I was being a little sarcastic, or at least, satirical when I compared marriage checkouts with animal husbandry. By the way, you could certainly add arranged marriages to that, I had forgotten those. But if you really think about it, how much concern did the "shepherds" have for the happiness of the "sheep" when they decided who should marry who? In animal husbandry, the OWNERS of the ANIMALS which SHEEP will mate with which SHEEP, for the financial advancement of the owners, not for the health and well being of the sheep.
Really, what was the motivation behind the marriage checkouts, and of any 'strongly' suggested marriage arrangement? Was it not so that the SHEEP would make pair of followers that would produce a litter of more followers, family units that enforce the ideals of the Living Word Fellowship upon one another, keeping one another in line, twenty four hours a day? Or was it that they believed that they had the spiritual maturity to help the members of the church have a higher quality life?
I hope there are Living Word "sheperds" reading this, it would be nice if they would question their own motives.
As I said before, I have a friend that stayed in Living Word all of these years. When our local church broke up, one of the families moved to another church and stayed. When I knew the man thirty years ago he formed thought out opinions, he had a pretty strong knowledge of the scriptures, a very logical person. Talking to him now is much different. The walk talk is there, the walk vision is there. I believe it is very subtle, how the members just seem to grow into a mold, and stay there. I wonder how many people there have sat in their seats and taken notes of what is said at the pulpit, and never after all this time, realized that what is said is only carefully extracted partial truths.
It is a shame that people who sought a relationship with the Lord, ended up knuckling under someone with an agenda, it's a shame that these people that wanted to support the Kingdom of God, just spent their time and money to supply several mansions to greedy double talkers. I can not fathom such a loss of life.
Really, what was the motivation behind the marriage checkouts, and of any 'strongly' suggested marriage arrangement? Was it not so that the SHEEP would make pair of followers that would produce a litter of more followers, family units that enforce the ideals of the Living Word Fellowship upon one another, keeping one another in line, twenty four hours a day? Or was it that they believed that they had the spiritual maturity to help the members of the church have a higher quality life?
I hope there are Living Word "sheperds" reading this, it would be nice if they would question their own motives.
As I said before, I have a friend that stayed in Living Word all of these years. When our local church broke up, one of the families moved to another church and stayed. When I knew the man thirty years ago he formed thought out opinions, he had a pretty strong knowledge of the scriptures, a very logical person. Talking to him now is much different. The walk talk is there, the walk vision is there. I believe it is very subtle, how the members just seem to grow into a mold, and stay there. I wonder how many people there have sat in their seats and taken notes of what is said at the pulpit, and never after all this time, realized that what is said is only carefully extracted partial truths.
It is a shame that people who sought a relationship with the Lord, ended up knuckling under someone with an agenda, it's a shame that these people that wanted to support the Kingdom of God, just spent their time and money to supply several mansions to greedy double talkers. I can not fathom such a loss of life.