uptown1

Here's something odd. Go to The Way's web site (http://www.theway.info/index.htm) Hold your mouse over the link that says "teaching" and you'll find a picture of Mark Graeser. I'm not making this up.

So they're giving MG the boot, but I'd like to know what they're going to do about this pp business. Are they going to backtrack and say they were wrong about it? I had someone give me a pp once. It was so strange that neither one of us knew what to make of it nor did we understand it. About six months later it came true I benefited from it greatly. So I can see that there could be something to pp. I'd also like to know what they're going to do with Karen Anne. Even if pp could be possible she obviously used it for evil.

I agree with the idea of treating the cold and not the cough (treating the cause and not the symptoms). But what is the cause? My belief is that ultimately this is a spiritual problem. A cult is an idolatry. They are worshiping something (the organization) or someone (the leader) more than they worship the true God and his Lord. If this is correct, then I have to ask, "How do you treat that?"

Is there really much of a difference between fake prophecy and things like fortune telling?

False leaders spend a lot of time focused on their own authority and reminding others of it. This is necessary because their spiritual authority isn’t real (i.e. based on genuine godly character) thus, it is postured. The real violence is that the believer has been cut off from God/Christ by substituting a human authority in place of them - the only true source of power. The believer is now defeated.

Some of you are acting like you're in a cult. The can’t talk rule has this thinking behind it: “The real problem cannot be exposed because then it would have to be dealt with and then things would have to change; so it must be protected behind walls of silence (neglect) or by assault (legalistic attack).” If you speak the problem out loud, you are the problem. In some way you must be silenced or eliminated. Talking about a problem out loud doesn’t create it, it exposes it. There were plenty of others at CES besides Elizabeth who knew Karen Ann was off her rocker, but no one could talk about it. To do so would be to incur the wrath of Karen Ann. The home office has ex-employees who now understand this. This system is a trap for the leaders and the cause of their downfall. If noticing problems is labeled disloyalty, lack of submission, divisiveness, etc it becomes impossible for wounds to heal – for wrongs to be made right. The abuse will escalate eventually.

Some common features of cults: Everything is spiritualized. Barnett, the cult leader of Community Chapel, saw demons everywhere. Mothers were instructed not to have their son’s hair cut at beauty shops. His reasoning was that, “These places are not without homosexual demons just waiting to influence the gullible.” If that sounds crazy to you just think back a couple of years to LCM’s delusions about homosexuals infiltrating the corps. Here’s one Elizabeth knows all too well. “Every indication of a negative or ‘rebellious’ attitude or unapproved opinion was attributed to demons.” All of the ex-way people should be able to relate to this one. A member of the Church of the Great Shepherd went to visit his unbelieving parents. In order to do this he had to be “armed with anointed prayer, and on guard against evil spirits of deception and lust…” Members of cults come to believe that demons are everywhere and apparently so does Karen Ann. Speaking of one cult the author stated, “There was a tendency to attribute any problem, interpersonal or otherwise, to demons. Members would psychoanalyze one another with regard to what specific demons were troubling them and then point to the need for deliverance.” Does that not describe Karen Ann’s treatment of Elizabeth? Read the first two or three pages of E’s letter again if you doubt this. KA had an interpersonal problem with E. E had confronted KA about her gossiping and they had a few other run-ins. KA attributed this to E’s devil spirits and they arranged a deliverance session for her. Good god! Cults really are all the same.

Cult leaders always get involved in people’s personal matters - where they don’t belong. In the cult Set Free (see post above) the pastor (Phil) required husbands to obtain permission notes for all aspects of personal life. The man mentioned in the post above “was not allowed to oversee his family as husband and father, but was expected to consult with Phil on all matters.” This easily relates to Karen Ann’s involvement in JAL’s marriage. Like JAL, the marriage of the guy mentioned above suffered horribly. In twi offshoot cult I was in this sort of over involvement was the norm. One person I know of had to get the apartment they picked out approved by the leader before they could sign the lease. He gave married couples counseling even though he has absolutely no training. His diagnosis of marital problems was always the same – the woman had devil spirits. Etc. The stories I’ve heard from people directly involved in The Way are the same. Anyone seeing a pattern here?

A quote from Churches that Abuse: “People, thinking that they were placing their allegiance in the Word of God, were actually placing their allegiance in a man and his interpretation of the Word of God. That is crucial to understanding why people were so easily deceived. They thought they were really obeying the Word of God.” It is easy to draw the comparison between the above quote and Karen Ann’s prophecies. Some CES leadership thought that by following Karen Ann’s prophecies they were following God. Karen Ann is not the first to use this trick. The leader of the cult Set Free (regularly featured on TBN by the way) wanted to get one man and his family to move onto the cult’s estate. After making his desire known the man was “coincidentally visited by a member of Set Free with a word from the Lord concerning [this move.]” Because they thought they were following God they made the move. As long as Karen Ann has free reign she will continue to have this kind of influence. The prophecy trick is a common cult move. While some people purposefully do this just to get what they want others really are getting a word. But it’s from the wrong god. I think Karen Ann falls into this last category.

I have sent two e-mails to CES, but they were not addressed to anyone specifically. I’m not sure who got them or if anyone bothered to read them. My take on things is a little different from all of the other opinions I’ve heard so far. I’ll try to explain without sounding too nuts. When you let doctrinal error into a group it doesn’t just sit there all harmless. It spawns practical errors. Eventually, other errors that are based on the first error develop and more practical error results. It just keeps going and going until it has roots. If no one catches this in time… There is at least one major doctrinal error I am aware of that CES let in the door – feminism. I understand that a lot of women were hurt deeply by the abuse the so-called men in twi inflicted upon them, but trading one error for another isn’t going to work. This is what nailed Karen Ann (among other things I’m sure). She is CES’s Jezebel. She took out JAL and his wife (I’m not saying he’s innocent). That put Karen Ann’s man in line to be the head of CES. Once there she ruled CES through her husband and kept taking key people out. I believe it is key to understand that Karen Ann is the ringleader – she is the Jezebel. To fix this she must be removed permanently. Then someone needs to remove the feminism that was let in the door. What these women did was to couch feminism in Christianity to make it more marketable to believers. But a rose by any other name is still a rose and feminism does what it has always done – destroy the lives of men, women, and children. You cannot find women’s lib in the Bible and believers should not be able to find it at CES either. As for the big question about a woman’s proper place in the Body of Christ there is a simple answer. If God raises a person up to be a teacher, then they will be a teacher. Anyone who fights against this will be fighting against God and will lose. The gender of the person is unimportant. Rather than creating some official feminist policy about women in the church we should just let God do his job.

I thought I would add something to this discussion. I spent a few months reading a bunch of different cult books - how they work - that sort of thing. What I found interesting about E's letter was that almost everything she said was in all of those cult books. It was like I was re-reading my books and not someone's letter. That left me with the impression that she was the only one involved in this whole thing that seem to know what was really going on. If that's true (and it is) that means all those prophecies are full of cram, which of course means that all of those prophets are working for someone other than God.