Today many false religious systems offer their members and prospective members the opportunity to advance in life, while at the same time, offering to fufill their perceived needs and desires. Many religious movements offer their members new revelation from God, the feeling of belonging to God's elite group of people, and an exalted afterlife in a fabulous kingdom to come. In the garden of Eden, the serpent offered Eve the opportunity to be like God, to know good and evil. Today the story is just about the same. People are told what they want to hear, enticing doctrines and the offering of support structures designed to meet their needs, provided of course, that they faithfully remain within the group.
Our Mormon friends, for instance, would have us believe that faithful Mormon males can expect to become "gods" one day and have their own planets to watch over. The Mormon prophet, Lorenzo Snow, claimed that man can become God. Snow stated, As man is, God once was: as God is, man may become.1 Mormons believe that God was once a man with flesh and bones, who came to earth and had literal sex with the Virgin Mary to have the Christ child. Such an exaltation to becoming a god attracts many adherents to the Mormon faith. When we consider the written publications of Witness Lee and the Local Church, we read that we are already God, having the divine nature of God, according to Lee's interpretation of 2 Peter 1:4 and other passages of Scripture.
Closely associated with Witness Lee's doctrine of "mingling" is the result of the "mingling" process, which, according to Lee, is the elevation of man to divinity. Although Lee and other individual members of the Local Church will adamently deny that they become God, the words of Lee, as presented in his published works, certainly raises some suspicion. States Lee:
God's purpose in creating man is not only to obtain a good man, but even more to have a GOD-man, one who has God's life and nature and is just like God....But God's desire is not that man should be only a good man, but, much more, a God-man, one who is the same as He is....Oh, the purpose of regeneration is that we may have God's life and be like God...2
Because the life of God is the content of God, in it is hidden the fullness of God, and in it is contained the nature of God Himself; therefore, when we receive the life of God, we receive the fullness of God (Col. 2:9-10), and have the nature of God (2 Pet. 1:3-4). Because all that God has in Himself and all that God Himself is rests in the life of God, when we receive this life, we receive all that God has in Himself and all that God Himself is....Brothers and sisters, have you ever realized that because the life of God is in us we have all the capabilities and functions in us which are in God? Have you ever realized that because we have the life of God in us we can be what God is and do what God does?...Since we have the life of God in us, we can be what God is and do what God does....This means that we can love as God loves and be righteous as God is righteous. Thus, we can be like God and live out God.3
The traditional concept in Christianity is that God wants us, the saved ones, to be good, to be spiritual, and to be holy, but there is no concept that God wants us to be God-men. When God became flesh and came to earth, He was both God and man, a wonderful God-man, having both divinity and humanity. As for us, we are not only created by Him, but we have Him begotten into us, so that every one of us has God's life and nature, we are now God's children (2 Pet. 1:4). Therefore, as those begotten of God, we are all God-men. My burden is to show you clearly that God's economy and plan is to make Himself man and to make us, His created beings, "God," so that He is "man-ized" and we are "God-ized." In the end, He and we, we and He, all become God-men....When God created us, He created us according to His image and after His likeness. We are like a picture, which has His image, but is without His life. After we are regenerated, this picture becomes the "real" person, having His life and nature, and being the same as He is. He is God "man-ized," and we are man "God-ized." In the end, the two become one, both being God-men. This is the divine revelation of the Bible.4
The dispensing of the Triune God has only one goal, which is to transform us, to change us metabolically with His divine element. In this way we have not only the human element, but the divine element as well. We are now a God-man, a person with both humanity and divinity, both the human nature and the divine nature. We are divinely human.5
The reality of the Body of Christ is the aggregate, the totality, of such a living by a group of God-men....Today in the church age, the God-men who were perfected and matured are Zion, the overcomers, the vital groups within the churches....God's redeemed people have become absolutely the very God in life, in nature, and in appearance, but not in His Godhead...We all have to endeavor to reach this high peak....Sooner or later, you have to be made God, either in the church age or in the coming kingdom age. All of God's redeemed people will eventually become gods as the very God in life, in nature, and in appearance but not in the Godhead. The New Jerusalem is the God-men who have been transformed, glorified, and mingled with the processed and consummated Triune God.6
Transformation in God's organic salvation causes us to be shaped in God's organic salvation and conformed to the image of Christ, the firstborn Son of God, so that we manifest God in life, in nature, in inward thinking, and in outward expression. This will consummate in the New Jerusalem, in which we, due to our transformation, will be exactly the same as God, who sits on the throne in the divine glory in eternity....This is the ultimate purpose of God's salvation, that is, to work on all those whom He chose in eternity to such an extent that they become wholly like Him.7
The following quotes, taken from the Witness Lee book, The God-Men (not to be confused with the Duddy/SCP book by the same name), further illustrate the use of this God-talk language that is not commonly found in mainline evangelical Christianity.
Some may ask, "In what book, what chapter, and what verse can you find this wonderful term the God-men?" The answer is very simple. Although we cannot find the term the Triune God in the Bible, nearly all Bible students recognize that the entire Bible reveals the Triune God. In the same principle, although we cannot find the term the God-men in the Bible, the fact, the reality, of the God-men is in the Bible. Initially, the Bible speaks of the God-man. Today this God-man has become the God-men. The God-man is Jesus Christ, who is God incarnated to be a man. As such a One, He is the God-man. Furthermore, He is the model God-man, the prototype for the producing of many God-men (Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29), including all the dear saints throughout the world. Regardless of our nationality, and regardless of whether we are male or female, young or old, we all must believe that we are God-men. We are all God-men, and each one of us is a God-man.8
...In the past two thousand years of human history, Jesus Christ as the God-man has influenced the entire world. Today He is still doing the same thing, but He is doing it not by Himself alone but by thousands and even millions of God-men, who are the mass reproduction of Him as the prototype.9
Although we are of different races and nationalities, by His mercy we have all become the same: we are all God-men. A God-man is one who has been born of God. In Christianity there is a theology that tells people that we believers became sons of God not by birth but by adoption. According to this theology, we were not born of God but were merely adopted by God. However, according to the Scriptures, we, the believers in Christ, were all born of God to be His sons. As the sons of God, surely we are God-men. We are the same as the One of whom we were born. It would be impossible to be born of God and not be the sons of God. Since we are the sons of God, we are God-men.10
As sons of God and as God-men, we have the divine life (John 3:15, 36a). Many Christians realize that they have eternal life, yet they do not know what eternal life is. Furthermore, they do not know what the divine life is. They do not know that, as regenerated ones, they have another life in addition to their own human life. We all need to realize that in addition to our natural life, we have another life, the divine life. The natural life makes us a natural man, and the divine life makes us a divine man. We all can boast that we are divine persons because we have been born of the divine life. Since we have been born of the divine life and possess the divine life, surely we are divine persons. We have been born of the divine life; therefore, we are divine. It is a pity that the majority of regenerated people do not know that they have God's life in addition to their own life. Our own life is a human life; thus, we are all human. But through regeneration we have received another life, which has been added to our natural life. This life is not only holy and heavenly but also divine. Thus, we have all become divine.11
Although we are divine men, we need to ask ourselves whether we live, act, and behave ourselves as divine men...12
...The Bible, according to God's economy, teaches all God's chosen ones, who have believed in Christ and have been regenerated by the Spirit and who have become the God-men, to be divine persons (Gal. 2:20; Phil. 1:19-21a).13
As those who are born of God, the God-men have not only the divine life but also the divine nature. Thank God that in the Bible, among the sixty-six books, there is one verse, 2 Peter 1:4, that says that we are partakers of the divine nature, which is the nature of God. We should mark such a verse in our Bibles so that whenever we open the Bible, that verse will stand out. We are not turtles, because we do not have the turtle nature. We are men, for we do have the human nature. But we have also been born of God; we are God's sons, God's children. Thus, we have God's nature. Since we have God's nature, are we not God? In fact, we are God in His life and His nature, but not in His Godhead.14
As God-men, we also have two lives, human and divine, living together as one life. We may wonder how two lives could live together as one life. The answer is very simple. In grafting, a branch from one tree is grafted into another tree. The two are joined together, and the two lives live together as one life. In the same principle, we, the believers, have been grafted into Christ (Rom. 11:17-19) and are living in an organic union with Him. In such a union the human life and the divine life are joined as one so that they live together as one mingled life and one living.15
The God-men not only have two lives, but they also have two natures, humanity and divinity. This is marvelous. Today's Christianity makes God's salvation merely a religion. Religion does not teach people to be God-men by receiving God into them. Religion always cultivates man's natural capacity in order to build up the self. Education does the same thing; it merely builds up the human being. Apparently, the Bible also does this, but actually it does not. The Bible does not build up the natural man; rather, it builds up a God-man. We are born of God, and we are children of God. The Bible builds us up to be proper God-men.16
My burden in the Lord's ministry is not to build you up to be a nice man, a good man, or a gentle man, but to be a God-man. I have given thousands of messages on how to be a Christ-man, a God-man. In the Lord's recovery our teaching is not to raise up good men. Our teaching, absolutely according to the Bible, is to raise up God-men.17
We need to know by seeing that we have God's life and possess God's nature. There is such a fact that the divine life is mingled with our human life. Therefore, we must learn to live not by our human life but by God's life mingling with our human life to make us divine.18
During a February, 1994 conference, Witness Lee spoke on the matter of the highest purpose of God concerning man, repeating similar themes of man becoming God. States Lee:
In this conference we definitely have a burden to focus on the unique, highest, deepest, most mysterious, and most glorious subject in the Holy Scriptures, that is, God's highest purpose concerning man. God has a purpose concerning man, which is clearly revealed in the Bible. The Bible is a book concerning God, especially concerning God's relationship with man. In God's relationship with man we can see that God has a heart's desire and a purpose; that is, God wants to make Himself man and to make man God that the two God and man may become altogether the same. God is God, yet He made Himself a man and lived a human life exactly the same as man in the human nature and the human life. On the other hand, man is man, yet God wants to make man the same as He is, of the same kind and the same likeness as He is in life and in nature, except that we human beings have no share in His person. Thus, His attributes become our human virtues and His glorious image is expressed and lived out through us. Eventually, God and man become a matching pair in the universe. This couple look like man, yet actually they are God. This is truly mysterious to the uttermost. This is God's highest and ultimate purpose in man.19
...He created man in His image and according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26). God created man not in the image of the birds nor in the image of the beasts, but in the image of God. What God created was man, but what came out was God. Today, we are not only man; we are also God. We are man yet God. Likewise, today God is not only God; He is also man. He is God yet man. As a result, both God and man, both man and God, are completely alike and become a matching couple. How wonderful this is!20
...God created man in such a way that man had His image outwardly and had a spirit inwardly to contact and receive God....God became a man and accomplished redemption to solve all the problems between God and man and release the divine life....He became the life-giving Spirit. This is the Triune God in whom we believe today. When He enters into those who believe in Him, He dispenses Himself into them....When He as the life-giving Spirit comes into us, He is begotten in us. When He is born in us, we are regenerated to become another person, no longer the original person.... Now we not only are created by God and have His image; we also are born of God. He Himself is born into us to be our life, our person, and our everything. He and we become one entity-God yet man, man yet God.21
The burden of this conference is very mysterious, especially the main point on God becoming man and man becoming God. This is an economy that cannot be fathomed by angels and men; it is too high, too mysterious, and too mystical, even to the extent that we simply cannot believe that such a thing can happen in the universe. I sincerely hope that every brother and sister who is attending this conference will see this great vision.22
The six thousand years of human history show us that there are the teachings of religion, philosophy, and ethics; this is true throughout the world. Only the Lord gave us a Bible. In this Bible He shows us a great revelation, that is, that God wants to make Himself the same as man. Is this not wonderful? He is God, yet He took on human nature, put on a human body, and had a human life to dwell and live together with men in order to make men, His chosen people, the same as He is. Thus, although these men are human, they have His divine life and His divine nature. In life and nature, man and God are of the same kind. Eventually, He begot us, and we were born of Him. He is God and has our human nature; likewise, we are man and also have His divine nature. Hence, these two are God yet with humanity and are man yet with divinity. By these two natures and two lives God mingles Himself with man in order that His divine life may be lived out through humanity among men, and in order that His redeemed may have His divinity and in His divinity may live out the likeness of God through the resurrected and uplifted humanity.23
Eventually, this will make God and man alike and mingled together and even built together. Through the steps that were just mentioned, God builds Himself into man and builds man into Himself. He Himself becomes this constitution with Himself as the intrinsic element the source, element, and essence within and with His redeemed people built together in the intrinsic element the source, element, and essence to become the framework. This is the one new man in the universe. This is what Ephesians 4 shows us. The ultimate consummation of this new man is the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is a constitution of God and man and man and God, who are constituted into one; it is divinity expressed in humanity and humanity glorified in divinity. Therefore, they two divinity and humanity become a mutual dwelling place. The One who is God yet man dwells in the one who is man yet God, and the one who is man yet God dwells in the One who is God yet man. They are a mutual dwelling place. Thus, His divine glory shines forth radiantly with great splendor in humanity. There is not one bit of good or evil here, and it has nothing to do with good and evil. God's economy is absolutely outside of good and evil. This economy is God and man becoming one entity, as one who is God yet man and man yet God.24
Brothers and sisters, you are all blessed to be able to see this. This is a tremendous blessing. May the Lord fully rescue you and me out of religion, philosophy, and human ethics into this great vision of God becoming man and man becoming God.25
The following hymn, carrying this doctrinal theme, was introduced at this 1994 conference.
1. What miracle! What mystery!
That God and man should blended be!
God became man to make man God,
Untraceable economy!
From His good pleasure, heart's desire,
His highest goal attained will be.
2. Flesh He became, the first God-man,
His pleasure that I God may be:
In life and nature I'm God's kind,
Though Godhead's His exclusively.
His attributes my virtues are;
His glorious image shines through me.
3. No longer I alone that live,
But God together lives with me.
Built with the saints in the triune God,
His universal house we'll be,
And His organic Body we
For His expression corp'rately.
4. Jerusalem, the ultimate,
Of visions the totality;
The Triune God, tripartite man
A loving pair eternally
As man yet God they coinhere,
A mutual dwelling place to be;
God's glory in humanity
Shines forth in splendor radiantly!26
Witness Lee continues to propragate his teaching of man being divine to this day. Consider the following passages taken from his books, The Divine and Mystical Realm, The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ, and The Secret of God's Organic Salvation. Here we read that man is being transformed to become God.
Not only are we God-men but also we are one with God, one spirit with God. The human spirit and the divine Spirit are not only joined and mingled but are also one spirit...He made us one spirit with Him...Our real status is that we are one spirit with God. We have been saved to such a high level. What God is, we are.27
The Christ whom we know is so profound and so high. This One is our Redeemer and our Savior. He is not only Jesus Christ but also the One who became the life-giving Spirit, the consumation of God. It is this One who went through all the processes to accomplish the step for Him to become man that He might make man God....Then how does God make man God? After God regenerates us with Himself as life, He continues to carry out the work of sanctification, renewing, and transformation in us by His Spirit of life. God became man through incarnation; man becomes God through transformation....Therefore, it is through regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification that we become God. When we reach this point, 1 John 3:2 says that when "He is manifested, we will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is."...The issue of this process is an organism. This organism is God joining and mingling Himself with man to make God man and also to make man God....The ultimate issue is the New Jerusalem. This shows us how God became man and how afterward He makes man God that man may live a God-man life. The God-man life that we live today is the model life that Jesus Christ lived on earth by going through death and resurrection.28
In His death and resurrection Christ also produced us. He brought God into us not in an objective way but in a subjective way. As He brought God into Mary, so also now He brought God into us, His redeemed ones. In this way He began to make us God; that is, He begot us as children of God. Since we were born of God the Father in Christ, and since our Father God is God, how can we, the children begotten of Him, not be God? Since our Father is God, we who are born of Him surely also are God.29
When Christ was resurrected, all His believers, chosen and given to Him by God, were included in Him. Hence, they were resurrected with Him (Eph. 2:6) and regenerated through Him that they may have the eternal life as the authority for them to be children of God as His species. Through regeneration we, who are human, have become God-men; we have become God's kind.30
Regeneration has added the divine life to the believers' redeemed life, making the two a "grafted" life; thus, the believers participate in God's divinity...The believers are being mingled with God, and God is mingling Himself with them. As a result, the believers have divinity in their being and participate in God's divinity.31
Three things cause us to participate in God's divinity: regeneration, sanctification, and renewing. Regeneration changes our life, sanctification changes our nature, and renewing changes our mind. All three things enable the believers in Christ to participate in God's divinity. If we realize this, we will see that as believers we are not only human but also divine. Today we, the believers in Christ, are both divine and human. We are human and divine persons. Because we are divine as well as human, we are also mystical.32
In God's organic salvation we, the believers in Christ, can participate in God's divinity. God's life has been imparted into our life, His nature is being wrought into our nature, His mind is being wrought into our mind, and we have His divine element, the element of the riches of His unsearchable life, to transform our entire being. Thus, we have God's life, God's nature, God's mind, and the divine element of all His riches, and now we can participate in God's divinity in full. For us to participate in God's divinity means that He is making us Him. He is making us God in His life, in His nature, in His thinking, and in His expression but not, of course, in His Godhead.33
The God-men, who have the divine life, the divine nature, and the divine mind, and who participate in the divinity of God, have the divine capacity to carry out the divine requirements of the divine kingdom. God has qualified us by imparting His life into us, by sharing His nature with us, by making His mind our mind, and by transforming us with the element of His being. We praise Him for qualifying us and for giving us the divine capacity.34
God's intention is to make man like Him in His divine life, in His divine nature, and in His image as His expression, but not in His Godhead. For God to make man like Him in this way actually means to make man God. God has imparted Himself into us to make us the same as He is in life and in nature but not in his Godhead. This is the divine intention. In order to carry out His intention, God regenerates the believers in Christ with His divine life that they may begin to participate in His divinity. Since we, the believers in Christ, participate in God's divinity, we are gods. Second Peter 1:4 says that we partake of the divine nature.35
In these messages we have considered the eight sections of God's organic salvation: regeneration, feeding, sanctification, renewing, transformation, building, conformation, and glorification. God's goal in these eight sections of His organic salvation is simply to make us God, that is, to make us a duplication, a zerox copy, of God.36
Through regeneration God imparted His life into our being. Now we have the divine life, and we are also partaking of the divine nature. In addition, we have God's mind and the element of Christ's unsearchable riches...Eventually, we will be conformed to the image of Christ, the first God-man, and we will be fully saturated with the glory of the divine life and be brought into God's glory. At that time we will have God's life, God's nature, God's mind, God's being, and God's glory and we will bear God's image. We will surely have become God in life, in nature, and in expression but not in the Godhead. If such a person is not God, what is he? When our body is redeemed and transfigured and we thereby enjoy the highest portion of the divine sonship, we will be able to say, "Hallelujah! I have been made God. Praise the Lord that I have God's life, God's nature, God's mind, God's being and God's glory and that I am in God's image!"37
The teaching that man is God, a "god," or that he may become such, is nothing new to church history. Genuine Christians, at the time they were saved, were indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit works within Christians to daily transform them, not to make them God, but to make them godly people. Witness Lee has crossed the line by removing the distinction between the divine Creator and mankind.
Endnotes
1. Prophet Lorenzo Snow, quoted in Milton R. Hunter, The Gospel Through the Ages, pp. 105, 106.
2. Witness Lee, The Knowledge of Life, 2nd ed. (LSM: 1988) 25.
3. Ibid., 30-31.
4. Witness Lee, A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing (LSM: 1990) 54.
5. Witness Lee, The Economy and Dispensing of God (LSM: 1990) 75.
6. Witness Lee, The Practical Points Concerning Blending (LSM: 1994) 44-46.
7. Witness Lee, The Holy Word for Morning Revival: The Experience of God's Organic Salvation Equaling Reigning in Christ's Life (LSM: 1997) 25.
8. Witness Lee, The God-Men (LSM: 1995) 10.
9. Ibid., 11.
10. Ibid., 11.
11. Ibid., 11-12.
12. Ibid., 12.
13. Ibid., 12.
14. Ibid., 12-13.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. Ibid., 13.
17. Ibid., 13-14.
18. Ibid., 14.
19. Witness Lee, The Dispensing, Transformation, and Building of the Processed Divine Trinity in the Believers (LSM: 1995) 9.
20. Ibid., 9.
21. Ibid., 10-11.
22. Ibid., 37.
23. Ibid., 37-38.
24. Ibid., 38.
25. Ibid., 38-39.
26. Ibid., 14.
27. Witness Lee, The Divine and Mystical Realm (LSM: 1996) 53-54.
28. Witness Lee, The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ (LSM: 1995) 30-31.
29. Ibid., 49.
30. Witness Lee, The Secret of God's Organic Salvation (LSM: 1996) 14.
31. Ibid., 39.
32. Ibid., 40.
33. Ibid., 42.
34. Ibid., 52.
35. Ibid., 65-66.
36. Ibid., 70.
37. Ibid., 70-71.