[Jay]

Originally Posted by aron

I have a few questions.

- Do they still tell you, "don't waste your time" with the poor, the orphans, the widows, with those who have no means to repay you in the present age? See Luke 14:13,14; cf Prov 19:17. Paul wrote (Gal 2:10) that he was "eager to remember the poor" but I didn't see much eagerness when I was in the FTTA. Instead they were eager for "good building material", such as Caucasian college students. How 'normal' is this disdain for the weak and the sick among us? It doesn't seem like a normal Christian church life, to me.

- Your moniker is SevenSpirits: do you really believe in seven spirits, or in just one spirit, sevenfold intensified to overcome the degradation of the church? If this "seven is really one" idea is true, then why didn't WL use the same methodology throughout the Revelation? Why didn't he say that Revelation 21:12 showed one gate, which had become twelvefold intensified, or that Revelation 8:2 showed merely one angel standing before God, who was sevenfold intensified, or that the seven churches in Rev 2 and 3 were in fact one church, sevenfold? Why use one methodology (seven = one) in one place, and abandon that interpretive method everywhere else? Why the inconsistency of method?

And if Moses built a lampstand holding up seven lamps in Exodus, then was the church already degraded in Exodus when he went on the holy mountain and received the vision? So, why did Moses need to create seven lights in Exodus? In the NT we see only one spirit (e.g. Ephesians 4:4), and then in Revelation 1 (once again?) John beheld seven flames burning before the throne?

I suspect there were seven flames all along, and the "degraded church" idea was something that WL needed to distance himself from every other teacher, all of whom were of course useless. "They're all degraded!!" Only WL had the oracle, so we were taught. Yes, were problems in the Asian churches in Revs 2 & 3, but there also were problems in Jerusalem, Antioch, etc. So why seven flames in Revelation? And why WL's need to overturn the plain language right in front of him, and make seven equal one? And if his logic were right, why didn't he consistently use it?

- Why were women prominent in the early "recovery" movement, but now they can't even give a message in church on Sunday morning? Ruth Lee, Peace Wang, etc etc; there were dozens functioning alongside WN. Ironically, one hundred years ago, women couldn't vote or hold public office, but could function in WN's "Little Flock" movement. Today women can run for President but can't speak on Sunday morning? What got recovered, here? Where's Priscilla and Aquila in the Lord's recovery movement? Banished.

I agree with you on the LC treating poor people without love. They treated me this way. I was looked at with disdain for not being an excelling brother, and some brothers have even used condescending language towards me. There was also a brother who came into our locality a few years ago and he got baptized with us and later on ran into some trouble and became homeless. He reached out to the leading brothers and was basically ignored. I was in the room with one of them when he called and asked for help and he was redirected to a different locality where a brother had maybe a room for him. Which was ok I guess, but then that brother got off the phone and said verbatim "we are not a salvation army." And he laughed about it. That has never sat right with me

But I don't agree that Lee was talking about degraded Christianity in an errant way in the sense that he is objectively wrong about them. Certainly the denominations are sectarian and degraded in more ways than one. But we could also argue that Lee's constant bashing of them wasn't righteous either. To the point where you almost get an "us vrs them" type of thought. At the end of the day these are our brothers and sisters in the Lord. They may be to whatever extent lost in the worldly Christian system, but that doesn't make them less than us, and Lee was constantly bashing them and putting them down, which would give the listener an air of superiority over them, as if these were foreign people who didn't deserve our time. Which would make the members of the local churches special and extraordinary in comparison with other believers. And I do think this type of thinking is latent in the recovery. They really do believe they're a special class of Christian and they absolutely do talk like they're more blessed than other Christians. Which is debatable objectively, but it's also not right to talk about yourselves that way. It's certainly a matter of pride