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Originally Posted by JJ
Yes, that was a long, painful listen. It is full of many "local churchisms", broad-brushing large groups of people, over-exalting two of God's servants and those who chose to follow them, rather than Jesus Christ who is our life.
"I didn't need to pray" is telling.
Why did Witness Lee bother to come to a Navigators Bible study if it was part of the old wine skin?
I found the statement "The ministry is for the church, not the church is for the ministry" at the beginning very interesting. James, do you hear yourself?
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You mentioned a few things that I wanted to discuss. I don’t know too much about James Barber, but I think he passed away sometime in the mid-80’s, before the so-called turmoil took place. I have also heard that after the Max R. incident, he was moved to OKC by WL. In other words, it seems that his visibility in the LC gradually diminished over time. I think one of his sons indicated that he had expressed resentment towards the LC near the end of his life
I don’t know when James spoke this ‘history’, but whenever he did must have been a point in time when he was still blinded by the standard LC train of thought. It is interesting how him and so many others worked to give the impression of the whole world situation (WW2, communist takeover in China, etc.) being due to the Lord “preparing the way” for WL to come to America. It’s a ridiculous correlation fallacy at heart, but in the LC, I think that there has been the persistent effort to relate the world situation to what WN/WL were doing at the time. James’ message is indicative of this.
Regarding James’ decision to follow WL, which is summarized by his statement “I didn’t need to pray”, it seems that the underlying motive was his disillusionment with the seminary that he was attending. That is very telling indeed. Towards the beginning of the message he says that he only had two paths for his life: become a lawyer, or go into ministry (a false dilemma), and since he didn’t want to be a lawyer, he chose seminary. It seems that perhaps there was some inner turmoil that he never dealt with and his ‘escape’ was to follow Lee.
On the subject of TAS, it seems WL was seeking to find a way to discredit him. On way was obviously the matter of “the ground”, the other was criticizing his Honor Oak ministry center. I am dumbfounded by this criticism just because of the sheer amount of irony. I am almost 100% certain that LSM officially calls their current building for conferences and trainings a “ministry center”. To WL and his LSM scam, the issue was never about the ministry being for the churches. This was just a way that others could be discredited, all the while WL could have his minions like Benson go around and make people submit to his ministry office.