[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Ohio

In many matters, Lee hed totally "flip-flopped" during Ingalls' quarter century working often side-by-side with him. One can then legitimately ask whether Ingalls ever knew the "real Witness Lee." And for that matter, does anybody?

Actually Lee did not do a flip-flop, he simply reverted back to the kind of person and leader he was in Taiwan before he ever came to America. It is a historical fact, noted by many trustworthy personal witnesses, that Witness Lee was doing all the same things in the 50s-early 60s (in Taiwan/Asia) that he was doing in the mid-late 80s in America. He was hiring and firing elders and co-workers at his personal whim. He made demands that they be personally loyal to him, or be ostracized or cut-off from participating in the ministry. He had brothers spying against brothers and reporting back to him. He was extremely unethical and immoral in the handling of large amounts of church monies - sometimes using church funds to pay off personal/business debts incurred by him and his sons. He also betrayed many longtime brothers who had ministered among the churches.

THIS was the real Witness Lee that came to our country to "bring the Lord's Recovery to the top Christian country on earth". Maybe Lee did repent before he initiated the movement here in America, but the simple fact is that he had already disqualified himself from being an elder of a single local church, much, much less the leader and sole teacher of an entire Christian movement. My contention would be that if Witness Lee was honest about his past, and made steps of restitution and reconciliation to all the saints he had damaged in the Far East, maybe, just maybe, the Lord would have allowed him to minister among various Christian groups in North America....but not with a place of official leadership or influence - for he had forever disqualified himself from holding any church office.

Let me be clear - none of what I have written here detracts from or delegitimizes any of the experiences of Christ, genuine salvations or precious fellowship we had among us. The Local Church of Witness Lee was not the first Christian movement that God blessed and moved among them despite the immorality, sins and heresy of a leader, and it certainly won't be the last. Yet for those of us who have come to know the facts and reality of the past 50+ years of Local Church history, to cover up, or even to downplay, would be exposing the dear brothers and sisters still entrapped within the Local Church movement to further abuse and damage. May God have mercy.
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