Leaders of the Lord's Recovery

Indiana · 10-28-2013, 05:44 PM

Opening Remarks continued

The Accusation that the Lord’s Recovery Has Changed in Its Nature

Ron and Kerry say on page 11, “With [John’s] personal feelings as the basis, John says not only that none of our practices matches our teaching; he even goes so far as to say that the nature of the Lord’s recovery has changed. ‘I also began to realize,’ John tells us, ‘that the nature of what we call the Lord’s recovery has changed’. Here John simply makes the accusation; he doesn’t support it…If John persists in his view, having neither a change of mind nor of attitude, he may take himself out of the divine stream, the flowing of the Triune God, which he once so dearly cherished.”

What flowing of the Triune God? There was dissension, division, and saints leaving the churches due to the change in nature that John refers to. There was no flow of the Triune God. Brother Lee spoke to this matter again and again for several years, especially in elders’ meetings, making statements, such as, “We all have to hate deadness, lukewarmness and barrenness. We must seek to be vitalized in desperation, considering this to be a matter of life or death”; “We may feel that we have been enjoying the Lord every day, but a tree is known according to its fruit. The real church life can be evidenced only by fruitbearing”; “As I have said before, the spirit of not shepherding and seeking others and being without love and forgiveness is spreading in the recovery everywhere. I believe that not having the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and not having the Savior’s shepherding and seeking spirit is the reason for our barrenness. I realize that you all work hard, but there is almost no fruit. The Lord says, ‘By the fruit the tree is known’ (Matt. 12:33), but we are a tree without any fruit.”

“Everywhere among us barrenness is very prevailing”; and “the Lord’s recovery in the United States has come to a point where we cannot go on further without the shepherding.” These are representative examples of much more speaking along these lines after the new way began, as well as before. (See A Word of Love)

The question is why were the churches in such a condition? John realized that there was really no flow, and he searched for the answers. He, and others, were not without spiritual discernment and began to address the idea that there had been a change in nature to the Lord’s recovery.

Godfred
John relates a conversation he witnessed between Brother Lee and Godfred that begins to tell the story of the change in nature.

The Center of the Church

"The next afternoon, Friday, August 26th, I joined Godfred and Al at Brother Lee’s home. Godfred spoke strongly, asking Brother Lee first if he had spoken anything against us recently. He replied that he had not. Then Godfred reasoned with him: How is it that you speak against autonomy, considering that a problem, but you will not deal with the problems that we brought to your attention. Godfred spoke earnestly and impressively. He said, “the center of the church should be Christ, but He has been replaced by you and your ministry.” Brother Lee was touched by what Godfred said, and perhaps considering that what he had just alleged afforded some light for clearing up the problem, he said, “I like to hear that.” I recall the scene vividly, and his words still echo in my ears. It seemed that this time Brother Lee appreciated the frank fellowship and was trying to warm up to us. But we could not seem to make any real progress. Brother Lee remarked that everything that had happened in Europe, which had cause so great a problem between the churches and the Living Stream Ministry was just a misunderstanding. After the meeting Godfred told us that he wanted to leave the eldership and was fully disgusted with the whole situation."

Two Senior Co-Workers From Taiwan

The following excerpt from John Ingalls’ book explains what is meant by the recovery changing in nature, as expressed in a conversation John had with two senior co-workers from Taiwan. John was not merely giving his own personal views in his resignation talk, but the shared views that he had with senior co-workers and many elders and saints in the Lord’s recovery. There was a feeling in the Body about the change in nature.

John continues
"I would like now to record some of the comments made by Brother Jeng Guang Ming. He spoke as follows: 'We co-workers in the past have not had genuine fellowship among us concerning any questionable practices in the churches due to the prevailing concept that we should have no opinion, but rather just listen and submit. Brother Lee has related his experience and attitude toward Brother Nee in order to kill all opinions as well as all feelings and concerns. But our genuine fellowship is in sharing the feelings the Lord gives us, and in this we discover the leading of the Holy Spirit.'

the brother continues
"I very much treasure Acts 13, where the Holy Spirit spoke, 'separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' I believe that the speaking of the Holy Spirit to the brothers there in Antioch must have been through the genuine fellowship of the feelings which the Holy Spirit Himself gave to them. The same thing occurred in Acts 15. As long as the Holy Spirit speaks among us there will be no problem. But we don’t have today the leading of the Holy Spirit as in Acts 13 and 15, a leading in fellowship, a subjective leading manifested by each one speaking his own feeling before the Lord. The plurality gives the Holy Spirit opportunity. If we emphasize the one leadership so much how can the Holy Spirit have opportunity? The Spirit’s leading in the Body is in the prayer and fellowship of all. The kind of submission being practiced today kills the move of the Holy Spirit in the churches through the genuine fellowship among the saints. We have no intention to rebel or overthrow Brother Lee. We have suppressed our feeling for many years, though we sensed there were many points of deviation. In Taiwan Brother Chu [Shun Min] and I had no such fellowship concerning the abnormal situation in the churches today as we now have. We feel that the genuine fellowship must be like that recorded in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, where the Lord did not refrain from pointing out the negative aspects as well as the positive, the real situation.

One basic item of the change in nature in the Lord’s recovery is that it appears the Lord’s work has become Brother Lee’s work; the churches have become Brother Lee’s churches; and the Lord’s workers have become Brother Lee’s workers. All things have become personalized, and everything appears to require Brother Lee’s approval to be legitimate. He can acknowledge and he can also deny the validity of the Lord’s workers, elders, and even churches. This concept has been injected to all the brothers and sisters, particularly those who have a heart for the Lord.

Brother Chu Shun Min then told me how that on April 1, 1988, he had a conversation with Brother Lee in the Bay Area. He presented a number of serious concerns to Brother Lee and asked him to bring all these things to the Lord. Brother Chu told me that Brother Lee listened quietly and passively to all his points (with one exception), making no comment, neither admitting nor denying. The exception was a point he made concerning Brother Lee’s son, Philip Lee. In conclusion, Brother Chu told Brother Lee, “All the sweet feeling we had in the past is lost. All the rest in our spirit is over".

John Ingalls
"I will mention just a few more comments made by Brother Chu. He said that he feels very sorry for the present state of things – he gave his whole life to this. He has received letters from elderly ones in Taipei that are full of blood and tears. There are very few elderly ones there who are not discouraged or withdrawn. The warfare now is fiercer than in Watchman Nee’s day when the issue was that of leaving the denominations. We are at a critical juncture. We cannot be silent regarding the change of nature in the Lord’s recovery. We should have no part in it. This is a day for further recovery. We need a new beginning to recover us back from the change of nature to the Lord’s original intention. We must discard all the changes of nature. The main direction is to come out of the system; it cannot change.

Realizations

Previous to meeting with the two senior co-workers, John met with other brothers.

"In those days I had further fellowship with Godfred and with some of the brothers we had contacted, with whom we had intimate fellowship through the years concerning the Lord’s work. We realized that the spiritual condition of the churches throughout the United States and in other places, generally speaking, was very poor, very low. We searched for the reason. Something was radically wrong. The Lord’s blessing was not among us. Life was at a very low ebb. In a number of places there was considerable discord and dissension, and instead of a steady increase in numbers, there was a steady decrease. We began to realize then that there were practices and tendencies among us that we had never considered before. And, we ourselves as well as others were responsible, having participated in these. But we had not seen clearly or realized previously what was being done. Thus we began to come to some conclusions.

I believe that the first was that the ministry was being given a place above the churches. It was being too highly exalted and emphasized, so that it became imperative for every church now to manifest that they were “for the ministry” and to “serve the ministry”. It was no longer, as we were often told, that the ministry was for the churches and that only the churches should be built up; rather the churches now should be for the ministry, and the ministry was being built up. We felt that we should voice such a concern to Brother Lee.

About the second week of October we began to fellowship with Dan Towle, an elder in the church in Fullerton and a trainer from the full-time training in Taipei, who was attempting to give direction and help to the fifty or sixty full-timers who had moved from Taipei to Orange County. To his great frustration, the full-timers were taken over by the LSM office and its management, and were charged to do construction and yard work over an extended period of time to the neglect of their gospel preaching. Dan had also heard some things concerning misconduct and irregularities related to the ministry office that greatly upset him, and he had serious concerns as we did for the Lord’s recovery. At one point he told me that he considered to resign from the work and to leave. We confirmed his feeling that the situation was indeed serious.

Godfred, Dan, and I came together a few times, joined also by Ken Unger on a couple of occasions to fellowship about the situation and what should be done. Ken Unger, who was an elder in Huntington Beach, had himself also become very concerned. We conferred about our burden to speak with Brother Lee, mentioning a number of our concerns that involved aberration of truth and practice (p. 102).

To say that John was leaving the flowing of the Triune God if he continued in his direction was an erroneous perception. Serious problems that had been stopping the flow needed to be addressed, and John did his best to do so. In 1977, Brother Lee had shared,

Do not say, as if it were a mere slogan, "I am following the flow." The real flow is the Lord Himself. How wrong it is to stir up a movement! That is an insult to the Lord. It is an offense to Him. There must never be a movement among us in the Lord's recovery. Do not use the word "flow" as a cloak to disguise a movement. When some of you speak of the flow, you actually mean a movement. To create a movement and then to encourage others to follow it is to make a tremendous mistake (The Spirit and the Body, p. 9, 1977).

John Ingalls was in the church in Los Angeles in the very beginning with Witness Lee in 1962. By 1989 at the time of his resignation he knew what the flowing of the Triune God was and what it wasn’t. In the new way, though it was Scriptural, there was no flow. It was a movement that featured a man and his ministry and a way. A system developed without the “real flow of the Lord Himself”. John tried to address those problems effecting the flowing of the Triune God, which he did experience in Los Angeles in the sixties and early seventies, with the church on a genuine ground of oneness in those years.

Abnormal Spiritual Perception?
Had Ron and Kerry considered what other members, besides John, were experiencing in the late eighties? and how they felt about aberration of truth and practice? and the change of nature in the recovery? John did not stand alone. Ron and Kerry, however, didn’t appreciate or understand John’s research, study, fellowship, and public evaluation, so they could only judge by their limited concept of him and his address to the church. They said,

Before we turn to John’s eighteen numbered points, we need to draw the reader’s attention to a striking feature of John’s speaking on March 19, 1989 – abnormal spiritual perception. As indicated by the material in the transcript, John’s perception of the situation in the Lord’s recovery is abnormal, and his view is biased and distorted. Again and again, his words demonstrate the failure to perceive the true character of the things about which he is speaking. “He does not see the true character of a thing; yet, he considers himself clear.” (Watchman Nee, Spiritual Reality or Obsession, p. 48) John claims certain things to be facts that are not facts. We believe that a careful examination of the content and implications of John’s eighteen points will show that his spiritual perception of the condition and direction of the Lord’s recovery is abnormal and unreliable and that the conclusions he draws from this perception are erroneous and unwarranted.

Again, Ron Kangas and Kerry Robichaux were Living Stream Ministry employees, working in Irving (also Anaheim). They were daily filled with exercise in writing and editing for printing and distribution. This was a major realm of their involvement in the recovery. They were Witness Lee loyalists through and through. He was their spiritual father, as well as employer. It didn’t matter what Witness Lee did, or how he did it; they stood by him. As long as he was speaking and they were writing, etc., they were happy. John Ingalls was an elder in Anaheim and not active in the LSM work. LSM was a world to itself, and its world was growing. Its influence in the churches was also growing. This was of great concern to those with the least bit of spiritual perception, and it had very much to do with the change in nature in the recovery, as well as to John’s claims in his eighteen points. John Ingalls relates from his own book what he and others perceived. His view is not “biased and distorted”, but honest and forthright, a very normal, not abnormal, spiritual perception.

As has already been shared, the influence and control of the LSM office was a major concern. Here again is some of John’s fellowship about the problem:

John Ingalls
"Another matter that concerned us greatly was the growing influence and control of the LSM office, (i. e. Philip Lee) over churches, elders, co-workers, and the full-time training in Taiwan. We had numerous examples of such an intolerable and unscriptural situation. With my own eyes I saw some leading ones reporting to Philip Lee what they were intending to share with a gathering of Orange County young people and ask if he thought that would be all right. I could hardly believe it. Was this the function of a business manager? When I reported this observation to some brothers who had coordinated with Philip Lee and associated with him, they laughed at me and said that that was very common. They were amused by my being startled by this discovery. Godfred even admitted later that he had done the same thing himself: he had suggested that before someone was chosen to lead a young people’s conference, it should be checked out with Philip. Godfred fully repented of that. Dan Towle remarked that this was our “life-style”. How far off we were!

"Moreover, elders were encouraged to call Philip Lee regarding conferences and many affairs concerning the work and the churches in their areas, asking his advice and who should come to help them. A few places actually practiced this. There are a number of instances of churches and whole areas being cut off by the management of the LSM office from the supply of literature and tapes due to some alleged offense of the elders, regardless of the suffering imposed upon the saints in those churches. When the elders repented in a manner satisfactory to the office, the ban was lifted. Some adjustments, we understand have been made in the administration of the LSM office, but at that time the situation was bad and worsening. The portent for the future was threatening. This was a genuine concern.

Are Ron and Kerry aware of the corrupting effect that Philip Lee brought into the recovery?

Are they aware of the facts concerning him? John Ingalls was well aware.

10-28-2013, 05:44 PM	#11
Indiana Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 718	Re: An Appeal to Ron Kangas Opening Remarks continued The Accusation that the Lord’s Recovery Has Changed in Its Nature Ron and Kerry say on page 11, “With [John’s] personal feelings as the basis, John says not only that none of our practices matches our teaching; he even goes so far as to say that the nature of the Lord’s recovery has changed. ‘I also began to realize,’ John tells us, ‘that the nature of what we call the Lord’s recovery has changed’. Here John simply makes the accusation; he doesn’t support it…If John persists in his view, having neither a change of mind nor of attitude, he may take himself out of the divine stream, the flowing of the Triune God, which he once so dearly cherished.” What flowing of the Triune God? There was dissension, division, and saints leaving the churches due to the change in nature that John refers to. There was no flow of the Triune God. Brother Lee spoke to this matter again and again for several years, especially in elders’ meetings, making statements, such as, “We all have to hate deadness, lukewarmness and barrenness. We must seek to be vitalized in desperation, considering this to be a matter of life or death”; “We may feel that we have been enjoying the Lord every day, but a tree is known according to its fruit. The real church life can be evidenced only by fruitbearing”; “As I have said before, the spirit of not shepherding and seeking others and being without love and forgiveness is spreading in the recovery everywhere. I believe that not having the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and not having the Savior’s shepherding and seeking spirit is the reason for our barrenness. I realize that you all work hard, but there is almost no fruit. The Lord says, ‘By the fruit the tree is known’ (Matt. 12:33), but we are a tree without any fruit.” “Everywhere among us barrenness is very prevailing”; and “the Lord’s recovery in the United States has come to a point where we cannot go on further without the shepherding.” These are representative examples of much more speaking along these lines after the new way began, as well as before. (See A Word of Love) The question is why were the churches in such a condition? John realized that there was really no flow, and he searched for the answers. He, and others, were not without spiritual discernment and began to address the idea that there had been a change in nature to the Lord’s recovery. Godfred John relates a conversation he witnessed between Brother Lee and Godfred that begins to tell the story of the change in nature. The Center of the Church "The next afternoon, Friday, August 26th, I joined Godfred and Al at Brother Lee’s home. Godfred spoke strongly, asking Brother Lee first if he had spoken anything against us recently. He replied that he had not. Then Godfred reasoned with him: How is it that you speak against autonomy, considering that a problem, but you will not deal with the problems that we brought to your attention. Godfred spoke earnestly and impressively. He said, “the center of the church should be Christ, but He has been replaced by you and your ministry.” Brother Lee was touched by what Godfred said, and perhaps considering that what he had just alleged afforded some light for clearing up the problem, he said, “I like to hear that.” I recall the scene vividly, and his words still echo in my ears. It seemed that this time Brother Lee appreciated the frank fellowship and was trying to warm up to us. But we could not seem to make any real progress. Brother Lee remarked that everything that had happened in Europe, which had cause so great a problem between the churches and the Living Stream Ministry was just a misunderstanding. After the meeting Godfred told us that he wanted to leave the eldership and was fully disgusted with the whole situation." Two Senior Co-Workers From Taiwan The following excerpt from John Ingalls’ book explains what is meant by the recovery changing in nature, as expressed in a conversation John had with two senior co-workers from Taiwan. John was not merely giving his own personal views in his resignation talk, but the shared views that he had with senior co-workers and many elders and saints in the Lord’s recovery. There was a feeling in the Body about the change in nature. John continues "I would like now to record some of the comments made by Brother Jeng Guang Ming. He spoke as follows: 'We co-workers in the past have not had genuine fellowship among us concerning any questionable practices in the churches due to the prevailing concept that we should have no opinion, but rather just listen and submit. Brother Lee has related his experience and attitude toward Brother Nee in order to kill all opinions as well as all feelings and concerns. But our genuine fellowship is in sharing the feelings the Lord gives us, and in this we discover the leading of the Holy Spirit.' the brother continues "I very much treasure Acts 13, where the Holy Spirit spoke, 'separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' I believe that the speaking of the Holy Spirit to the brothers there in Antioch must have been through the genuine fellowship of the feelings which the Holy Spirit Himself gave to them. The same thing occurred in Acts 15. As long as the Holy Spirit speaks among us there will be no problem. But we don’t have today the leading of the Holy Spirit as in Acts 13 and 15, a leading in fellowship, a subjective leading manifested by each one speaking his own feeling before the Lord. The plurality gives the Holy Spirit opportunity. If we emphasize the one leadership so much how can the Holy Spirit have opportunity? The Spirit’s leading in the Body is in the prayer and fellowship of all. The kind of submission being practiced today kills the move of the Holy Spirit in the churches through the genuine fellowship among the saints. We have no intention to rebel or overthrow Brother Lee. We have suppressed our feeling for many years, though we sensed there were many points of deviation. In Taiwan Brother Chu [Shun Min] and I had no such fellowship concerning the abnormal situation in the churches today as we now have. We feel that the genuine fellowship must be like that recorded in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, where the Lord did not refrain from pointing out the negative aspects as well as the positive, the real situation. One basic item of the change in nature in the Lord’s recovery is that it appears the Lord’s work has become Brother Lee’s work; the churches have become Brother Lee’s churches; and the Lord’s workers have become Brother Lee’s workers. All things have become personalized, and everything appears to require Brother Lee’s approval to be legitimate. He can acknowledge and he can also deny the validity of the Lord’s workers, elders, and even churches. This concept has been injected to all the brothers and sisters, particularly those who have a heart for the Lord. Brother Chu Shun Min then told me how that on April 1, 1988, he had a conversation with Brother Lee in the Bay Area. He presented a number of serious concerns to Brother Lee and asked him to bring all these things to the Lord. Brother Chu told me that Brother Lee listened quietly and passively to all his points (with one exception), making no comment, neither admitting nor denying. The exception was a point he made concerning Brother Lee’s son, Philip Lee. In conclusion, Brother Chu told Brother Lee, “All the sweet feeling we had in the past is lost. All the rest in our spirit is over". John Ingalls "I will mention just a few more comments made by Brother Chu. He said that he feels very sorry for the present state of things – he gave his whole life to this. He has received letters from elderly ones in Taipei that are full of blood and tears. There are very few elderly ones there who are not discouraged or withdrawn. The warfare now is fiercer than in Watchman Nee’s day when the issue was that of leaving the denominations. We are at a critical juncture. We cannot be silent regarding the change of nature in the Lord’s recovery. We should have no part in it. This is a day for further recovery. We need a new beginning to recover us back from the change of nature to the Lord’s original intention. We must discard all the changes of nature. The main direction is to come out of the system; it cannot change. Realizations Previous to meeting with the two senior co-workers, John met with other brothers. "In those days I had further fellowship with Godfred and with some of the brothers we had contacted, with whom we had intimate fellowship through the years concerning the Lord’s work. We realized that the spiritual condition of the churches throughout the United States and in other places, generally speaking, was very poor, very low. We searched for the reason. Something was radically wrong. The Lord’s blessing was not among us. Life was at a very low ebb. In a number of places there was considerable discord and dissension, and instead of a steady increase in numbers, there was a steady decrease. We began to realize then that there were practices and tendencies among us that we had never considered before. And, we ourselves as well as others were responsible, having participated in these. But we had not seen clearly or realized previously what was being done. Thus we began to come to some conclusions. I believe that the first was that the ministry was being given a place above the churches. It was being too highly exalted and emphasized, so that it became imperative for every church now to manifest that they were “for the ministry” and to “serve the ministry”. It was no longer, as we were often told, that the ministry was for the churches and that only the churches should be built up; rather the churches now should be for the ministry, and the ministry was being built up. We felt that we should voice such a concern to Brother Lee. About the second week of October we began to fellowship with Dan Towle, an elder in the church in Fullerton and a trainer from the full-time training in Taipei, who was attempting to give direction and help to the fifty or sixty full-timers who had moved from Taipei to Orange County. To his great frustration, the full-timers were taken over by the LSM office and its management, and were charged to do construction and yard work over an extended period of time to the neglect of their gospel preaching. Dan had also heard some things concerning misconduct and irregularities related to the ministry office that greatly upset him, and he had serious concerns as we did for the Lord’s recovery. At one point he told me that he considered to resign from the work and to leave. We confirmed his feeling that the situation was indeed serious. Godfred, Dan, and I came together a few times, joined also by Ken Unger on a couple of occasions to fellowship about the situation and what should be done. Ken Unger, who was an elder in Huntington Beach, had himself also become very concerned. We conferred about our burden to speak with Brother Lee, mentioning a number of our concerns that involved aberration of truth and practice (p. 102). To say that John was leaving the flowing of the Triune God if he continued in his direction was an erroneous perception. Serious problems that had been stopping the flow needed to be addressed, and John did his best to do so. In 1977, Brother Lee had shared, Do not say, as if it were a mere slogan, "I am following the flow." The real flow is the Lord Himself. How wrong it is to stir up a movement! That is an insult to the Lord. It is an offense to Him. There must never be a movement among us in the Lord's recovery. Do not use the word "flow" as a cloak to disguise a movement. When some of you speak of the flow, you actually mean a movement. To create a movement and then to encourage others to follow it is to make a tremendous mistake (The Spirit and the Body, p. 9, 1977). John Ingalls was in the church in Los Angeles in the very beginning with Witness Lee in 1962. By 1989 at the time of his resignation he knew what the flowing of the Triune God was and what it wasn’t. In the new way, though it was Scriptural, there was no flow. It was a movement that featured a man and his ministry and a way. A system developed without the “real flow of the Lord Himself”. John tried to address those problems effecting the flowing of the Triune God, which he did experience in Los Angeles in the sixties and early seventies, with the church on a genuine ground of oneness in those years. Abnormal Spiritual Perception? Had Ron and Kerry considered what other members, besides John, were experiencing in the late eighties? and how they felt about aberration of truth and practice? and the change of nature in the recovery? John did not stand alone. Ron and Kerry, however, didn’t appreciate or understand John’s research, study, fellowship, and public evaluation, so they could only judge by their limited concept of him and his address to the church. They said, Before we turn to John’s eighteen numbered points, we need to draw the reader’s attention to a striking feature of John’s speaking on March 19, 1989 – abnormal spiritual perception. As indicated by the material in the transcript, John’s perception of the situation in the Lord’s recovery is abnormal, and his view is biased and distorted. Again and again, his words demonstrate the failure to perceive the true character of the things about which he is speaking. “He does not see the true character of a thing; yet, he considers himself clear.” (Watchman Nee, Spiritual Reality or Obsession, p. 48) John claims certain things to be facts that are not facts. We believe that a careful examination of the content and implications of John’s eighteen points will show that his spiritual perception of the condition and direction of the Lord’s recovery is abnormal and unreliable and that the conclusions he draws from this perception are erroneous and unwarranted. Again, Ron Kangas and Kerry Robichaux were Living Stream Ministry employees, working in Irving (also Anaheim). They were daily filled with exercise in writing and editing for printing and distribution. This was a major realm of their involvement in the recovery. They were Witness Lee loyalists through and through. He was their spiritual father, as well as employer. It didn’t matter what Witness Lee did, or how he did it; they stood by him. As long as he was speaking and they were writing, etc., they were happy. John Ingalls was an elder in Anaheim and not active in the LSM work. LSM was a world to itself, and its world was growing. Its influence in the churches was also growing. This was of great concern to those with the least bit of spiritual perception, and it had very much to do with the change in nature in the recovery, as well as to John’s claims in his eighteen points. John Ingalls relates from his own book what he and others perceived. His view is not “biased and distorted”, but honest and forthright, a very normal, not abnormal, spiritual perception. As has already been shared, the influence and control of the LSM office was a major concern. Here again is some of John’s fellowship about the problem: John Ingalls "Another matter that concerned us greatly was the growing influence and control of the LSM office, (i. e. Philip Lee) over churches, elders, co-workers, and the full-time training in Taiwan. We had numerous examples of such an intolerable and unscriptural situation. With my own eyes I saw some leading ones reporting to Philip Lee what they were intending to share with a gathering of Orange County young people and ask if he thought that would be all right. I could hardly believe it. Was this the function of a business manager? When I reported this observation to some brothers who had coordinated with Philip Lee and associated with him, they laughed at me and said that that was very common. They were amused by my being startled by this discovery. Godfred even admitted later that he had done the same thing himself: he had suggested that before someone was chosen to lead a young people’s conference, it should be checked out with Philip. Godfred fully repented of that. Dan Towle remarked that this was our “life-style”. How far off we were! "Moreover, elders were encouraged to call Philip Lee regarding conferences and many affairs concerning the work and the churches in their areas, asking his advice and who should come to help them. A few places actually practiced this. There are a number of instances of churches and whole areas being cut off by the management of the LSM office from the supply of literature and tapes due to some alleged offense of the elders, regardless of the suffering imposed upon the saints in those churches. When the elders repented in a manner satisfactory to the office, the ban was lifted. Some adjustments, we understand have been made in the administration of the LSM office, but at that time the situation was bad and worsening. The portent for the future was threatening. This was a genuine concern. Are Ron and Kerry aware of the corrupting effect that Philip Lee brought into the recovery? Are they aware of the facts concerning him? John Ingalls was well aware.