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Originally Posted by John So, Manila 1990
Using his own term, really the fermentation started at Stuttgart in 1986. made by the coming of 5 brothers sent by Witness Lee and sent by his office, Philip Lee. Ironically, things didn’t start with us, really did not start with us. At that time Witness Lee was invited by us to come to Germany and we were all expecting brother Lee to come, really. But to our disappointment, brother Lee didn’t come. He said he was busy and instead he and his office sent 5 brothers to come to Stuttgart. I think brother Ray Graver came, brother Benson Phillips, brother Minoru Chen, Brother Ken Unger, and Brother Dan Towle. The Lord knows when we were in disappointment, we brothers had had fellowship just before the brothers came, and I told the brothers, and all the brothers could testify for me, that we should receive these brothers just as Witness Lee himself. We shouldn’t make any difference, we should not make any difference.
So the 5 brothers came. Now, of course, speaking now, you have to realize I’m speaking retrospectively—I’m looking back. At that time we thought their intention was to give a conference, even the “one accord” conference that Witness Lee had just given in the elder’s meeting in Anaheim. So we welcomed them. But to our surprise, this 5 brothers themselves proclaimed that their burden was not the conference, but in the afternoon fellowship from the leading brothers from Europe. There were at least a hundred brothers present there. And they told us that their burden—and every afternoon from 3:00 to 5:30, 6:00 we had fellowship with these 5 brothers concerning the leading of the ministry office—to be one with the ministry office. And I do have the tapes of these meetings. They were on record and since the matter is opened up, I would certainly request the brothers in Stuttgart to transcribe all these messages and make it available to the public. In all these afternoons I was there present maybe just a few times and almost at the end sometimes at the end of these meetings. In these afternoons the brothers’ burden was very strong to propagate and to promote the ministry office, and at that time, really, none of the leading brothers had any idea what the office is; at one point, somebody was very ignorantly and innocently asking, “Well, what is the office, anyway?” And everybody was just laughing, you know, we don’t really know what is the office. Of course, we found out that the office is really brother Lee’s son, Philip Lee.
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