[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

And we got a visit from Brother RK himself. The topic was transformation, I believe - 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 Ron 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 after a conference, and was 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. Still demanding and unperceptive, with peculiarities even more pronounced. Little evidence of the inward, metabolic transformation. But Ron had been saved from that. He went to a conference by WL, who said to pray every day, "Lord, make Your home in my heart", and he'd done so every day since, and had the full assurance that Christ was there, working.

What struck me was the stark contrast between this, and what I 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 see a post that confirms my anecdotal observation.

Originally Posted by Trapped

I spent a little time scrolling through the other memorial videos for Benson. Ron Kangas is back, clearly having lost weight. He managed to get a nice slap down on all the saints by saying something like, "I have to be frank, but very few brothers and sisters in the church life are actually mature". So.....whose fault is that exactly? How much more "in the central lane" can they get at this point?

How are the old-timers supposed to take this? "Sorry, but you spent the last 45 or 50 years just calling, calling, calling the Name of Jesus, and now you are still not mature." Or the younger generations: "Okay, double down because it didn't work for the others. But if you're twice as desperate, maybe it'll work for you."

From "The Flesh and the Spirit" by Witness Lee

GROWING IN LIFE BY EATING JESUS

I have been a genuine, seeking Christian since 1925. I loved the Lord and the Bible so much, but for many years I never heard a message telling me that I have to grow in life. I heard message after message telling me that I had to do certain things or behave in a certain way. But no one told me that I need to grow, not to improve. No school can help you to grow. Every school is doing its best to help you to improve.

The main thing that good mothers do is to feed their children. In our homes the dining table is much more important than the desk. Every Lord’s Day we do not have a desk in front of us but a dining table, that is, the Lord’s table. I have traveled to many places and have been a guest in many homes. The first thing the host would care for is my eating. In many homes I did not have a desk, but in every home I had a dining table. This is because eating is more important than studying, writing, and reading.

So, the church members have been dutifully eating Jesus for decades, now they find out they're not mature, lacking growth in life, not much transformation?

Originally Posted by Ohio

I, of course, still believe that they all are genuine Christians, at least all the leaders I knew back in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Reading the NT carefully one can see that many Christian leaders will fail us, falling into sin, immorality, or financial corruption. Dangers abound. Beware of false teachers and prophets. We should be careful never to interpret these ones in scripture as fakes or non-Christians.

I probably shouldn't have said, "genuine Christians", but, "I got fooled - I felt that this was a safe and nurturing place for my Christian journey. It wasn't."

After years of 24/7 immersion, I became increasingly frustrated that my buried feelings, resentments and anxieties, along with my shame-based and compulsive behaviors, hadn't magically gone away, or even receded much. I met privately with the church elders, one by one, and bared myself, and each of them stonewalled, with some variation of "Just keep eating, just keep drinking." They were like automatons, unable to contemplate anything outside Ministry narratives. But I guess that's how they became elders.

I don't reject the notion that crying out to the Living God for salvation is worth doing. "Call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Tim 2:22; cf Psa 51:10) and all that. But that presupposes things that are categorically eliminated in WL's message of, "Just eat and drink". Then decades later, to find out that just eating and just drinking, just didn't cut it. "It's so simple and easy, our worries flee away"... remember that? Sorry, not as simple and easy as we'd thought... sorry for the past 45 years...