8/8/2023 0 Comments Witness lee and watchman neeResponding to the strong demand for countercult publications after the Jonestown tragedy of November 1978, second editions of both books were published. First editions of both The Mindbenders and The God-Men were published in 1977. Meanwhile, SCP was independently developing Wallerstedt's manuscript into a book titled The God-Men. Sparks was listed as the putative author but the chapter on the local churches was written by Braun, who, although he had never met with the local churches, blamed Watchman Nee and Witness Lee for his negative experience with Gene Edwards. The first book Gillquist commissioned was The Mindbenders by Jack Sparks. In the summer of 1976 Peter Gillquist, the presiding NCAO apostle, became the head of the new books division at Thomas Nelson Publishers (Nelson), a respected Bible publisher. Thus, both the NCAO and SCP had copies of Wallerstedt's manuscript. Wallerstedt followed Sparks but completed the manuscript he had been commissioned to write for SCP. The large majority of members would not go along and CWLF split. Later that year Sparks tried to convert CWLF into a church and bring it under the authority of the NCAO. In early 1975 Sparks asked a young CWLF staff member, Alan Wallerstedt, to prepare a manuscript critiquing the teaching and practices of the local churches. In 1974 three CWLF members founded a subsidiary countercult ministry, Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP). In 1979 six of the original seven NCAO apostles appointed themselves bishops of the newly formed Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC). Braun, who had a bitter split with Gene Edwards and left his group, joined with Sparks and five other former Crusade leaders to establish the New Covenant Apostolic Order (NCAO) with themselves as apostles. Throughout the early 1970s Sparks and Braun, who knew each other through CCC, gave talks at CWLF gatherings against Witness Lee and the local churches to stem the loss of members to the (local) church in Berkeley. Jack Sparks, a former statistics professor at Penn State and Crusade staff member, soon became the dominant figure in CWLF. In 1969 Campus Crusade launched what became Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) at UC-Berkeley as an attempt to reach the young people in the counterculture. Edwards had met with the local churches briefly before leaving to carry out his own interpretation of what the church should be. A short time later Braun joined a group led by Gene Edwards, a former Southern Baptist evangelist. In 1968 Campus Crusade's national field director Jon Braun, who had read Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Church Life, and all of the regional directors under him left Campus Crusade seeking the New Testament church. History Interaction with countercult ministries īy the 1960s the writings of Watchman Nee had become popular among evangelicals, including many in Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). In addition, some criticized the teaching of Witness Lee on the nature of God, God's full salvation, and the church. Unsupported criticisms of anti-social behaviors led to three libel litigations. In the 1970s they became a target of opposition of fledgling countercult ministries. To a large extent these controversies stem from the rapid increase and spread of the local churches in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. The local churches and the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have been the subject of controversy in two major areas over the past fifty years.
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