[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by aron

Whatever happened to thinking of others more highly than yourselves? Oh, I know, it disappeared on the Local Ground. The LG was a trojan horse to get you to accept a human cultural ethos centered upon the deification of one of its own. Without the elevation of one of the flock to God-Man status, untouchable and unquestionable, who'd be in charge? Chaos would reign! No, Good Order in the Church is predicated upon Authority and Submission. And in a Normal Christian Church this must be absolute.

This one's pretty brash.... even for our brother aron!

To my dear brothers and sisters in the Local Churches: You may want to resist the temptation to consider this as simply the ramblings of a bitter former LC member turned "opposer", and instead file this under the "truth hurts" category. Oh, maybe it's something in between the two of these extremes, but an honest evaluation by sober people, both within and out of the Movement, points mostly to the objective truth in what aron has posted.

About 38 years ago the Local Church put out a pamphlet entitled "Beliefs and Practices of The Local Churches". An electronic version is published here:
http://www.localchurches.org/beliefs/faq.html

Under the frequently asked questions area you will find this:

Who is your leader?
Our unique leader is Christ. We have no official, permanent, organized human leadership. Furthermore, there is no hierarchy of any kind and no worldwide leader. We regard no person as infallible, and we do not follow anyone blindly. On the contrary, we follow only those whose teaching and practice is in accordance with the truth of God’s Word.

I still remember, as a young college student, kind of cringing inside upon seeing this statement published. I mean, the objective reality was so different than what is stated here that it was almost embarrassing. Well, in less than a decade's time, Witness Lee was declared to be "The one apostle with the one ministry for the age" - "The one Master Builder" - "The Commander in Chief" - and some LSM trainers boasted: "even if Witness Lee is wrong, he is right!" and the worst of all, one mindless minion declared Lee to be "the fourth member of the trinity"!

Of course the Local Church movement is now partly populated with a large segment of young people who were not even born when these pompous proclamations went forth from the faithful, true believers. However, my dear friends, make no mistake, the Movement is now directed and controlled by people who absolutely believe and subscribe to these preposterous notions.

***Any Local Church elder, co-worker or LSM/DCP official who wants to dispute this is more than welcome to come and set us straight. Your retort will be promptly and prominently featured on the forum's main page. I did have a special module entitled "Soapbox of the saints" posted prominently on the forum for several months. We got almost 1,000 hits/views on this module, but not one LC member took advantage of the opportunity to sock it to us. Maybe you brothers taking the lead in the Local Churches and Living Stream Ministry can break the ice?

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