Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
But the pray reading book was a different time. In 78 and 79 everyone was eagerly trying to prove that these things were so with a view towards refuting Mind Benders. I don't think that was cynical. By 1981 the Irving construction project and the significance to Texas brothers like RG and BP was the key focus. The RcV was not yet finished, but almost. EM and RG were beginning to formulate the whole use of footnotes in testimonies which would mean everyone had to have a RcV, and hence they would become "gold bars" to LSM and LSM would embrace the Texas brothers. 1981 was a major turning point in RG's life in the LRC, but this was at least a year or two years after he began work on that booklet.
According to the Mind Benders book Pray Reading was introduced to us here in the US from the Far East, it was based on chanting and practices that have no root in the Bible and it was a form of mind control or brain washing. It was a practice that define the LRC as a cult. If you know the history of Pray Reading you know that it is not right to blame WL for bringing this practice from the Far East. The practice originated with a church that was going through great turmoil and it was so bad they couldn't have anyone speaking a message. The only thing they could meet around was the Bible. The meetings were based on reading some verses, then praying, and ultimately there might be some short testimonies. The church experienced a revival, they described the practice as "pray reading" and then it was promoted as another practice recovered that had been lost.
Clearly the original practice and what is now called "pray reading" are very distant relatives. Not unlike the difference between a TV dinner and a real home cooked meal. I think it is fair to say in hindsight that LSM wanted to package and sell "pray reading". But in 78 and 79 it is very likely that RG was running with the original story, not the repackaged version.
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ZNPaaneah,
I know that this discussion took place awhile back; but I thought that I should respond to your post, since it contains several inaccuracies as well as misleading information:
- The Mindbenders does not claim that pray-reading came to the U.S. from the Far East. The book also does not claim that pray-reading was based on chanting.
- I don’t know if the church where you claim that pray-reading started, the one “going through great turmoil,” was in the U.S. or the Far East. If you are maintaining that pray-reading started in the U.S., what you wrote is inaccurate based on what I’ve read and been told, in addition to what I experienced in The Church in Houston (having been there from its inception). If you meant that pray-reading started in the Far East, your description sounds like it might have come from Living Stream Ministry propaganda.
- You state that “it is not right to blame WL for bringing this practice from the Far East.” What we can charge Witness Lee with is teaching it and promoting it to us in the U.S.; whether he brought it from the Far East or vice versa, or neither. In other words, where it came from (or even whom it came from initially), is not so important in this discussion. It’s what Mr. Lee did with it that’s most important, I think. And, the type of pray-reading that he did advocate and demonstrate was what I might call the Oh-Lord-Amen-Hallelujah (OLAH) kind, as described previously in this thread, not what is apparently referred to in Ray Graver’s booklet (which I haven’t read). One of the major thrusts in the Local Churches, including Houston where Ray was a leader, was to “get out of your mind and get into your spirit,” and pray-reading was one of the methods we were to use to accomplish that end. We were told that we shouldn’t use our minds when contacting the Word, because the mind was the wrong organ to use!
- Witness Lee was able to use pray-reading to maintain control of the Local Churches in the Far East after the 1966 split there. Since a number of church leaders had split from him because of his dictatorial control (among other things), pray-reading was one of the techniques that he was able to leverage to ensure that leaders would not be able to gain power and influence that would be outside of his control. Under Lee, pray-reading was taught in the Far East—the OLAH kind. It was one of the ways the saints there were given to escape the rational mind and become free in the Church. (This is my very high-level, partial summary of observations and conclusions by Fred in his 1975 anthropological doctoral dissertation, “Ritual as Ideology in an Indigenous Chinese Christian Church.”)
- You state that by 1981 that the “Recovery Version” was almost finished. One of our “Recovery Version” copies bears a copyright date of 1985. I don’t think many would consider a book to be “almost” finished when it didn’t come out for four more years. If you have one that bears an earlier copyright date, please let me know.
- You wrote as if Ray Graver was “running with” a version of pray-reading that was more biblical (my word) prior to 1981; yet, he was part of the leadership that was encouraging the original OLAH pray-reading in The Church in Houston.
This post of yours was disturbing to me; because, it appears that you have written as an authority yet misstated what
The Mindbenders presented about pray-reading, glossed over Witness Lee’s push of mindless pray-reading into The Recovery, didn’t mention Fred’s observations on the subject, and incorrectly surmised that Ray Graver’s story in 1978 and ’79 was more like “original” pray-reading when the original in Houston was the OLAH kind.