From one recover(ing) Streetcar member to another: Welcome, and it's gladdening to hear your honest testimony.
When you mentioned 'highest ranking elder' I immediately thought of Vic 'the Vicious Hall' Hall. And yes... your testimony of being in a church that was once wonderful and a good place to be, that later transformed into a loveless, hopeless and overall unpleasant place resonates well with my own experience. It is truly sad to watch a good church head down the slippery path into corruption and dictatorship just because one man (or one man and his few chosen lackeys) decides to play God.
With my exit from RFI, my eyes were opened and I saw so many things that I could never have possibly noticed before. One of the most painful to watch was the gradual departure of the presence of the Holy Spirit from the churches in RFI. Whereas in my childhood I remember church being electrified by the presence of the Holy Spirit... by the time of my butchering at the hands of Vic 'the Vicious Hall' Hall, services and prayer had by and large become much more ceremonial and less spiritual - again, this being an incredibly sorrowing matter to me.
The good news, however, is that with people like you and I once being active in the church, and having seen all the damage this current 'leadership' (I can scarce bring myself to even call it that - it's DICTATORSHIP, not leadership, that's what it is. I call a spade a spade indeed.
) is doing, we can testify. We can let the masses who are still mesmerised by Vic's yarns and fables know - wake up! That their beloved 'messenger' is nothing more than a farce, and their beloved 'lampstand' and a whole lot of those doctrines are nothing more than philosophical garbage, products of a deluded mind.
