Ten tests Witness Lee’s teaching fails

Paul warned that men would arise from within the church “to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:30). At the November 1988 Pasadena conference and the elders’ meeting that followed, Witness Lee made extraordinary claims about his own ministry.

John Ingalls ↗, who was present, records Lee connecting God’s oracle with God’s deputy authority: whoever speaks for God possesses divine authority. Lee claimed the Lord’s oracle had been with him, said he was claiming this “at the face of Jesus Christ,” and said in the same meetings, “I’m claiming this for Lee!”

Compare that with Paul: “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed?” (1 Corinthians 3:5). And: “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).

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Lee said, “Our sounding must be one,” and taught that workers should be restricted to one publication in order to preserve one ministry.

Paul’s pattern was different: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge” (1 Corinthians 14:29). John condemned Diotrephes because he “loves to have the preeminence among them” (3 John 9). The New Testament expects multiple teachers whose speech the church weighs, not one ministry everyone else must echo.

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Lee framed the teaching developed through Watchman Nee and his own work as “the up-to-date continuation of the New Testament ministry.” Yet of the gospel Paul delivered “first of all,” that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again (1 Corinthians 15:3-4), he said, “We should not preach the shallow gospel that Christianity preaches. … Although this is the gospel, it is a low gospel.” In its place he set “the high gospel that we preach”: Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit “to accomplish the great work of the divine dispensing.”

Every sermon in Acts calls people to repent and believe for the forgiveness of sins; none describes the gospel as divine dispensing. Lee put repentance in the gospel he called low, and his high gospel has no call to turn from sin, though Jesus came to “save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21) and to make slaves of sin “free indeed” (John 8:34, 36). Paul’s test is not whether a message sounds higher but whether it is the gospel the churches “have received,” and he pronounces a curse on anyone, even an angel, who preaches another (Galatians 1:8-9). A teacher cannot claim to continue Paul’s ministry while telling his followers not to preach Paul’s gospel.

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Lee repeatedly described Christianity, Christendom, denominations, and religious organizations as degraded or fallen while presenting the Lord’s Recovery as God’s recovered way.

Paul warned against Christians defining themselves by particular teachers: “Each of you says, ‘I am of Paul,’ or ‘I am of Apollos,’ or ‘I am of Cephas’... Is Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:12-13). And: “Let no one boast in men” (1 Corinthians 3:21). Teaching that one movement uniquely possesses God’s recovered vision can create a sectarian identity without calling everyone outside unsaved.

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When serious criticism arose, Lee did not tell believers to investigate the evidence; he characterized dissenters as rebellious and published The Fermentation of the Present Rebellion ↗ against longtime coworkers and elders who had challenged his leadership.

Scripture says, “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The Bereans were praised because “they searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

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Philip Lee, Witness Lee’s son, managed Living Stream Ministry. John Ingalls ↗ records that serious misconduct involving Philip and the LSM office was brought directly to Witness Lee and that the matter continued for months before Philip was removed from management.

Scripture makes a leader’s household part of the test for church leadership. An overseer must be “one who rules his own house well” (1 Timothy 3:4-5). Titus requires an elder’s children not to be characterized by dissipation or insubordination (Titus 1:6). God condemned Eli because “his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them” (1 Samuel 3:13).

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Jesus gives a process for confronting sin in Matthew 18:15-17: go privately, bring witnesses, then tell the church. Paul says elders who persist in sin are to be rebuked “in the presence of all” (1 Timothy 5:20).

John Ingalls ↗ records repeated private meetings in which he and other senior brothers brought concerns directly to Lee. Lee later published The Fermentation of the Present Rebellion ↗, portraying the dissenting elders and coworkers themselves as rebels. Lee calls it rebellion; Ingalls gives a chronological account of private confrontation.

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Witness Lee was president of Daystar, a for-profit motor-home venture promoted among Local Church members. Believers invested or lent money, most of it lost when the venture failed.

In a recorded 1978 telephone conversation, Boston elder Sal Benoit ↗ asked whether tax-exempt Living Stream Ministry funds had been used in connection with Daystar losses. Lee initially told him, “This is not your business,” and said contributors had no right to inspect the accounts, but acknowledged that LSM had loaned money to Overseas Christian Stewards, which owned the Taiwan company that manufactured Daystar’s motor homes.

The contrast is especially stark in the recorded financial conversation ↗. Lee said, “The church is the church of all the saints,” and told Benoit, “You are responsible to show the saints how the account is kept.” He then separated his personal ministry from that standard: “The ministry is my personal ministry,” followed by, “I’m not responsible to anyone. I’m only responsible to the government.” That is a striking double standard: accountability was invoked for the church’s accounts, then denied for his own ministry.

Government oversight is not the only biblical standard for a spiritual leader handling ministry-connected money. Peter says an elder must shepherd God’s people “not for dishonest gain” (1 Peter 5:2). Paul says an overseer must be “not greedy for money” (1 Timothy 3:3), and when he handled a collection he arranged matters to be honorable before both the Lord and people (2 Corinthians 8:20–21). When members have lost money in a venture promoted through church relationships, they deserve a clear accounting and a serious effort toward restoration where harm occurred.

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John Ingalls ↗ and Al Knoch resigned as Anaheim elders in March 1989. Months earlier Lee had told elders that “the church in Anaheim was his baby, and that he does not like to see it suffer.” On March 28, he wrote the church appointing Eugene Gruhler and Francis Ball as replacement elders, saying he was “very sorry for the two brothers that their course in following the Lord would have had such an issue.” Ingalls later wrote that their eldership had been “replaced, revised, and greatly enlarged in number.”

Peter tells elders not to lord it over the flock entrusted to them (1 Peter 5:3). Paul says apostles are “not... lords over your faith” (2 Corinthians 1:24). When Paul confronted Peter at Antioch, he did so face to face because Peter was “to be blamed” (Galatians 2:11). Anaheim’s dissenting elders had already left when Lee named their successors.

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In The Seven Spirits for the Local Churches, Lee taught that no preaching was necessary and that helping unbelievers say “O Lord” three times would save them, even if they had “no intention of believing.”

Compare Jesus: “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Paul: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). And: “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” (Romans 10:14). Jesus also warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

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