Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
We know some of what is in RK’s heart by what he has told us - he was convinced that WL was the “greatest” of them all. That belief directed all of his words and actions, regardless of God’s words and commands.
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Suffice it to say that I don't go to LC meetings often. Occasionally, family obligations force my hand, and I find myself in something. Last year, I went to one meeting, I think. There were a few old-timers, a few new-timers, but the assembly was a shell of its former self.
And we got a visit from Brother RK himself. The topic was transformation, I believe - in LC parlance it's "being transformed in life and nature by imbibing the Processed and Consummated Triune God". There's this idea that by "pray-reading" and "calling" and "groaning" and so forth, one has an inward metabolic transformation and becomes the same as God.
But RK was giving us a sober message, telling us that you can pass through all this, and not get transformed. He gave us an anecdote, about a time 38 years ago, he was having fellowship with some brothers after a conference, and they got interrupted by some impertinent young sister who demanded to know the answer to a theological question. So they addressed her, and she left them.
And he said, "And now, 38 years later, she's still the same." I don't remember the words he used but the idea was that she was still impetuous, flighty, unstable. Just older and more peculiar, still demanding and unperceptive, with peculiarities even more pronounced. Little evidence of the inward, metabolic transformation to be more, like Christ.
But RK told us that he'd been saved from that. One time he was at a conference by WL, who said to pray every day, "Lord, make Your home in my heart", and he (RK) had done so every day since, and had the full assurance that Christ was there, working.
What struck me was the difference between this story and what I've heard in the WL church since the 1970s. "Calling is the way." "Just by calling every day" "Just call, 'O Lord', he'll change your life".
Now here was the story of a woman who'd been calling for 38 years, with no change. She hadn't gone to the right conference, heard the right message, prayed the special prayer. No, she was just calling, calling, calling every moment each day. Calling the name of Jesus, she (wrongly) thought it was the way.
I looked around to see if anyone else had picked up on the apparent turn in LC dogma. Nobody seemed to notice. Maybe the idea was, As long as you're here, getting the Word from the Great Man, you're in the Flow from the Throne. Even if, while in the Flow, he tells you that you've wasted the last 40 years of your life just by calling every day.
We were told, "Just call O Lord, He'll change your life", and anything else was some variant of "dead works." All we had to do as believers was gather on the local ground, be in oneness, call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Then suddenly, decades later, we find that there was the requirement for a special prayer from a special conference that RK and a few insiders went to.
What should we think of that? If you hold to the Great Man theory, then being told by RK that you've wasted the past decades on inadequate doctrine and insufficient practice is still acceptable (I guess), because you got told this by the Great Man RK himself. But think about it - if WL and then RK gave us poor doctrine, illogical, poorly-founded, and eventually contradicted, abandoned or ignored, were they really Great Men?