Quote:
Originally Posted by bettercountry
This is also an example of what I meant in my initial post about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Humanly, whenever we come to see/know anyone that does something as egregious as WL did, especially from the mid-80s onward (but, yes, even before that timeframe), it's natural and maybe excusable to dismiss ALL of what that person did/said. But, sorry, I can never agree with that stance. We all are unrighteous to some degree, and no matter what degree that is, that means we all don't deserve ANYONE listening to ANY of us about ANYTHING. So, what does that leave us with? Unless we come to the ability to look beyond the person (with all his/her flaws) and just look for truths, then we will be prone to live out the rest of our days in the "monastery" of our own pride. Of course, there are cases where certain individuals should be totally shunned, but for me.....WL is not in that category, specifically some of the things that were taught prior to the 80s. Again, I know I'm ruffling a LOT of feathers here, and I really don't want to get into this argument.
And, I am not very eloquent, so most likely, the heart of what I'm trying to say is being poorly communicated.
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Let me start by saying that you do communicate very well.
Many posters, including myself, hold similar views concerning WL. This forum has had many, many, often heated discussions confronting these themes. Basically, how do we reconcile the good with all the bad? Take, for example, the LC phenomena of being “poisoned.” In the LC vernacular this indicates a loyal, devoted member to the ministry of WL who almost overnight becomes an outspoken “opposer” as a result of learning some of the hidden history of the Lee family.
Apparently this happened to you back in the 80s, and then me in 2005 during the “tract war” prelude to being quarantined. This forum and its predecessor opened up to the viewing public a number of unbelievable stories of corruption at LSM. Like peeling back layers of an onion, I was repeatedly “shocked.” At the time, the Lord had led me to read several Plymouth Brethren biographies, and basically all I could find online at the time, in an attempt to “make sense” of what was going on. They were our spiritual “forebears,” and much of our history duplicated theirs.
The exact same dilemma confronting you, also has confounded members of the PB assemblies for nearly two centuries concerning John Darby. Like us, they all had to “choose sides,” and “neutral you cannot be.” Few indeed could remotely reconcile the good with the bad, the same with us today. One historian Coad said something that hit me with apparent wisdom when he concluded, “concerning John Darby, there is so much good, and so much more wrong.” And let me add that so many of the same distinguishing features that characterized Darby could be said of both Née and Lee.