Steve Lortz

I'm currently taking a first year Greek class, and we've finally gotten around to studying the use of participles in the Greek. While it can truly be said that Greek uses prepostions with a "mathematical exactness and a scientific precision"... much more so even, than the use of prepositions in English... the same thing cannot be said about the Greek use of participles. I dug out my old copy of "Fundamentals of Greek Research" by Walter J. Cummins. FoGR contains a few rudimentary items that are useful, such as how to use a concordance, the meanings of some of the most common prepositions, and a crude synopsis of Greek tenses, but for the most part FoGR uses examples of interpretation taken from PFAL, and reinforces those interpretations, even when the Greek does not necessarily do so. There was NO mention of participles. The closest is in a quote from page 21, "Other parts of speech and constructions are used just as precisely as the prepositions. The Greeks were a very mathematical people, and so was their language." That's just not true. The Greek thinking behind participles was so different from our way of thinking about participles, a direct translation of a participial phase into English usually doesn't make sense. Translating a participial phrase from Greek into English REQUIRES guesswork, informed by information from other parts of the sentence. Most of the big debates, about what particular passages from the New Testament mean, involve a participial phrase. The example our professor brought up spontaneously in class was Acts 19:2a, "He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" The phrase "since ye believed" is the translation of a single Greek participle, and could just a accurately be translated "when ye believed" or "because ye believed." Wierwille taught us that interpretation of the Bible has a degree of certainty which in truth, it does not have. Of course Wierwille's goal was for us to accept HIS interpretation as the only one having mathematical exactness and scientific presion. It had neither. Love, Steve

It strikes me that the amount of damage a cult can do to an individual's capacity for critical thinking is directly proportional to the individual's commitment to the cult. The more committed a person is to a cult, the less that person is willing to critically examine her or his own thinking. That's why every cult, not just TWI, but the offshoots, Amway, Mars Hill, etc., put such a premium on COMMITMENT! Commitment is usually elicited in a group setting that is highly charged with emotion. And once the commitment is made, it is BINDING FOREVER! God REQUIRES that we pay our vows! But a thoughtless (anoetos - "thoughtless" or "foolish", Galatians 3:1,3) commitment is just as much a sin as any other sin. Commitment is neither good nor evil in itself. Being committed to a good thing is right. Being committed to an evil thing is wrong. And God DOES NOT require us to fulfill commitments that are wrong. God expects us to REPENT of our unthinking commitment, and return to doing what is right. Love, Steve

Clueless... his brain is so fried, he doesn't have sense enough to be ashamed, as per Philippians 3:19, he is proud of things that he ought really to be ashamed of, as were we all in TWI. Love, Steve

This thread sure makes John Lynn look clueless when he writes "Please pray that God can bring us some wealthy people who will be thrilled to use their money to make known the truth of God's Word." Clueless on SO MANY levels! Love, Steve

I don't consider Driscoll's view on women to be genuinely Christian, but it has certainly been orthodox since the time of Augustine at the turn of the 4th/5th century. Why do you think there has been so much controversy about ordaining women? Well, ordaining women was certainly controversial back when I was young. Nowadays, the controversy has migrated to other issues. One of the things that originally appealed to me about TWI was that Wierwille was willing to ordain women, though I later learned that was only a temporary (and public mask) phase in development of TWI's attitude toward women. Love, Steve

After reading the first post on this thread, I went and googled "Mars Hill". The name seemed to ring a bell with me, though I couldn't point to a specific reason. Maybe one of my classmates mentioned it in passing conversation. I've had direct personal experience with two "ducks": Wierwille's TWI and wannabe direct off-shoots, and Toccini's Momentus (which included signing a "hold-harmless" contract before being allowed to participate). It seems to me that Driscoll looks, quacks and walks like a duck. I am sad for those taken in by his quackery. He also goes to show that a cult can be a cult, even with perfectly orthodox theology. Love, Steve P.S. - I remember how I came across reference to Mars Hill. I was looking for the youtube rap presentation called "Jesus vs. Religion", and I came across an excerpt with the same title by Marc Driscoll.

Wierwille taught that fear is believing in reverse, that it is sand in the machinery of life, that is always encases, always enslaves, always binds. Based on this one-dimensional definition, Wierwille taught that we should not fear God. I believe, because of what the Bible actually says about fear, that Wierwille's beliefs and teachings about "not fearing God" are at the root of all the evil perpetrated by Wierwille and his followers. I believe this because I have seen the results in my own heart and in the fruit of my life, in the fruit of CES/STFI/TLTF, and in the fruit of TWI. What you write about humility is accurate, WordWolf, because humility is the reflexive component in the subject of the fear. The Pavlovian definition of fear, that it is nothing more than a negative response, goes wrong the same way Wierwille's definition went wrong, because it also is a one-dimensional definition of fear. The definition of fear that can be inferred from its uses in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, is multi-dimensional, and takes into account the salutary effect of fear that inclines the subject to humility and obedience. Wierwille made hash of the Word of God because he was not inclined to humility and obedience. He did not keep the fear of God before his eyes. Wierwille drugged and raped young women because he was not inclined to humility and obedience. He did not keep the fear of God before his eyes. I signed the Momentus hold-harmless agreement, and stayed faithful to that agreement for as long as I did, because I feared men more than I feared God. I was inclined to humility and obedience before Lynn and Toccini, rather than before God. I did not keep the fear of God before my eyes. When I finally got humble enough to ask "Lord, why is my life so f...ed up?" He answered me, and showed me how to get out from under the curse I had brought on myself. And His answer involved keeping the fear of God before my eyes. Why did Christian Educational Services get so screwed up they had to change their name? Why did they then go on to produce the debacle that ended the association of John, John and Mark? Because they were not inclined to humility and obedience. They did not keep the fear of God before their eyes. How did people get so screwed up in Corps training? Because we were taught to fear Wierwille and his underlings rather than God. We had the fear of Wierwille and his underlings before our eyes, whether we liked it or not. How can the people who are so adamantly stuck in TWI be so blind to the evil around and within them? Because they STILL fear Wierwille, they are STILL inclined to be humble and obedient to the false image of a dead man rather than to God. Talk about keeping the fear of Wierwille before their eyes! It certainly ain't the fear of God! Why do so many people comment that the most outstanding feature of unreconstructed wayfers with whom they come in contact is arrogance? Because pride and arrogance are the polar opposites of the fear of God. The Bible says as much in Proverbs 8:13. That means that the one-dimensional definitions of fear presented both by Wierwille and Pavlov are insufficient to cover the ways in which the Bible uses the word "fear". If we go back and actually read what the Bible says about the fear of God, we notice it makes a big deal about whether or not a person keeps the fear of God "before his eyes". I think "keeping something before ones eyes" means paying conscious, deliberate, habitual attention to the thing. We need to pay conscious, deliberate, habitual, attention to the fear of God, that is, we need to pay conscious, deliberate, habitual attention to the things of God that incline us to humility and obedience. The best way to do that is to be genuinely thankful for the things God is doing for us right here and now, and the proper expression of genuine thankfulness is genuine worship. Genuine worship needs to be a conscious, deliberate, habitual part of our lives if we are to truly say we fear God. Love, Steve

We had our first session of second semester, first year Greek this morning. I was such a smart-alec during the first semester that the professor gave me a challenge to translate the lyrics of Born to Be Wild into koine Greek before the semester is over, complete with proper poetic form. It's gonna be fun. Next summer, I might translate it into Anglo-Saxon using the alliterative style! Love, steve

According to Protestant tradition, there are 5 "solas": Scripture alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone and Glory to God alone. Whether Protestant traditions have any more validity than Roman Catholic traditions is open to question, since both traditions go back to Augustine's Neo-platonic misinterpretations of the New Testament writers' Stoic terminology. There's a good study in "linguistic drift" for anybody who needs a topic for a master's thesis! At any rate, even Protestants are willing to sacrifice "scriptura sola" when it can be demonstatrated that the Bible contradicts some of their other pet theologies. For instance, according to II Timothy 3:16&17, ALL Scripture (which includes Jeremiah and Ezekiel) is useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting and for instructing in righteousness. If Christ is the primary subject of the Bible from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, then how can people say that they don't see Christ in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, unless they are admitting that they have an imperfect understanding of the Bible. Which is something I freely admit to. If I believe that I already know everything there is to know, I will never be able to grow in my understanding. And by the way, the purpose of teaching, reproving, correcting and instructing in righteousness is so that a person can be completely outfitted to do good WORKS! "WORKS" God says! HUH!?! Would God say "WORKS"? So, let's look at Ezekiel 11:17,19-20, 36:24,26 and 18:31 to see what teaching, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness we can extract from them, so that we will be better equipped to do good works. Ezekiel 11:17,19-20 "17 Therefore say, Thus saith the LORD God; I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. ... "19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them an heart of flesh: "20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God." First, the context of receiving a new heart is the gathering together, when we shall receive our resurrection spirits in the age to come, at Christ's appearing. Second, the purpose of the new heart will be that we can DO (WORKS) the will of God. Third, the Holy Spirit that was first poured out on the Day of Pentecost is not the spirit of resurrection life in the age to come, it is the earnest of that inheritance. Ezekiel 36:24,26 "24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. ... "26 A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." Again, the context of a God-given new heart is the resurrection at the gathering together. What are we supposed to do until Jesus appears, the dead in Christ are raised, and we who remain are changed? Ezekiel 18:31 "31 Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" MAKE you a new heart and a new spirit! Until Jesus appears, we are to work on fixing up as much of our hears as we can. We are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. We are to perfect holiness in the fear of God. If you think there's something wrong with that, then you need to take it up with Paul, the writer of Romans, not with me. Love, Steve

STFI could be just fine, if Schoenheit came to the realization that "the Adminstration of the Sacred Secret" is a theological hoax, and all the "rightly dividing" research supporting it is nothing more than rationalization that magnifies a faulty logic over what is actually written in the Word. Love, Steve P.S. - Schoenheit didn't withstand me to my face. He sent me a postcard saying essentially "I'm too busy preaching the truth to verify whether or not it's actually true."

When I give a dog pills, sometimes I have to wrap them up in a bit of cheese so that the dog will gulp them down and not spit the pills back out before it swallows. Wierwille PREACHED a lot of things that were true, in order to get us to swallow the errors that he PRACTICED and TAUGHT. The only way to know what was true and what wasn't is to go back and study the Bible for yourself. That is, if you accept the Bible as a standard for truth, which is NOT intuitively obvious. Love, Steve

Wierwille never trained people to be real leaders. He trained people to be "yes-men", and to browbeat others into becoming "yes-men". That's why it all fell apart after Wierwille died. According to Petty Officer 3&2, the training manual the Navy was using when I first began to assume the responsibilities of leadership, the three requirements for a good leader were these, in order of priority: 1. Good moral character, 2. Leading by personal example and 3. Administrative ability. TWI leadership training failed in the first two priorities because Wierwille failed in the first two priorities. In the aftermath of The Passing of A Patriarch, I realized Martindale didn't have the leadership skills necessary to lead a bunch of lemmings over a cliff! Love, Steve

BINGO! Proverbs 8:13 "13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate." The inclination to pride and arrogancy is in people's hearts. That inclination is in EVERY person's heart. It is the desperate wickedness of Jeremiah 17:9. The "evil way", and the "froward mouth" are when the abundance of pride and arrogance in a person's heart flows out into expression. The Bible does not leave us guessing about what the fear of the LORD is. Yes, there is a component of awe when regarding God, but there is also a reflexive component of wanting to be safe with God by cleaning up our decisions and actions to make them what He wants them to be. Love, Steve

It's good to have you back, Naten! When I start writing about what I learned in the Stoic cosmology book, I'm going to have to wander what may seem like a long way off topic, so I'll reiterate where we're going to wind up. ALL of the misery of life experienced by Wierwille and his followers, including the followers of the TWI splinter groups, has come about as a result of the curse Jeremiah cited in 17:5. Different people experienced that curse to different degrees, and for different lengths of time, depending on how COMMITTED they were to what Wierwille taught. The tightness of the snare depends on a person's COMMITTMENT. The more committed we were to Wierwille's errors, the more tightly we were held. The reason we fell into the snare was because the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. The only antidote to the deceitfulness and wickedness of our own hearts is the genuine, honest-to-God fear of the LORD. The only release from the snare comes by CHANGING WHAT WE'RE COMMITTED TO. That's another way of saying "repent". When we change our committment from Wierwille's errors back to the Lord Jesus Christ, then HE is faithful to bring about the blessing of Jeremiah 17:7! =========================== So there I was, cruising the stacks at the university library, when what should I see among the thousands of books on the shelves but The Origins of Stoic Cosmology by David E. Hahm. It wasn't a book on the Bible. It was a book about how certain philosophical ideas developed in antiquity. But it sparked my curiosity, so I checked it out and read it. Wierwille taught that there are two realms, the spirit realm and the senses realm, and that the laws of the spirit or supernatural realm supercede the laws of the physical or natural realm. He taught that we could gain power in our lives if we learned the laws of the spirit realm and operated them. That seemed reasonaable enough. The idea of duel orders had been around since before Plato articulated it around 400 years before Jesus was born. The Church certainly held the idea from the time of Augustine about 400 years after Jesus was born. The first Corps Principle was to acquire an in depth spiritual perception and awareness. But I learned that the Stoic view was of a UNITARY not a dual cosmos. And much to my surprise, I learned that most people in the first century, including Paul's readers, understood life in terms of the Stoic, unitary cosmos. I started thinking about what that meant for interpreting the things Paul wrote. That's where things stood in 2003, when I got into a fight with M--e at the Greasespot Cafe. He explained that there were no errors in PFAL because the spiritual meanings of what Wierwille taught superceded the senses-realm meanings, therefore the errors in PFAL were only apparent, and not real. Some of my present readers may remember a few of those exchanges. We fought about a lot of things, but the one bone of contention that had lasting significance, to my thinking at least, was an argument over whether the word "senses" in Hebrews 5:14 meant supernatural senses or natural senses. M--e held that they just HAD to be spiritual. I contended they had to be our ordinary, everyday senses. One day, while having lunch with my brother, I was explaining the whole fight to him, and I drew a diagram on a paper napkin showing how information flows from objective reality through the impressions of our senses into our minds, how the information that we pay habitual attention to becomes our attitudes of heart, and how our attitudes of heart flow back out into objective reality through our expressions. My brother was teaching at a classical academy, and that fall, the headmaster hired me part-time to teach an aesthetics course based on the diagram. As time went by, I was taken on full-time to teach writing and humane letters, but my teaching on aesthetics grew into a curriculum I called Exercising Judgment: That Your Love May Abound, and I continued to develop and teach it over five years to 2008. It was while I was working on Exercising Judgment that all of the things the Lord had taught me, about how to change the things that were in my heart, began to fall into place as parts of a coherent whole. That was when I started to see Jeremiah 17:5-10 as an integral passage, and not just a collection of individual verses haphazardly thrown together. That's when I started to understand how the deceitfulness of my heart, and its wickedness, had been played upon by Wierwille from the first time I sat through Power For Abundant Living, and it was when I began to realize how much more powerful the fear of God is than Wierwille had let on. So... now I hope you understand that I'm not just coming up with this suff from out of the blue. There are deep, biblical reasons why I believe that the fear of God does NOT mean the kind of respect we give to an elderly uncle we are no longer expected to obey. I'm going to go into these things in much more detail, but I hope this sufficiently orients my readers to follow at least part of what I say until they get more used to my lingo. Love, Steve

Time for a little more narrative... I didn't walk away from CES after the 1996 congregational meeting of The Living Word Fellowship, where I publically repented of the thoughtless promises I had made during the Momentus training, and John Lynn withstood me to my face. John Lynn was standing up, his nose inches from mine, reproving me for repenting within seconds of the time I had finished my public repentance... how twisted can it get! I didn't back down. I loved John, John and Mark as my brothers in Christ, and wanted to see them delivered too. Part of the reason my life had turned so blah in the early-'90s was because I had stopped doing my own research, and had been parroting the CES teachings the same way I had parroted Wierwille's teachings in TWI. We had only gone so far in re-appraising what we had learned in PFAL. In terms of doctrine, CES rejected Wierwille's law of believing and tried (with only limited success) to recognize the Lordship of Jesus. In terms of practice, John, John and Mark were horrified by their former attitudes toward sex in TWI, and they became legalistic to the point of paranoia about their personal relations with women. They were NOT caught up during their CES time with the licentiousness of TWI. After repenting of my involvement with Momentus, I regained initiative in a lot of areas of my life, and one of the things I started doing again was my own research. The first question I looked at was the validity of dispensationalsim, what Wierwille called getting the "administrations" right. I found out that dispensationalism is a cart load of horse manure, or as those who spent time at Gunnison might picture it, a dumptruck load of cow manure. Dispensationalism works by eisegesis, reading foreign meanings into biblical words. Specifically, dispensationalism reads the meaning "a period of time" into the word oikonomia, which is actually "management" or "stewardship". The system obliviates what the New Testament says with the word aion or "age", and makes the New Covenant of no effect for the Church. That's why CES was only partially successful in recovering the significance of what it means for Jesus Christ to be Lord. Since the crucifixion occurred in the gospels, and the gospels are not addressed to the Church, dispensationalism literally makes the cross of no personal effect in the thinking of dispensationalist Christians. (How's that, geisha :) ) In the early days of CES, John, John and Mark were highly in favor of dialogue because they thought that the sheer logic of their position could convert the whole of Christianity to their way of thinking. Their newsletter was Dialogue. I was one of the editors in the early days, before John Lynn took on all those responsibilities for himself. After I learned the Scriptural truth about dispensationalism, I took advantage of every dialogue opportunity CES offered, to present the truth. Eventually, CES eliminated dialogue from their agenda (not just because of me though, there were a whole host of people poking holes in the doctrines they had inherited from TWI). Sooo... one day about a decade ago, I was cruising the stacks in the local university library and I came across The Origins of Stoic Cosmology by David E. Hahm. It was a paradigm shocker, but more about that after I eat... Love, Steve

You ask some worthwhile questions, geisha. Where was Jesus Christ? You state that Jesus Christ seems to be missing from my theology. WordWolf, you speculate as to what my be the cause of my apparent obsession with the fear of God. Time for some narrative. The Lord Jesus Christ saved me in 1956 when I was 7 years old. In 1973, when I was 24 and going crazy, I called on God to help me in the name of Jesus Christ, and the same Lord delivered me from going crazy, and began teaching me how to change the things that were in my heart. That was six years before I ever heard of TWI and Wierwille. He never taught me audibly, but He would plant questions in my mind, and as I searched for the answers to the questions, I would learn the things He wanted me to know... literally years' worth of stuff. I took PFAL in 1980, and disassociated myself in 1987, when I learned of Martindale's sexual predation from a personal friend of mine who had rejected Martindale's advances. There were times while I was involved with the Way when I heard the Lord speak to me more clearly than I had ever heard Him before. He let me know exactly, word for word, what to say to the Corps coordinator when I left in-rez training. In the late-'80s I became involved with CES. I was on the editorial staff of CES' Dialogue newsletter, I taught at one of the CES Chicago meetings, and I taught on one of CES' monthly tapes. I attended John Lynn's weekly fellowship at his home, and he had me teach it when he was on the road. I had a more than casual relation with Lynn. In the early-'90s, my life seemed to be going nowhere fast. I had developed a feeling of lassitude and helplessness. I was doing free-lance work, and I was being ripped-off too many times by clients. My wife was not happy with me. In the fall of 1994 I took the Momentus training that was being promoted by John, John and Mark. I DID receive some deliverance during the training, but in the weeks that followed, as the excitement wore off, things started going from bad to worse. After about a year,it got to the point where I prayed "God, why is my life so f...ed up?" and I heard from him again. The first time I heard THAT clearly from Him since I left the Way. The same Lord Jesus Christ who had saved me at 7 and delivered me at 24 gave me to understand at 46 that I was under the curse of Jeremiah 17:5. WHAT!?! HOW COULD THAT BE!?! God doesn't put hoodoo curses on people, and especially not during the administration of grace! And then that same Jesus prompted me to read what's actually written in Jeremiah 17:5, "Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD." It doesn't say that God puts hoodoo curses on people. It says there are bad, VERY BAD consequences for doing certain things. And it lists what those bad things are. During the Momentus training, the trainees, myself included, had been manipulated into making a number of thoughtless promises, chief among which was the hold-harmless agreement. I had sworn an oath that I would not hold the Momentus trainers or sponsors responsible for ANY damage done by them in the training, to myself or to anybody else, even if that damage resulted in death! That was a POWERFUL oath. I had trusted in man: Toccini, the sponsors and myself. I had made flesh, the artificially induced stress of thought reform processes, my strength. And I had allowed my heart to depart from the LORD. In the Momentus training (as well as TWI and every splinter I have sufficient knowledge of) we were taught that once you made a vow, you were BOUND to fulfill it, no ifs, ands, or buts. But Jesus showed me that He would free me from the consequences of those foolish (anoetos - "thoughtless", Galatians 3:1,3) oaths, if I would simply repent. So I did. But He also wanted me to do it publically in front of a group of people who had also made those oaths, so they could see how to get out of trouble if they wanted to. So I did that, too. Over the next several years, the Lord, that same Jesus, taught me ramifications of that experience, and my observation, that ALL the evil that resulted from TWI came about because Wierwille taught us that we are not to fear God, that observation springs from those ramifications. We will get into those things, but this is all I can write for now. I am thankful to God that you all care for me! And thank you too, Mark! I have considered you a thoughtful researcher and a good friend for a long time. Love, Steve

I don't think the problem is with the English word "fear". I think it may have come in with the translation of the Old Testament into Greek. Phobeo/phobos covers a lot of different Hebrew words. Exactly how is something I won't be able to examine until next week, when the university library opens up again after the holidays. I intend to go up and spend some time before class starts again going through a concordance of the Septuagint. When Wierwille said "fear" doesn't mean "fear", it means "respect", he left something very important out. I haven't yet figured out exactly how to say it in biblical terms, but I know I had to repent of it in 1996 before I could get out from under the curse of Jeremiah 17:5. I know it was the reason for the leaders' of CES blindness to the damage they were doing: hospitalizations, divorces and suicide attempts. One of the things that not fearing God (whatever THAT means) does, is it blinds a person to the deceitfulness and wickedness, the pride and arrogance, of their own hearts, and blinds them to the arrogance and destructiveness of their own words and actions. BLINDS them! BLINDED ME! Love, Steve

The idea that you cannot love a person and fear them at the same time is not as true to experience as it might first seem. When I was a kid, we lived on a very busy street. There were a couple of trees in the front yard, and Mama told us we weren't to go closer to the street than a line drawn between those two trees, or we would get a switching. And when she caught us crossing that line, she switched us. It wasn't punishment, it was reproof. I loved my mother, and I knew she loved me, but I feared her when she used the switch. I remember the day I was mad at Mama and ran out into the street in a fit of rebellious anger. I narrowly missed being hit. I learned THAT day to fear the CARS. Mama did NOT switch me that day, she was so thankful that I hadn't been hit, and I was truly ashamed of my foolishness. Mama NEVER had to take the switch to me again for that reason. I learned I needed to pay better attention to her, because her wisdom was greater than mine, and I would be better off if I were obedient. There are still things nearly 60 years later that I never have done, and never will do, because I feared her when she used the switch. And yet I loved her dearly, and know that she loved me even more. God doesn't switch people: "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the LORD God of hosts." Jeremiah 2:19 Jeremiah 5:21-31 "21 Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not: "22 Fear [yare Strong's #3372] ye not me? saith the LORD: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it? "23 But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone. "24 Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear [yare Strong's #3372] the LORD our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest. "25 Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you. "26 For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men. "27 As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. "28 They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deedes of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy they do not judge. "29 Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? "30 A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; "31 The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" Why does God talk so much about the sea in verse 22? Because God set the boundaries between chaos and order, and chaos and order are obedient to those boundaries, yet foolish people are not obedient to the boundaries God has set. They don't fear God. Wierwille was not obedient to the boundaries God set. Wierwille didn't fear God. He taught us to do the same. The people in verses 23 and 24 had revolting and rebellious HEARTS. They did NOT say in their HEARTS, "Let us now fear the LORD our God." They could not say that God gave the rains and harvests, because they had eyes which did not see, and ears which did not hear, because they did not keep the fear of God before their eyes. Verse 24 also shows us that God wants people to fear Him for his goodness. And what happened? Did God switch them? No He did not! "Your iniquities have turned these things away. Your sins have withheld the good things." They got the consequences of their rebellion, but they couldn't understand why, because they had flattered themselves too much in their own eyes to even recognize that they were being rebellious. Could there be a better description of The Way International than verses 26-28? Do they really think they can get away with it forever? Yes, they do, because there is no fear of God before their eyes. If you've ever studied the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, you know that in that Dark Age culture, the word "grim" had a vastly broader and more lofty meaning than it has today, a meaning we cannot now easily translate into English. In the culture of Antiquity, both Jewish and gentile, the word "fear" likewise had a vastly broader and more lofty meaning than it has today. I would submit that none of our current definitions of "fear" come anywhere near to communicating the way it was understood in antiquity. Love, Steve

I agree with everything you've said. I think the problem we have in seeing eye-to-eye (to use the lingo of my current faith community) may be a result of the overly simplistic definition of "fear" that we learned. You wrote,"vpw had neither RESPECT, REGARD nor AWE of God, and used the TRAPPINGS while not actually CARING..." I submit that your use of the word "caring" may come more closely to the biblical sense of "fear/awe" than either of those words, "fear" and "awe", come in our everyday usage. If we look at phobeo/phobos in the New Testament, it's hard to see how the single concept can be applied to both "terror", in the strictest sense of the word, and "respect" for God, but if we look at the various Hebrew words translated by phobeo/phobos, we can see there were nuances in the Old Testament that do not come out in the New Testament. I don't really know where Wierwille got his definition of "fear" from, but it certainly wasn't from study of the Old Testament. For instance, let's look at Job 3:25, "For the thing which I greatly feared [pachad - Strong's #6342] is come upon me, and that which I was afraid [yagor - Strong's #3025] of is come unto me." Seems simple enough, doesn't it? Fear is believing in reverse, and we're gonna get the things we fear, right? But let's look a pachad in Job 23:15 in its context, "13 But he [God] is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth. "14 For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him. "15 Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am afraid [pachad] of him. "16 For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:" When Job considered God, he was afraid, and God troubled his heart. Now let's see how Job uses yagor in Job 9:28, "I am afraid [yagor] of all my sorrows, I know that thou [God] will not hold me innocent." What does THAT mean? I'd be lying if I said I understand it completely, but it seems there is an element of fear associated with the idea of being held accountable by God. Now there is a different flavor to the fear of pachad compared to the fear of yagor, but Job 3:25 holds these two kinds of fear in poetic parallel, meaning that the fear the author of Job was trying to express was a composite, or a synergism, of the meanings of pachad and yagor. Was Wierwille communicating the biblical truth to us when he said that "fear" doesn't really mean "fear", it simply means "respect". There was an elementary truth to what he said. "Fear" CAN mean "respect", but it can also mean many more things, things that are communicated by the numerous different but intertwined words for "fear" in the Old Testament, and things that are communicated by your use of the word "care", WordWolf. I've only scratched the surface, not only in what I've posted here, but also in my study of this topic in the Old Testament. I've seen enough to know there is a heck of a lot more in Jeremiah. All for now! Love, Steve

Nowadays, it's Teen Mania and Acquire the Fire. Love, Steve

I'm expecting a wonderful new year! In January I'll be starting my second semester in seminary, and no, it's not a "cemetary." It pains me when I remember all of Wierwille's old slurs on genuine theological study. The crescendo of the first semester was in the Constructive Theology class when the doctor (a REAL one this time) explained that the meaning of Creation is discovered, rather than invented, and that the purpose of ALL Creation is to praise God. When you put those things together, you realize that the purpose of life is to discover ways to praise God! What fun! I expect to discover many more ways to praise God during the coming year(s), and am so blessed not to be "re-searching" the stale, rancid crap that Raf and others disproved long ago! Happy New Year! Steve

The fear of God is important because it is the only antidote to the deceitfulness and wickedness of the heart highlighted in Jeremiah 17:9. The heart is so deceitful, it can convince people that they are still serving the Lord, when they have actually allowed their hearts to depart far from Him. The touchstone for the fear of the Lord is this: Am I willing to reconsider the thoughts and intents of my heart if I see that they don't line-up with what's written in the Word (line-up overall... not just verses pulled out of context here and there)? ALL of the terribleness that has come about as a result of Wierwille's teaching and practice has happened because people who thought they were serving God were being taught that they could do so without being obedient to the Lord's commandments. Love, Steve

Here's an interesting use of the fear of God, Jeremiah 2:19 "19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear [pachad] is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts." Some people say that fear comes from punishment, and God doesn't punish us anymore. That may well be, but does God still allow our wickedness to correct us? and our backslidings to reprove us? There ARE consequences to not fearing God, and those consequences are evil and bitter. The evil and bitterness associated with TWI stem from Wierwille's and his followers' failure to pay attention the fear of God, their failure to accept reproof when they departed from Him. It was MY failure, too, to the degree that I accepted Wierwille's admonition that I should not fear God. I accepted God's reproof and repented of my pride and arrogance, and He delivered me. He'll do it for anybody who is willing to look honestly at the condition of his own heart. Love, Steve

I believe that ALL the problems brought on by TWI and its off-shoots can be traced back to the truth that there was no fear of God before Wierwille's eyes, and he trained all of us as well to ignore the fear of God to one degree or another. I believe one of the greatest tools Wierwille used to teach us to ignore the fear of God was to reduce the meaning of "fear" in the TWI groupspeak to a one-dimensional entity whose only power was negative. Wierwille taught that fear is believing in reverse, that it is sand in the machinery of life, that it always encases, always enslaves, always binds. The truth is that God designed fear as an important survival mechanism, an emotion that drives an individual to seek a safe relation with the object of her or his fear. Just as with every other aspect of life, fear has been distorted and abused since the fall. We are mistaken if we confuse the godly purposes of fear with its distortions and abuses... DANGEROUSLY mistaken! A person who does not recognize genuine fear is like a person who chews things before the dental novacaine has worn off. When the feeling comes back, he finds he has chewed up the insides of his cheeks and his tongue. Wierwille said that the fear of God doesn't mean that we should fear God, but rather that we should "respect" Him. Now there IS an aspect of reverence and awe involved with the fear of God. Wierwille used the sugar-coating of that truth to fool us into swallowing the lie, that we are no longer expected to be obedient to God, that we can do whatever we damned-well-please without any consequences. But there is also a "fear" component to fear, as the word itself might suggest, a component which moves us to be obedient to God even if the thoughts and intents of our own hearts say it's perfectly all right to disobey. The picture of "fear" in the Old Testament is more complicated than the idea presented in the New Testament, because the Greek words phobos/phobeo are used to translate a number of different Hebrew words. But this also indicates that the NT uses of phobos/phobeo are much more nuanced than Wierwille would have had us believe. More later. Love, Steve

From the time I first took PFAL until well after I left TWI, I wasn't particularly concerned with whether or not Wierwille had stolen PFAL. It was only after Raf started poking holes in the class that I realized there was no over-arching coherency to PFAL because Wierwille had just bodged together a pastiche of other people's work. I do remember thinking, "Well, that must of been some research he did when he was spending so many hours a day doing it. He sure doesn't spend that much time at it now!" Little did I realize then that he NEVER spent all those hours a day researching. Speaking of which, I went back to the gospel of Luke to see what he had to say about Judas Iscariot after the betrayal. Luke doesn't mention Judas directly, but in chapter 24, verse 9, Luke says that the women who had gone to the tomb on the first day of the week "...returned from the sepulcher, and told all these things to the eleven..." If Wierwille had given even cursory attention to the gospel of Luke, he would have seen that Judas had bugged out before the resurrection. According to the same writer as Acts chapter 1, Wierwille's thesis that Judas was around in that chapter doesn't hold water! Love, Steve