Who Is Bill Mallon? (For Those Who Don't Know)

[Jane C Anderson]

Bill Mallon was one of the three leading brothers (Bill Mallon, John Ingalls, and James Barber) in Elden Hall (in Los Angeles) in the earliest years of the Local Church movement in the USA (1960s). Bill went to be with the Lord in May of 2019. Here is a link to a memorial thread about Bill on the Local Church Discussions forum:  Bill Mallon’s passing.

If memory serves me well, before coming to the Local Church, Bill and his wife Barbara worked with Wycliffe Bible translators. In the Local Church, Bill worked faithfully alongside Witness Lee until the time of the 1987 “rebellion” when he eventually found no other recourse in standing for truth, but to resign from being a co-worker of Witness Lee. Three letters that Bill wrote to Lee at that time have been public for some time. (There is a link to these letters on the “Bill Mallon’s passing thread” [link above].) He was later quarantined by Witness Lee and other Living Stream Ministry leaders.

Although John (my husband) and I heard Bill speak a number of times at Local Church conferences, we did not meet Bill in person until after we had been out of the Local Church for several years. (Our meeting was also after Bill had been quarantined by Witness Lee.) There is a somewhat humorous account in The Thread of Gold (p. 267) of the first time we met Bill and Barbara, under the subheading “Hotel Plano.” In that account, Bill’s pseudonym was “Mark.” After that first visit, Bill came to see us in Plano a few other times. We visited him in Anaheim twice. It was during one of the Anaheim visits (late 2006 or early 2007) that Bill told us (my son, Matt, and me) about his handwritten notes. Bill loaned them to us at that time so that we could make photocopies of them for safekeeping.

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