Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
You never stop being a peach. You make the local church look good. But sorry, from what I know, it's a bait and switch. You're like the sales pitch, that doesn't match the received product. I know you know this. You've seen and known about only what I've discovered went on after I left.
And you and Kangas just went along with it all, even when it's obviously against all Christian standard of morality and ethics.
That sheds a bad light on the both of you, and all others, that just turned a blind eye, and conscience.
It hurts me to say this brother ... specially about brother Ron, whom I've known, but also about you, who I've come to like.
|
Brother awareness,
I accept and acknowledge your experience and that of most others in this forum. I too lived through all the storms and knew people that went, and came and went, including most of the leading brothers both those who left and those who stayed...... my experience has been good, actually wonderful to be more accurate in spite of the problems. I had to deal with situations also. Not like yours but challenges just the same. My product matches my rhetoric.... I am not peddling anything that is not genuine to me. I recognize no man is without faults, sins, problems, weaknesses, including me, or maybe I should say especially me. I acknowledge the issues that are restated here again and again day in and day out...... but perhaps the difference between me and some others is that I am not obsessed with the failures of others and by the grace of God I was enabled to forgive and face the next chapter.... or the next storm, or whatever life brought me.
Yet surely Harold, you are not so numb at this point that you do not see a problem with the steady stream of slander, berating, mocking, and judging of brothers and sisters in the local churches? If you prefer a standard of ethics then where is the ethics in that? Do you not recognize how the simplest explanations on a variety of topics are disregarded in favor allegations of sinister plots, criminal behavior, theft, immorality, etc.? At what point is it enough for you? Or are you all in when posters refer to servants of the Lord as "brain -dead"? You don't find it just a little usual that almost every topic ends up with rants about events that happened decades ago and where most of the players are dead? Or is it all justified in your view because of negative events that happened to you and others decades ago? If it was wrong then, then it is wrong now with the shoe on the other foot....so why sanction it, why play into it, and why flirt with becoming the thing you hate? Obsession seems to me to be a modest description of such patterned behavior. Still, I believe you are a brother with a conscience and I think in your heart of hearts that you know this path does not lead to the kingdom... because it is not living the kingdom life which is just the Lord living through us. There is a call for overcomers to all the churches in Revelation 2 & 3 so no matter where you are today the call is there. But if you do not accept that interpretation then how about the more straightforward command from the Lord in the gospels to forgive your brothers while you are in the way, before you or they die. Forgiving your brother 70 X 7 times... forgive others debts as the Lord forgave you of yours? Some brothers in this forum made that simple yet crucial observation recently.....
ZNP and
StG in other threads.. and yet they go unheeded... the status quo rolls on.
Harold, I tell you the truth in love. If it were possible, I'd believe for you. If it were possible I would go back in time and be your companion in your time of trouble. But that is not possible so I can only be here for you in the present and so I will tell it to you like I see it, straight-up, whether you believe it or not.
Drake