[aron]

I think that the most important thing is to have peace. Without peace, who can love?* We're reduced to a kind of nervous energy. In reacting to LSM organs such as Shepherding Words, Defense and Confirmation Project or Affirmation & Critique, there's a kind of knee-jerk indignation, seeing what they write versus what's known to have happened. Poster Robert writes of a sort of "holy anger" welling up within.

But my anger isn't holy, because it's shot through with unresolved personal issues. I got snookered - I was looking for love in all the wrong places, as the country song goes, and wound up in a cult. Now I'm angry about the fact that I got snookered. But James wrote, "For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." I can't let unresolved childhood issues work through my posts, and my anger spread out to the world.

But Christ died for our peace. We have peace toward God our Father and likewise to all around.** We may question, and should question, but abiding peace must remain. The price Jesus paid for our peace was high. "My peace, I give to you. Remain in my peace. Don't let it go."

Questions, however, are necessary.*** And we should ask them until SW and DCP and A&C respond adequately.

Why does LSM sell God's Plan of Redemption by Mary E. McDonough and other such books by women, if women can't teach? Why did WN copy Jessie Penn-Lewis in his Spiritual Man, if women can't teach? Why did WN have senior co-workers Ruth Lee and Peace Wang if women can't bear responsibility and authority in the church? Clearly RL and PW did. Yet 100 years later, it's no longer allowed? Why are such rules, apparently scripturally-based, so erratically kept?

Why did WN have a library of 3,000 spiritual classics if only one publication is allowed? Don't tell me that each one of these 3,000 classics was written by one of the successive ministers of the age? And if not, and WN could safely and profitably pick through literally thousands of non-MOTA tomes, why can't we?

Why were we told the age had turned when WL died? Yet no scripture was offered. Why is that?

Why does the RecV footnote say that people are healed by the leaves of the tree of life, and live forever, but then it says that this is not eternal life? How do the words 'forever' and 'eternal' mean different things in the same passage? Please answer via scripture, not supposition.

For that matter, how does giving a cup of cold water to a believer during the Great Tribulation get one "forever-healed human life" yet at any other point in human history it's apparently vain to give a cup of cold water to a believer because works are dead? Would God so arbitrarily overturn the eternal laws?

How does a RecV footnote in Psalms say that an imprecation is "fallen human concept" or "mixed sentiment" or "natural" because we're called in the NT to bless not curse, yet in other Psalms the same writing is said to be a type of Christ defeating Satan?

How could Paul ask Timothy to remain in Ephesus and to teach "intensification" as intrinsically part of God's economy, if Paul's never seen teaching this himself? Clearly the God's economy of Witness Lee and the God's economy of Paul/Timothy are markedly different. How to reconcile this?

Why do the noted facts on Daystar in LSM website omit the role of Timothy Lee? All independent observers place him as prominent, even as the motivator and key player, and other narratives have him in similar past roles (e.g., the 1962 Seattle World's Fair). Yet in the SW website narrative he doesn't exist. Clearly the roles of immediate family members of WL affected the "storms, turmoils and rebellions" in the LC. Yet they're omitted by SW.

What if Peter had taken the funds laid at his feet in the early chapters in Acts, and started a for-profit business run by his immediate family members? Don't you think that would affect the narrative of Acts? Yet there's this pretense in ShepherdingWords.com that such things never occurred.

Now, can we ask such questions without being bitter, or angry, or vindictive? I hope so, and will keep trying. There are probably a lot of such questions to be asked.

*See, e.g., 1 John 4:20

**Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another? ~Malachi 2:10 (cf 1 Cor 8:6)

***Acts 17:11