[OBW]

Hope,

I would like to note that, in the brief interaction with you, no matter how I have sounded, I have not disagreed with you. We are dealing with observations from the past in which no one knew the whole story. Even if the actual events are clear, the motivations are not. I am more than clear that you are mostly providing a somewhat cold relating of observable facts. (I say "mostly" because given our past association with Lee and the LC, it would be impossible to be without bias. And that bias could be either way because of the relative sway of past observations and feelings in opposition to more recent observations and feelings.)

On the other hand, I have been providing a clearly subjective "is it possible" kind of analysis. I may be springing from observed facts, but I am also allowing the totality of history to affect how single points in time are understood. If we were dealing with robots, my analysis might be more certain because of the predictability of machines. But since we are talking about people, I fully realize that my theoretical chain of thoughts and intents is just that — theoretical.

But my real goal is not to somehow determine that Lee has always been some wolf in sheep's clothing. Instead, I think we should simply reconsider what it was about the early LC days that was so enjoyable. And we should even reconsider how sound some of those early teachings were. Without casting any aspersions at Lee concerning his motives, I note that The Economy of God is from messages spoken in 1964. I honestly believe that its very opening chapter is an exercise in shoehorning a doctrine into existing scripture by ignoring the actual words of scripture and using logical fallacies to bring the listener/reader along. In this case it is significant in that this doctrine was an underpinning on how so much of the rest of scripture was read. It provided a significant portion of the color in what I call "Lee colored glasses."

Without calling Lee a charlatan, I note that this would indicate that the progression of "the ministry" is already taking a turn toward error as the young believers, like yourself, are enjoying freedom in Christ and learning much more about Christ than you might otherwise have within your previous Christian affiliations. While Lee continues to open things all over the scripture, surely a lot of it is simply sound Christian teaching that was being ignored. But did the dramatic change from routine Christianity to where you were help to blind almost everyone to the things that were already off the mark?

I really am not looking for a generic analysis of the early days. I'm looking to find whether error was already on the rise. It is too easy to want to consider the positives since we already have learned that things really got bad and there was ample reason to leave. My goal is not to burst the bubble that the early days were good, but to point out that even if Lee was changing over time, that there appear to have been problems from the very start.

Continue to look back at those days with fondness. You and the others did grow in Christ. It was an enjoyable time. But we were already in a pot and the fire was on at some level. The boil came later.