Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
Your personal encounters with Ron may have clouded your thinking about him and what he is all about. I’ve been there, and Ron was one of my favorite “speakers” on conferences and trainings for many years. I can admit that I was willing to give him more rope on his speaking than any other person in the whole LSM. Even when I knew inside that what he said in some of his tirades was just plain dung, (as the MOTA has labeled it). I was willing to compromise the truth for it tickled my ears enough to feel good about myself and what I was a part of.
It is not until I left, and one day was reading John 7, when Jesus said the following statements:
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16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
17*If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.
18*He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.………….
24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
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Your “opinion” about, “What we see of people are surfaces. God judges the hearts.” directly contradicts Jesus himself in the above text. We are to be able to judge for ourselves and discern what and for who these people are speaking for, unfortunately. It will lead to conflict and even divide. Truth divides people, if you like it or not!
You also notice that in Jesus’s own words in Mat 12:24-30, He didn’t condemn the servants for recognizing the differences between the wheat and tares, (which people overlook from the context on purpose to avoid conflict). Why is this important? Because it allows true believers to protect themselves from wolves and false brethren that have crept in. It’s is not our job to go and uproot them, or to get rid of them, God forbid, we leave them to God to do that, but to point them out and avoid them is what every true believer ought to be doing. May God give them according to their works, and may He give us true discernment to be able to make distinctions between man who are there pointing people to Christ, vs pointing people to follow fools like Witness Lee. The person’s speaking and his life doesn’t contradict each other, and if it ever does, there must be contrition or repentance. That never happened in the local church since it’s invention or inception, not with Nee and definitely not with Lee.
Ron is one of the most divisive individuals on earth, who has lost his way long time ago, when he sold his soul to Witness Lee for a position that he still hold to this day. What is unfortunate now, that there aren’t any or very few people today who are willing to say things out loud, call and point out the tares that have made a havoc in a lot of peoples lives. Everyone is looking for peace and tranquillity, oneness, but not many are willing to put their neck on the line to point out the embarrassment that is the local church. You can keep defending it, trying to make it sound as if there was positives to be had, but the fruits say otherwise, and that’s how you determine the difference between the truth and the false reality which has a lot of people in bondage today.
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Thank you for your instructive reply. If you think I was lauding or defending Mr. Kangas, I must have expressed myself poorly. I was merely recounting that I knew the man personally.
Look at my signature line if you will. You’ll see my name there, the years I spent in the local churches and when I left. If I had followed the discernment of the spirit, I wouldn’t have stayed a week, let alone 13 years. I saw, the hate and coldness in Witness Lee’s spirit even in the videos, and I ignored it. I learned my lesson. The irony is , I was being taught to follow my spirit. To actually follow it would have been to get out of there as fast as I could run.
Now, you’re a bit mistaken in your application of John 7 to my poor words. Judging by appearance, was exactly what I was avoiding when I spoke of surfaces. “Righteous judgement” is the Lord’s. Those that “hunger and thirst for righteousness” hunger and thirst for God. Accept no substitute.
Now, I appreciate what you’re saying. Forgive me if I don’t always agree. As the videos have illustrated, we are all fallible, our opinions can change. I have only the sketchiest knowledge of Mr. Kangas and the Lord’s recovery movement since I left. So whatever judgement I make of it is provisional.
Your last paragraph is perhaps the critical one we need to focus on. After leaving the LC I spent decades in agnosticism questioning everything I had learned there. In dialogues on this forum we call this post LC phenomenon “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” I don’t think that is what you intend.
I hope that you will join me in affirming that, whether we are speaking here, producing youtube videos or whatever, we want to practice the true oneness of the Spirit.
Ultimately it is up to the Good Shepherd to “recover” every lost lamb. We at best can give pointers in a process that is between the Lord and the individual soul and at the very least, may we not get in the way.
I marvel at the Lord’s inscrutable ways in allowing me if not leading me into the local churches, the deep truths I learned there mixed as they were with leaven. I don’t think the years I spent studying the Bible there were spent in vain. What do think?