At the end of “The Worst Blasphemous Words...,” J. S. says, “May the Lord save us from adding anything to the scriptures.” We agree. Nothing should be added to the Holy Scriptures. In keeping with Revelation 22:19, we would hasten to say that just as nothing should be added to the Scriptures, so nothing should be taken away. It is utterly false to accuse Brother Lee of adding to the Word of God. In particular, it is false to accuse him of adding the heretical teaching that man can become God in the sense of having the Godhead or of being an object of worship. Brother Lee does not teach this and thus he does not add it to the Word of God. However, regarding J. S. there is reason for concern that, in principle, by denying a crucial aspect of the divine revelation in the Bible—the truth that God intends for the believers in Christ to become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead and not as an object of worship—J. S. is taking away from the Scriptures something most precious to God. Furthermore, he may be depriving God’s children of the truth and hindering their entering into a life that is in keeping with the peak of God’s revelation. According to Revelation 22:18-19, adding to the Word of God and taking away from the Word of God are equally serious. Brother Lee is innocent of the former; if J. S. denies this truth, he is guilty of the latter.
J. S. may not only take away from the Word of God; he may also deny a crucial aspect of the teaching of the apostles. In his concluding paragraph J. S. remarks: “The word of God never says that we, the believers, will at any time become little gods, baby gods, or mature gods. Not one of the twelve apostles, the foundations of the New Jerusalem, ever taught this.” To be sure, the apostles did not teach that the believers can become God in the Godhead or as an object of worship. Nevertheless, if we have an intrinsic view of the writings of Paul, John, and Peter, we will realize that these apostles certainly did teach that the believers in Christ, having been born of God to be His children possessing the divine life and nature, may, in fact eventually will, become God in life, nature, and expression. Christ, the very God incarnate, is life (John 14:6), and now our regenerated spirit is life (Rom. 8:10). Further, we are one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17); we live a life of coinherence with Him (John 15:4; 1 John 4:15); we partake of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4); we are being transformed into the Lord’s image (2 Cor. 3:18); we will be conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29); and for eternity we will be the same as God in expression as well as in life and in nature (Rev. 4:3; 21:10-11). Yet God alone possesses the unique Godhead, and God alone is to be worshipped.
J. S. seems to deny much of the apostles’ teaching regarding all this. In view of J. S.’s reckless writing in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...,” we must raise a serious question: To what extent does J. S. now deny the teaching of the apostles concerning the believers’ experience of the Triune God and concerning their being made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead?
J. S.’s remarks concerning the New Jerusalem cause us to wonder whether he has the proper view and understanding of the nature of the New Jerusalem which, as the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2, 9), is the corporate expression of the Triune God for eternity. We raise this question because, according to the divine revelation in the Scriptures, the New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of the building up of the believers, who have been made God in life, in nature, in constitution, and in expression but not in the Godhead. This means that there is an intrinsic relation between the believers’ becoming God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead) and the producing of the New Jerusalem. In the Life-study 1 and 2 Samuel (pp. 198-199) Brother Lee describes this very clearly:
The conclusion of the divine revelation in the Bible is a building, the New Jerusalem. This building is a blending and mingling of divinity with humanity....The New Jerusalem is a composition of divinity and humanity blended and mingled together as one entity. All the components have the same life, nature, and constitution and thus are a corporate person. This is a matter of God becoming man and man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. These two, God and man, man and God, are built up together by being blended and mingled together. This is the completion, the consummation, of God’s building. We all need to see this vision.
Does J. S. see it? Does he believe it? Does he agree with God’s way of carrying it out, the way of mingling divinity with humanity? There is reason to suspect that in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” J. S. is not only falsely accusing and attacking Brother Lee but may also be tampering with the divine enterprise in the divine economy—the dispensing of the processed Triune God into the believers to make them God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead) for the producing of the New Jerusalem as the ultimate, consummate corporate expression of the Triune God for eternity in the new heaven and new earth.