[aron]

I left on good terms, and occasionally visited. My own gripe was twofold: first that they said to ignore the people Jesus ministered to - the poor, the sick, the weak and the weary - and went for the "good building material", i.e. naive college students, who would get good jobs and buy ministry publications and recruit others to buy ministry publications.

Second was that we were "the Body" and "just Christians" but seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time pooh-poohing everyone else in "the Body" but us. We were "the church in Smithville" but wouldn't visit anyone else in Smithville but required that they sat at our Lord's Table. The hypocrisy of it became too much, and I tired of sitting in the same chairs looking at the same faces saying the same things.

So I left.

But only later I learned of Philip Lee and the "storms" and "turmoils" and "rebellions" that Ohio alluded to. Never even heard of John Ingalls, except that his name was in the front of some older LSM publications. Never heard of John So or Max Rappoport or Sal Benoit or Bill Mallon or so many other "rebels" who walked away.

But everyone has faults, right? So I became more critical, but not "negative" in the true sense, not an "opposer", though I would occasionally be critical, which was dangerous enough to the programme zealots.

My smoking gun became this: when I read the footnotes to the RecV in the Psalms and realized that probably 70% of the verses were panned by LSM as "fallen" or "natural concepts" or "mixed". This completely flies in the face of NT reception of scripture.

Look at Peter's speech in Acts 2. Did he say, "David was just in his natural mind, supposing that God would help him, a sinner."? No, Peter said that David was a prophet and was not speaking concerning himself but of the seed that was to come.

Again and again the NT indicates that the writers and speakers of the books were looking to scripture as indicative of the coming Messiah. Some might be arguably not - the repentant Psalm 51 or some of the more vitriolic "imprecative" psalms come to mind (though even these have NT echoes if you look) - but the LSM version of the Psalms goes far beyond that.

Jesus said, "David was in spirit" writing about Him. Nowhere does He, or Paul, or the gospel writers say that this was limited to the 40 explicit citations. Yet LSM either sees "NT believers enjoying grace" in the Psalms, or David/Asaph/&c expressing "natural" or "mixed" sentiments.

When I saw that I also "rebelled" against this ministry, and its franchise churches. Nice people, but very, very misled.