Steve Lortz

Two words, outandabout... rotten eggs! Love, Steve

When I was a kid in the '50s, we used to go down to my great-aunt's tobacco farm in the hills of Kentucky. Aunt Flossie would go out in the afternoon, and after deciding which chicken to eat for supper, pick it up by the head, and fling it around in such a way that it's head would pop off. No axe involved. Then we would watch the headless body dance around for a little while. After it was well and truly dead, Aunt Flossie would scald it in a pot of boiling water and then pluck it. Her chicken was always delicious! Love, Steve

Two English words that can be used to indicate the "eeke eeke eeke" sound are "susurration", which means a whispering or murmuring sound, and "crepitation", which means a crackling or sizzling sound. Love, Steve

I really liked the peanut butter bombers on LEAD. I was carrying one in the pocket of my jeans and the plastic wrapper split or something, and peanut butter mooshed through my whole pocket. A dark stain of peanut oil gradually spread through my pants during the course of the week! Love, Steve

I grew up in Indiana, and I love the crickets and night sounds. Some of them are little tiny tree frogs croaking. I spent six years in the tropics, where the closest thing you get is geckos chirping in your walls at night. That's good though. The geckos eat the roaches, which are ubiquitous in the tropics. One thing about the insect night noises, if you're driving through the country with your window down, the insects sound the same whether you're moving or stationary. There are just that many of them! Love, Steve

The fact that Luke/Acts ends so abruptly where it does is one of the considerations that inclines me to think it was written as a legal brief for presentation to the Roman magistrate who heard Paul's case in lieu of Nero. Love, Steve

"Prophetic council coordinator" is not something that happened in The Way International, but something that happened in Christian Educational Services (CES), now called Spirit and Truth Fellowship International (STFI), when the leaders, Lynn, Schoenheit and Graeser, came under the influence of the prophetic movement. I don't know much more about it but that, since I left before this got all ginned up. Tzaia may know more, but the Spirit and Truth Fellowship International threads are the place for discussion of this topic. Love, Steve

Hiya, Jerry! Good to see you're still kicking! Love, Steve

Thanks, teachme! That helps me understand you better! Love, Steve

Looking back, the whole thing seems blasphemous. Love, Steve

I remember some time in 1986 or '87, when many of the leaders who had been kicked out of TWI were going around the country and talking to whoever would listen, somebody ran the video of AOS, using the pause and rewind buttons, asking "What did it just say?" "What does that mean?", and pointing out what was going on visually at the same time. Nearly the very first words, and nearly the very last, were "We are PROUD!" The actions on the stage often contradicted the words of the narration. The flesh color of the Seed-of-the Serpent's costume was supposed to represent the truth that the SotS was still a living human being. When the spirits killed the girlfriend of the guy who would become Rainbow Man, there was a video special effect that represented murder. Later on, as Rainbow Man was developing his superpowers, there was a special gesture he made that was supposed to represent receiving revelation from the True God. At the high point of the production, when Rainbow Man is standing at the top of the set holding the unconscious SotS in his arms, he reaches up making the special revelation gesture, then brings the elbow of the same arm down on the SotS' head. He then drops the limp SotS to the ground, and the video reprises the special effect indicating murder. So.... the highpoint of AtoS, at least on the video, was the Man of God receiving revelation from the True God to murder a helpless human being! I have repented before the Lord Jesus Christ for my involvement with The Way International. Love, Steve

Which specific verses are you referring to? What specifically does TWI teach about those verses that you disagree with? Love, Steve

One of my jobs on the grounds crew at Gunnison was to feed the heifers every morning, usually before sunrise. Nothing like a herd (I think there were eight at the time) of teen-age cows! I would go and chuck a bale of hay over the fence, break the ice off of their trough and fill it with water. When I first started doing the job, they would see me coming and run away. After a few days, it sparked in their little teen-age bovine brains that I was going to feed them. After that, they came running when they saw me. One day we had to move them to another field, so I got to participate in the Great Gunnison Cattle Drive. It wasn't like the movies though. We just sort of shoo-ed them along, and they would look at us like, "Who do you think YOU are?" Even mucking a dump-truck-load of manure out of their barn was refreshing in its own way. It was the one place at Gunnison where you could clean out the manure with a shovel. Love, Steve

It's gonna be a few weeks before I can get the book. I'm in the middle of a summer school class (a whole semester packed into 5&1/2 weeks, about 2 weeks to go) on writing APA style. It's pretty intense. In September my load will lighten up considerably. I have to finish three hours of a "Life Assessment" module, and three hours of a "Christian Communities and Vocation" module, then I'll have completed the requirements for a BS in Organizational Leadership. After that, I start jumping through the hoops to acquire official accreditation to teach. Love, Steve P.S. I'll definitely answer your question when I find out myself!

Mahalo for wishing me mele kalikimaka! Aloha nui oi, Steve

Back in the late '80s, I had a copy of The Dilemma of Foreign Missions in India. If my memory serves me, Wierwille's pamphlet could well have been plagiarized from William's testimony. Love, Steve

Once I took off the TWI/CES blinders and started reading around, I found that there are some very good New Testament scholars out there. Actual scholars! James D. G. Dunn has been one of my favorites for well over ten years. Today, I came across a copy of volume II of The Indelible Image by Ben Witherington III. Thumbing through it, I decided to acquire a copy of volume I for myself. Witherington focuses on the interdependence of theology and ethics in the New Testament. One feature of his book that intrigues me is the picture he presents of "The Thought World of the New Testament," which is a Venn diagram, with overlapping circles. Each of the circles represents the thoughts of one of the New Testament writers. There are places where ALL of the circles intersect, but there are also other places where each writer's thoughts are unique to that particular writer. This seems to me to be a much more reasonable and much more useful presentation of the integrity of the Word than Wierwille's "fits like a hand in a glove." It'll be awhile before I'm able to get the book and start reading it, but I thought I'd post a "heads up" in case anybody else might be interested, or has already heard of Witherington. Love, Steve

"14 He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him." Proverbs 27:14 Love, Steve

Now just picture this... You lost four hours sleep last night because you stood a Bless Patrol watch. Between breakfast and lunch, you spent four hours splitting logs for firewood (Gunnison, you know). And now, this afternoon, you have to stay awake and seem interested as you listen to those teachings live, if anything that dull can be called "live"... Love, Steve

Thank you so very much, excathedra! Love, Steve

Yep. That's about where I was in my thinking when somebody told me about PFAL in 1979. I was sold out to TWI's point of view until after I left CES in 1996. Right now, I think there are a few simple truths I can trust. I'm willing to listen to anybody's reasoning, but I'm very, very picky about what I'm willing to buy into. as Roy would say, with love and a holy kiss.... Steve

The question becomes very interesting if we think of Luke/Acts as being Paul's legal defense, and Theophilus as being the magistrate who heard his case on Nero's behalf. Who's fault was all this mess that Paul had gotten himself into? Was it Paul's fault for going to Jerusalem? Or was it his God's fault for sending Paul there? A very delicate situation indeed! How would this presentation affect the decision of a Roman magistrate about this new religion, and the man who represented it? Love, Steve

Loved them 32 ounce ballpark beers! Love, Steve

Four years ago, my brother died at the end of a lengthy and excruciating bout with skin cancer.He wasn't a wayfer, but he was a Christian, and I think he died well. In the depth of his pain, he studied Job, and came away from it believing the point of the whole book was where Job said "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." My brother trusted the Lord Jesus to the end. A year after my brother died, I discovered that I had diabetes when the doc told me my blood sugar level was 1010 (after calling an ambulance). I was in intensive care for several days. 1010 points is ten points off the scale for measuring blood sugar. It can be fatal at 300. My digestive system had shut down, and I remember it coming back on line. The only way I can describe what happened in my head was that it seemed like a snow-globe had been shaken up, and all the information was trying to find its way back to somewhere comfortable. One thing I found odd was the fact that I was experiencing euphoria through the whole episode. Why did my brother die the way he did, while I skated so easily through something that should have been every bit as deadly. I don't know, and I ain't gonna presume to guess. Love, Steve

After I realized the emperor had no clothes, it seemed to me that Wierwille surrounded himself with "yes-men" (not to mention "yes-women"), and LCM was the biggest yes-man of them all. Love, Steve