Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Newbie at www.reformubf.org (former Chicago UBF)

(Originally posted on the discussion forum at reformubf.org ca. 2000 and later archived at http://www.voy.com/63135/2/19.html.)

Author: From Newbie at www.reformubf.org
Subject: Wounded by Samuel Lee

I am one of those many wounded by Samuel Lee during the over one decade I was in UBF. I know how much the devil hates humanity, and I believe Satan was using Samuel Lee and all my experiences in UBF to kill me and to turn me away from the Father. After years of counseling and prayer, my heart still breaks when I remember what I experienced and what I witnessed others experience. Samuel Lee did not know he was being used by Satan to hurt me. He was too disillusioned by his own self-perceived grandeur and self-deception that he was chosen by God to conquer the world. Have you ever read about totalitarian rulers around the world like Mao or Kim Il Sung or Hitler? I can't tell you how shocked I was when I first read about the Cultural Revolution in China and about how the North Koreans put on a nationwide "show" for their first Western visitors in the early 90s. I couldn't help thinking how similar the descriptions were to life in UBF. The forced confessions during the Cultural Revolution reminded me of the weekly sogams, where the worse your sins were the more spiritual you seemed. I remembered Samuel Lee forcing people to dress in certain ways, to eat certain foods, take on ridiculous names, go to certain schools, live in certain neighborhoods, marry specific people. I remembered how feelings and emotions were scorned as weaknesses and sinful (really a good tactic when you're trying to establish a cult--get the people to deny their feelings so that they can't recognize their own emotions, otherwise known as brainwashing). Being a person created by God with deep emotions, I can't tell you the damage that was done to me. To this day, I struggle to recognize what my actual emotional state is. It has taken years of counseling and prayer to allow myself to be emotional.

So what do I have to say about Samuel Lee and how he has hurt many, including myself? Intellectually and spiritually, I have to agree with Jimmy Rhee, who says that he pities and prays for Samuel Lee. In total honest emotional reaction, however, I have to confess that there are days when I ask the Lord to bash Samuel Lee's head against the rocks. I am not condoning this way of thinking. I am just being honest about how I really feel about Samuel Lee, who stole so much from me. Yet I know that it is the miracle of the cross that what was stolen will be given back to me and that everything will work out for the good of those who love God. However, I am weak and still sinful and sometimes still bitter. Okay, I am often still bitter. Still, there is the possibility that Samuel Lee will repent and I will have to spend eternity with him, although I personally wonder whether he hasn't rejected God entirely. By accepting God's call to follow Jesus, I know that the kingdom is now, and that I need God's mercy to melt my heart of stone towards Samuel Lee. I recognize that hating SL is sin and murderous. I still need much healing in this regard.

For those of you who are in UBF still, I urge you to follow Jesus, not Samuel Lee. Be totally honest with yourself. Are you doing what you are doing out of a desire to follow our Lord, or are you climbing the UBF corporate ladder? I truly believe that many in UBF genuinely love Jesus but are severely blinded spiritually because they have allowed someone else to dictate to them what and how they will believe. This breaks the Father's heart. He just wants us to love him as little children. Kids who have a healthy relationship with their parents are not afraid to crawl into their daddy's lap. This is what God wants, not all this back-breaking digging in the dirt in the back yard. Yes, we are called to the harvest, but we can do that from the lap of the Father. Apart from him we can do nothing.

Anyways, let me bring this to a close. I am a weak human being who has been severely wounded by Samuel Lee. However, I recognize that Samuel Lee may not have known that he was working for Satan as he was wounding me. Despite all the hurt, by the grace of my Father God, I say, let mercy triumph over justice. As huge as I perceive Samuel Lee's sin against me to be, how much greater has been my sin against God? And as he has forgiven my debts so freely, how can I not forgive this one man Samuel Lee? The power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the blood that Jesus shed free me from the fledgling power of Satan as experienced through those wounds inflicted on me by Samuel Lee and a score of others in UBF. I know that I don't have to wait until Jesus comes again or until I die and go to heaven to be healed and free. God is healing me now, day by day, because he loves me.

Nevertheless, I pray that Samuel Lee would stop his ministry of death and destruction because it's not helping anybody.

For those parents in UBF, I warn you to guard your children. Just because you are all supposedly servants of God, do not think that there are not those who will hurt your children emotionally, spiritually, physically and sexually when you're not watching. I have personally witnessed and experienced such abuse in UBF. Also, parents, remember that God gave you your children as a ministry. Your marriage and your children are ministry. Don't misinterpret scripture about hating your mother and brother and sister etc. That was another UBF tactic, and you know it! Think about the Father God and how he loves his children. Husbands, you are called to love your wives as Christ loves the church. That's a very high calling. I saw too much abuse during my years in UBF, even of husbands hitting their wives. That's illegal and God hates it too. Wives, remember that you are coheirs with Christ and that there is a difference between submission and subjugation.

May God heal the families in UBF, and those who were in UBF and are still broken as families because of their experiences in UBF.

And yet I know that God is in control. He knows what he is doing, and even Samuel Lee is subject to the sovereign will of God. So, Father, I ask in Jesus' Name that You would come
and heal me, heal us, bring freedom to your Church, not just to UBF, that we would live in, walk in, and minister in the Kingdom now by the power of the Holy Spirit, that Your will would reign here on earth in our lives. Amen.