A Short Testimony/Introduction

[Zezima]

Hello Everyone, just introducing myself. Long time Christian who grew up meeting with the Lord’s Recovery, I am a third generation “Church Kid” as they say, attended the FTT, and in fact Witness Lee spoke at a family member’s wedding back in the day. Needless to say, the culture, doctrine, & community runs deep. I write this to share a bit of my experience of leaving the LR, I hope to whoever reads this, it helps you in what you are searching for.

Much like a Jenga Tower that falls after multiple blocks have been removed, for me & my partner it was also a bunch of little things that caused our tower of faith in the LR to collapse. With that said, the biggest overarching reason for us to leave was the accepting that our cognitive dissonance wasn’t a problem with “me” or “us” but rather a problem from them. For way to long, I had brushed off different LR teachings or doctrines that caused an objection in my being as simply me lacking the “vision”. So I would shove that feeling aside and simply believe that what ever doctrine I was being taught from the “minister of the age” was correct, that “I” was the problem.

One day about two years ago, I was reading Matthew 24 where Jesus uses the times of Noah as imagery to what it will be like when He returns. While I can’t recall the exact verse, the footnote says in the recovery version that “Taken away” means raptured. However, in the context of that passage, those taken away in the times of Noah were taken into judgement. It was at that moment, I simply could not brush aside my issue with the “lack of vision” excuse. I was reading one thing, but the footnote was saying something else. I used my disagreement with that footnote as a launch pad to look at other interpretations for that verse, which lead me down a long exploration of eschatology.

Now, this isn’t a post about where LSM lands on the wide eschatology spectrum (though I might make a separate thread for that). I mention that specific experience because ever since then I could not help but find gaps between what the ministry said & what the bible said. These gaps weren’t huge, but rather subtle. A Recent example of what I mean, from the summer training last year... LSM claims God stripped Job so that God could add Himself to Job. While that sounds great, and you can pull in verses to support that idea of God stripping man to transform him. That idea isn’t what the bible says. In Job 1, Satan says Job only follows God because God provides so much for him, and that if God took that away, Job would curse God. So sure enough, God lets Satan take it all away, but Job doesn’t curse God. This is what the bible says.

See how subtle that is? LSM consistently places ideas into the text..a method of interpretation called eisegesis, rather than drawing ideas out from the text, a method called exegesis. With this understanding of how to interpret the bible, many of the blocks that supported our faith in what the recovery was offering began to fall… And soon the entire tower went with it. The local ground of the church, us becoming God, the white horse being the gospel, culture not being in the bible, the book of James missing the mark, Etc...

Nowhere in the bible does God say apart from the spirit and the text will we need someone to “unlock” the meaning of the bible. Circling back to that Job example, while it may sound good what LSM says the story of Job means, the text of the bible simply doesn’t say that. It wasn’t until that portion, in Matthew 24, did I ever begin to look for answers outside “The Ministry”. I always...always blamed myself for not agreeing with the message given or the interpretation presented… I never blamed the subject presenting the message. Not only that, but I never thought LSM could be wrong. While those are personal rationalizations, they were developed through a lifetime of being told LSM could not be wrong and a suppression of critical thinking.

While those doctrines above aren’t listed on Local Church’s Statement of Faith, within the community of the LR these doctrines (and many more) are foundational to their faith. They are the unofficial statement of faith, if you will. This is the overarching reason we left, we simply could no longer agree with major items of the LSM faith because they did not align with what the text of the bible says. Try standing up in a prophesying meeting explaining that the “one city, one church” doctrine isn’t prescribed in the bible, and divisive toward other image bearers of God... Try having a home group meeting where you read a Tim Keller book rather than Witness Lee, and see what the elders do.

My partner and I no longer meet with the LR, even though we have a lot of healing left for the Lord to do... we have never been happier and more joyful in the Lord than we are now. We were told that all the riches are in the LR, and nowhere else. However, we have found so many biblically sound preachers, and ministers in Christianity. We have enjoyed the bible like never before by coming to the unadulterated word. We are excited to go to Church on Sunday, a Church where Christ is the corner stone, not Witness lee. Furthermore, we no longer look at other Christian churches as degraded, but rather we praise God for the work that He is doing in each one of them.

It's a very difficult experience to leave/left something behind you were told is the answer. We are leaving a community that our entire lives have been built around. We don’t fully know where we are going, but we are following the Lord, and have never been happier.

[aron]

For way too long, I'd brushed off LR teachings that caused an objection in my being as simply me lacking the “vision”. So I'd suppress that feeling and believe that what ever doctrine I was being taught from the “minister of the age” was correct, that “I” was the problem.

One day about two years ago, I was reading Matthew 24 where Jesus uses the times of Noah as imagery to what it will be like when He returns. While I can’t recall the exact verse, the footnote says in the recovery version that “Taken away” means raptured. However, in the context of that passage, those taken away in the times of Noah were taken into judgement. It was at that moment, I simply could not brush aside my issue with the “lack of vision” excuse. I was reading one thing, but the footnote was saying something else.

Welcome - I relate to your points above. I came in as a college student, was immersed in the teachings for years, in the LSM-run "church life". At some point the disparity between what the scripture said and what WL taught became too glaring to ignore. But even though my extended family wasn't in the LR, and I still had my Christian childhood as touch-points, it still was hard unweaving the teachings out of my brain. What you've done as a former "Church Kid" is probably more challenging.

As a recent example of discrepancy, I found myself reconsidering "God's economy" as taught by WL: where does Paul promote intensification? If not, why pretend that Paul was urging Timothy to remain behind in Ephesus and teach it? And if Paul wasn't telling Timothy (or anyone else) to teach it as part of "God's economy", why the presumption that we should? And, where can I broach such questions as a basis for respectful and mutually profitable exploration? Not in the LR!

Suppose I see Jesus teaching, "Give and it will be given to you" and "Give to those who cannot repay and your reward will be great in heaven" and "Sell what you have, give to the poor and follow me", and then I see Paul asking the various churches to set aside for the poor of Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:2,3; 2 Cor 8:19; Rom 15:25,26; cf Gal 2:10; Acts 24:17), and I go, "Hey - God's economy!" and I want to talk about this interpretation in church setting? Not in the LR!

Eventually I made a conscious decision to pursue the Bible wherever it took me. Now, such a decision of itself doesn't guarantee success. But without such resolve there can be no explorative journey. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find" and unless I seek, there's no promise of finding. Jesus' command is our strength, our hope and our aim.

(My "God's economy" sidebar wasn't meant to hijack the thread but to show an example of LSM teachings that members and ex-members have noted as questionable. Perhaps someone could start an anonymous website like this: "Observations on scripture, for respectful dialogue with current LR members")

[GraceAlone]

Hi Zezima,
Welcome, and thanks for sharing your story. Boy did it resonate! When you mentioned eisegesis vs exegesis, it reminded me of the bells that went off in my head not too long ago when I learned that word, eisegesis, and got all excited because I finally had a way to articulate my discomfort with the LSM approach to Scripture. I would read outline points or HWMR passages that seemed a bit wacky to me, and I’d look up the Scripture references given to support such claims, and too often for comfort I just couldn’t find a solid logical connection. It reminded me a bit of that saying about statistics, but with a variation: “If you torture the verses enough, they’ll confess to anything!” That’s why I think we each bear personal responsibility to be in the Word (read in context) and use not only our spirits but also our minds to apprehend it.

I also resonated with your comment about looking forward to Sundays now. That’s our experience too! It’s incredibly refreshing after years of increasing dread and anxiety and sense of duty to now eagerly anticipate going to worship joyfully with our brothers and sisters and hear God’s word read and expounded in the place where we are meeting. We feel set free. Sounds like you do too, and I rejoice with you!

[Trapped]

Zezima, welcome to the forum!

Like GraceAlone said, your testimony/intro resonated with me also. For so long I had thought the problem was me, and actually more than that - I thought that God hated me and really liked seeing me suffer. I have talked to other church kids about feeling that way, and they immediately echoed that they felt the same way growing up in the LC. Imagine holding those thoughts inside you - the God that hates you and wants you to suffer is the same God you are supposed to be honest and open with and want above all else?! That's not a good place for a kid to be, mentally, especially for an extended period of time.

I realize I spent a lot of my growing up years with a kind of clamped-down protective layer around me. This was, unknowingly, my way of keeping myself safe from the teachings and condemnation, while simultaneously believing and having to live according to those same teachings and condemnation, because that's all I knew. Sometimes I liken it to a kid born into a KKK family......all he knows is the incredibly wrong stuff he was taught his whole life about other races.....but at a certain point somehow he realizes it's off, even though he was never taught otherwise. Somehow I knew something was off, wasn't right, and I curled up against that onslaught, but it took years to realize the "off" thing wasn't me but was the local church.

The double-speak was the first chink in the armor. How can we say we are better than denominations when we follow Witness Lee with more slavish devotion than any denomination "with a name" that we condemn? How are we not doing the same thing we look down on them for - and worse?

Why DO we only read this one guy, Lee?

Is he really the "minister of the age"? Is there any biblical basis for that claim?

Why do we keep his name from new college students? Why do we keep information hidden from them?

How can "good" be "death"? This makes no sense at all.

Why did God create me with knacks and talents and then condemn me for simply using them?

Where DOES the Bible tell us to "get out of our mind"?

How can God institute a system where you submit to someone "regardless of right or wrong"?

And on and on and on. Once you see one thing that clearly has to be questioned, then you start questioning everything, and you find out, stunned, that there aren't answers for it. The verses are prooftexted. The responses you get are distracted and meandering and don't actually address the question.

LSM has created a masterful set of teachings that are the epitome of eisegesis. They set up pillars that "we have to see" or else we'll "miss out on the up-to-date speaking" or the "fresh move of God" or be "in death", and then use the Bible to support their creations. But when you go digging in the Bible for the evidence, it's just not there. They've taken in out of context. They've made it say something it doesn't, and sometimes, the very opposite of what it actually says!

I echo that it is hard to leave the community and everything you knew. It's further isolating because so many people out there have no idea what it's like and how constant a companion the feeling out of sorts is. It is very encouraging to hear that you are happy and following the Lord!

Trapped