Witness Lee Said He is God

Witness Lee is Going to Hell

Witness Lee, in a 1994 video message quoted in a recent Local Church brochure, said, "God became man that man may become God." The group calls this "the greatest truth in the whole Bible." Benson Phillips said Lee's statement was based on a quotation from the early church father Athanasius: "He [God] became man that we might become God." Believers become, according to Witness Lee, "God in his life and in his nature, but not in his godhead."

The truth of this mistaken assumption is that only God is God in His life and in His nature. Christians have God's life (eternal life) and nature (holiness), but we are not God. Witness Lee is dead wrong to say Christians are God in any way, shape or form. Therefore, we need to reject Witness Lee in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit for his doublespeak.

"Harvest House Publishers, based in Eugene, Oregon, had unsuccessfully sought jurisdiction for the lawsuit by The Local Church in 2001 against them. The publisher asked an Oregon court to declare that the Ankerberg/Weldon book "has not defamed" the group. On March 15, 2002, a Lane County, Oregon, circuit court judge ruled the court had no jurisdiction over the Local Church. The judge dismissed the suit "with prejudice," meaning it could not be re-filed. Harvest House declined comment for this article."

What Harvest House was doing was simply vying for jurisdiction in defending themselves as they were already being aggressively pursued by Witness Lee's cult Living Stream Ministry.

In a March 2002 letter, Beisner—who is cited about a dozen times in the Harvest House encyclopedia—said that in his opinion the Local Church: "Insists that the Father is the Son and the Son is the Spirit" and "Has a tendency to sue its critics, entirely out of keeping with the apostle Paul's advice in 1 Corinthians."

Going to court

The recent failed libel suit is not a first for the group. The Local Church previously sued Thomas Nelson Publishers over The Mind Benders (1977), which former Campus Crusade for Christ worker Jack Sparks wrote. It also sued the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP) over the German edition of Neil Duddy's The God-Men. Both volumes, now out of print, extensively criticized Local Church teachings and practices.

Thomas Nelson settled out of court with the Local Church and published a retraction in 1983. SCP fared worse. Duddy left the United States reportedly because of legal pressures related to the suit. SCP declared bankruptcy. Subsequently, a judge ruled that the book was libelous and awarded $11.9 million to the Local Church. SCP was able to pay only $34,000. The latest failed suit, Living Stream and The Local Church are seeking $20 million each. In addition, 96 local fellowships are seeking $1 million each. The group said that it is suing because extensive attempts at mediation with the authors and publisher have failed. Of course, it is not incumbent upon Harvest House to respond at all, for what they wrote in their book was true.

I have read these two books and did not find anything in particular that was defaming, but were simply matters of faith.

However, though their attempt initially to vie for jurisdiction before, Harvest House did win all the way up to the Supreme Court level. The matter is settled, whereby Living Stream is now $136 million less rich than it thought it was. Our prayer is The Local Church cult stop suing people frivolously and its members repent of their sins of suing for faith.

Troy Brooks