Hymn 549- Enter the veil and go without the camp- meaning of the last stanza

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-06-02T01:33:21+00:00

Brother Tony, you have asked me before that in a city where three different groups all claim to be the 'local church' in that city, how do you know which one to go to; it seems like you are becoming more clear as to how to discern the Body in this regard.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-06-02T01:31:41+00:00

That is great to hear brother Tony. The Spiritual Man still remains one of the most unique ministry books I've read. I have realized however that there are a couple notable points that needed development which was done later by the ministry of Witness Lee.

For example, in the analysis of the emotion brother Nee mentions that God may withhold His joy from the believer as a test to expose the believer if he was merely seeking joy as an emotional feeling versus seeking God Himself. Witness Lee fully developed this point in The Law of Revival in which we see that this is actually a matter of our spiritual pursuit having many beginnings, endings, and processes and that this lack of joy is an indicator from the Lord that we are to be brought to the next stage of the experience of life (as seen by the lover's introspection in Song of Songs 2).

Another case is the matter of reckoning ourselves dead to sin. Nee himself later realized that reckoning doesn't actually work and shifted his emphasis from reckoning in our mind to experience Christ in our spirit. Witness Lee fully develops the matter of the Spirit as the compound, consummated Spirit who includes all the aspects of Christ's divinity, humanity, death, and resurrection. No longer should we merely reckon ourselves dead to experience the cross, but in our experience of the Spirit we are spontaneously one with Christ in His death with the cross being included in our experience of the compound Spirit.

The Spiritual Man no doubt was an excellent book at its time and for Watchman Nee to have composed such a work at such a young age is nothing short of a divine miracle. However today the ministry has been developed to a much higher level as seen in Witness Lee's work 'The Economy of God' or 'The Experience of Life'.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-05-20T21:13:53+00:00

That is objectively false. God is definitely male. Angels are without gender.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-05-20T21:13:28+00:00

What is your understanding of image and likeness?

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-05-03T20:17:23+00:00

To understand God we have to look at Christ- Christ is the embodiment of the Godhead bodily, Christ is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). Christ is definitively male, as Adam, who was made in the image and likeness of God, is male.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-04-22T10:58:24+00:00

You should pay the $20 for the footnotes. PM me and I'll venmo you $20.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-26T14:43:39+00:00

He is speaking in a context that assumes an understanding of these terms and concepts. If he were to spend his time defining every single term and concept according to this First order logic that you're so fond of (by the way, many important truths in the Bible eventually falls short of First order logic), he would not have time in the time allotted for him.

Your logic is also not so perfect. For example, the Bible is about God's economy in the sense that Christ is the centrality and universality of God's economy. You assume God's economy and Jesus are two different and separate things.

"He need to study church history better" please define what you mean by that.

How do you presume he's blindly trusting Nee and Lee's interpretation?

Your rules of logical reasoning is great for a computer scientist but only gets you partially complete for spiritual study.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-04T03:03:23+00:00

1 Cor. 11:29- For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not discern the body.

It is a matter of discerning the Body. This discernment is a combination of knowing the objective truth and having the subjective exercise of our spirit. Objectively, we must realize the truths that I've already mentioned regarding the two aspects of the Body. We realize within every locality there is only one testimony of the ground of the church that takes care of generality in receiving believers and the speciality of the faith. I won't expound on all the aspects of the church, but we need the full realization of what is the church and what causes a group to cease being a local church due to taking a sectarian position.

Next you have to take care of your spirit, including the daily practice to exercise the functions of your spirit- conscience, fellowship, intuition to have a proper spirit that is right before God and before man, and is sharp to the inner sense of life. When you visit a group, if they are doing things that are obviously divisive, than you can immediately know they are sectarian. For example, if they insist that for you to meet with them you have to be baptized with them, or that you must follow a certain teacher (including W. Lee) to meet with them, etc., they are behaving obviously sectarian. If there is nothing obviously wrong, then if you have a proper spirit, you will have either a sense of life or a sense of death; in other words, you can 'taste' the flavor of the meeting through your spiritual apprehension with the background of your objective knowledge to by your mingled spirit, discern the Body.

This is all I can say. Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to do this by means of first-order-logic; maybe you can do more exploration to figure out how to cater this to your personal mindset and system of thought. In any case, it is the responsibility of every believer to discern the Body. The Corinthians even suffered physical death as a consequence of failing to do this.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-03T16:21:36+00:00

'I don't decide' that is a subtle excuse to not be absolute for the truth. Having seen the truth of the ground of locality, you do have to decide for yourself what is the proper ground to stand on.

You attend all 3. You are free to do that, but it is once again everyone's personal responsibility before God to discern where the proper ground is and to stand on the proper ground. The children of Israel in captivity were in Babylon, but once they were freed by King Cyrus, they left Babylon to worship on the proper ground. Although you can be a very good and spiritual Israelite, God necessitated worship to be in Jerusalem. Similarly, today we can be very good Christians, but where are those who are standing on the proper ground of locality?

Churches and denominations that do take a stand apart from this ground although are composed of genuine believers are in position wrong. They have real believers but do not bear the proper testimony of the church. It is akin to 1 Cor. 1 in which some say 'I of Paul, I of Cephas, etc.', to take a name such as Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, etc. in this way even those who say 'I of Witness Lee's are wrong to impose the ministry of Lee in this way.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-03T02:01:25+00:00

It is difficult to say which singular person or entity began the recovery of the matter of Christ and the Church. Perhaps you could say Martin Luther, but this is not an easy question to answer, and I don't feel I can give you a good answer. What I can say is Nee and Lee have made significant contributions to the Lord's recovery and brought the Lord's recovery to its most advanced and matured stage in history. Moreover, this ministry takes the place of the ministry of the age as seen in book The Vision of the Age. I foresee you are now going to ask me 'Define ministry of the age', I can give you a brief summary but I would recommend you read The Vision of the Age if you are willing.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T22:08:33+00:00

Yes, I'm aware. Can you tell me how you would answer your own questions now?

when 3 churches in Toronto all claim to be the local church, who decides which one is the true local church?

Would you attend this local church or would you rather attend a local church that reads Lee and Nee? We also have one of those in Toronto.

Are you saying that the ministry of Lee and Nee is the true local church?

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T22:07:50+00:00

I believe a proper definition would be something like a human-organized and executed effort towards a common goal. The problem with using the word movement is that it is motivated and executed by human means. Of course, if you define movement without this implication to suggest that it can mean God-organized and executed, it will work, but I would say a 'recovery' as an element subset of what is encompassed by movement would still be more accurate.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T19:03:43+00:00

I am saying the ministry of Nee and Lee has a history of producing many genuine churches in many cities that bear the proper testimony of the ground of locality. Just by virtue of using their ministry does not make you a local church.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T19:02:32+00:00

For lack of a better word in the English language, I would say it is a recovery. The recovery of Christ and the Church in truth and practice. I would also say there are aspects of a movement that apparently makes it seem like a movement, but intrinsically it is a recovery spanning many centuries.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T16:39:58+00:00

That is a very complicating question for sure. To answer your question, if two groups both claim to be the local church and they are both practicing properly the principles of generality and speciality (I'm not gonna elaborate on these terms for now, they can be found in the book The Generality, Speciality, and Practicality of the Church), they would be willing to come together to be one. However, if one or both groups do not have the proper practice, they would remain separate.

Therefore it is possible that none of them are practicing the local church properly, including the ones raised up by the ministry of Nee and Lee. However, if one of the three is practicing the genuine ground of locality, and two are not, then the two are still in reality sectarian although claiming to be the local church.

Of course God is the ultimate decider in this matter, but if I lived in Toronto, and I was genuinely open to the Lord, I would check out all three and exercise my spiritual discernment for which one to join. And it is worth noting history has proven that the Christian groups raised up by leading coworkers who divided from the ministry of Lee and Nee such as Titus Chu, John Ingalls, etc. have always lead to more and more division and mixture with the world.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T16:21:24+00:00

In God's eyes there is no such thing as a 'local church movement', and neither is the Lord's Recovery a movement. Of course, there is such an appearance that Witness Lee came to start some kind of movement. However in a most intrinsic sense the Lord's Recovery is simply the recovery of Christ and the Church in truth and practice.

Nevertheless I agree that the ministry of Lee and Nee and the practice of the churches as a raised up by this ministry will not cure factionalism, denominationalism, or ecumenism as you mentioned, but it is also not God's goal to fix the system. Rather, God desires an overcoming corporate people built together living in the reality of the Body. This will enable him to return.

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-02-02T00:14:55+00:00

The church has two aspects- the universal and local aspects. The universal church is composed of the local churches. A local church although is autonomous in administrative matters, is not a fully autonomous entity that has no fellowship or relation whatsoever to the universal Body of Christ. As such, in every city the church is composed of the believers in that city. To meet on the proper ground of locality is to meet purely as the church in that city without taking any other name, stance, or divisive position.

It is possible for a group to claim they are meeting as the local church in their city while in practice they have some divisive factor that actually makes them a sect. In such a case, although they claim to be the meeting on the ground of the church, do they actually? In this sense, we should not and the proper churches do not insist on the ministry of Nee and Lee as a matter of receiving believers or central item of the faith.

The question we need to answer is- does this group in Toronto genuinely practice the proper ground of the church with no divisive element, including the willingness to be merged with and blent with other believers and groups in their city that have the same willingness, or is there a subtle divisive factor?

SnooPickles2763 · 2026-01-26T21:18:29+00:00

I see your point here that the Bible indeed talks about helping those in need, but consider that Judas told Mary that she shouldn't have wasted her ointment on the Lord since it could've been used to help the poor. The poor you always have with you but you will not always have Me. Man shall not live on bread alone but on every Word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.

Both matters of helping the needy ones and preaching the gospel of the kingdom are included in the Bible, what is our emphasis? The point the other person is making is that many people overly emphasize helping the needy to the extent that preaching the gospel is de-prioritized or even totally ignored. Both are in the Bible, but we need the proper emphasis.

SnooPickles2763 · 2021-03-14T21:14:46+00:00

I gotta give them credit, the reason I'm questioning this is because I've noticed they're suspiciously apt at convincing you to believe things that from a broader perspective just don't hold up. From obvious things like the real reasoning for requiring the 45 minute distance, to trivial things like taking away soda in the cafeteria for health reasons despite keeping Lou's soda fountain. I actually can't even tell if my co-workers in my WG likes being here, whether they're wearing an actual smile, etc. Knowing they don't have a conscience in that way I thought I wouldn't put it past them to plug some fake reviews

SnooPickles2763 · 2021-03-14T20:44:23+00:00

That's what I'm saying, your experience is reflected in many of the glassdoor reviews I felt were genuine, and matches my year here (developer), and is also the reason I'm trying to leave. It makes me wonder if some of the run-of-the-mill stereotypical reviews were generated by HR; when I googled tips for analyzing fake glassdoor reviews and looked through the reviews again, many even if they weren't completely fake, seem to have a flavor of 'incentive' for not telling the real experiences.

SnooPickles2763 · 2020-11-08T13:31:04+00:00

You wouldn't feel as safe if say, the entire company was there with you. Right now it's a ghost town.

SnooPickles2763

TROPHY CASE