[JJ]

I mentioned in my first post on Local Church Discussions three years ago that a dream was a factor in my decision to finally leave “The Lords Recovery” (TLR). I had always taken the dream as a personal thing to encourage me to end my on and off and on again participation in it after 10 years of trying to change it from within.

However, recently I’ve begun to think that maybe the dream and its interpretation (as I’ve come to understand it) might be helpful for others who are still struggling with what to do with TLR (whether inside or out of it). So I’m going to share it here. This post will give background and the dream, and the next post will give an interpretation of the dream.

Background for Context:
I was unsaved when I was about 18 years old and had just started going to college and met a “local church” brother who was attending the college. My twin brother, who had been saved about a year before that and had been attending a different church also met the brother, and together we were invited to various meetings of “Christians on Campus” and “The Church in _____” in the city we lived in. Over the course of a year, my brother started attending “The Church in _____”, and I received the Lord Jesus and started attending as well along with my Christian girlfriend (who many years later I married). Initially my experience in TLR was very good. Our meetings were filled with the Holy Spirit, God and Christ were exalted, and “the saints” loved and supported each other. There was a lot of legalism that was strangling many of the saints, however. And, we overly exalted Witness Lee and Watchman Nee and their writings, were completely isolated from other believers (and scorned them).
After seven years there was a split in the church regarding one of the elders, and I left along with about a dozen saints who felt the matter wasn’t handled well. For another 15 years I would periodically try to attend local church meetings and conferences in my city and in Anaheim, and continued to read many Living Stream Ministry materials. I continued to like and agree with Witness Lee and Watchman Nee’s writings, but was turned off by the deadness of many of the meetings I attended. I knew they were dead, I just didn’t know why. I thought it was related to the leaders who were taking over the leadership of TLR, some of whom were involved in what I thought was mishandling of the elder situation in my locality. I never stopped reading the Bible or praying, in fact I prayed more that the situation in my locality and in the recovery at large would be healed, and I studied the Bible closely to see if I could figure out the problem. Being away from TLR was tremendously liberating as far as getting away from legalism and seeing life in other Christians outside of it. And, I gradually began to see some errors in Witness Lee’s teachings.
Meanwhile I moved for business reasons to another city that didn’t have “a local church”. So, my wife and I and children started attending a community church in that city. After about five years, however, I found out that “local church” saints were meeting in that city as “The Church in ____”. I decided to try it out, and again was turned off by the deadness and legalism, and this time by the constant “trashing” of “Christianity”. But, I thought “I’m going to give this the benefit of the doubt (in case I’ve been wrong all along) and see if I can work on fixing the problems I saw from the inside.” So I began attending “the church in _____” again, and tried repeatedly to work with leaders I knew to try to work to change it from within.
Meanwhile my brother had continued in TLR the whole time, though he had moved to a different city. We had already had a number of unpleasant arguments about what was happening in TLR. He was fully convinced that the leadership was OK, and I wasn’t.
My wife and I had discussed the problem in TLR and had identified the trashing of Christianity as one of the big problems, and though I brought it up with the elders, it was allowed to continue.
I really didn’t know what to do. I had tried the community church and “TLR” and wasn’t satisfied with either. The community church was less legalistic and didn’t exalt itself, its leaders, or its ministry. But, the large meetings didn’t provide opportunities for calling songs, prayer, or testifying with praise, which I enjoyed doing in TLR.

The Dream:
In 2014, while I was attending both churches on and off, I had a dream one night that was very strange. I immediately knew it wasn’t something to be ignored, and might be inspired by God to give me some direction to solve my quandary. I didn’t immediately understand it. Here is the dream:
I was walking over humpy land with dry dead grasses that had a barbed wire fence running along it and had the sense of deep dissatisfaction and spiritual searching.
Then I came to a building that was in an elevated area. The building was very large and had a cold institutional feeling to it. Parked in rows outside of the building in its parking lot I saw many yellow school busses that all had huge “monster wheels” on them. I had seen these types of busses used to give people tours of the Athabasca Glacier in Alberta, Canada. Yet, even in my dream I laughed at their strange appearance and noted the strangeness. The building’s double doors were open, so I went inside.
Immediately I noticed the building had three or more stories, and it was supported on the inside with very tall and overly thin columns (pillars). Many people were inside of the building.
My brother was inside of the building near one of the pillars. Then the ground began to shake violently. The pillars were swaying and starting to crack. The building also was starting to crack and collapse. My brother and I both grabbed a pillar and tried to steady it. This went on for a while, but it was apparent to me that the situation was hopeless. The pillars were going to fail, the building was going to come down, and the people inside (including my brother and I) were in imminent danger. I told my brother that we needed to get out and others should too. But, he disagreed and continued to try to steady the pillar as it and the whole building continued to shake, crack, and crumble.
Frustrated, I ran out of the building and down the hill the building was situated on. As I walked down the hill I noticed I was entering a neighborhood in a city built in the valley below the hill. Strangely, there was a fire station built into the side of the hill. The fire station’s garage doors were open, and I noticed that it had both fire engines and ambulances. I could tell that first responders from this station were equipped and ready to respond to emergencies, including the collapsing building I had just fled from. I also had the sense that this was the place I was searching for, and not the institutional building I had just fled. Then I woke up with a sense that this was a message for me.

Next post: The Interpretation of the Dream