Hey Goodland, I saw your post detailing why you like the LC and I would like to offer my experiences and I am sure many others regarding the specifics you mentioned.
Here is your post-
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodLand
Yes, I am aware of how the Church in Knoxville attacked Jo Casteel for voicing concerns about the Local Church, and her husband ended up committing suicide.
I am continuing to meeting with the local church because I like the fellowship and the up to date speaking in conferences and trainings. Those messages eventually go into the Holy Word for Morning Revival. For example, we have talked about musing on the Word and praying it back to the Lord. Also, I follow a Bible reading schedule. In addition, I like the footnotes in the Recovery version because they help me to understand the Bible better. My favorite part of the Lord's recovery is being able to prophesy for up to 2 minutes from the reading for the week and listening to other saints' enjoyments. That's why I look forward to prophesying meetings every week.
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My Response-
1. I disagree wholeheartedly about the "up to date speaking". First of all they just robotically repeat a man’s ministry from the twentieth century and continue to do so as long as they can (not very up to date......). Also, Lee ministry has a very unbiblical nature, which is just unappealing to me.
2. Pray reading- Is just some weird cultural practice that developed in the 60s in Anaheim California (Source- Don Rutledge). I mean it is just mindless vain repetition. I believe that we are not some bird brain low-capacity parrots that are uncapable of expressing our self to God. The lord hates vain repetition and I do not see the value of this practice. There are lots of practices in the LR that involve the key attribute of vain repetition and I believe it is just some tool to keep everyone a Lee robot.
3. Holy Word Morning Revival- In the lords day meetings, the individual is not prophesying. One can definitely critique a lack of sharing and engagement a person has in most of Christianity worship gathering today. But the LR is really no different and actually perhaps worse. In the LR, you are just a audio transcript, mindlessly repeating the word of Lee and at most just express how much you love the morning revival that you just mindlessly repeated a minute ago. You are a glorified audio tape of one mans word, and then you say how much you love those words. In essence, the lord’s day meeting really just is one man speaking, he just has a bunch of audio tapes repeating his words over and over again....
I remember this one time; this brother was sharing this one verse he liked. My memory is foggy right now and I can’t remember the exact location of this verse, but it dealt with Gods glory. The amount of disgust and looks of disdain he got from sharing the bible was just alarming to me. It was the first time I saw someone read a bible verse from the bible and all he said was "I like this verse" and he just read the verse regarding the glory of God. That’s all he did and there was no Amens, just pure silence and looks of disgust and awkwardness. Can you imagine not being able to share your love for the word of God in a time of day in which you dedicate yourself to loving the lord? I never saw him share something from the bible after that day. The elders most likely had "fellowship" with him.
So, prophesying= being an audio tape for Lee. But hey, at least you can say how much you love being an audio tape!
3. Footnotes- The footnotes made me understand Witness Lee nature. He died many years ago and I never knew him personally. But the word of God has this unique ability to really expose a person and reveal their nature and who they are. I saw which verses Lee had disdain for, had love for, and ignored entirely. I am sure maybe you can find some relatively useful footnotes in some places but overall, I just saw a man who wanted to shape the bible in his own image. If you were to submit yourselves to the footnotes entirely, you would succumb to a very twisted practice of the Christian life.
This my experience and many others and it is on the long list of reasons of why we decided it is not worth it at all to stay. It is a very despondent place in attempt to experience the on true God when they try to twist and manipulate the nature of our Lord.