[aron]

Originally Posted by Nell

I started at the beginning. Sorry. Sometimes a topic will take off on a tangent. Don Rutledge made quite a contribution early on. Try a few every day???

Nell

There's some scary stuff on this thread.

Originally Posted by blessD

Fyi… The Perfecting Training was a video-taped event just like other trainings, but it occurred once a week. WL sat behind a desk facing the camera in what looked very much like the Tonight Show set. There were plants and décor. There were chairs (or a chair) that sat beside the big desk also facing the camera. A selected brother (I think mostly elders were picked) was brought up to sit in the chair beside WL. WL would then begin to point out the brother’s various weaknesses in an attempt to “perfect” the brother, thus the title of the training. Here in OKC, we would go watch this like any other training meeting. I remember sitting in them thinking this was so weird. And, not only weird, but sick. I thought “who does this man think he is, God?” It was the ultimate in public humiliation from my viewpoint.

I would like to hear from any others on the forum who remember this and please correct me if I did not describe it exactly as it happened.

Originally Posted by kisstheson

WL undoutedly was inspired to do this by WN. There is a whole book in the "Collected Works of Watchman Nee" entitled Spiritual Judgement and Examples of Judgement (Volume 58 of the Collected Works of WN). After four introductory messages, this whole book (319 pages) consists of 66 "trainees" at Kuling Mountain in China coming forward and giving their testimonies. After each one spoke, WN would publicly critique and judge the testimony which was just spoken. As the introduction of this book states: "In 1948, during Watchman Nee's training at Kuling Mountain, he asked the trainess to give their testimonies. He then followed each testimony with his critique and comment. These critiques and comments were spiritual judgements or discernments of the condition of the trainees."

I think that you can see the DNA of this group pretty clearly here.