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Originally Posted by Terry
In my time as a child, teen, and adult in the local churches, I heard much about God's Economy, Overcoming, and the New Jerusalem. Very little if at all about forgiveness, ramifications of unforgiveness, spiritual responsibility of reconciliation, and love. Given Witness Lee has a short 3 chapter or so book A Word of Love, but in the localities it is simply ministry speak. You were to re-speak the ministry, but not actually do it. Take love as an example, there was memorial services I had attended in 2007 and 2014, Steve Isitt was present both times and I witnessed this brother being shunned by different ones. Brothers may say they love brother Steve, but there was no evidence of even a greeting.
Regarding these current leading ones Lisbon, something has to be said about being supported financially by Living Stream Ministry. Many of these brothers who are and have been, I don't know what they're thinking, their experiences, or what these brothers go through, but from my perspective from afar, it appears their conscience becomes a casualty for the sake of a man's ministry. If one had the integrity to say "enough is enough", where would he go? How would he support his household much like former leading ones had to do?
The basis of the recovery is very much entrenched in "ground of locality" and "deputy authority", these practices resulted in a spiritual stronghold.
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Lee did speak about confession and forgiveness, but those were seen as too “basic” to devote much time to. A concept I’ve come across in the LC is that those topic are things you teach to new believers. I don’t think that there ever any intention to not practice forgiveness, but maybe after a bit of time, everyone just started operating under the assumption that forgivingness goes without saying in the LC. In other words, if there was any offense that came up, the situation would resolve itself.
After repeating enough LSM material, a disconnect develops between the words on paper and actually putting it into practice. One opportunity for Lee to put his own teachings into practice would have been to confess to the saints after the Daystar failure that he messed up big time. He could have then asked for everyone’s forgiveness. Instead, he made a totally off-the-wall statement about how the saints had “lost their virginity”. It was through statements like these that a precedent was set.
Without a doubt, LC leadership holds themselves to a completely different standard than their subordinates. This not only results in an environment where confession and forgiveness are one sided, but the fundamental meaning of these things becomes skewed. Forgiveness has become something to the effect of bending over backwards when leadership meddles in something. Forgiveness has also become synonymous with the expectation that saints will turn a blind eye. It is no wonder that there are so many in the LC who are utterly confused.