Thanks for sharing your testimony. Being from Ohio it caught my interest ...
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Originally Posted by seeking1
That night I saw something. I saw that they (the LC) don’t like it when you touch their doctrine. You can show up, have fellowship, give a testimony, but don’t…don’t touch the doctrine.
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To be fair ... since leaving the LC's, I have been publicly "corrected" in two different congregations which I have been a part of. The moral of the story is that nearly all Christian leaders love their own precious doctrines.
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Originally Posted by seeking1
It worked for a while, but it just became more and more apparent to me that something was lacking. The “well had run dry” and had been running dry long before I had arrived. They were abiding in system of “no system” they were embracing a doctrine of “no doctrine”, and meeting under the name of “no name”.
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Well said. This became to me one of life's greatest ironies. It took me close to 30 years to learn what you did in just a few.
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Originally Posted by seeking1
The brothers were always trying to implement some new strategy that was supposed to revive the saints and restore them to their former glory. I could never make it through a meeting without someone recalling the yesteryears “we used to do this” or “we never did that” and “we sang hymns and called on the Lord the whole way there” and I believe them.
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As a deacon in a LC, I spent half of my life arranging and rearranging the saints in order to carry out the latest strategy from Cleveland ... or from Anaheim ... or from Malaysia ... or from where ever it was the last place the elders visited. Because LC leaders have been trained for decades,
what would WL do? or what would TC do?, it seems the ability to seek the Lord as a church elder/shepherd is probably lost. Those brothers who have attempted to do so have been chided or marginalized, or at worst quarantined.
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Originally Posted by seeking1
This was just another attempt by the leading one’s to resuscitate the lifeless body of a dead system, refusing to accept the reality of the matter. Even though that little table was placed in a central position, Christ was not the center of the table meeting. The real center of the meeting was a book shelf off, over to the side of the hall, full of books written by Witness Lee.
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The real question is simple -- why is the Lord is not blessing them? Why is their program so tasteless? Why is there so little anointing when repeating messages from those Green Books? The LC leaders really don't know how to treat people. They have learned so many bad habits. They love the new ones and beat up the old ones. You faced that first hand concerning the
doctrine of stacte!
Yikes!
The trail of wounded and departed brothers in the Recovery is quite a lengthy one. Yet no one asks why. They dare not too.
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Originally Posted by seeking1
So, I asked? What’s the difference between us and them (denominations).
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The answer is simple -- there is no difference between us and them (denominations.) The LC's have been condemning other Christians for so long, that "
with what judgment you judge, you will be judged," as the Lord has warned us.
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Originally Posted by seeking1
Regardless of your denomination or affiliation, if the Lord is on the throne and allowed to reign unhindered by man, life will flow and things will grow. Eventually I realized that nothing was going to change. The brothers were going to remain faithful to their “stand” and what they were “shown”. They are the elders! Who God has “placed” there, and in twenty years they will still be the elders, still being “faithful”, still with no sheep to shepherd. It saddens me to say that.
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I was told by many saints that things had changed for the better. I was told that TC had changed for the better. I was told that the GLA churches were enjoying new found liberties after leaving LSM.
But how can things change, when the leaders have not? Many LC leaders should have resigned long ago seeing how badly they have done. In my LC, since the new leader was sent to town, the church has split in half. Many dear saints have left. Morale is miserable. On job performance alone, he should have been fired long ago.
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