6-year legal battle against
Harvest House concludes

    EUGENE — The U.S. Supreme Court recently brought an end to The Local Church’s six–year, $136 million legal battle against Eugene-based Harvest House Publishers and authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon.
   The Local Church and Living Stream Ministry was appealing a January 2006 Texas appellate court ruling in favor of Harvest House. After the appellate decision, The Local Church requested a rehearing, which was denied in June. The Texas Supreme Court also rejected the case twice.
    The Local Church complained that the Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions defamed them by accusing them — and all the other groups in the book — of crimes such as murder, rape, and drug smuggling. The Texas appellate court ruled that “nothing in the book singles out The (Local) Church as having committed (those actions).”

   The libel suit was filed by Living Stream Ministry and the Local Church in late 2001. Based in Anaheim, Calif., Living Stream Ministry publishes the writings of the late Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.
    The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of The Local Church’s petition means the Texas appellate ruling is upheld.
    Shelby Sharpe, lead attorney for Harvest House and its authors, stated, “The Texas appellate court correctly applied well-established law to the facts of this case in reaching its decision. The position taken by The Local Church would have created a totally subjective standard for interpreting written or spoken language — a standard that would have threatened all media communications.”
   “We wrote our book to ‘speak the truth in love’ from a Christian perspective,” said authors Ankerberg and Weldon in a statement. “No matter what has transpired the past six years, we continue to pray for and care about the members of The Local Church. We encourage them to be spiritually discerning by comparing their leaders’ teachings to those of the Bible.”
   “We are grateful beyond words,” said Harvest House president Bob Hawkins, Jr., “to those many individuals, organizations, and associations who understood this case and its significance, and who stood with us by offering their legal support, encouragement, and especially their prayers through this very long and arduous battle.
   “Beyond all this, we are especially thankful to God for His faithfulness.”
     In a statement issued after the High Court decision, spokesmen for Living Stream Ministry and the Local Church said the High Court decision “sets a dangerous precedent.”
     It continued, “There is no court ruling at any level that has substantiated or validated even one word published in (the Encyclopedia) concerning Living Stream Ministry or the Local Churches.”
     The statement also claimed that in the past several years, many qualified Christian researchers and theologians have carefully investigated Living Stream Ministry and the Local Church and have “expressed their belief in both our Christian orthodoxy and practice.” Among them, they said, are Fuller Theological Seminary, Christian Research Institute, Answers in Action, and The Institute for the Study of American Religion.