NancyB wrote:
Where do we go from here? Perhaps we can help the future to learn from our past. I believe our discussions on this forum matter and will be valuable in the future.

I believe that as well. Otherwise, I would not participate in the discussion here. As it has been said often, if you don't learn from the past, you're bound to repeat it.
Here is an excerpt of a post by 'reveal,' from September of 2018:

Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: reveal
Date: September 02, 2018

TLWF uses manipulation, coercion and emotional blackmail to convince members to accept things that under normal circumstances they would find totally unacceptable. They have created a culture of fear and intimidation, in which they threaten to ostracize those who question or disparage their decisions and mandates. Brainwashing or not, TLWF exercises extreme psychological abuse and control to manipulate members into bending to their will. They deceive good people who are either too naive or too afraid to question extremely questionable behavior by leadership.

Additionally, no organization truly representative of God would do any of the following:

1. Separate people from their biological families because said families have negative opinions about the church.

2. Encourage couples to divorce when one decides to leave the church and the other does not wish to.

3. Fire longtime loyal employees and pastors who dare question anything that Rick or Gary & Marilyn does, and then withhold severance pay unless they sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Clearly, they have much to hide.

4. Command submission of every decision in people's lives to include dating, marriage, having children, where to live, what job to take, to go to University or not, etc. and if people decide not to submit these things, to at a minimum withdraw affection and ostracize them from their church family, or disparage their character, make a pariah out of them, gossip about them and accuse them of *GASP*...an independent spirit. And these are only the least of what I've seen done.

5. Demand unquestioning allegiance to the leaders and place loyalty to them above any other relationship in your life or any sense of right and wrong.

6. Protect and keep in positions of authority a leader who has perpetrated multiple acts of sexual misconduct and harassment and abused church finances for his own personal enjoyment, and expect members to just accept it, while members themselves are held to a much higher standard.

I could go on..

If it walks like a cult and talks like a cult it must be a . . .

Posts from July of 2013:

Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: larry bobo
Date: July 15, 2013 07:41PM

Thank you Sierra for sharing your story. TLWF has obviously had a deep impact on your life and your overcoming is an encouragement to others. I knew your parents but was not close to them. Thanks also for your openness and honesty to share very personal areas of your life without the veil of a fictitious username - I know many others will know your family and your story will have much more impact. Many who have once belonged to TLWF and suffered in silence have started to to reach out for help - they just don't want to do it in a public forum. I'm sure you will be a help to them - especially those your age. I so agree with you - " There's a LOT of great, amazing people in the Body, so let's pray the blinders are taken off and that they see things for what they are and become set free."

Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: paleface ()
Date: July 15, 2013 08:01PM

I'd like to repeat what was said before. If you leave the Living Word church and have a great life, they will say "see how easy it is to live when you leave the front line of God's army." And if you leave the church and have rough times, they will say "see what happened to him (or her) when they left the covering of divine order." See, they got you either way. It's a classic mind-control trick.

But Sierra said it well. If you leave, there will be NO LIGHTNING striking you down. In fact, a lot of us that have left have talked and traded stories. The vast majority of opinion is this: Life is great out here. It's a big, wide world and the people in it are for the most part, wonderful and loving. We do not regret leaving for one single second !!!!!!

B O B O

Amazing people EVERYWHERE.

P A L E

Easy = withdrawal
Rough = rebellion

What was promised to be a garden was actually a prison. Life is much larger on the outside.

Asking for a friend. I would google for myself but I don’t even know what to google because I threw all LWF literature in the dump years ago.

Does anyone know where I can find (or have links) to original sources for writings that JRS plagiarized? To be a Christian? To every man that asketh?

I woke up wrote:
"I threw all LWF literature in the dump years ago."
I laughed after reading this line.

"Does anyone know where I can find (or have links) to original sources for writings that JRS plagiarized? To be a Christian? To every man that asketh?"
I don't--but someone who participates in this forum must know.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2020 03:46AM by changedagain.

Larry or 'Paleface' might know:

Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: larry bobo
Date: September 06, 2014 06:41PM

Paleface said, “I had read that too. “The First Principles" were (so we were told) given to John from God as some new revelation. I understand that nearly all of it was already out there as Latter Rain teaching. John had merely collected it into one book and called it his own. Seems a bit like biblical plagiarism to me.”

I think there was definite plagiarism – I’m not sure how biblical it was. I posted a lot of info on the Latter Rain on Factnet. Here’s some basic Latter Rain teachings and you decide if there is any similarities to TLWF: The Latter Rain, Restoration of the Church, Restoration of the five-fold ministries, Pre-rapture spiritual second coming of Christ, New revelation and prophesies, Manifestation of the sons of God, Overcoming death before Christ’s return, Dominion now theology and spiritual warfare, Mainstream Christianity referred to as “old order” or Babylon, Personal ministry with words from God from leaders to congregants, Emphasis of Feast of Tabernacles, Manchild doctrine, Joel’ army and militancy, Deeper levels of revelation including altered states of consciousness, Incarnation of Christ in a many-membered body, Spiritual evolution to perfection, Divine order, Enforced unity, Shepherding, Father/son mentoring etc, etc. The only original LWF teaching was that John was the Door Opener Apostle to the kingdom and Marilyn was the Lamp of Israel.

I’ve heard many say that it only shows God was speaking the same thing to many groups. It might be good for those in TLWF to be aware that one of Martha’s family members emailed me to say that after Martha died, they carted boxes of John’s Latter Rain tapes out of the house. In John’s case, I would suggest God was “speaking” to him through those tapes instead of directly in the remodeled chicken coup as we were led to believe. I’ve talked with several national leaders in the body of Christ who noticed how the Latter Rain movement and its spin-off groups started in what appeared to be a genuine move of God. After a number of year though, the fruit was very destructive. TLWF is no exception.

Posts by 40yearsin2016, Puddington and Cloudwatcher also mention that his teachings were not original:

Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: 40yearsin2016 ()
Date: January 21, 2019 03:29PM

Talking about alcoholics...

A few years after I'd left the walk, in the mid-80's or so I think, I looked up Winston Nunes, the famous layer on of hands from JRS's Latter Rain days in the event in Seattle that supposedly began JRS's unique revelations (later we found out he'd plagiarized most of it from a variety of sources, especially Latter Rain). Rev Nunes was still alive and preaching. and I as I remember he had jet black hair while in his 80's (what's up with evangelical preacher's and their hair color). I joined the congregation for a season, but being so PTSD over the Walk, I never got up the nerve to ask Nunes if he remembered JRS.

Anyway, I distinctly remember one sermon Nunes was talking about substance abuse (don't remember why). He talked about aggressive and charismatic evangelical preachers he had known over the years, "preaching 8 - 10 times in a week, sometimes 4 - 5 times on a Sunday", he commented that no human being could keep up that kind of pace without chemical support, either cocaine or alcohol. The whole thing stuck with me because I couldn't help thinking he was talking about JRS... I'd heard rumors but never knew for sure... imagine that..


Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: Cloudwatcher ()
Date: November 14, 2018 04:47PM

puddington Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don’t recall where I read this but apparently
> JRS plagiarized from a lot of other Latter Rain
> teaching. Nearly all of the First Principles were
> stolen from someone else. No wonder we were told
> not to “drink from other fountains”. He didn’t
> want us discovering how unoriginal his “apostolic
> word” was.

Then there is this:

www.georgewarnock.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2020 04:24AM by changedagain.

This partial post is shared here with permission from the author. It was shared by a friend in the private Facebook group The Living Word Fellowship Survivor's Stories in 2018:

"Then my husband, while doing research for a book on a little known literary movement, found this from a speech by George Herron in 1892:

“To be a Christian according to Christ means, first and always, the unreserved surrender of self to him as Master, for him to do with as he wills. The call to be a Christian, or a better Christian, is a summons to be no more your own man but Christ’s self-renounced man; to dedicate your life with all its powers and possessions, your occupations and energies, to the righteousness to which Christ dedicated himself; to live among your associates, in whatever sphere of life you move, in your church and out of it, for the very same end that Christ lived . . . To live a Christian life means, in the real sense, the giving of your whole course of procedure to the direction of Jesus as your living King” (The Call of the Cross 22).

"Does that sound familiar to anyone but me? It was a shock to the gut, but I hope that knowledge--the knowledge that one of the best "words" that came out of TLW was not original to JRS--will help me more fully to free myself of the superiority complex I have had in relation to what I have perceived TLWF to have in terms of God's word."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2020 06:53AM by Reepicheep.

Changed,

Thanks for the link. [www.georgewarnock.com]

"The Feast of Tabernacles" looks exceedingly familiar. I believe it was printed in 1951, I'm pretty sure that the JRS version was several years after that.