Quote:
Originally Posted by John
Motives of those in the Local Church and related entities
Why would Evangelical and Drake engage in such personal attacks against Jane Anderson, even mocking her and her writings? Of course, I can’t know for sure what their motives are, but here’s what I think: It is apparent to me that they are members of the Local Church. As such (and I speak from twenty years of experience), they basically have a duty to protect and defend, at all costs, the Local Church, Living Stream Ministry (LSM), associated ministries (like Defense and Confirmation Project [DCP] and A Faithful Word [AFW]), Watchman Nee, and Witness Lee.
Jane wrote a book (The Thread of Gold: God’s Purpose, the Cross, and Me) giving her personal testimony of her experiences in the Local Church, as well as experiences with the LSM of Witness Lee. This book was denounced from the podium by Benson Phillips, one who became a main ministry leader after Witness Lee’s death. As far as the leaders are concerned, Jane has to be denounced whenever possible, because her exposé negatively impacted them and their movement. One of the things that her story showed was the Local Church’s poor treatment of women. Regardless, her book has helped hundreds, if not thousands, understand how the Local Church operates, and her book has helped many recover from their experiences there.
Why is Jane Anderson still being attacked?
The Thread of Gold, which was published twelve years ago, is still having an impact today. After its publication, Jane began posting on Internet forums, first on what’s known as “The Bereans” and then on this one, “Local Church Discussions.” As those of us who were in the Local Church movement know, members are asked to present a good image to the outside world, and some even go into this “ministry” on a full-time basis. After one of Jane’s posts, a former elder in the Local Church wrote to AFW, stating that her post was not true. AFW, trying to discredit her, posted the man’s letter on their website. When Jane found out about it, she wrote a long response to the attack.
My point here, of course, is that those associated with the Local Church and LSM will try to disparage Jane in any way they can. Objective readers can ascertain for themselves whether the level of attack in this thread is warranted, what might have caused the attack, and whether or not Evangelical and Drake are simply hanging out on this forum to try to prop up the images of the Local Church, LSM, Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, etc.
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Given the history, John's assessment is understandable, however misguided, for the following reasons.
Is it really fair to pass judgement on Lee for saying the Psalms are natural, but give a free pass to a book which says 46 bible verses are put there by Satan?
All of my posts are focused on the present and analyzing the text of what Bushnell/Jane wrote according to freely available scholarly literature and not related to Lee/Nee in any way.
My motivation is very simple and it is based upon defending the Bible. If anyone writes a book saying that 46 verses of the Bible are lemons inspired by Satan I would not care who they were. I would present the same analysis as I presented here. As far as I can tell the book has not attacked anything related to the LSM so to claim that I would be arguing against it on that basis is not well supported.
As anyone can see, I have not addressed any parts of the book which may relate to LSM, LC, DCP etc. Only the parts presented on the blog, relating to the "lemon verses", which attacks the credibility of the Bible. My analysis has consulted various sources, gotquestions.org, bible.org, Prof Wallace and other experts, biblehub commentaries. None of these to my knowledge have any association with LSM/LC etc.
In that respect I have behaved no differently than a typical Evangelical would when confronted with a view that 46 verses of the bible are in error. I believe that the contextual bubble in which Jane's book is viewed favorably on this forum would burst if it was presented on a standard Evangelical forum which does take the bible's reliability and writings from gotquestions, CARM, bible.org, biblehub etc more seriously.
In summary, Jane's book does not seem to attack the LSM/LC in any way. However it does seem to attack the Bible's authenticity and it is from this point of view that we defend the Bible, or at least present an analysis which would pass scrutiny on any serious non-liberal evangelical forum.