Humble Bricklayer
04-04-2024, 06:20 PM
Hi everyone,
I was in one of the churches under Titus Chu. Later the church fell over on to the Blended Brother side. I was new and really did not grasp the gravity of what was happening. Actually, it was all a big joke to me because the infighting was mainly amongst the leading brothers and I thought it would all just blow over. I was just simply 'enjoying the Triune God'.
Even when we were 'forced' to watch the Whistler Convention, we were cracking jokes and laughing at some of the speakers (actually I didn't crack any jokes myself, but I remember one particular sister thought it was all really funny). I also remember after watching that stuff I felt like I'd been poisoned. This feeling crept in afterwards. The usual feeling of 'enjoyment' was absent. I wasn't the only one who felt this way. It was later explained that the negative feeling was just a sign of a successful inoculation. It would wear off, we were told. I guess it did.
I was initially attracted to the 'church life' because of what appeared to be the depth of the teachings. By then I was fed up to the back-teeth with Pentecostalism. Soo wishy-washy. Soo focused on worldly things. I'd had enough. I had already been exposed to Watchman Nee years before. And nothing I heard out of the Pentecostal pulpit even came within a mile to approaching his depth of understanding of the Scriptures.
Then along came Titus Chu's lieutenants. I had never heard of Witness Lee. His writings and Titus Chu's writings were presented as one and the same thing. This was before the One Publication Proclamation. They seemed to be like solid meat compared to the diet of diluted milk out of Pentecostalism. The brothers, I can only say were gifted speakers and teachers. John Myer was especially impressive. The difference between him and the other brothers was like watching the same show, once, in black and white, and then later, in color.
They helped me begin to penetrate what I found to be Witness Lee's opaque and sometimes incomprehensible doctrines. Watchman Nee, I had found to be far more lucid. We were told that we needed to 'exercise our spirits' and to learn the 'divine and mystical language' that had come down from heaven and been handed to Witness Lee. It was explained that no other language had the capacity to contain the 'high truths' and complicated concepts that had been revealed to Witness Lee (it sounded like English to me). By the way, John never said those kind of things. And he never seemed to have a narrow opinion about things that the LC is famous for having narrow opinions about.
One thing, though, always bothered me about the 'church life' right from day One. But I suppressed it because I had no evidence to the contrary. I just found it incredible that someone like Witness Lee had actually walked this earth. He was so squeaky, squeeeeeeaky clean...cleaner than a nun's undies! I mean was it possible, I would often ask myself. I heard NOT ONE SINGLE THING that would constitute a mark, a spot, or even the faintest of smudges, against this man's name. He had never even ever raised his voice in exasperation, let alone anger, as far as I could tell. I'm cynical by nature and this stretched my incredulity in no small measure. But I buried it.
I can tell you with a 101% confidence that almost none of the saints I was with would believe for a second even one sentence of what has been uncovered and revealed on this forum. And those who remain would not believe two sentences.
The final straw came one day when I was in a 'meeting'. We had 'exercised our spirits', we had 'called on the name of the Lord five times, and we were 'eating' (we were eating Christ) taking a deep dive into the glorious riches of the Ministry. And then the sister (the one who makes fun of, and loves laughing at the awkward saints on the LSM videos) began parroting the 'divine and mystical language' and sputtering and spewing forth all the bombastic terms she could muster: 'processed', 'compounded', 'sevenfold-intensified', 'all-intensive', 'crystallized', 'all-inclusive', 'distilled', 'titrated', 'organic', 'automated', 'unmechanized', et cetera, et cetera...I had heard all this a million times before.
But then after making all these almost mindless declarations, she suddenly appeared to become more sober, and to begin to pray, and to pray in a more composed fashion. She began to thank the Lord for his 'light', his 'life', his 'love', his 'mercy', his 'grace', his 'righteousness', his 'knowledge' etc. She had grasped my attention. These terms seemed to me to be more in harmony with the Bible.
And then to my horror I realized that I had extremely little understanding of what they truly meant. Actually, this had been building up for some time over the years, but it was thrown into sharp focus that evening as she uttered the words. I mean what does 'Light' really mean? And what does 'Righteousness' really mean? I had no idea. And what is 'Grace' anyway? I hated the Pentecostal definition: 'unmerited favour', nothing more than a dictionary definition of the word which misses by a farmer's mile the deeper meaning of the kind of grace that is unfolded in the Bible. The LSM definition was no more enlightening: "grace is the enjoyment of the Triune God". What does that mean?
I had convinced myself that I knew the meaning of these concepts. And beyond a simple and superficial academic appreciation of them, I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT. This was driven rudely home that evening in that moment.
In exasperation I decided I would ask the sister what these things meant she was thanking the Lord for. As soon as she stopped praying I asked her pointedly what Light meant, and what Righteousness meant. She was caught off guard. She had just been mouthing a prayer shooting off words that made her look 'constituted' in front off the saints, and this kind of direct questioning was unexpected. You should have seen her. Fumbling for words to answer me. She looked exactly like a politician who has been publicly blindsided by a reporter asking what he was doing with a prostitute at "that hotel downtown at 3 a.m. last night".
I was actually quite surprised that she completely failed to answer me. Without diving into the Recovery Version to find some technical definition in the footnotes she was at a total loss.
That's when I realized I had become a part of a 'kingdom of words', and the "kingdom of God is NOT in Word, but in Power" (1 Corinthians 4: 20).
And that's when my journey out of there began. Nonetheless, they are still my brothers and sisters, and so I often wonder and question how wise turning my back on them really was. I eventually got the answers to my questions. But at what price? I don't seem to have arrived anywhere.
Is Christ divided? (1 Corinthians 1: 13)
That's it, folks.
I was in one of the churches under Titus Chu. Later the church fell over on to the Blended Brother side. I was new and really did not grasp the gravity of what was happening. Actually, it was all a big joke to me because the infighting was mainly amongst the leading brothers and I thought it would all just blow over. I was just simply 'enjoying the Triune God'.
Even when we were 'forced' to watch the Whistler Convention, we were cracking jokes and laughing at some of the speakers (actually I didn't crack any jokes myself, but I remember one particular sister thought it was all really funny). I also remember after watching that stuff I felt like I'd been poisoned. This feeling crept in afterwards. The usual feeling of 'enjoyment' was absent. I wasn't the only one who felt this way. It was later explained that the negative feeling was just a sign of a successful inoculation. It would wear off, we were told. I guess it did.
I was initially attracted to the 'church life' because of what appeared to be the depth of the teachings. By then I was fed up to the back-teeth with Pentecostalism. Soo wishy-washy. Soo focused on worldly things. I'd had enough. I had already been exposed to Watchman Nee years before. And nothing I heard out of the Pentecostal pulpit even came within a mile to approaching his depth of understanding of the Scriptures.
Then along came Titus Chu's lieutenants. I had never heard of Witness Lee. His writings and Titus Chu's writings were presented as one and the same thing. This was before the One Publication Proclamation. They seemed to be like solid meat compared to the diet of diluted milk out of Pentecostalism. The brothers, I can only say were gifted speakers and teachers. John Myer was especially impressive. The difference between him and the other brothers was like watching the same show, once, in black and white, and then later, in color.
They helped me begin to penetrate what I found to be Witness Lee's opaque and sometimes incomprehensible doctrines. Watchman Nee, I had found to be far more lucid. We were told that we needed to 'exercise our spirits' and to learn the 'divine and mystical language' that had come down from heaven and been handed to Witness Lee. It was explained that no other language had the capacity to contain the 'high truths' and complicated concepts that had been revealed to Witness Lee (it sounded like English to me). By the way, John never said those kind of things. And he never seemed to have a narrow opinion about things that the LC is famous for having narrow opinions about.
One thing, though, always bothered me about the 'church life' right from day One. But I suppressed it because I had no evidence to the contrary. I just found it incredible that someone like Witness Lee had actually walked this earth. He was so squeaky, squeeeeeeaky clean...cleaner than a nun's undies! I mean was it possible, I would often ask myself. I heard NOT ONE SINGLE THING that would constitute a mark, a spot, or even the faintest of smudges, against this man's name. He had never even ever raised his voice in exasperation, let alone anger, as far as I could tell. I'm cynical by nature and this stretched my incredulity in no small measure. But I buried it.
I can tell you with a 101% confidence that almost none of the saints I was with would believe for a second even one sentence of what has been uncovered and revealed on this forum. And those who remain would not believe two sentences.
The final straw came one day when I was in a 'meeting'. We had 'exercised our spirits', we had 'called on the name of the Lord five times, and we were 'eating' (we were eating Christ) taking a deep dive into the glorious riches of the Ministry. And then the sister (the one who makes fun of, and loves laughing at the awkward saints on the LSM videos) began parroting the 'divine and mystical language' and sputtering and spewing forth all the bombastic terms she could muster: 'processed', 'compounded', 'sevenfold-intensified', 'all-intensive', 'crystallized', 'all-inclusive', 'distilled', 'titrated', 'organic', 'automated', 'unmechanized', et cetera, et cetera...I had heard all this a million times before.
But then after making all these almost mindless declarations, she suddenly appeared to become more sober, and to begin to pray, and to pray in a more composed fashion. She began to thank the Lord for his 'light', his 'life', his 'love', his 'mercy', his 'grace', his 'righteousness', his 'knowledge' etc. She had grasped my attention. These terms seemed to me to be more in harmony with the Bible.
And then to my horror I realized that I had extremely little understanding of what they truly meant. Actually, this had been building up for some time over the years, but it was thrown into sharp focus that evening as she uttered the words. I mean what does 'Light' really mean? And what does 'Righteousness' really mean? I had no idea. And what is 'Grace' anyway? I hated the Pentecostal definition: 'unmerited favour', nothing more than a dictionary definition of the word which misses by a farmer's mile the deeper meaning of the kind of grace that is unfolded in the Bible. The LSM definition was no more enlightening: "grace is the enjoyment of the Triune God". What does that mean?
I had convinced myself that I knew the meaning of these concepts. And beyond a simple and superficial academic appreciation of them, I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT. This was driven rudely home that evening in that moment.
In exasperation I decided I would ask the sister what these things meant she was thanking the Lord for. As soon as she stopped praying I asked her pointedly what Light meant, and what Righteousness meant. She was caught off guard. She had just been mouthing a prayer shooting off words that made her look 'constituted' in front off the saints, and this kind of direct questioning was unexpected. You should have seen her. Fumbling for words to answer me. She looked exactly like a politician who has been publicly blindsided by a reporter asking what he was doing with a prostitute at "that hotel downtown at 3 a.m. last night".
I was actually quite surprised that she completely failed to answer me. Without diving into the Recovery Version to find some technical definition in the footnotes she was at a total loss.
That's when I realized I had become a part of a 'kingdom of words', and the "kingdom of God is NOT in Word, but in Power" (1 Corinthians 4: 20).
And that's when my journey out of there began. Nonetheless, they are still my brothers and sisters, and so I often wonder and question how wise turning my back on them really was. I eventually got the answers to my questions. But at what price? I don't seem to have arrived anywhere.
Is Christ divided? (1 Corinthians 1: 13)
That's it, folks.