tape Label Bk Cover
(The Ministry Magazine Vol. 6, No. 8 - Oct 2002 pp 48-49 JK [Note: Italic emphasis in the original] - Living Stream Ministry)
NINEShepherding the Correct Part of People's Tripartite being:
"Here I like to say a little word, we have learned from the past, we thought we should shepherd people's spirit. Right? Because we stress people's spirit so much, and then we tell people to reject the soul, and that, that is not so right. Today the saint's problem is with their soul. Of course you may say, if their spirit is strong there will be no problem! But how could their spirit be strong, when they have a lot of things in their soul? So we have to learn how to shepherd their soul, how to touch their soul."
[Witness Lee - ''The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups'' - Pg77, Tape 9FVGT08 - Living Stream Ministry]
TEN''I have heard that some brothers notice things happening that are not right, but they dare not say anything. To avoid getting involved, they stay silent and let the suffering go on. To do this is to play politics. This is what some of you have been practicing. Dear brothers, change your mind. Repent. Let us have no more such thing.'' [Practical Talks to the Elders, No. 2 - Feb 14, 1983 - pg 23, Witness Lee - Living Stream Ministry]
"Now we realize that every local church must be a police station and that every saint must be a policeman. Many have been reluctant to act as policemen for fear they might cause trouble. If someone claims to be for the ministry and yet goes about stealing and deceiving, we need to fulfill our function as policemen by checking him out according to the truth... If we see evil deeds but do not function as policemen, then we are not practicing the truth... Someone has even said that we should care only for the Spirit, not for principles. How subtle! ...If we all had practiced the truth, certain sayings and practices would have been questioned a long time ago."
(Witness Lee - Truth Messages - Chapter 1, Section 2 - Living Stream Ministry)
ELEVEN
"I have heard some say that the ones we visit are not worthwhile for us to work on because they are from the lower class. This is wrong. We need to see what the Lord's way is. The Lord wants to get the poor and crippled and blind and lame, and He even commands us to compel them to come in (Luke 14:21, 23). Would we be encouraged by gaining a "crippled" one? According to our natural being, we look down on people... Our natural being needs to be transformed to a spiritual being so that we can have the view, the sight, that the Triune God has..." "God chose the weak of the world that He might shame the strong. God chose the things which are not to bring to naught the things which are. The things which are not refers to those who are nobody. If you are somebody, God will have nothing to do with you. In God's choosing, He shames those who are somebody so that no one can boast before Him.''
[Elders' Training, Book 11: The Eldership and the God-Ordained Way (3), Chapter 6, Section 1&2 - Witness Lee "Excerpt" - Living Stream Ministry]
TWELVE
"Concerning the appointment and qualification of co-workers and elders, we can view this from two angles. On the one hand, we should follow the Scriptures. On the other hand, based on our long-term history, we know that some of our co-workers have been harmed because there has been no evaluation of their service. Today in various big companies and government organizations there are examinations with grades. Even diplomatic officials must take examinations... I absolutely believe that if we had systematically evaluated the co-workers in Taiwan over the past thirty years, the co-workers would have been more fruitful than they are today. The same applies to the elders... In the Bible we cannot find any length of time for the service of an elder. According to our understanding, it seems as if an elder should serve his whole life, like a justice on the Supreme Court. If an elder is constantly learning and making progress and is truly an elder among the saints, this is all right. But if one has been an elder for twenty or thirty years, and the church under his management is only mediocre, this proves that the time has come for him to voluntarily yield his position to someone who is younger but more qualified and experienced... In this way the churches can have a new beginning and a new hope."
[Crucial Words of Leading in the Lord's Recovery, Book 1: The Vision and Definite Steps for the Practice of the New Way, Witness Lee, Chapter 6, Section 5 - Living Stream Ministry]
THIRTEEN
"We must all be clear that those who administrate and serve the church are the elders and deacons. They should not expect co-workers to serve in their place.. I made it very clear to the brothers that they should not think that they were relieved of bearing any burden because I was there. I told them that I had come to unload many burdens onto them and that the more I worked, the more their burdens would increase. I was sent not to bear the burden for the brothers or to lessen their burden; instead, I went to give them more burdens... The elders and deacons should not think that their burdens can be unloaded onto the co-workers who come into their midst."[Whether by being Physically present, through their Printed Messages, or by means of Electronic Media/Webcast - comments supplied]
Witness Lee 1952 - The Building and The Administration of the Church (1) - Chapter 3 - Living Stream Ministry
FOURTEEN
"When a person in a position of authority deviates from the truth, we must not follow him... When we observe such a deviation, we have a responsibility to cooperate with the Lord to seek to remedy the situation... In some cases, we need to care for the Lord's interest by seeking out His representatives to make the situation known to them in the principle of informing the priest of an outbreak of leprosy (Lev. 14:35). In some cases where the deviation is severe, we may need to separate ourselves from vessels of dishonor in order to preserve the Lord's testimony (2 Tim. 2:20-21). We should not be deterred from expressing genuine concern for the condition of the church or it's deviation from the truth by those who claim that such expression of concern is rebellion. Actually, the proper opening of such concern to the Lord and to His representatives is our duty as a service to the Lord, to the saints, and to the church."
Series 4, Book 7, Pg 10 - Properly Discerning Spiritual Authority to Rightly Follow the Lord - Defense and Confirmation Project
FIFTEEN
"[They] twist selected words from Brother Lee's ministry to support their own private agenda and disregard the main burden of his fellowship. To be faithful to the ministry presented to us by our brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, we should not pick and choose those portions that appeal to our taste and disposition. Even the more, we should not misappropriate the words of the ministry by taking them out of context to construct specious arguments that only reflect our own biases." "...they have become reckless in mishandling and misapplying our brothers' speaking, ignoring their clear speaking and engaging in speculative flights of imagination. Our hope is that by exposing this recklessness the saints in the Lord's recovery can be preserved from such poisonous words."
Repenting for Offending the Body of Christ - What Did Witness Lee Really Say? - Defense and Confirmation Project
''Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.'' [Acts 26:19] |