[Thankful Jane]

Well, I just had a little time to catch up, so I read through this thread. I am sitting here feeling sick at my stomach after looking at the various power struggles and political maneuvers behind the scenes and thinking about the shamefulness of these ugly inner workings of the LC "leadership." I just have to put the word "leadership" in quotes. This was not leadership, it was egos gone wild in the name of God. It was a mockery of all that is good and holy, true and pure. It was men consumed with ambition whose practices were nothing less than taking the name of God in vain. I no longer wonder at what happened to so many of the sheep.

In a sense this isn't really news to me having heard so many pieces of it before, but there is just something about putting all these men together and visualizing them posturing in closed meetings at conferences that makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. Seeing a hierarchical and functional organizational chart laid out before us and watching it morph as hostile takeovers proceed among those who were leading “God’s move on the earth today” is totally disgusting.

The Bible says truly that that which is done in secret will be shouted from the housetops. That must be why God let Al Gore invent the internet. Sorry, I just need to lighten my post a bit. It is weighing me way down.

I feel sad and ashamed and betrayed and angry all at the same time, as I think about the farce that was in operation behind closed doors. Who got hurt? It was the little ones--the simple, trusting, blind and naive sheep.

I saw a movie called The Inner Circle many years ago that was the story of what went on behind the scenes in Stalin's inner circle of power- hungry, fawning men. The story was later told by a small potato (or small pea) who was included as part of that inner circle by Stalin because he ran the projector for the movies Stalin watched. That projector operator survived to tell the story after Stalin was gone. Hope was clearly more than a projection operator, but he is here playing a film for us on this thread, one that every person who was ever in (or is now still in) the Local Churches needs to see.

I have heard others say that WL would rake people over the coals in verbal tirades, but hearing that you experienced this firsthand, Don, well I don't know what to say. How could he be allowed to do this? The whole mess is terrible, shameful, evil…what words fit this sickening picture? Phillip, not falling far from the tree, practiced this same kind of ranting at brothers and sisters. Jame's wife told me that at training times this kind of ranting is what Lee did to James that hurt him deeply and resulted in him coming home and doing the same thing to his family.

I personally spent many hours over a period of months in the 90s with Brent and his mother and with a few others trying to help him on his road to recovery as a human being. He had been to hell and back before finding Jesus as his savior. Together we prayed with him and for him. He was trying to forgive his Dad and find freedom from all that had happened to him, but his hurt and anger were very deep seated. (Some may find this hard to believe, but he sounded better in his posts on the Bereans than when we were spending time with him.)


He was baptized in our swimming pool, seeking to have a new start with the Lord. He was a terribly wounded soul. I wept for him. I kept thinking what a shame it was that such a brilliant (and I do mean brilliant) young man was not nurtured and loved and encouraged by his father to be all that God made him. The last I knew he was still struggling just to find some normalcy in life. Yes, James is directly responsible for what happened to his family, but we have to face the fact that the atmosphere in the LC was/is a greenhouse for abusers. In poor, poor Christianity James might have been helped to see the importance of his family.

I'd best stop. One more thought. I sat under James Barbers harsh SMOs type teaching for years. In one sense James might have been a bruised reed, but in another he was a reed bruiser.

Thinking about those closed door meetings brings some verses to mind:

Rev 18:2,4 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

Thankful Jane