Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Date: October 27, 2018 02:11PM
I took my typical hiatus from this forum and today I had this urge to log on to catch up. Talk about timing. One of the first messages I saw was from Onion regarding Shalom's FB post, "Letter to The Living Word Fellowship". I quickly logged onto FB to read. I read all the letters and then comments coming in from so many familiar names.
Here are some of my thoughts:
Shalom: I remember you telling me about this many years ago, however, it was more vague. I was gut wrenched reading all the details. My heart sunk, and sunk and then sunk more. Feelings of disgust, anger, sadness, and complete outrage overwhelmed me as I read, thus pulling back my own memories... some of the very reasons I left TLWF.
I applaud you for your courage; standing for rightness, You are amazing Shalom and I believe you and support you 100%.
As for some of the posts, i.e. pastors wives and select others, I cannot help but wonder the authenticity of the posts, are the comments genuine, or are they posting out of fear that they have blood on their hands due to the fact that they all knew what was going on and swept it under the carpet to protect Marilyn's Son? I don't know the true answer to this, but our Heavenly Father does! This being said, below is a short version of my thoughts:
Sexual grooming is control! Something that TLWF was / is so, so good at!
Sexual Control
Mind Control
Serve your Shepherd / D.R. Control
Clean my House Control
Work at the Church Control
Build / Remodel my Home Control
Build a Kingdom for Rick / Gary / Marilyn Control
Submit to the Brothers Control
Take Abuse Control
You Cant'Date / Marry Him / Her Control
You Can / Cant have a Pet Control
AND... the list goes on and on and on!
The bottom line, control is control and all that have been involved on a Shepherding level, or Authority level need to be accountable for the damage inflicted on so many wonderful people, those that gave their lives serving wholeheartedly; serving those that were not worthy!
I will conclude by quoting a portion of kBOY's words:
No matter how glorious the 'word' extrapolated from the scriptures, it will never be enough to offset the actions of lives lived in contradiction to it.
May our Heavenly Father continue to guide us, expose the lies and hiding and give us the strength to move forward in righteousness before him.
Love & Light