Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
My point is that I do not believe that God would expect his people to consider such a flawed person, or any other person for that matter, as some kind of Minister of the Age. It just doesn't make any sense. It's always possible that someone God used greatly can go bad. So, how does one decide when that has happened? For the LR they have no answer, or their answer is the current leaders will tell you.
Really? That's it? We're supposed to follow this movement blindly because Lee decided he was MOTA and some other people believe it, too? And because of that alone we are supposed to consider any alternative service we give to God as second-rate, tainted and probably worthless?
Does anyone really think that's how God operates? But that is the crazy LR mentality.
Reason doesn't work with these people because the basis of their beliefs is not reasonable, it's a visceral ultimately fear-based thing.
|
You would think that LC'ers (
like myself) would have learned something from Papal history. Obviously the original leaders in the church in Rome, perhaps starting with Peter, were serious men of God. They loved God, His word, His people, and many suffered for this. Today they have a
papal lineage spanning 2 millennium. They were not all bad, especially in the beginning.
Yet Catholic Popes, Brethren Oracles, and Recovery MOTA's had at least two defining characteristics in common. Firstly, they and their minions thought more highly of themselves than the Bible ever permitted. Secondly, they used a distorted oneness of the body of Christ to squelch all opinion to the contrary.
As the Casteel's experience has reminded us, how far will we go to maintain this
distorted oneness? Every reformer in history faced this. Every LC'er faces this. How far does blind loyalty take us? How long do we reject the troubling of our conscience? How long do we remain silent in the face of hypocrisy? Obviously Lee's distorted views of oneness were a prison to enslave the minds of the saints.
Jo Casteel's story,
along with hundreds of others, shows us that it is the word of God and His Spirit in our conscience which alone safeguard the child of God. The Casteel's will probably lose their church social life, much like the Jewish believers during Jesus' time were cast out of the Synagogue, but is that not the cost of freedom? As one poster keeps telling us,
"Freedom is free. It's slavery that's so horribly expensive."