Local Church Discussions - View Single Post - Publication Work in The Lord's Recovery aka The One Publication

Trapped · 02-10-2019, 12:14 AM

While I don't disagree with the spirit of the concept that any Christian group has a right to set rules and regulations for its members, in the LCs many of the "rules" are not expressed outright, nor are they revealed up front. Many are set not in writing but through glances, looks, insinuations, comments, implications. No one coming into the church is given a list of rules that lets them know up front:

1. Don't grow a beard.
2. Jeans are rebellious.
3. Movies are evil.
4. Department stores are of the devil.
5. Don't have friends.
6. We only read one Bible version around here.
7. If you share from another Christian author too many times.....look out.
8. If you try to write something and publish it - you will be seen as a rival and are by default dead meat.
9. IF YOU GO TO ANY OTHER CHURCH YOU ARE DIVISIVE AND GOD WILL PROBABLY SEND AN ASTEROID TO CRUSH YOUR SINFUL BEING (just look at John Doe and the mac truck incident.......)

Sign here! ______________________________

No one would ever join if they knew up front what they were getting into.

If to be a member of the church you have to waive personal publication rights in deference to LSM's publication work or get quarantined......then the local churches have no leg to stand on when they try to deny people's claims that they are LSM churches. They just don't.

They can dance around all they want, but the more they write in defense of all this the worse it is. The letters they wrote to DYL speak of "rivalry"......where does any Christian group manufacture the concept of rivalry to begin with?!?! And it's all over mortal human's publications. And many go down tooth and nail defending this stuff.

I wish I could find it again, but one letter started out with a thick paragraph denigrating all other non-LC churches, and there was this one sentence that made it so crystal clear that the co-workers view "the Lord's recovery" as "the Body of Christ". Not a part of it, but THE. The sentence was full of "ones", as in "the one Body of Christ as built up by the one ministry in the one recovery work as produced by the one publication of the one minister of the age" or something like that. I was so deflated reading it.

Something I can't wrap my head around though, is that even now, I know of new ones who have "touched the church" who say very explicitly that the Lord told them to come there. Even they were prominent people in their former church, and yet the Lord led them to the local church to be a no one. And yet others like me are dissatisfied there and have lost decades of a happy life from warped misrepresentations of God and need years to recover from being there. Who can ever know what the Lord is doing.

P.S. I understand that TC and DYL apparently turned exclusionary themselves; I'm not defending what they did or really making any commentary there since I don't know the full story. The whole structure of the local churches is wrong since they are based around a man, which inherently lends itself to this kind of thing. I am fine to say that many churches were raised up by Witness Lee, that is undeniable. But the continued force-fed diet and control of all the LCs is not good. The LCs disguise this under the guise of "fellowship among the churches" but it seems to me the emphasis should be much more on fellowship among the members of the church in a given city rather than fellowship among churches in many different cities.

By this I mean they should emphasize the fellowship of the TRUE church in Anaheim (all the believers in Anaheim, regardless of where they meet or what they call themselves) rather than a tiny portion of the church in Anaheim (the LC) fellowshipping with a tiny portion of the (LC) church in Boston fellowshipping with a tiny portion of the (LC) church in Seattle, etc.. The LC's always denigrate other churches coming together as "shaking hands over the fence", but the LC's don't see that they've replaced their own fences with 20-foot cinder block walls and turrets and machine guns and a moat and drawbridge. It's asinine.

One time I talked to an elder about this very thing, and he tried to speak up how the churches emphasize "oneness". I said, "okay, but wouldn't you call it an internal oneness while we are still separated from all the other believers?" His response was, "Yes, well, you go talk to any of those other pastors out there and they don't even know the name of the pastor in the next town over!" I realized I wasn't dealing with someone with two feet on the ground. Who cares if they know the name of the pastor in the next town over? I'm more than willing to bet they know the names of other pastors in their own town, and probably are friends with them, and ask advice and have them over for lunch, which is more than we can say! The local churches are the most egregious neglecters of the actual church in their own city.

Sorry, went off topic there, that gets into the ground rather than the publication....it's all connected but I'll stop there.

02-10-2019, 12:14 AM	#392
Trapped Member Join Date: Mar 2018 Posts: 1,523	Re: One Publication While I don't disagree with the spirit of the concept that any Christian group has a right to set rules and regulations for its members, in the LCs many of the "rules" are not expressed outright, nor are they revealed up front. Many are set not in writing but through glances, looks, insinuations, comments, implications. No one coming into the church is given a list of rules that lets them know up front: 1. Don't grow a beard. 2. Jeans are rebellious. 3. Movies are evil. 4. Department stores are of the devil. 5. Don't have friends. 6. We only read one Bible version around here. 7. If you share from another Christian author too many times.....look out. 8. If you try to write something and publish it - you will be seen as a rival and are by default dead meat. 9. IF YOU GO TO ANY OTHER CHURCH YOU ARE DIVISIVE AND GOD WILL PROBABLY SEND AN ASTEROID TO CRUSH YOUR SINFUL BEING (just look at John Doe and the mac truck incident.......) Sign here! ______________________________ No one would ever join if they knew up front what they were getting into. If to be a member of the church you have to waive personal publication rights in deference to LSM's publication work or get quarantined......then the local churches have no leg to stand on when they try to deny people's claims that they are LSM churches. They just don't. They can dance around all they want, but the more they write in defense of all this the worse it is. The letters they wrote to DYL speak of "rivalry"......where does any Christian group manufacture the concept of rivalry to begin with?!?! And it's all over mortal human's publications. And many go down tooth and nail defending this stuff. I wish I could find it again, but one letter started out with a thick paragraph denigrating all other non-LC churches, and there was this one sentence that made it so crystal clear that the co-workers view "the Lord's recovery" as "the Body of Christ". Not a part of it, but THE. The sentence was full of "ones", as in "the one Body of Christ as built up by the one ministry in the one recovery work as produced by the one publication of the one minister of the age" or something like that. I was so deflated reading it. Something I can't wrap my head around though, is that even now, I know of new ones who have "touched the church" who say very explicitly that the Lord told them to come there. Even they were prominent people in their former church, and yet the Lord led them to the local church to be a no one. And yet others like me are dissatisfied there and have lost decades of a happy life from warped misrepresentations of God and need years to recover from being there. Who can ever know what the Lord is doing. P.S. I understand that TC and DYL apparently turned exclusionary themselves; I'm not defending what they did or really making any commentary there since I don't know the full story. The whole structure of the local churches is wrong since they are based around a man, which inherently lends itself to this kind of thing. I am fine to say that many churches were raised up by Witness Lee, that is undeniable. But the continued force-fed diet and control of all the LCs is not good. The LCs disguise this under the guise of "fellowship among the churches" but it seems to me the emphasis should be much more on fellowship among the members of the church in a given city rather than fellowship among churches in many different cities. By this I mean they should emphasize the fellowship of the TRUE church in Anaheim (all the believers in Anaheim, regardless of where they meet or what they call themselves) rather than a tiny portion of the church in Anaheim (the LC) fellowshipping with a tiny portion of the (LC) church in Boston fellowshipping with a tiny portion of the (LC) church in Seattle, etc.. The LC's always denigrate other churches coming together as "shaking hands over the fence", but the LC's don't see that they've replaced their own fences with 20-foot cinder block walls and turrets and machine guns and a moat and drawbridge. It's asinine. One time I talked to an elder about this very thing, and he tried to speak up how the churches emphasize "oneness". I said, "okay, but wouldn't you call it an internal oneness while we are still separated from all the other believers?" His response was, "Yes, well, you go talk to any of those other pastors out there and they don't even know the name of the pastor in the next town over!" I realized I wasn't dealing with someone with two feet on the ground. Who cares if they know the name of the pastor in the next town over? I'm more than willing to bet they know the names of other pastors in their own town, and probably are friends with them, and ask advice and have them over for lunch, which is more than we can say! The local churches are the most egregious neglecters of the actual church in their own city. Sorry, went off topic there, that gets into the ground rather than the publication....it's all connected but I'll stop there.