[Drake]

Thanks Untohim.

Igzy, I will share my view of your post by section/point as I am sure you prefer it that way. Sorry, it may be longer than my usual readers digest version type post but I want to address you points thoroughly.

Drake,

Lee wasn't talking about being useful to the vision of the LCM. He was talking about something else.

The vision is the overarching driver, Igzy. It's not about something being useful to the vision, for me its about a controlling vision. So it is part of everything.

He was saying if you left the LCM you were in rebellion against God, by definition. No exceptions. I was there. I heard it myself. Benson taught it. The elders taught it.

It would be useful to see the exact quote but for sake of argument I can hear Brother Lee saying that. I can hear Benson repeating it and some elders also. Yet, this was my earlier point. If you have once seen the vision of the ground unity of the believers, the local churches as the practical expression of the universal Body of Christ, the resurrected and ascended Christ as the Head transmitting His power into the members of His Body, as the means to defeat God's enemy and bring in the kingdom of God to the earth..... then, yes, if you having seen and affirmed that, and you then go back to denominations for instance, then you are in rebellion.

Benson once said there was "nothing" in Christianity that can help you. Do you believe that? That is what he taught.

I think I heard Benson say that also. Both agree and disagree. I disagree if the person is an unbeliever or a new believer because most denominations preach the gospel and can lead a person to the Lord. A new believer also can receive help with the basics of the faith and to overcome sin and sinful habits. Can learn to become grounded in the christian truths. Some charismatic groups can also help a person to experience the gifts of the Spirit.

Yet, I agree with it in this way. If you have been in the Lord's Recovery for more than a few years then all those experiences were available to you and the controlling vision took you even farther, deeper, and higher. Having received all that and to then consider returning to denominations or Catholicism , well, then I agree that there would be nothing in Christianity that could help you beyond what you already received. Nothing there for you.

No offense, but it seems you must do some pretty heavy rationalizing to reconcile yourself to these kind of things. I understand you are committed to the LCM. But there has to be some place in your conscience that has a problem with this stuff.

No offense taken. I have zero problem with this stuff just mentioned. Reconciliation is not only not difficult, it is perfectly congruent with my understanding of the truth in the Bible, my personal experience with the Lord, and my corporate experience (practicing the body life) in the local churches.

Anyway, that is this gist of the problem with me. And that is what messed me up for so many years. As I said, if you don't understand that you don't understand why I post here.

Ok. I understand that your experience is different from mine. I am sorry it messed you up for so many years. I have heard and read about folks who had a bad experience and had I went through what they went through I might be on your side of the fence. I cannot say for sure because on the other hand, I have read in this forum the bad experience someone had and I recognize that I went through the same experience but came out on a different side than they did.

The LCM attempts to hold people there and is intolerant to any alternatives to their way. I believe that is extremely damaging. You can talk all you want to being faithful to a "vision." But why that "vision?" Is really because it is so plainly what God wants or is it because that's what you've been convinced of through fear and manipulation?

I disagree. The local churches do not attempt to hold people there. That sounds like against their will. I watched people come and go. Of course, you want to understand if there was some offense to clear it up. Of course, there is concern and calls and persuading going on. That is not holding people there. That is not damaging. Eventually, they stay or they go, its up to them. The vision I described above is a real vision, a seeing, a spiritual insight, and a life-changing must have experience. Fear, manipulation? They don't even enter the equation.

The problem with the LCM is a person cannot honestly even consider that question, because to them reconsideration is the beginning of rebellion and so is suspect in itself. It's the same mindset that prevented the callback of the bombers in the book "Fail-Safe." The pilots were so trained to carry out orders past a certain point in their flights that they ignored the pleas of their own wives to turn back, and so mistakenly obliterated Moscow.

Well, a governing vision is governing but it is not irrational, obsessive, blind, or however you wish to think of it. Reconsideration is a healthy exercise and I do it often but it always brings me back to the governing vision, sometimes adjusted with a little more clarity.

It reaches the point where the psychological mechanisms necessary for healthy correction cannot even function because the person has been trained to be suspicious of them. That's when things get very dangerous. That's when you can be controlled and yet be convinced you are making your own decisions.

Well, that can be applied to any discipline but that is not my experience and healthy correction or adjustment are a necessary iterative process.

The psychological pressure for members to conform pushes them to agree with things they might otherwise disagree with. This causes them to think and argue in unreasonable and irrational ways. You see it all the time here. I know people don't necessarily agree with some of the tenets of the LCM in their hearts. But they convince themselves they do because they feel they have no choice, because they fear judgment, both from men and God for not doing so. And that expresses itself in irrational ways. Even you seem to manifest this sometimes, sorry to say.

As to judgement, a fear of God it is a healthy thing. I probably have expressed it here because here the brazen slander, false accusations, and derision leveled against brothers and sisters in the local churches is very disturbing and often shocking. At those moments, I truly am concerned for the well-being of that person at the judgement seat of Christ. I am not familiar with the "psychological pressure to conform" you speak of.

I don't think the Lord operates that way. Certainly truth is objective. But God doesn't use peer pressure or the fear of ostracization from community to convince us (except in very extreme cases). He hand is gentle and fair. The LCM's is anything but that.

I agree the Lord is that way. My experience in the local churches is also that way.

That does not mean that once in a while a brother or a leading one will not say something that comes across as emphatic, zealous, or prescriptive. I welcome zeal but that does not mean that that particular word was for me. Everything that is stated may not be for me, or at least maybe not for me at the time I first hear it. The Lord knows what we can absorb so we just have to keep our eyes on Him. Every man is a sinner, every man needs the blood daily, every man has weaknesses and faults. Every man, no exceptions. We are all in the process, we are growing, sometimes more, sometimes less. The fear you describe is not the fear I am familiar with in the Lords' Recovery. I acknowledge that you and others may have indeed experienced something different than I did. Or based on your circumstances or who delivered the message or how it was delivered are all factors that I cannot know. Maybe expectations were set too high and when others did not live up to them their world crashed and the disappointment was to great to overcome. I cannot know that either for you or for anyone else. I can only tell you that for me, I did not have the same experience and do not recognize the local churches you describe.

Drake