Research paper on Witness Lee, founder of Living Stream Ministries

On Witness Lee, founder of Living Stream Ministries - Research Paper Example Lee was an influential preacher of Christianity and used to emphasize upon the experiences of the life of the Christ as he believes that the followers could carry out the goals of God through proper understanding about oneness of Body of Christ. He established the Living Stream Ministry in 1965. It was located in Anaheim California. The minister worked for the publication and spread of the works and books of Witness Lee and Watchman Nee (Huei Liu, p182). Lee carried efforts for the establishment of local churches in Western hemisphere and South East Asia. As part of local church movement several churches were also founded in Russian and eastern European countries. Lee believes that the local churches are the Lord’s Recovery. He also divulged the living stream minister version of Bible that is called as â€Å"The Recovery Version†. It is based upon the belief that God moves to establish a thing for the first time and when it is destroyed by Satan God moves second time to recover the loss made by Satan (Nee, p89). According to Lee, the creation of the universe is also based upon this cycle as it is written in Genesis that God created heaven and earth that became empty and water and then during the six days of creation God worked for the recovery of earth and heaven. The Jewish temple built by Solomon was destroyed and Jews recovered it after returning to Jerusalem. He teaches that the churches were built in the 1st century and destroyed during the dark ages and now they are being recovered in the age of reformation. He founded the living stream ministry also to affirm that the local churches are evidences of recovery of Christ. The preaching of Lee are based upon the thought that Lord Recovery is simply the recovery of Christ that is often viewed as recovery of genuine oneness and proper church life however; these two things are also actually the recovery of the Christ that is everything for the believers. He taught that the believers of Christ have to remain determent upon their beliefs in oneness of God. There are two aspects of Lord Churches; local and universal that express the body of Christ in the locality. The universal aspect of churches is explained in Matthew 15 and Epistles whereas the local aspect of church has been presented by Lord in Matthew 18, apostles, the Epistles and Revelation (Piepkorn, 78). Lee insists upon the importance of Churches in the lives of the believers that they could understand the oneness of Lord by apostle addresses in Church’s meetings where they have to declare that we are the church. The local churches should be visited by the genuine Christ’s believers rather calling them Baptist, Catholic or Methodist that is against the oneness of belief in Christ and churches. Lee also threw the light upon the importance of following Lord Commands while understanding the functionality of the economy. He frequently used the phrase God’s economy to present that thought that economy is a subject of Bible because the economy is like household of God and he has defined the laws to run the economy on his lines in order to gain the corporate expression of Him (Bays, p312). He spent considerable portion of his life travelling and spreading the message of the Local Churches and their importance. He also worked to establish the â€Å"New way† so that he could eliminate the odd thinking about the local churches. He decided that the new way is based upon four major pillars. At first the meetings are arranged at