[Nell]

Excellent post, Trapped.

I would add to your list:

6. Follow the money.

Early on, one point of "truth" being taught by Lee was poor, degraded Christianity's practice of hiring pastors and paying them to shepherd their flocks. Hirelings he called them. It's shameful! "In the Local Church, we don't do that." Why? When the going gets tough, the hireling will be gone.

If you don't pay them, they will be gone. If you do pay them, you own them. You control them. They will say what you pay them to say. Whoever is hired can be fired. They are bought and sold. In other words, follow the money.

Witness Lee "inoculated" us, the faithful, early on against relying on the hirelings. WE don't do that! WE don't pass the offering plate like THEY do! WE don't have hirelings. This was the inoculation. This was the Kool-aide we drank. It even seemed like the right thing to do. Rely on offerings of the faithful to pay the treading ox.

Then the lying started. Then Lee turned around and started the family business and began to sign up his own hirelings and pay them.

How long has it been since Ron Kangas worked a job in the private sector? Who owns Ron Kangas? How many more hirelings does the LSM hire to service its franchise outlets?

I honestly don't know that hiring pastors is wrong. People have to put food on the table and raise their families. What's wrong is the overwhelming, in-your-face, blatant hypocrisy.

You have to drink a lot of Kool-aide to keep your eyes blinded to the hypocrisy in "the ministry". When I figured out that something was wrong with the Kool-aide, I stopped drinking it. I began to question EVERYTHING Lee taught. Everything was suspect. I only kept what I could confirm in the Bible. If I believed something, it was because it was clearly taught in the Bible. NOT because "Brother Lee said..."

Nell