Quote:
Originally Posted by Freedom
The view is that the more 'territory' they gain, the better. This was seen when there was the Titus quarantine. I remember hearing some fuss from the blendeds about who some of the churches in Africa 'belonged' to. The same thing was true with South America and DYL, again the concern was territory or what churches belonged to whom.
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The quarantines in the GLA had as their bottom line the question, "
Whose fruit are we? or,
Who do we belong to, Cleveland or Anaheim?" That is no joke. I was told repeatedly that TC "raised us up," and thus we must stand with Cleveland because we are TC's fruit. Others made it clear that we all are "WL's fruit," thus we belong to "the" ministry, and we must stand with the Blended brothers.
Some brothers from the GLA had gone to Nigeria to minister. It began as a personal connection with a friend of a family in Cincinnati. One brother, unrelated to the situation but loyal to LSM,
asked TC if the Blendeds knew about this new work begun in Africa. Apparently TC said "yes," but there was some confusion surrounding the details. Within no time we had two colonial powers fighting over the rights to a small handful of believers in Africa, on the other side of the world. How disgusting is that? Not only were we divided in the US, but now that little community in Africa was also divided. The websites concernedbrothers.com and afaithfulword.org soon lit up cyber space with opposing versions of "the truth."
So the question boiled down to this, "who owns those African saints?" But isn't this whole battle pretty pathetic? Have not both sides forgotten that we are the Lord's, and His alone? Can any ministry
own another man? What kind of debt do I owe to Anaheim and Cleveland since both were at one time helpful to my faith? Does their ministry really come with such an unwritten price tag? If not, then why do both sides attempt to fill their people with such guilt about owing them?