The short answer to all your questions, alwayscurious, is that if you start looking into what makes a cult a cult, or an abusive church an abusive church, or an aberrant group aberrant.....the local churches match up. They just do. You can be as lenient as you want on the categories, but the characteristics still match up too many ways for it to be anything but.
People who are experts on cults have boiled the known manipulative and controlling tactics commonly used in cult down to an acronym called the BITE Model. There are numerous manipulative and controlling tactics from this list that are used in the local churches. It stands for:
B - Behavior
I - Information
T - Thought
E - Emotion
.....control
You can read some examples of this here:
https://freedomofmind.com/bite-model/
The ministry/co-workers in local churches use all of these four tactics to subtly control and influence the saints. There's no way around it. Some examples are:
Behavior control:
Discourage individualism. "All our differences must be blended away" (except the Bible says the opposite - that the members are distinct one from the other).
Imply that God will hurt, maim, or strike you down for leaving the local church or for speaking up about your genuine concerns.
Fear-based, by the way.
Information control:
They call any websites that speak honestly about the local church "poison" or "negative" or say that you will be "dead" if you touch them. This is a classic abusive church fear mechanism. It is, at its core, a literal threat.
Fear-based, once again.
Thought control:
The classic "you are too much in your mind" or "get out of your mind and into your spirit" fits this category well. (by the way, scripture NEVER tells us to get out of, or abandon, or not use our mind)
This is called a "thought-stopping cliche" that short circuits your thinking and results in compliance. Shuts you down for expressing a concern.
Emotion control:
Promote feelings of guilt or that you are always the problem. This describes your point #4 exactly. Case in point.
The tactic there is condemnation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alwayscurious
1. Why is there a sense of stigma when others use non recovery version bibles? God's Word is His Word. period.
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The leadership in the local churches consider other translations to be leaven. I'm not exaggerating. Witness Lee's footnotes and Witness Lee's personal stamp on the translation is what makes the RcV word of God pure.
They call the recovery version "the gold bar". Note that they are not referring to the Bible when they say that, but to the Recovery Version specifically.
This ain't normal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alwayscurious
2. How come we don't quote other "ministry books" other than ones published by LSM?
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Because the local church is on the cult spectrum. The focus of this cult is strange - one man and the books he published. I honestly am not aware of any other group where a set of books is the top dog.
Because, they say, that other books come from "degraded Christianity" and have a different "flavor" than Witness Lee. What does that mean? Nothing. It's just another way they manipulate you into feeling bad for daring to have the thought that another flavor is actually okay.
The Bible itself was written by a variety of authors, for heaven's sake. There's a good reason we are not to be restricted to one fallen human for anything in the church.
More later.