[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by Thankful Jane

Sorry for being slow to answer, Terry.

Here are some facts I need to give you before I can answer your question:

1. Witness Lee never called out the “holy sisters.” In fact, Sandee R. and Ann Malir (another one of the three sisters) told me independently of each other that Lee never called them “holy sisters,” not even once. Sandee said that the person who always referred to them mockingly as “the three holy sisters” was Phillip Lee. So, when you hear this term, understand that it’s source was Phillip Lee, not Witness Lee.

2. I first heard this term in Houston in 1978 when either Benson Phillips or Ray Graver told us about Max and Sandee leaving the church. We were told that Witness Lee called out the “three holy sisters” in a meeting and had stopped the “sisters’ rebellion.” In retrospect, it is easy to determine the source of their information by the fact that they used the term “three holy sisters.” I suspect that Phillip was happy that his father had said something to these sisters in a meeting and passed this information on to the Texas brothers by saying something like Witness Lee had called out the three holy sisters in a meeting. From then to now that is how the Texas brothers have repeated this account.

3. Benson used this term and repeated the same story in December 2005, after my book came out, and if I remember correctly, he said Lee had called out the three holy sisters asking them to stand up in a meeting.

4. Here is what Lee actually did on Saturday night, Memorial Day weekend, 1977. Max was in Chicago, I believe. Lee gave a message in Anaheim and at some point during the message, he spoke to the three sisters (with whom he been meeting and giving them direction for several years) and said they should not sit together in the meetings but should sit with other sisters. That was the extent of it, according to Sandee and Ann. There was no strong rebuke, nor asking them to stand up, just this correction. Sandee and the other two sisters could not understand at the time why Lee had done this, when he could have easily told them in one of their private meetings with him that they should stop sitting together in the meetings. In time it became apparent that this action by him was his opening move to begin discrediting Max.

5. In 2006, when I asked Sandee about “the three holy sisters” event, she was surprised. She had no idea what I was talking about. All she could come up with was what I described in point 4. She found it interesting to learn that this "holy sister" story had been circulated and had come up again in a meeting as late as 2005.

Thankful Jane

Thankful Jane, thank you for the post and thank you for the correction. I apologize for my previous post which misrepresented Witness Lee by saying he called the Holy sisters. This is clearly an example of a half truth being passed as a whole truth.
Based on what you have revealed, what Witness Lee said to the sisters does not seem like a big deal nor unreasonable. In any assembly it can be said to any group of sisters or brothers.