Quote:
Originally Posted by Covert
The epitome of an "absolute" brother are those very same "blended" who sided with Lee when he threw Ingalls, So, Mallon and many others under the bus. They wanted to remain high up in witness lee ministry and now they have it. Today they are his obsequious sycophants and will crush anyone who are genuinely concern and dissent due to the burden of truth that they have.
John Ingalls seems like a man who joined the local churches on a false promise by witness lee. I say false promise I have heard my fair share of testimonies from old school elders who joined in the early days and talked about why they joined, what witness lee initially described what the LC would be, and after some thought, anyone who is not obstinate realized it was nothing at all what he promised. In fact witness lee had no intentions to grow the "LOCAL" churches. He wanted to grow his own ministry, he wanted to grow the witness "LEE" churches and his ministry. The local churches meant nothing to him if they did not bow down to his ministry. In the Steve Isitt thread regarding leaders of the lords recovery in post 219, you clearly see how even senior co workers from Taiwan had this genuine concern of witness lee domineering over the local churches with his ministry. He couldn't deny it to the senior coworkers face because he knew darn well it was the truth but couldn't admit to it possibly cause of shame or admittance of wrong (which witness lee hated doing).
If someone here knows John Ingalls quite well then please feel free to expand on John Ingalls character/mentality towards lee ministry. From my experience, the perpetuation of evil was a breaking point. He was not "absolute" just a man with a threshold that was bound to break due to the severe consequences of living under witness lee ministry.
Question for Terry- Did your uncle mean, "what happened to John Ingalls", as like where did he go and do after being excommunicated from the local churches? Or did your uncle not even know that John was excommunicated due to a turmoil started by Philip Lee crimes? It seems sad man, it must be terrible to be absolutely powerless to help a man like Ingalls who gave so much to the recovery and only ended up being demonized, while the piece of trash Philip Lee gets a nice little burial "loving father and husband", exaltation of Witness lee "Closes" coworker and no accountability of crimes like that of Philip lee.
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I see the epitome of an absolute brother is one whose Christian fellowship has Witness Lee's ministry as their foundation. There is no Christian fellowship apart from "the ministry". It's not a matter if someone was helped, appreciates or doesn't appreciate Witness Lee's ministry. Brothers like a John Ingalls or a Steve Isitt did appreciate Witness Lee's ministry, but their Christian fellowship was not based on it.
There is something to be said of local churches that parted ways with Living Stream and the pledge of allegiance to Witness Lee. Once a local church ceased LSM affiliation that also caused them to no longer be received as a local church. It's as if LSM affiliation makes a church a bona fide local church. Moses Lake cut off ties in 1986. In mid-1990's I asked a Bellevue elder about Moses Lake. he told me "they're a rebel church". What does that say? Meeting on the ground of locality means nothing and being in communication with LSM means everything.
I had a lunch with John Ingalls in 2010. He spoke favorably of Witness Lee's ministry. As anyone can deduce from reading
Speaking the Truth in Love, the direction LSM was taking affected his conscience. He and other brothers present at the lunch agreed as much. I think one has to understand where John Ingalls came from and where he went to before and after. A good decade before meeting Witness Lee, John met Stephen Kaung in 1952. I don't know anything about John's fellowship with Stephen during John's time in the local churches, but post local churches, the fellowship was rekindled. How I phrase John's leaving the local churches, one chapter ended and another chapter began.
Being an absolute brother, while my uncle was in close fellowship in the local churches, I'm quite positive what was released in ITERO's was all he needed to know. He knew of the quarantine/excommunication. Though I see Phillip Lee being a minor role of the turmoil.
We all heard at one time or another John was trying to gain a following as misleading as the statement is, but no one bothering to find out what did happen? That's how I interpreted my uncle's question.
Let's put it in this context, how Donald Trump was demonized by non-conservatives, that's what happened to John Ingalls by the local churches since 1989. Yes, even today it is still going on. If a local church brother has
Speaking the Truth in Love on his bookshelf or on a website, he is certain to lose fellowship with any local church.