Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
But if you also look at the sister's rebellion you cannot explain that incident with anything that Max did other than the fact that Max and Sandy knew about PL.
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There is a little more explanation that can be given.
It took Lee over a year to get rid of Max after the initial conflict over Phillip. Sandee told us that if Lee had done something against Max too fast, it would not have worked well because there were many brothers and sisters in Anaheim who loved Max and Sandee for the personal care they had received from them. Sandee said that when they first moved to Anaheim, they had found a lot of hurt and wounded brothers and sisters who needed help. They began taking care of them--praying for them and fellowshipping with them to help them with practical life matters such as marriage difficulties, etc. This kind of care went on for several years before Max went to Lee about Phillip. Because of Max and Sandee’s hands-on care, many Anaheim brothers and sisters would not have been easily turned against them. Sandee said that Lee himself had very little interaction with the “common” brothers and sisters in Anaheim. She thinks that after the Max went to him about PL, Lee realized he was vulnerable in Anaheim because of the saints’ love for Max and Sandee. He had to find a way to gradually discredit them.
The first step he took was to speak against Sandee publicly in a meeting. He did this at a Middle Age conference that was being held in Anaheim while Max was at a young people’s conference in Chicago (pretty sure it was Chicago). Lee’s speaking against Sandee occurred Memorial Day weekend 1977. What Lee did was a very hurtful to Sandee, not only because of their personal closeness to him, but also because during the previous few years, she and two other sisters had been in constant (weekly, I believe she said) fellowship with Lee and the Anaheim elders about how they were caring for the Anaheim brothers and sisters.
At the Middle Age conference Lee publicly corrected Sandee and the other two sisters for sitting together in meetings. This might seem to be a little thing, but it sent a loud message that Lee was not pleased with Sandee. Sandee said things began to change from that time forward. She and the other sisters could not understand why Lee did this publicly, when he easily could have said this to them in one of their private meetings with him. Someone called Max in Chicago to tell him what Lee had done, and he came home immediately. This was when Max and Sandee first began to realize that Lee was changing his face toward them and to suspect that it was because of Max’s action concerning PL, which had occurred shortly before this.
By the summer of 1978, things had progressed to the point that what had gone on with the sisters in Anaheim was being characterized as a “sisters’ rebellion” and what Max had been doing was being portrayed as damage to the recovery because of his independent ambition.
Max and Sandee left in the fall of 1978.