[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by John

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.

Thank you for catching this, my mistake. I have never read either the MindBenders or the God-Men. What I should have said is that at the time of the LRC lawsuit with both the MindBenders and the GodMen allegations made on the Rice campus where I was involved in preaching the gospel were that the LRC had practices based on chanting that came from the Far East. We were being painted as being “a Chinese church” with non Biblical influences from the Far East. We had to respond to this.

Originally Posted by John

• 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.

I thought I gave a detailed and clear testimony on this somewhere, but if not I will repeat it. I went to the North East with DC and visited 7 churches, one of which was the church in Amherst. This was after the Max Rappaport incident and at the same time that BP was in Cambridge (one of the churches we visited). While on this trip we met with the elder of the church in Amherst, he in a very apologetic tone, explained that they did things differently than we might be used to. He said that after the Max incident things were so contentious that no one could speak anymore in the meetings without being shouted down, ultimately they moved to meetings that were focuses solely on their own (unique) style of “pray reading”. They had 7 ways in which to approach a passage, one way was reading, one was praying, a third was to share a testimony, I don’t recall all 7. He made it clear to DC and me that it was not their intent at all that any other churches imitate what they were doing, but that they did this as the only way they were able to meet and that it had caused a very small revival or renewal in the church. After this introduction, we had arrived to the meeting early and it had only been us three at this point, we then entered into the meeting as others came and I thoroughly enjoyed the time, even though we never had any inclination to bring or even share this practice in Houston. I do recall that we spent about 45 minutes going through a short passage of the Bible, perhaps half a chapter. Later I heard someone, (probably while I was in the FTTT or else it was in Houston when RG was sharing about his research and his book), relate how pray reading came to the US. Their story seemed very similar to the one I heard in Amherst but I have no idea of the truth to that story, though I believe the firsthand account I heard from the elder in Amherst to be very accurate.

Originally Posted by John

• 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!

Actually what is important to this discussion is what I laid out in the first post when I started the thread. This thread was started in response to a question on how to talk to LRC members about the practice of pray reading. And quite specifically, this thread is about my suggestion that using RG’s book would be a very good way to find common ground with someone in the LRC to discuss this. For example a key verse in RG’s book was Ephesians 6:17-18a). And receive…the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit. Surely if you wanted to fellowship about “Pray Reading” all Christians could start with this verse. Even if you don’t agree with the practice as practiced by the LRC you can at least agree that “receiving the word of God by means of all prayer” is a biblical truth. Along these lines you could then raise up what Martin Luther said “It is very certain, that we cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer (Martin Luther).” Perhaps you agree, perhaps not, but you have to admit that Martin Luther is a respected church father without any influence from the Far East. Personally I like the advice of William Law “When you meet with a passage that more than ordinarily affects your mind and seems as it were to give your heart a new motion towards God, you should try to turn it into the form of a petition, and then give it place in your prayers (William Law, 1686-1761).” George Whitefield also spoke something that struck me “My mind being now more open and enlarged, I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books and praying over, if possible, every line and word. This proved meat indeed, and drink indeed, to my soul. I received fresh life, light, and power from above (George Whitefield, 1714-1770). And of course Andrew Murray “The word comes from God's heart, and brings His thoughts and His love into my heart. And then the word goes back from my heart into His great heart of love, and prayer is the means of fellowship between God's heart and mine (Andrew Murray, 1828-1917).” Now I feel, and this was the point of this thread, that if you used this book by RG it would be a great way to discuss Pray Reading. Now it may be that the practice in the LRC does not resemble this at all, it is not useful for me to say that, the person would only become defensive.

Now if you think that what is more important is what WL did with Pray Reading then I suggest you start a new thread on that topic. Since this thread is focused on using RG’s book to discuss pray reading with current LRC members the book and what it says is far more central to the discussion. As a result I will close this thread after posting this. I hope that my response is a thorough response to your post. If not you are free to start a new thread, but most of this post and most of the discussion in this thread was off topic as far as I was concerned.

Also I don’t understand how you could have been in Houston and not have read RG’s book? Don’t you remember that he would share on the book in the meetings and also provide us with rough drafts to read?

Originally Posted by John

• 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.”)

I am not well versed on what WL did prior to ’78 nor do I think I have made any statements that suggest I did. Therefore I don’t see how this relates to any inaccuracies of my posts.

Originally Posted by John

• 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.

Thank you for bringing this up, it is hard to remember that not all churches were the same. What I should have said and what would have been much clearer to those more removed from those days is this. In Houston many of the meetings were in the book of the Bible currently being taught by WL in the life studies. Friday night we would watch a video that came from Anaheim of the Genesis or Exodus messages. Sunday morning would often be based on the most recent NT training either the winter or summer. Now they always wanted us to read together from the RcV, so in your bag you might have a RcV of Matthew, and of Ephesians, and of Romans, Revelation, etc. Many, many times in Houston RG, EM, KR and others would fantasize about how great it would be to finally have a complete RcV of the entire NT so that we didn’t have to shuffle all of these different individual books. Now, for all of those in Houston, we were well aware that 1981 was a very big year for RG. This was the year the little printing operation in Houston that RG headed had been visited by WL and RG then announced he would be going to Irving to run the LSM printing. I was a classmate with KR who was going to work on the translation. So on a daily or even weekly basis I was hearing how great it would be to finally have one RcV, from many different people. So since the Life Studies of the NT were supposed to be finished in 1982 it seemed to me in 1981 that the RcV was almost finished in 1981.

Originally Posted by John

• 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.

Again, I don’t understand how this is an inaccuracy on my part. John Nelson Darby was quoted in RG’s book as saying “Study the Bible, dear brother, with prayer. Seek the Lord there, and not knowledge - that will come too; but the heart is well directed in seeking the Lord: the eye is single, and then the whole body is full of light (John Nelson Darby, 1800-1882).” The book RG published is running with this version of Pray Reading and it does seem more biblical than the LRC version. Or George Mueller is quoted as saying “I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning….When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it, but still keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation (George Müller, 1805-1898).”

Originally Posted by John

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.

I am sorry for the confusion with the reference to the MindBenders, I hope you find my response an adequate explanation. As to the other things that disturbed you they are not relevant to the topic that I defined in the first post. They might be relevant to a comprehensive discussion of the practice of Pray Reading by the LRC but that was not the topic. If you think that is the best way to fellowship with someone currently in the LRC by all means propose that. From my own limited experience I have found it best to seek common ground and to not be judgmental or dismissive of others when trying to fellowship. While in the LRC I was taught that we were the vanguard of the Christian faith, since leaving I have been humbled. I no longer seek to be seated in the first seat, but merely to be able to sit with other Christians in fellowship. As a result I don’t assume that I know more or that their practices are “wrong”. I am sorry if that disturbs you.