Well it should be possible to corroborate some of this stuff eventually. If some of what Krieger says relates to what actually happened, then that should be enough not to simply dismiss it out of hand, due to his later interests. He might still be a witness to some LC history. Actual witnesses who saw some of this are so scarce today that I wouldn't ignore any of them out of hand, no matter how flakey they may seem to be.
Is anything that DK says independently corroborated somewhere else? Did Samuel Chang, for example, tell anyone else that he was the "financial side" of things, and, try direct-marketing techniques with the Church in Boston? There's a big swath of LC history covered in this testimony, 1962 - 1975.
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Originally Posted by Doug Krieger
I know I digress here - but one Samuel Chang in 1963 informed me that Lee was the spiritual side of Watchman Nee and that he was the "financial side." During Lee's Daystar enterprise and the stupidity of the "native way" of selling these exceedingly expensive dinosaurs "door to door in rich American neighborhoods" (in order to cut marketing costs) Chang came up with the bizarre idea of natural vitamins and minerals. The Churches, like Boston, were given a front row marketing presentation by Chang himself who set out hundreds of little cups full of this snake oil and attempted both to sell it to the saints and to have the saints market it--man, talk about Kool Aide!
All this is so sad--but I share this to clearly let you know that "mingling" capitalism with Christianity - God with mammon - was at the heart and soul of the L.C. from its commencement--concealed until Lee saw an opportunity to advance his cause and a way to fund his empire and to secure a massive financial base for his family members--even his "charging for the ministry" and the "trainings" was an idea concocted by him and shared with the elders in Washington, D.C. and me in a car on the way to the meeting hall in D.C. - Lee said that smart Christians like so-and-so were doing it and "so should we!" Thus, charging for the ministry became the way of the Local Church of Witness Lee--whereas prior to this time during the early days of the 1970s such a practice was non-existent--but Lee decided to follow the way of Christianity, a Christianity he resented and blamed as the Great Babylon!
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