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Responding to aron's "right-on" list above, I would add the following:

1) "Our group is special". The Word says clearly that God is does not show favoritism. (Romans) There is also an old saying that goes something like "humility leaves when it sees its own face". Therefore, as soon as you think you are special, you are not. Of course, the Word also says that ALL of us have received favor from God--reinforcing the fact that we are all the same before Him. No one is "extra-special".

2) "Our leader was raised up by God in these last days to restore the church..." If this were, indeed, true, would He not have mentioned it in Scripture so that everyone would know that they were to come? Would He want anyone to "miss the boat"? Shouldn't there be a verse that says somewhere: "Behold, there shall come forth from the land of the Dragon two last great witnesses?" But no--"only" the two great witnesses during the time of Jacob's sorrow are mentioned and their ancestry is Jewish or, at the least, directly in the ancestral line of Jacob.

3) "Our leadership is always right. Never question them, because this is rebellion against God's anointed." So, then, our beloved Paul was in rebellion when he "withstood Peter to his face" about separating from the Gentiles? After all, wasn't Peter a "super-apostle", while Paul was sort of "second generation-afterthought"? And when the Bereans "searched the scriptures to find out if these things are so"--would they have remained silent if they had found it not to be or would they have spoken? You catch my drift, I am sure.

And on another page, another posting, someone mentioned how they claim not to have a formal seminary. "A rose by any other name" is still a rose. Full-time training followed by more full-time training is a seminary--even if you play the semantics game and say it is not. No one is fooled.

A LC member who no longer meets with the LC shared that once it was declared in a meeting that they were going to hold an "Advance" at a local denominational church camp. (They don't mind using their "degraded" facilities.) Others, it was shared, may have "retreats", but not the LC--they had "Advances"! Ha!

I believe it was Freedom that pointed out elsewhere that the members really do not function but, rather, read from the HWFMR, thereby just re-speaking what Lee said. True. One has only to go to a meeting or two before this is clearly seen. To leave the script is dangerous. So, in effect, they do not share what God has surely given them (because we ARE assured that "each man HAS"--present tense), but what one man said years and years ago. Only Lee is functioning, really.

Finally, the Word is not read (except, perhaps, very rarely) unless the footnotes are then consulted. (THE HWFMR is actually the Recovery Version verses with footnote materials expanded into full pages.) These "footnotes" are actually a complete Bible commentary, which anyone is entitled to write and publish if they so choose. These, however, are inserted into the pages of this version itself and treated as part and parcel of the Holy Word. How embarrassing it is to open a page of the Recovery Version and see just one or two small verses at the top with Lee's footnotes filling the entire rest of the length of the page! When visitors come to the church and try to read or share from their version of the Bible, much effort is made to thrust this "Recovery Version" into their hands and get them to read, instead, from it. By the way, I find this version to be clumsy and difficult to understand in many places. (By "understand", I mean the difficulty in following a sentence that is a looping of one clumsy phrase to another to try to stay in "word for word" translation.) It lacks the beauty and rhythm of the KJV and certainly the clarity of the NIV or ASV, among many others. This is just my own opinion, however.

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