What is a Glorious Church life?

[AndPeter]

Originally Posted by Hope

...
Because I know a lot of the details around the Barber family I have little confidence in the fairness or accuracy of their posts. ...

Dear brother Don,

One thing that struck me was when Brent shared to the effect that his father had second thoughts about the LC in the last few months of his life. The post is towards the end of his series of posts. I looked but could not locate it.

Would you care to comment on this statement as to its fairness or accuracy.

Steve

[Hope]

Originally Posted by AndPeter

Dear brother Don,

One thing that struck me was when Brent shared to the effect that his father had second thoughts about the LC in the last few months of his life. The post is towards the end of his series of posts. I looked but could not locate it.

Would you care to comment on this statement as to its fairness or accuracy.

Steve

James died of cancer. He was in Irving living with Benson seeking to get help from alternative treatments. During this time no one had much contact with him. Before this I had pretty much dropped contact with him. He was becoming more and more odd. I attributed it to nothing in particular. Perhaps it was due to internal conflicts about the lc. He suffered greatly over the whole thought of the video messages. He complained to me that "we ministering brothers" may as well get a pop corn machine and sell pop corn during the videos. It was obvious to me that he saw his role in the recovery was pretty much over and WL was going a different direction with different people. James could have certainly been disappointed. I never heard him criticize WL but he was not happy at the end.

In Christ Jesus there is hope for us all,

Hope, Don Rutledge

PS

Yo djohson,

God-men socks???!!! When did this happened? Makes we want to double over in laughter. How crazy did things get? Who had the socks? Where did they come from? How do you get a pair of those babies?

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Hope

He suffered greatly over the whole thought of the video messages. He complained to me that "we ministering brothers" may as well get a pop corn machine and sell pop corn during the videos. It was obvious to me that he saw his role in the recovery was pretty much over and WL was going a different direction with different people. James could have certainly been disappointed. I never heard him criticize WL but he was not happy at the end.

James' comment about the videos is quite telling. How sad that must have been for him. Not only did he endeavor to be the best "WL Promoter" on the planet, but he was bested by another, Max R, in a power struggle, which isolated him on "an island" in OKC. And now he feels completely useless by the emerging technology of "Beta machines."

James was not alone in this regard. The "New Way," FTTA, "laboratory experiment" had the same subtle goal -- to discredit all the senior brothers around the country who were the very ones promoting the ministry of WL from the beginning. This pattern of "using and discarding" gifted brothers is troublesome for sure. Think about our history of quarantines.

This side of LC history is hidden for sure. The sad and painful experience of promoting a minister, only to come up in the end "on empty." Heart- wrenching indeed. At one time (II Corinthians Training circa 1982) I felt that promoting the ministry of WL was more important than the message of the cross of Christ. Can you believe that? To me "promoting the ministry" was the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens, while the message of the cross of Christ was just the "low gospel" of going to heaven. Where was I?

Yes, the ministry of WL taught us many Bible truths which were helpful, but in his ministry we got lots of "extras." These "extras" had many strings attached. Eventually all these "extras" served as leaven to leaven the whole lump. This is why so many ex-members struggle to differentiate what is healthy "bread from heaven," and what is not.

Another sad fact is this -- the ministry of TC is also loaded with "extras."