My Open Letter Regarding "The Lord's Recovery" (June 12, 2025)

To Anyone To Whom this Matters,

I love God. I love the Bible. I love all believers. I believe when and where there is love, in deed and in truth, there is no division, no sin, and no abuse. When and where there is a breach in fellowship, this signals a problem in our love that needs to be quickly and scripturally repaired, through honest confession, true repentance, and gracious forgiveness, so that we can have fellowship with God and with one another, based on His Word. Only then, in love, we can be built up as His church.

Ephesians 4:14-16 (ESV): “...So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro

by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by

craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in

every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and

held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working

properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

As I reflected on a letter I read last night, written by a brother whose last name is Anderson,

who was once in the Church in Washington, D.C., a letter of apology and of farewell dated

March 19, 1979, it came to me that I have never written an open letter. Today, as I got

acupuncture and ran errands, I continued to reflect on several open letters I have read and

shared on Youtube, letters that spoke to my heart and helped to bring clarity and to heal some wounds. Letters that inform me that I am not alone in the agony I have felt related to the Christian community in which I was raised.

I feel obligated to write my own open letter at this time. To do so requires every truth I have

assimilated my entire life. To do so requires I employ every skill I have acquired as a

Linguistics major and as an English teacher. To do so requires God Himself to do what I

otherwise could never do. To write a letter that adequately yet succinctly communicates why a letter needs to be written at all is a daunting but necessary task.

I was born to parents who consecrated their lives and all they had (which was very little, but

not the least of which was their marriage and growing family) to a real and living God. During a devotional family time, when I was around 3 years old, I received the Lord Jesus into me. I remember it vividly. Since then, I knew without a doubt that Jesus lives in me, and I have loved Him my whole life. I loved listening to the Gaither Trio on vinyl records, and tears would stream down my face as I sang to the Lord - “Something beautiful, something good, all my confusion, He understood. All I had to offer Him were brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful of my life.” And I remember singing for my whole neighborhood to hear - “Let’s get all excited, go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King! ....Jesus Christ is STILL the King of Kings!”

And one of the sweetest sentiments I remember from a very young age was a ceaseless, keen awareness that as God’s child, I have family - God’s family - all over the globe and throughout all the generations - so many dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

When my parents found Christians who met as “The Church in Seattle” when I was 5, they had been seeking oneness with ALL believers. Convicted by Watchman Nee’s book The Normal Christian Church Life, they wanted to leave any organization or system that was in any way divided from any believers. They believed they found it, when they found believers who meet as Christians were called in the Bible - the church in whatever city they lived. I always explained it to friends: “We don’t want to divide ourselves from any believer. Every believer is part of the same church, the one Body of Christ. We just don’t want to take any name, so we just meet as the church in a city like they did in the Bible. But every believer in the city is just as much a member of the church in that city.” Something like that.

Fastforwarding through several years, I grew up mostly in the Northwest until I was 13. One

night when I was 12, seated on a hard bench near a large campfire at a children’s camp,

Camp Parsons, Ted Williamson shared with tears about how most or all of his childhood

friends had left the church, and that he remained. He credited that to his habit of reading God’s Word every day. That night, I vowed to read God’s word everyday. I found the verse true - that we long for the milk of the Word if we taste that the Lord is good. I loved reading my Bible, and the promise attached to it, that doing so would help me never leave the church.

My family moved to Anaheim in 1984 just before I started 8th Grade. We lived with the Knoch family (Al and Charlene and their 5 children) for a period of time, a very normal household where I was deeply cared for. In Seattle I had felt like my family was excluded from the heart of the church life. We were outsiders - never really fitting in with the clearly more spiritual families who mostly lived on the same street - Bagley Avenue. I remember as a child in Seattle, hearing my parents talking in the front seat of our little Datsun, that they had invited a church elder and his family to our home. That elder had been the person through whom my parents found “the church.” The elder and his wife had declined the invitation. I heard my dad say he was told that elders have to be careful who they spend time with. It was different in Anaheim.

In Anaheim, we lived with a church elder, and we were not treated with inferiority, but rather

with at least as much love and care as anyone else. My sweet sentiment I always felt, even in

Seattle, was confirmed - I am a child of God, and my loving family is indeed unspeakably

precious, wonderful and vast - all over the world. At Ball Junior High and then at Loara High

School, I was fine whenever I was physically alone. I knew, invisibly, I was surrounded by my

family of faith - all the believers in Christ.

I began to serve in the Living Stream Ministry when I was in Junior High, wanting to help

people all over the world be able to enjoy what I was enjoying - the expounded Word of God that I believed was open to us like never before and like nowhere else. I attended every

possible church meeting and “ministry meetings” (where Witness Lee would speak). I

voraciously took notes and absorbed every life-giving morsel of God’s Word.

My parents never wavered from loving God and loving ALL people. They loved every believer in Christ in a special way - as their brothers and sisters and as loving the One we can’t see by loving those whom He indwells.

In my teenage years, I would go to every semiannual training possible. I believe my first

training was the Life-Study of Acts. It was typical for young people my age, especially in

Anaheim, to get special permission. We were encouraged to strive, like Jacob, for the birthright - attending those trainings. We studied the Conclusion of the New Testament, and then the God-ordained Way. “The New Way brings forth the New Man, the New Man Walks on the New Way,” we sang and declared.

Witness Lee and the churches became very focused on this New Way, and the Fulltime

Trainings in Taipei and then in Irving were formed. Young adults would pass through Anaheim’s pre-training, to go to Taipei for the Full-Time Training in Taiwan. I remember seeing some of the young adults I loved in my childhood years in Seattle, including Ted Williamson and Scott Fisher and Hallie Williamson and Chris and Kim Siegel - all who cared for us young ones in various ways. Then I would hear that after the FTTT, some of the young adults lost heart and were no longer meeting. I deeply wondered about this, but was thankful that Hallie and Ted and some others seemed to make it through unscathed.

I attended door-knocking trainings and began to go out regularly with door-knocking partners, all around the Orange County area, especially in and around Anaheim. We would sing a gospel song to the tune of “It’s a Small World” outside of people’s homes, and if they opened their door, we would treat them as Sons of Peace and begin praying and, if at all possible - and if you have enough faith, it IS possible - even running their bathtub water for their pending baptisms. We would record our numbers of doors knocked on, doors opened, people who prayed, people baptized, people with whom we set up a home meeting..... This was much of my life as a young teenager.

In 1987, I went to Taipei twice - in the spring break and in the summer. In my spring break, I

was fondled on my breasts, as well as my waist and upper thighs, by Philip Lee, the revered

manager of the Living Stream Ministry. I distinctly smelled hard liquor and tobacco on his

breath as he measured my dimensions. I was uncomfortable and confused, and told the older sister there, Naomi Hunt, “This is awkward,” looking into her eyes - which seemed to share my discomfort. But he finished measuring me, and I remained undeterred in my love for the Lord and for all the believers, including Philip Lee, who I regarded as a leader among us. When I returned home to Anaheim, before my Junior year in high school during which I believed we would gospelize our whole school through Youth Propogation Groups, I remember overhearing my parents talking in the kitchen - my dad was saying that he had talked with Philip, and it was not true. I wasn’t sure if my dad was talking about what Philip did to me. I had belittled it, chalking it up to yet another occasion that my sister and friends would have teased me about if I told them, that I am just too sensitive.

After the summer young people’s trainings in Taipei and then in Irving, Texas in 1987, things

began to change. Personally, I got a job at Disneyland where I spent much of my weekends

and breaks. But identifying as a “Flying Fiery Future Full-timer” who with my vital companions was going to “revolutionize the world” - lyrics from a song in the Irving YP Training - I continued following what I believed to be, because I frequently heard references to, “God’s New Testament Economy” and “God’s unique ministry on the earth” - meaning the ministry of Witness Lee (and before him, Watchman Nee - all that was printed and sold by Living Stream Ministry).

But there was something wrong. I didn’t know the details. I was told the enemy was attacking

the God-Ordained Way because it would bring the Lord back. I was told that brothers were

becoming rebellious due to their unfulfilled ambitions and unforgiven offenses. I heard dear

believers being told to sit down in meetings, and continuing to stand and speak while others

called on the Lord loudly to drown them out. My dad would encourage me to rest after my

Disneyland shifts and not to go to church meetings - a huge paradigm shift that had never

occurred in my entire life. Most of the young people’s serving ones, and eventually the English- speaking elders, stopped meeting with “the church in Anaheim,” including Al Knoch who was like a father to me, and Godfred Otuteye and John Ingalls, who had always spoken the truth faithfully and who had livings and testimonies in their daily life - that I had personally witnessed for years - that matched what they spoke. It was a very dark and confusing time.

This will get far too long if I go into too much detail - I intended this to be a letter, not a book; I do hope to write a book about these experiences in more detail soon.

Let’s fast forward again. In my senior year, I took a spring break trip to Texas, and decided to

attend to UT Austin, where there wasn’t fighting in the meetings, like there had been for almost 2 years in Anaheim by that time. After that visit to Texas, I went to an Anaheim Lord’s Table meeting, and heard a letter read from Witness Lee, that Gene Gruhler and Francis Ball were going to return to Anaheim to replace the elders who had resigned. In that meeting, I decided to stay in Southern California, and to attend UCLA, believing the “storm” in “The Lord’s Recovery” was ending,

I could say much about my college years, but mainly I would say that I was 100% given to the

church life, and set on fulfilling my vow to go to the Fulltime Training, now (by that time) in

Anaheim, after I graduated. That’s all I knew for my life - I wanted to be a living sacrifice and

serve the Lord any way He called me for all of my life.

I attended the FTTA from August 1993 to June 1995. The day I started the training was, if I

remember correctly, exactly 10 years to the day after I had committed to read the Bible every

day of my life, writing my vow in a Bible in August 1983 at Camp Parsons. I felt the Lord had

preserved me all those years by His Word.

The day I graduated from the FTTA, I had started the day wondering if a brother would

approach me related to marriage. I had a growing care for a particular brother who had been

on my team and who had a severe blood disease. I hoped the care (love?) was mutual. I read

a part of a Life-Study that morning before my graduation, about how Rebecca was brought to Isaac and was absolute that she would go with the servant, and marry Isaac, and how sisters should be absolute. So it was set. If there was mutual interest, that brother would be my Isaac and I would be his Rebecca. No more questions. No being wishy-washy. Be absolute.

The interest was mutual, we spent a few months “courting” and then a few months engaged,

and then we were married on December 17, 1995. Although there had been some painful and concerning interactions, I was absolute, based on that Life-Study. And I believed God brought us together. And I still believe that. I believe God is sovereign and that our children were known and loved by God since the foundation of the world. But I have also learned some important - invaluable - lessons.

My husband and I served together in our beginning years, and then he went to graduate

school, for which we moved back to the UCLA area. I served on a campus team until I had two children, and it seemed impractical to serve on the campus in the same way anymore. When both children were in school, I wished I could serve on the campus again, but didn’t seem to fit that role anymore, so I began to teach elementary school. I am still teaching to this day - now middle school.

My husband finished a Masters degree, and then began to work. After about 15 years of

working, he began to serve more as a trainer at the Fulltime Training in Anaheim, and by then he had become an elder in the church in Los Angeles, and a board member of the church, as well. He also shared at various conferences in other parts of the country.

So why this letter? What happened?

This is what happened. Everything scriptural and godly I had ever learned began to be

violated, in my marriage, in my extended family among my in-laws, and then in my broader

church community. I began to face various ungodly treatment I had experienced at the hands of various leaders in the community, from Philip Lee to my own husband, to senior coworkers from whom I desperately sought help.

My dad passed away in 2017, and shortly before his death, he had asked me if Philip Lee had

ever touched me inappropriately. I have always been honest, and had to say, Yes, though I

knew it would hurt my dad’s heart that not only his daughter had been molested, but also that he had been lied to by the perpetrator. My dad asking me that gave me permission to begin to face that, which led to facing other forms of abuse.

The marital abuse became untenable. For some of the details, you can read my book, The

Games, available on Amazon. In short, I was no longer permitted to be in my home, and the

family I had married into began to treat me as if I had no human rights, and eventually like I

didn’t exist and that it was better for my husband if I didn’t exist, except to be a nominal wife so that he could maintain his marital status for the sake of his “service” in the church.

In my desperation, I began to be helped through therapy to understand various toxic dynamics, both in marriage and in families and in faith communities. I began to read from experts, and I began to read fellow survivors’ stories and, yes, open letters. And I began to feel increasingly indebted to share what I was learning, as I found that I was sadly, far from alone in experiencing abuse in “The Lord’s Recovery.” Victims of dupicitous leaders who were both revered and ungodly, were becoming innumerable.

I met and spoke with some of those victims, labeled as “opposers” by leaders in “The Lord’s

Recovery.” I became anathema to people who had been those precious brothers and sisters in Christ whom I had treasured from my earliest memories as a child and young believer.

So here is my open letter’s main statement section:

I love Jesus. I love the Bible. I love all believers. I believe that love makes us truly ONE. I also

believe that love prohibits abuse. I believe that love rejoices with truth, and that we cannot love one another and be one while tolerating lies. We cannot be one and allow fellow brothers and sisters to be blistered by the beatings of cruel shepherds. If we don’t confront cruelty upon our awareness of it, we are complicit. The cruelty and lies have been pervasive among leadership in what is called “The Lord’s Recovery.”

I also believe in what my parents were seeking when they found “the Church in Seattle” -

oneness of all believers. Jesus prayed for this. He also said the Father seeks those who would worship in spirit and truthfulness. I believe as we meet with believers in spirit and truthfulness, we keep the oneness of the Spirit. I believe that any other teaching or practice, including “ground of locality,” can actually divide believers. Only spirit and truthfulness work in keeping all believers one with one another.

There is a semi-annual training coming up. Thousands will gather. Thousands more will pay to watch the livestream or recordings. Perhaps, like Jo Casteel, in either name or by indirect

reference, I will be called leprous for my own open letter, six years after hers. Perhaps, like

Steve Isitt, I will be called someone “of death” as he has been publicly accused of being, by a leader who also said in a radio episode that God hates death more than sin. I may be labeled as having unfulfilled ambitions or unforgiven offenses, as John Ingalls and others were falsely accused of having when I was a teenager.

I ask you, what does your conscience testify? What does your spirit say? Please don’t say that

you have a sense of discomfort, so that is death, so this is all death and you have to avoid

death, so avoid everything and anything that makes you uncomfortable. Change is rarely

comfortable. Love and truth are often inconvenient, and may even be painful. Excruciating at

times. Choose love and truth anyway. Always.

What does your logical, God-given mind - which is hopefully renewed; hopefully Christ has

made home in it and it is the mind of Christ - what does that mind say? If I am rebellious and

leprous and “of death” that God hates so much, why do you say that? Because I am not covering up works of darkness, bur rather exposing them? Is it because I am speaking out

publicly - which the Bible tells us to do if an elder is sinning, based on multiple witnesses?

Silence is complicity. Please read A Church Called Tov, in which the authors explain the need

for some to speak out publicly when other efforts fail.

What does the Bible say?

I know before the Lord and before ALL who care, that my ambition is ONLY to please the Lord, to be faithful to Him, to keep His Word. I love my husband and my children, but neither I nor my children can sustain limitless mistreatment in an environment that is meant to be a home, humanly or spiritually. No one should be abused in their physical home and by those to whom they are biologically or legally related. And no one should be abused in their spiritual home, their church, by those to whom they are spiritually related.

God’s Word MUST be obeyed, and not be weaponized. God requires of us, according to His

unchanging Word, 'only to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God” (Micah 6:8).

So, as I started this letter, I will end it.

I love God. I love the Bible. I love all believers. I believe when and where there is love, in deed and in truth, there is no division, no sin, and no abuse. When and where there is a breach in fellowship, this signals a problem in our love that needs to be quickly and scripturally repaired, through honest confession, true repentance, and gracious forgiveness, so that we can have fellowship with God and with one another, based on His Word. Only then, in love, we can be built up as His church.

I hope this matters to you. I believe it matters to God, because His household matters to Him. His children matter to Him. The church matters to Him. All the believers, in oneness, matter to Him. Each believer matters, is precious, to Him. Love one another. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). “... have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.” (1 Peter 1:22). “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

Love in Truth,

Ruth Wise

Los Angeles, CA

P.S. Lest I be accused of, or actually fail by, offering only general statements, let me list some

of the specific matters to which I am referring when I say, “Everything scriptural and godly I had ever learned began to be violated, in my marriage, in my extended family among my in-laws, and then in my broader church community.”

These are merely a few examples:

1. There is rampant idolatry in “The Lord’s Recovery” - honoring, loving, guarding and uplifting specific people over others, and even above God and His Word.There is partiality. I can give specific examples upon request.

2. There have been many lies told, in print, from podiums, and among people in the Lord’s

Recovery. One example - but again, there are MANY - are the words spoken and printed by

Witness Lee, and the “supporting” accounts given, in The Fermentation of the Present

Rebellion that never once mention Philip Lee, though he was a common denominator among all those called “rebellious” - all of them had expressed valid concerns related to Philip Lee’s immorality and of his coercive control tactics, which are documented by multiple witnesses. Lies include denials of truth, silence when asked regarding matters of importance to members, omission of relevant information, commission of untrue statements, exxaggerations, and unfounded accusations.

3. Believers fail to verify claims made about a victim/whistleblower, but they rather believe a

leading (more “powerful”) one who states false claims. The position of a leader is regarded

rather than facts of a case.

4. The violation of many marriages by treating a husband and a wife as separate parties during marital crises, and/or by ignoring pleas for help in cases of abuse of a spouse, which could be verified by multiple witnesses. Again, #3 applies, where in many cases, the husband (and even his family) is believed over the wife, without ascertaining the facts.

5. Brothers and sisters have been cut off from fellowship SIMPLY for expressing godly and

scriptural concerns. They are then smeared with half-truths and/or with blatant lies, to justify

their banishment.

6. Churches are not recognized as legitimate, “genuine” local churches if they do not subscribe to the Living Stream Ministry.

7. For decades, transparency of financial “donations” and offerings has been severely lacking, and failed businesses conducted using believers’ donations and investments have damaged many families’ financial stability. In spite of their losses, the Lee family succeeded in amassing extensive wealth before Witness Lee and then Philip Lee died.

8. There is sectarianism, by definition, practiced by “The Lord’s Recovery” while leaders and

members claim to be non-denominational, non-sectarian, and one with ALL believers.

9. There are many cases of sexual assault and sexual impropriety that have victimized

believers and have been covered up and denied.

10. Twisting of Scriptures to justify (or cover up) sinfulness and ungodliness of leaders, while

also using Scriptures to condemn and accuse godly members.

Again, specific examples can be provided for each point, if needed toward repentance

and reconciliation of members in God’s family.