waysider

I'm not certain but I think that may be from Victor Paul Wierwille: Born Again To Serve by Dorothea Kipp Wierwille HERE

Anticipation My father sits at night with no lights on, his cigarette glows in the dark.

I think we're all kind of saying the same thing. One of the main techniques they brought in from the Dale Carnegie class is to listen to what people are telling you and use that to identify their "needs". Then, show them how the class can "meet" those particular needs. So, yeah, in that sense, they are searching for your vulnerabilities so they can target them correctly, using the appropriate bait. They recognize that everyone (as Twinky said) has vulnerabilities.

From the W&U syllabus "The basic reason we witness is to help people into the classes on Power For Abundant Living......" "We should witness every chance we get." "I suggest you read How To Win Friends and Influence People..." "Every person and every situation will be different." ------------------------- So, it's like fishing on a lake you're unfamiliar with. You troll from the boat to see if there is any chance of activity. If not, you move the boat, change the bait and adjust your other variables, such as hook size, depth, etc. --------------------------------------------------- "Some people's reasoning and beliefs are based on: Emotion, feelings, experience, and social conformity, not logical truth." ---------------------------------------------------- "If you've got their attention, begin undershepherding....or....excuse yourself." -------------------------------------------------- So there you have it. They troll for anything that ventures to give a nibble. They adjust their methods to whatever kind of "fish" happens to be biting on a particular day. --------------------------------- I just don't think you can allow yourself to think it's your fault they reeled you in.

There were some good people, some good experiences, some good things that were taught. By and large, though, the whole thing was really a big sham.

Looking back at my own experiences, I think it's pretty hard to predict who'll be drawn into a cult. All sorts of people got sucked into the Way vortex, from hippies to blue collar workers to people with advanced academic degrees. Who a cult will target and why is a whole different matter.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Jai Guru deva Om (Praise to the Teacher)

Something that I think has escaped us on this thread is the way VPP defined fornication, adultery, etc. According to VPP, only the spiritually underdeveloped still think these are terms relating to the physical realm. Nope, these are spiritual terms. In fact, in the Advanced Class, he even said there was a spirit called the spirit of whoredom that plays a role in people committing "spiritual adultery and fornication". Silly us, thinking adultery was some sort of function involving the human body. Sheesh!

"the problem I have with the religion is.. when things go "wrong" so to speak, out come the excuses. Idiom of permission, various euphemisms." Bingo! Can't find an explanation for God's actions in Job? No problem, we'll just invent one. Maybe call it the idiom of permission or something. Man's mind works in such a way that it doesn't fancy entertaining unresolvable problems for long periods of time, especially problems that are counter-purpose to previously held beliefs. ..Enter cognitive dissonance.

That video needs as a soundtrack.

Think about Aesop's Fables for a moment...The Tortoise and the Hare, The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Fox and the Grapes...We know that tortoises don't race hares, ants don't talk to grasshoppers and foxes don't operate logical thought. Still, we have no problem accepting that these fables contain valuable lessons. But, when it comes to the Bible, there is a school of thought that says it has to be factual to have any value. I don't know what Job's intended message is. What I do know is that if you get too bogged down with whether or not it was a real, historical incident, you will probably miss the point, just as worrying about whether ants can talk to grasshoppers will distract you from the message of that story.

I don't remember what class it was taught in but the basis for this is II Corinthians 11:4. (It was used out of context and grossly misinterpreted.)

Yeah. We must be REALLY moving da werd. The old bird is even attacking our cars so we won't be able to get the "babes" to the class.

What's that you say? You have no way to get to the abundance class? Not a problem. I'll stop by and pick you up. I'll be driving this: .

When you were a kid, did you ever try to rationalize the existence of Santa Claus? Oh, he must be real. Who else, besides my parents, knew I wanted those Engineer Boots? Same thing. We wanted some of this stuff, like the idiom of permission, to be real so we found ways to "explain" it.

In retrospect, the irony is almost comical. You come to a class that promises to unlock the secrets of abundance and what do you witness? The people running the class are reusing disposable cups, brewing yesterday's coffee grounds and stringing chairs that were donated because they couldn't afford to provide their own. It's like going to a musical recital and discovering the performers have yet to take their first lesson.

And all the while, we were hawking a "class" that promised its graduates a more than abundant life. Who was supposed to live this promised life? Surely not us, driving clunker-mobiles, forsaking retirement savings and health insurance in favor of giving our money for the furtherance of the greater cause of PLAF recruitment.

In my opinion, she exemplifies what musical performance is really about..... being about to communicate on a deep emotional level, transcending the need for extraordinary physical appearance and note for note perfection.

I remember R.S. from my days in Columbus in the 1980s. He owned his own company. He adopted a policy of paying his employees only what they needed to survive. This is something that came down directly from HQ. It was called a "needs basis". I strongly disagreed with it but my wife (at the time) was of the opinion that, if it came from HQ, it must have come from God. We argued about it regularly. It's one of the contributing factors to our eventual divorce. It's one thing to sit in Sunday School and trade interpretations of a passage of scripture and an entirely different thing to promote doctrines that affect peoples' lives in profound ways. Those Bozos had no business leading people to believe they had any sort of divine insight on life's weightier matters.

On the other hand, if you view the Bible as being nothing more than a collection of writings that have stood the test of time because they offer profound (but not infallible) wisdom regarding the human condition, you might actually take away a greater insight into humanity than by dancing around to The Idiom of Permission Polka,

Indirectly related: http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-fox-parham