[Trapped]

Hi Unregistered,

Welcome! Thanks for joining us in the trash can. I moved a rotten banana peel over so there's a place for you to sit down.

Several decades in the church for me. They were just fine, but with constant nagging concerns that I could never put my finger on. Then the thing turned over, shattered my foundations, and I saw the beast for what it was. Abuse after abuse after blame after shame after neglect after being set on fire and thrown into the abyss. All this poured out of the leading ones "shepherding the flock" when all they needed to do was show genuine, human love and concern. It wasn't the people that they loved, but the ministry they protected. They, with a combined probably 250 years in the church life and the ministry, were utterly and totally incapable of binding up wounds with oil, but only knew how to treat the sheep as trash to be discarded.

And so the trash finds its way here.

Noah failed as a family man in a family setting, at home (or....at tent, if you will). I'm not 100% sure but I don't think any or many of us on this forum are going around exposing family affairs that were confined to the four walls of anyone's home. If those family issues bled into the church life and caused damage to human lives in the church, that is fair game, as it should be. But Noah's failure was not a representation of how to handle problems in the church, whether it be a personal failure, deviated teaching, or false apostles. The New Testament shows us how to do that, and in spades. (By the way, Noah's failure has probably been read by more people in human existence than any other non-Biblical failure. God made sure he was totally uncovered. Ironic, huh?)

And what the New Testament shows is that these things have to be tested, discerned, confronted, exposed, and either kept or excised. The only way to "test all things" is to handle all things as part of that testing - both the good and the trash. There doesn't seem to be a real way in the local churches to handle the very serious and damaging aspects of the trash part of it, so places like this forum are here so that the work that every believer has been called to do can be carried out, however much we may fumble around and give each other slightly black eyes in doing so.

Yes, we are accountable to God for every word. But we are also not exempt in this life from that accountability to others in the context of the church. Sinning elders are to be publicly rebuked. Paul got frustrated with the Corinthians for putting up with the oppressive behavior of the false apostles that had come in, and gives them grief for not doing something about it. Paul rebuked Peter to his face for his gospel-contrary actions. Accountability is also here and now, because the effects of not being accountable can have long-lasting and damaging repercussions to those around us.

The RC "fathers" versus co-workers is, for me, a very minor point so I don't have much to say about that.

I personally do not think it is a coincidence that the fireside chats came within a year after Jo's facebook letter. My personal perspective on the chats is that there have been a lot of pots boiling over in the church which the leading brothers avoided and ignored for a long time, even amidst many cries for help. They simply couldn't keep the lids tied down any longer, particularly after the FB letter, and the chats have come as a public relations necessity to address a growing tide of pain that should never have been allowed to grow to the size it has become. I view it as a "CYA" move. The co-workers are trying to lance a massive boil, that was caused by their own actions, that they have tried to ignore for a long time, pretending they don't know where the boil came from.

As human beings themselves, yes, the co-workers can certainly provide responses that can sound caring and shepherding. I have not listened to all of the chats, as it is probably around 20 hours worth, but I have listened to enough. Some responses vastly over-spiritualize what are desperately human questions. Even the question about over-spiritualizing responses was responded to over-spiritually. Some responses wax on about Witness Lee. Some responses do show genuine care and for that I am thankful (I am thinking particularly of the concern they showed for the sister asking about a brother wanting to get sexual too quickly). There will always be some genuine care in every group, or else no one will stick around. Some responses were flat out lies since there are too many people now who know how certain volcanic situations of sexual predators and abuse were really handled by some of the very co-workers who claim everything was handled properly, which turns what sounds like a reassuring answer into a disingenuous display of image protection. Some responses took very, very real pain and mocked it as "delusional" when the source of that pain can be directly quoted from the ministry (I am thinking particularly of the one who asked about marriage being presented in the church as a prison). Some of their responses about marriage may seem so wonderful, but it completely ignored and invalidated the shameful way marriage has historically been spoken of and treated in the local church....thus not touching on the real problem. Some responses were accompanied by a flippant apology if the brothers had given a particular impression, but really should have been accompanied by a few months of them traveling around the globe to apologize in person to all the saints who were damaged for years by that well-known impression, and to hear the hurt that that impression inflicted on them.

I'm glad to hear that you wept when Greg took his life. This is the response of a Christian. The co-workers, however, condemned the Casteels to hell, called for the ground to open up and swallow them alive, called Jo leprous, said they can never be overcomers, and now continue to stand on stage arrogantly claiming to have no feeling and no fear about it, while laughing that they (the co-workers) are in good company with Moses. This, unregistered, is a small glimpse into what is really behind the scenes. It's image protection. It's darkness. It's whitewashed tombs and yet, remember, there are dead men's bones inside. The very moment when the so-called God's deputy authorities, who are supposed to be representing who God is to the church, cursed their perceived enemies rather than blessed and prayed for them, showed us the truth. What kind of impression does this give to so many who are watching them? And this wasn't a mistake. Of course the co-workers had countless hours of meetings and fellowship among themselves first about how to handle the situation. And their decision was cursing and threatening, publicly, in the name of God. If you don't know any co-workers, if you generally stay away from the elders, if you simply read the ministry, close your eyes to the concerning stuff, get out of your mind, don't have opinions, and shun knowledge, yes your church life may be wonderful. But it's a blinded wonderful, and it's an inward-facing, insular wonderful. And it's designed that way.

There can be many fine upstanding Christians in deviant groups. The two are not mutually exclusive. It doesn't mean those Christians aren't genuine. It just means they are deceived. I'm not sure anyone on this forum has accused any North American locality of praying to Lee or overt idol-worship, but the heart-worship is there in repeatedly drawing from his works as the only source of life supply. Every conference, every training, every speaking, every HWMR, every ministry reading, every prophesying meeting - the words of Jesus are always filtered through the mind of Witness Lee and Witness Lee alone. You personally may read other Christian works, but that is not what is taught in the local churches as a whole. The top leadership even views such innocuous things like Christian biographies as poison or a negative injection because it's not from Lee or LSM. No joke. This is their view and what they themselves inject into all the rest of the saints in the local church, and what drives their "policies" and teachings. There is idol worship of the ministry publications whether you see it or not. It may not be so apparent in your locality, but the ones driving the whole movement bow before them as if they were God Himself. You may not have encountered this, as you said you don't know the co-workers. A lot of what makes an abusive group abusive is related to the leadership, and if you don't have much experience with the leadership, you may have an idyllic view of something that isn't idyllic at all.

There is not "a recovery" on earth. We are not "for a recovery" as the Bible never exhorts us as such. There is no such thing as a "recovery" that you can be "part of". The recovery work, if you want to say there is one, is simply what goes on inside each child of God in their individual and personal walk with God, regardless of if they are associated with the local churches and Witness Lee, or have never heard of them and him. The earth is the place of God's recovery. Even the earth itself will be recovered. None of us can claim to be part of a recovery work that any other Christians are not "part" of. To look for a defined "recovery" that you can go join or leave is itself extra biblical.

Regarding this forum, you may mistake disagreement and discussion as a "prevailing factor of division". The local church teaches that opinions and knowledge and using your mind are all of death and division, so it makes sense, given your decade in it, that what are actually very normal things - reasoning, discussion, debate, wrestling, sharp contention, looking from every angle - appear to you as division. It's not. It's a better training than any semi-annual training you'll ever get. Because you get to use your mind (which is made in the image of God by the way, not something you are supposed to "get out of"), to try to comprehend the things of God.

"The Lord's recovery is prevailing as a place of oneness". From that statement it is clear that you certainly have been in it for many years. But remove Witness Lee as the uniting factor, and you will find out how quickly the oneness prevails. Yes, the local churches are one around every word that Witness Lee said. But that isn't the church. The top leadership in the local churches literally say "we have burnt all the bridges to Christianity and will never build them back again, the further away the better"......which is nothing but a self-amputation from the Body of Christ. The local church oneness is division, defined.

As Cal laid out so well, much of what I wrote above - the lack of love, the twisting of Scripture (covering of Noah), the "why do you talk about the negative" (where the people who bring up the problems are made to be the problem, rather than the actual problems being the problems), the prevention of being allowed to actually test all things, the cursing and threatening of the ones at the top against anyone who speaks up about the truth, the focus on whatever Witness Lee said, taught, wanted, thought, breathed, the thought of being the recovered church or having recovered teachings (nothing new under the sun for aberrant groups), and viewing the most divisive group as some kind of bastion of oneness - all these are things that point directly to the local churches as being one big fat cult. There's more than that too, but I'm keeping it within the categories you brought up in your original post.

I hope you'll dialogue further.

Trapped