My Testimony: Olvin

[OBW]

Olvin,

It might be that Igzy's response to you here within your testimony was a poor choice of venue, but that does not make it incorrect.

And (this will sound funny to many coming from me) it may have been too blunt to achieve what he intended, but that does not make it incorrect.

Maybe the thing to do is to depersonalize the comments and read them again in terms of the things that you have been taught to believe for many years. To let his comments point to the ways that "the ministry" has hidden error behind a smokescreen of rhetoric that is actually not Christian and is in direct contradiction to the Bible that you have been taught you are following.

I have had a recent discussion with someone else concerning what I perceive as a system of error within the teachings of both Nee and Lee. It is a complex combination of real truth, highly charged terminology, special meanings for certain words (a private lexicon — that makes conversation with other Christians quite difficult), bandwagon thinking, an elevated status for "the ministry" so that we would not question or challenge things that should have set off significant red flags. All with the goal of placing Nee, then Lee, at the pinnacle of the local churches so that we would make such declarations that "even if he's wrong, he's right."

You may think you don't believe that. And you are probably being honest about it. But as you begin to peel away the errors, at some point, you will being to feel (as I have often felt) that you have been sold a bill of goods and didn't even realize it. No matter whether you think you are dumping everything Lee all at once or over time, you will find years later that some particular thing is still hanging on, and when you recognize it for what it is, your first thought will be "how could I have ever believed that." The answer is that we bought it one little bit hidden in an apparently healthy meal after another such meal. Eventually, we thought the Spam was Del Frisco steak and the jelly caviar. The garlic room that supposedly had Christianity befuddled was really right there in the meeting hall in "fill in the city name."

Let the bluntness of Igzy's words go on by you. Somehow we managed to switch roles this one time. I'm sure that neither of us will let it happen again.