Waking Up

[Awoken]

Hi fellow Christians,

I'm a Christian currently living in the northeast. I am, at least for now, still (at least from others' viewpoint no doubt) active in the LC, since I am just beginning to wake up from a serious belief in LC dogma and am still trying to get on my feet spiritually. After some experiences that whacked me over the head and woke me up enough to start seriously considering my surroundings, I started to do a lot of research on past LC history (including reading "A Thread of Gold", various testimonies from prominent ex-members, etc). I will, to the best of my ability, give my own short testimony below, awkward as it may be (this will probably be really long-winded, but I feel a need to put this down in words somewhere, sorry!).

I was introduced to the LC movement through a close friend who grew up as a "church kid", although her parents are very down-to-earth people and are not at all actively involved in the movement. I was an agnostic when I met this girl and she was not involved in the LC at that time, so we actually were dating and even ended up living together (in sin, I might add). Before that I had "touched the church life" through some home meetings, and although I enjoyed the atmosphere and the focus on Jesus, and I even began believing He was real, I was not really convicted enough to change my lifestyle. Eventually as we began to get involved in the LC together, I was baptized and began to feel strongly that I needed to repent. Since my friend's parents were not willing to allow us to be married until I have finished my college degree, I decided I was no longer willing to live together and moved out. I still firmly believe this was actually God's leading, and am happy I listened. At around this time I also began to get heavily involved in the local meetings and began cultivating my zealousness for the central LC dogma, which I wholeheartedly believed every word of.

I live in a state where most of the membership "fell" during the Titus Chu drama that happened before I ever got introduced to the movement, although I did not learn about it until a fears after my inception to the LC. In retrospect the way the movement's history is so shrouded in mystique seems bizarre, but I did not see anything strange about it from the inside. Anyway, the city in particular I live in is located in between several other LC localities, but the membership is rather small although there are a few couples here who are very devoted to LC doctrine. Actually I believe these people are genuine Christians and when I consider their situation, I get knots in my stomach because I do not believe anybody I came into contact with in the LC understood what they were doing. These are caring, loving people who are just involved in something unwittingly. That's the real danger of deception; it doesn't involve a lack of sincerity or the absence of good intention on the part of the deceived.

Anyway, moving on: what particularly opened my eyes to the sheer wrongness of LSM's approach to Christianity is intimately tied to my personal experiences (no doubt this would be disregarded within the LC as 'individualism'). As an agnostic and prior to believing in Christ, I had been cultivating a pornography addiction for most of my teenage/adult years (this is pretty shameful to write down, but it will be necessary if I want to speak the truth). The thing is, in the LC, I never really heard a gospel of repentance. The "repentance" taught to me in the LC didn't have anything to do with not sinning or changing my behavior, it had to do with "repenting" from not believing that W. Lee's view of Christian doctrine and staying in "spirit" was the absolute truth contained in the Word. I fully subscribed to the LC notion that there is a special class of Christians called "overcomers", who will get to reign with Christ during the millenium, and then a second group, the "non-overcomers" - which I took to mean those who were backslidden and hadn't fully repented of sin yet and/or those who weren't participating in "building the New Jerusalem", i.e. absolutely following the LSM/Local Church viewpoint and participating in the "real building" and "central line of life".

So, even though I have CONSTANTLY felt a need to fully repent of sin ever since believing in Christ, I could never understand why I couldn't fully deal with it. I even had a discussion with the elder who baptized me about this once and he told me, "Maybe this will never go away." The teaching that was fed to me was that I needed to stop focusing on "behavior change" and "legalism", focus on "the building", and keep "eating Christ", and then everything would just eventually magically be taken care of for me. And, for the better part of three years, I believed it.

For the past few months or so, though, this need to repent has begun to bother me so much that I started reading much older "non-sanctioned" Christian material regarding overcoming sin: Of the Mortification of Sin by John Owen and the works of Ichabod S. Spencer. These made it so clear that repentance from sin was crucially important to leading a genuine Christian faith that I began to seriously question "the gospel" as presented to me by W. Lee and company.

As I found myself reading through 1 John in the Bible at around this time, I also began to seriously question the concept of a special class of Christians called "overcomers". 1 John 5:4 (Everyone who has been born of God has overcome the world), along with John's description of those continuing to walk in darkness versus those doing the will of God, simply did not allow me to reconcile this viewpoint with the idea of the "1000 year darkness" for "sinning Christians" promoted by Lee (and, I believe, Nee). I have since heard this idea referred to as "Protestant Purgatory" and I now believe this is exactly what the idea really is. Because I was not considering the struggle with sin to be a life or death matter, but only a matter of "discipline", I was not really willing to repent. I mean, after all, even if I DO have to go through 1000 years of "discipline"... I still have eternal life, right? That's what Witness Lee says, so it must be right.

As my view of "the gospel" began to nag at me, so did my view of the belief systems in the Local Church. I have, of course, been severely bothered (to the point of feeling physically ill) with the thought that "I am in my mind, not my spirit!", "I am being rebellious!", "What if this means I have spiritual leprosy!?", etc - ironically, not because of the lack of repentance from sin, but because of the fact that I was beginning to question the gospel according to Lee. I have been aware for a long time of forums like this one, but I considered even looking at them to be taboo and a sign of divisiveness, leprosy, etc. Lately, though, with questions constantly surfacing about my real beliefs, I felt a need to go and do research. So I did. I started looking up the history of the LC, the early days, the various "turmoils", and so on. I discovered that at some point in the past a letter had even gone around where all the church elders declared Lee to be God's oracle and deputy authority of this age, and that they gave him unquestioning support. What!? I think that really hit me over the head; it seemed so impossible to deny this was man-worship that I couldn't reconcile it with the truth of the Bible. I also began to see the incredibly obvious superiority complex that seems so obvious about the LC from the outside, but which I just couldn't discern from inside the mess.

Ironically, what really "opened my eyes" spiritually was a word from the same friend with whom I initially came into contact with the LC. She still remains my close friend and I have felt on several occasions that God spoke to me through her. She is one of the only people I have felt relatively comfortable sharing my problems with, largely because of our history together, probably because I do not feel like I am being judged by her. When I mentioned I felt a need to seriously repent of this sin once and for all to her, and couldn't understand why I was still unable to do it, she said something to me that crashed through all of spiritual smog and LC blindness. "Maybe God needs you to give something else up too, and you're just not ready yet."

I don't know where this came from, but it began to dawn on me that I have been so blindly following MEN, the teaching of a man, and even considering these things to be the same as God's Word, that indeed it really may have been a mercy to me that I could not repent from a particular sin yet. Why would God allow this to stop bothering me, when I am doing something which is so blindly in contradiction to His Word? It called to mind something that had stuck in my mind while reading "Of the Mortification of Sin" by John Owen:

"Now, it is certain that that which I speak of proceeds from self-love. You set yourself with all diligence and earnestness to mortify such a lust or sin; what is the reason of it? It disquiets you, it has taken away your peace, it fills your heart with sorrow, and trouble, and fear; you hast no rest because of it. Yea; but, friend, you hast neglected prayer or reading; you hast been vain and loose in your conversation in other things, that have not been of the same nature with that lust wherewith you art perplexed. These are no less sins and evils than those under which you groanest. Jesus Christ bled for them also. Why dost you not set yourself against them also? If you hatest sin as sin, every evil way, you wouldst be no less watchful against every thing that grieves and disquiets the Spirit of God, than against that which grieves and disquiets your own soul. It is evident that you contends against sin merely because of your own trouble by it. Would your conscience be quiet under it, you wouldst let it alone. Did it not disquiet you, it should not be disquieted by you. Now, canst you think that God will set in with such hypocritical endeavours, -- that ever his Spirit will bear witness to the treachery and falsehood of your spirit? Dost you think he will ease you of that which perplexes you, that you may be at liberty to that which no less grieves him? No. Says God, "Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he is lost."

Upon coming to this realization, I now feel as though over the past week or so the "scales" have begun to fall away from my eyes. I thank God that He did not leave me in this blindness and self-righteousness and pride, and in blindly following the "commandments and teachings of men". Of course this experience has been incredibly painful, confusing, and tumultuous. I am incredibly worried for my friends who are involved with the LC, particularly the one I have described above. I also personally helped bring in a very genuine and earnest family of believers, a mother/daughter, who were preaching the genuine gospel very strongly before they came into contact with the LC. I also ruined a living situation with a Baptist brother in Christ I was formerly staying with because I was so convinced that he was in "Babylonian Christianity". I owe him a serious apology, and I hope to accomplish that today (I have plans to go see him to take care of some practical matters).

Part of what is really confusing about the LC is that some of their practices and ideas are very good. Their "each one has" philosophy of participation I still consider to be a huge step above the clergy-laity system. The problem is that this genuine Biblical belief is leavened with man-worship and man-following to such a degree that any benefit of genuine building up and spiritual oneness is lost. I read recently in an account from a former Lee follower a very interesting thought: those building the Tower of Babel were "one" in their building, in their lingo, in their intent, and in their work; and yet God hated it. It was something of men, by men, and for men. This, I believe, is the kind of "oneness" that you can find in the LC. Of course there are many genuine believers who really love Christ who have been deceived, and this seriously concerns me. The good things presented to them - and I have to admit there are many good things, even good teachings from W. Lee himself - have blinded them to the fact that the reality that is so often touted has completely left. Within the LC there is such an unquestioning loyalty to the LSM and the men who run it that it has effectively become the will of the "Body", and anybody thinking differently is automatically assumed to be spiritually leprous or individualistic. How about what Peter said to the Pharisees? Acts 5:29: Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than human beings!"

I am going to show this post to the brother I alienated today if possible, and I also really need to begin considering how to deal with my relationship to the LC group here. On the one hand I feel a desperate need to preach the genuine gospel to them, on the other hand I do not want to alienate them to the extent that it is impossible to reach them. I also have been considering going to the family that I personally caused to get involved in all of this and lay this whole mess out before them, including material for them to research so they can come to an informed decision. The mother in particular I do not think has been blinded to the point of being unreachable. On the other hand if I make this move I am almost certain it will result in my expulsion/being labeled as a rebel, which would make it more or less impossible for me to reach anyone else. I am torn because this involves very serious spiritual danger, and either way could be a huge mistake.

It's weird because on the one hand I am learning how to talk to God again in a simple way, telling him my problems and worries, and feeling like I really have His presence. On the other hand I am so full of worry and concern for the other LC members that I have found it nearly impossible to think of anything else all week, largely to the detriment of my college education. I was praying fervently for those I am close to a day or two ago, and I felt at that time I really began to understand what it means to participate in the sufferings of Christ. It has nothing to do with "self-denial" the way it is taught in the LC - it has everything to do with love for others, even being rejected by others at the expense of your own well-being. I am terrified of how to go on but I feel like I must press on and keep moving forward.

Anyway, this is my current testimony, jumbled and confused as it is. Your words and help would be appreciated in this difficult situation.

Your brother in Christ.