George Aar

Wyteduv, The part of your story you don't sum up though, did the man get out of his wheelchair? If not, you gotta wonder why, don't you? Maybe his believing wasn't "there" for a complete healing? I don't question what you saw, just what actually happened. Here's a blurb from "Quackwatch" that seems more in line with what I've experienced via "faith healing"... http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/faith.html

How about any of the goddam classes? Who the heII REALLY wants to spend their entire farking weekend in a musty church basement listening to some talking head blather on about tenses of verbs, arcane readings from some hitherto unheard-of document, or dubious accounts of Godly intervention? What WUZ the draw of WayWorld, anyway? (I vainly ask myself for the umpteenth time)...

Diazbro, I actually knew one of the supposed "miracle" recipients - someone who was supposedly "blind" and then was ministered to and GLORY!, she could now see. Funny thing was, when I asked her about this dramatic event in her life, she was really vague about it. She actually acted rather put out by my asking and sort of gave me the "bum's rush" out the door (I think we were at "The Rock" at the time). My suspicions are that the "healing" was somewhat less miraculous than it was billed. Personally I'm now pretty skeptical about any event where the Almighty supposedly suspends the laws of physics so as to accomodate the admittedly unworthy. But then, who am I to question the actions of ALMIGHTY GOD? If someone says He did it, it must be true, right?

Tom Odd, Yeah, and about that gate. One day whilst we were working on the chalet (I was putting on a new roof along with some in-res. "help") we came to work to find the gate laying on the ground. It had fallen over in the night. Fortunately no one was around to get flattened by it (though I can think of a couple who maybe could've used the treatment). New logs had to be cut for it (again, I guess they had problems like that before). And a guy who had spent some time with the log home builder in Colorado, spent a week or so rebuilding the thing. The place is a non-stop maintenance project...

Oh, and BTW, door-to-door witnessing (or any kind of witnessing for that matter) was NOT boring, it was downright painful... Geeze, there's STILL old friends who'll have nothing to do with me for fear I'll spring another evangelical event on them...

Two words, Way Productions, The Lawrence Welk Show with biblically correct (TWI style) lyrics - gaack!

"I say let's smoke this creep out of the woodwork and chase him down the streets like the torch carrying villagers after the Frankenstein monster." Sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend. Let's get a "bail money" fund together first, though, O.K.?

The four rooms at the back of the chalet were called the "Corpstel". I guess it was supposed to be for the use of "corps" who were traveling through or somesuch, but I never knew of anyone who actually used it. I've told this story before, but maybe it's worth repeating. The chalet is built of Colorado logs - trees that grew and were aclimated to an arid environment, consequently being located in humid Ohio (and due in no small part to Mr. Wierwille's decision to leave the chalet unfinished out in the weather - without a roof - for a year or so) the logs are constantly rotting away. There was a major rebuild on the corpstel section where an entire corner had to be replaced (no small feat with a real log building). Then there were numerous repairs to replace a log or two, or trim the exposed ends, or inject epoxy and slather on gallons of "Sikkens" wood preservative. In '88 the entire top of the building was torn off, many logs replaced, and an entirely new roof system was installed (the original shake roof having been done improperly). I guess there's been yet again many major remodels performed on it to the tune of who-knows-how-many thousands of dollars. When I last saw the place I was stunned to see how horribly out of level the decks were surrounding it. I was told this was due to the time the building sat out in the open and the logs got soaked and bent and twisted any way they wanted, and the "Waybuilders" were never quite able to cover up the damage. Anyway, my take on the situation is that it's a bad concept from the gitgo. A wrong type of structure for Ohio to begin with, and given to a bugwit that didn't deserve damned thing, yet was given the "keys to the kingdom" by the all-knowing MOGFODAT. A real joke all the way around...

"where did the time go??? " Indeed, my little girl, who I just took to her first day in Kindergarten LAST WEEK, is graduating from High School on June 6th! O.K., I guess this is no longer a derailment, it's a whole 'nother thread. Sorry...

Oh, and I'd have loved to put in a heating system for ya. I remember doing a couple of hot water systems while in Duluth, they were actually kinda fun to do - maybe because they were a change of pace - but I enjoyed doing both of them...

dmiller, Re:"(How many years ago was that!!!)" Gawd, I hate to count that high, but it was a wife, two children, a half a dozen or so flights to Japan and a couple of H.S. educations ago, and now looking down the barrel of a college education 'er two (yikes!). I make it as what, TWENTY YEARS?(!) Say it isn't so...

Yes, Shaz, And might I add, being from the "nortland, der", Mr. Miller knows of where he speaks when he's talking about "cold". The rest of the world may get a little chilly, but northern Minnesota gets COLD!.

Some Eric Clapton trivia (I think I've got this right), Yardbirds, Cream, Blindfaith (only one album, and the band immediately broke up), Derek and the Dominoes, then his basically solo career. BTW, the "Blindfaith" album has my vote as the best R&R album of all time. I still know all the lyrics to all the songs by heart - hell, I still know the order the songs were on the album (though the order was different on 8-track). I do seem to remember some chatter about the "In the Presence of the Lord" cut being divinely inspired or some such...

Danny, what are you saying?(!) You mean that every word in THE WORD was not PERFECT? And that God didn't have a reason for everything in the Bible, where He says it, why He says it, how He says it, to whom He says it, when He says it? Heresy!

OM, "I opine that if it was to be taken literally, really literally, that it probably would have been written down and documented in some way, for us to make no mistake about its meaning and importance." That's not how an accomplished conman works. He makes innuendos, inferences, or gives simple "connect-the-dots" analogies, but would take great care to leave himself an "out", a way to have "plausible deniability" should his critics close in. To my knowledge Mr. Wierwille never said "My word is equivalent to the Bible", but he implied as much CONSTANTLY. Oh, and re my "pig" comment, I was more trying to illustrate the futility of trying to reason with you, rather than disparaging your persona. Although I do have a difficult time maintaining much respect for anyone who - at this late date - still clings to the ridiculous notion that PFAL was anything but bait for a hook...

It is amazing how much money an actor can make if they do make it to network TV though, i.e. Billy Gray who played the son on FATHER KNOWS BEST. I remember seeing him on some talk show DECADES after his show had gone off the air, and he was living quite comfortably off his earnings and residuals from that one gig. Incredible. And that wasn't even in the era of the really high-paid actor. This was a '50s sitcom! Anyway, my vote for this coveted award goes to that gimp David Schwimmer from FRIENDS. Gawd, he's annoying...

OM, Re:"George, if you're referring to PFAL '77, your analogy doesn't fly. If that was really true, that PFAL 77 was God Breathed and he portrayed it as such, don't you think he would have made it one of those mandatory classes everyone should take? After all, it replaces the old one? As it turned out, I don't think any of us saw the finished product on tape, I know I didn't." You didn't follow what I was saying (what a surprise). Read it again. It was already made known that the PFAL '77 Class would NOT be replacing the '67 version as the required initiation into WayWorld (contrary to what the hype was prior to the class). Wierwille THEN made the announcement that "Paul never rewrote Ephesians" - the clear implication being that, like Ephesians, the first filmed PFAL class must have been received by revelation, and was a miracle or divine gift of some sort. Therefore, to redo "The Class" would be like Paul rewriting Ephesians (which he never did, right?). Ya get it now? Sheesh, like teaching a pig to sing...

OM, " PFAL isn't God Breathed and Dr. Wierwille never suggested same" He did too. Remember PFAL '77? The first thing VP said when he came out on stage - in regards to the fact that the decision had been made that the '77 version was not going to replace the '67 version as "THE" class - he stated that "Paul never rewrote Ephesians". The innuendos were constant that "Doctor" was getting revelation all through all of his teachings. Yes indeed, he was inspired! Please spare us your revisionist history of WayWorld. And re:"I think the "every woman in the kingdom belonged to the king" story is falsely applied to Wierwille" Well how about the "Shunnamite woman" teaching? You know, the story where the "man of God" took up residence with that woman. And the line from that teaching was "What do you think they were DOING all that time in that house together?" The obvious inference being that they must have been having sex. After all a minister HAS TO have sex REAL regularly, doesn't he? Or how about the dopey "teaching" that the original sin was masterbation? "Yeah, it'd be a real sin to masterbate when there's all of these hot chicks around to hump, wouldn't it Howard?" And there's numerous others, and you know it. Wierwille constantly dropped innuendos and hints that sex (especially with a MOG) was just fine. And, after all, if you really felt bad about it ('cause of your spiritual immaturity) you just "thanked" God for forgiveness. How convenient. The minor item that's always left out of these stories is that there's another party involved in sex. Yeah, THE WOMAN. But then, what does that bitch matter?

Pirate, It was not only the overpowering BELIEVING of all the "saints" (I can't believe we really called ourselves that) but a strict regimen of BEET juice (or was it rutabaga?) that brought HA back from the brink of death. And we all know how healing that can be.(?) Amazing the preposterous BULL$HIT we bought...

Galen, Re:"I dont recall ever seeing anyone clean anyone else's house," Geeze, what ministry were you in? I remember "volunteering" to clean the limb home in Washington starting back in 1975. Also got roped into it while in Alabama a few years later, and knew of people doing it CONSTANTLY. It was de rigueur in WayWorld, anywhere I lived... And Rafael, Re your post to OM: "Your last two posts make me sick. They are beneath you." No they're not. They're right there where he lives.

Imbus, Yours are the kind of accounts that IMO, trump all the other smarmy "but VP taught me THE WURD" (rhymes with "turd") type of testimonies. WayWorld was a secretive, sleazy congame that became a training ground for sociopaths. The fact that "Doctor" said some things that gave some a (false) sense of power, peace, entitlement, or whatever the draw, is wholely immaterial.

OH YES! It's The Word, The Word, The Word! Peepul, don't you see it? Yeah, the "Word" of Wierwille. It was his philosophy he was pitching, so the spotlight was still on him (as it should rightly have been, no? After all he was the MOGFODAT, wasn't he?) For all his protestations otherwise, it's quite evident that the Vickster was the prime mover at WayWorld and anyone questioning the veracity of any of his tenets of faith was quickly shown the door. The "Word" he was so adamant about promoting was his own. The praise he lavished on it (and expected others to do the same) was self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-promotion. Yes, he could feign humility. Any huckster - even mediocre ones - can do that. But if you look past the facade, he was pitching himself, first, last, and always...

This thread has jogged my memory a bit. Back in 1979 some of the "graduate" corps were invited back in residence. Why, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they had started thinking for themselves a little too much or something. Anyway, part of what they did while back there was to work on a research project of some sort. IIRC, the topic of the research was "Christian Ethics". I had the opportunity to listen to some of the conclusions reached by this stellar group of researchers ("This is HEAVY stuff bro. You oughta be REALLY thankful that God allowed you to hear this, man!"). Among their more interesting points was the concept that Jesus probably had sex with Mary Magdalene ("Well, wouldn't that have been the loving thing to do?"), that Paul probably had sex with several of the unmarried women in his territory ("Don't you think that they needed it?") and that if someone you're ministering to today is horny, you should probably give 'em a good humpin' too, ("After all, God is in the business of meeting needs, isn't He?"). These pearls of wisdom were imparted to me by the former NW RCs. Now maybe they came up with this stuff all on their own, and "leadership" knew nothing about it. It strikes me as more than a little coincidental, though, that the teachings reflect precisely the type of thinking that must have motivated the MOGs (Major and mini) in their lives of debauchery. The Vickster was one sick puppy. Why is it hard to believe that he promoted (very slyly) such a debased theology?

You know, now that you mention it, I spend a lot of time with people who don't even speak the same language as me. A dictionary, a few phrases and a whole lot of sign langauge, and we make it work somehow. I have aquaintances that have no clue what I believe or don't believe, nor I them. And we get along famously. What superstitions I or they may have never enters the conversation, and we're none the worse for it, might I add...

OM, "George, let's get real. Do you spend a lot of time with folks who couldn't care less what you thought or believed, even now?" Uh, yes, I do. The fact that you're so incredulous about that says more about you than you probably know...