Eagle

To all at GreaseSpot, Merry Christmas to you all! God Bless us everyone! Eagle

LG, This saddens me...to hear one of our own like this. I don't know if you have tried naturopathic methods or not, but maybe you have. We love you here at GS. Eagle

There is far too much evidence proving America was founded as a Christian nation that allowed everyone to worship freely in peace. Obviously, the founders found no threat to foreign religions, perhaps believing that our influence would cause converts to Christianity. We most likely should have done what God commanded Israel to accept only converts to Judeaism or one God, the God of Israel. Sounds horrible to some but not to me at all. Everytime Israel entertained foreign gods they went downhill from there. It would have been fine to let anyone in but apparently we have invited those in who find our beliefs reprehensible or insulting and try to outlaw or eliminate our culture to replace it with their own or just create havoc and disintegration from within. As far as the issue of diversity, and having a degree in business and hearing the philosophy it is based on, I can give my opinion on that, too. Diversity is a new way to promote even more discrimination in the work place and put less value on experience, education, knowledge, or prior job training. In an effort to be more "diverse," they will be looking at more than one race or two as minorities but everything that is not white. The affirmative action programs for African-Americans will be diluted causing more unemployment for them and replaced with Hispanic, Oriental, or Arab persons. Traditional Christian holidays will be diluted to just being a "holiday" in the work-place, and in my place of employment, the "holiday giving tree" was established in December so as not to offend one or two people out of twenty five hundered. This was a traditional program where gifts were given to underprivileged kids, and because Christ was taken out, this enraged several hundred employees who decided they would give their money to some other charity. The program took a nose dive in donations this year. Funny thing was, those two employees had no problem with seeing the word "Christ" and "Christmas". The company just decided, through their diversity program, that they did. CompPsych is the contracted company that promotes this methodology among corporations. Perhaps what they teach gets misinterpreted at corporate level, but I doubt it. Holiday tree. Good Lord. Guess I should put one up on Presidents day. That's a holiday. Maybe the Fourth of July. That's a holiday. We maybe should have Memorial Day trees, too, and if we stretch it far enough, an April Fools tree or Halloween Tree. Whatever, some can say the tree came from pagan symbology or whatever, but only Christmas was the major religion doing this in December. We have to call a lot of people on the carpet in this country. Ask them what their personal problem with Christians really might be. The country is getting worse, and when corporate human resources personnel let these controversial organizations into our workplace, they promote what they are fighting against, a hostile working environment.

Frankly, I never believed in Wierwille's interpretation of "seed" of the serpent. Eagle

Good Lord, exie... Give them the finger? I'd hate to get on your bad side...don't know which end of the planet I would land on. Eagle

I hope this is straightened out. It would be a huge mistake to even CONSIDER firing someone like John Schoenheit. They have got to work all this out. There are still books of theirs I need to buy and if there is a split, I'm not sure what would happen to their books. Eagle

CoolWaters: Your experience with poor pastoring I can identify with. Bad pastors are all over the place and many of them just preach dirt poor doctrine, a judgmental type of Christianity. When I married my wife I got two stepsons who were already grown and on their own. One was slow intellectually, the other was not but both were incredibly irresponsible, having kids out of wedlock, going in and out of jail, ruining jobs they were on and destroying my wife physically, mentally, and the two of us financially. When I took over I did cut out any support to them because all it did was help them continue in their mess. They began to straighten up a little, but still were pretty bad, getting into fights in town, more jail, bad driving records. Worse, when I cut the support to them, and they got traffic tickets and lost jobs, the real father of the kids would pick up and continue the support of the two of them, paying all their traffic costs, tickets, insurance, until he went broke. We asked for prayer in this situation from a pastor bt email, who did not reply to the email. We then went to a splinter group fellowship where he attended and we asked the group for prayer of these two, and the pastor got up as prayer began and went into the other room, refusing to take part in the prayer. I believe some pastors who think that misbehaving people deserve what they get and do not deserve prayer. But at least the rest prayed. We decided to dump the pastor. You can do that - fire your pastor. Go somewhere else. Fire him or her just like a lawyer, or change doctors, things like that. Here is what happened after that. The slow one, (mentally retarded) was with a group of derelicts who were driving in cold January morning when one of the derelicts told my slow son to get in the back seat so he could drink with the driver in the front seat. They went traveling, swerved off a road and hit a telephone pole. The one who took my son's place was killed instantly, and in fact, nearly decapitated. The driver survived but as a partial cripple, his legs pinned under the dashboard with the car turned up and around the telephone pole. Worse, the driver had AIDs and was bleeding in the car. My son ended up going through a side window and his body was supported by the window and we was above the driver with AIDs. My son got off the easiest, with eight broken ribs, burns to his back and some lacerations and was taken out unconscious. All of them were tested for alcohol content including the dead one. The two up front were found to be far above the legal limit for alcohol while my son registered - zero - no alcohol. He was taken to the hospital, life-flighted, and we prayed again. While he was there, we had him tested for the AIDs virus and he was negative, but we had to repeat the tests several times over several months and he was finally declared negative for sure, or never exposed. The car had been drenched in blood, but we think it was from the front passenger side derelict (sorry, but you had to know these punks) after almost being decapitated. My son, I thought, thinking back, had been fortunate that he was not on the bottom of the wreck where the driver with AIDs could bleed onto his open wounds, but rather my son was on top, bleeding on the driver. It took one more year but as slow as he was, realized that these "friends" of his were using him because he was slow, and decided to cut it off with them. With prayer and a little help, he accepted Christ. He believed God must have saved him despite his bad behavior. We later tried to get him working but he kept losing jobs for being too slow. He is on SSDI and SSI disability now, but my wife and I are planning a business where we can employ him, because no one else will. He got married and his wife was almost as lsow as he was but she didn't look it. She was very beautiful. Her story was that her family put her out in the street at 16 years old because they didn't want to deal with her. Social services took care of her, but she and Scott met and have married and now have a normal child. They are good parents. He laments now because no one lets him work (for very long). My wife and I check in on them a lot. The other son continued to be a problem but is reaping the consequences of his actions from the past. Because he has not really come to God yet, we continue to pray for him. His life gets better with some help, but I refuse to give him anything unless he really needs something and only do it once. One day he called up asking about church. He talked to my wife for a while. We had prayed for other things, too, in our neighborhood. We had three houses surrounding us that were filled with young people partying several times a week into the morning hours. Calling the police didn't help much. Talking with them personally didn't help much. After two years of prayer on this, something extraordinary happened. The three houses all went up for sale and sold, all within about three weeks of each other, and were replaced with much better neighbors. I believe Coolwaters did the right thing going to the hospital that night and calling the pastors later. It is okay to ask God first for the healing, but if believing hinges on such perfectness, then we better take the trip to the hsopital praying along the way. If the person heals, then great! If not, then medical help is there. We have seen miracles in our lives with consistent prayer. We still pray for both sons. Last week the son that had not accepted Christ yet (as far as we know), was in an accident totaling his company vehicle. It was hit by a man going through a red light. He was not injured despite the seriousness of the accident. I was in a car in traffic and fell asleep at the wheel last week. The car braked at the intersection at a red light and woke me up, but not my wife. My foot was on the brake but I didn't remember putting it there. I told my wife just last night about that and she laughed. I thought she would be mad. But she also said if I was tired anymore to just pull in somewhere and sleep in the car. Good advice. I still believe God wants to heal us, even now. I am still trying to figure out what it takes to get there. Eagle

Thanks for that scanned photo of the letter from Howard Allen to Bo. If that was any indication of how Wierwille taught his best friend, then the reality does exist that "Zero" Corps may have been a group of people who foresaw the crap coming down and would not put up with it. Hurray for Zero Corps! Then there is the very real possibility that Zero Corps did not expect half of what was thrown at them. That is a breakdown in communication from the top to those in that Corps and knowing Management the way I do, Management is usually to blame. Had they known what was going to happen, they would have prepared and stayed the course. Besides, in those years Wierwille was changing doctrine a lot, which may have bothered some of the first in the Corps program. Just thoughts. Eagle

You know what, Belle? That is the BEST I've ever heard in my life...that God saves us not because he expects something from us in the future, but because HE LOVES US. Perfect. Eagle

Glad you're okay too, Tom. Eagle

Wow, all those people giving out their dates of birth, just letting us know how old they really are. I choose 1968 as my year of birth, too. Never mind the rumors I was in Vietnam when I was three years old. The Vietnam war started not shortly after Korea with the French, then had American involvement then. Wasn't that the time the BRC was built and the Wierwille farm became HQ? Oh My God! The devil started the Vietnam War really ticked off about HQ! Funny thing, though. All of us here are mostly ticked off about TWI HQ. But you don't see any of us starting a war over it. Eagle

I'm glad to know I am not the only one with this kind of experience. My wife never knew. I did not tell her. She slept through the entire thing including the abrupt braking out of nowhere. It was as if she never felt it. She was peaceful. I'm telling her tonight. I should have told her this. Since she didn't experience it, I thought she'd think me a nut or get upset for me falling asleep at the wheel. I believe God did something. I sure didn't. My wife and I somtimes pray for a new house and beginning a church in a small town that really needs one. Not a big ambition spiritually, I suppose. If that is God's purpose for us, then so be it. I feel I should repay God somehow. But he is too big to repay. The only thing I know to do is ask him to help me follow His will. I don't know when my time will come. But I guess it wasn't yesterday. I'm just glad my wife wasn't hurt. Eagle

This is not TWI related but I had an unusual thing happen today. I was driving my wife to a flag retirement ceremony at my church coming back from a military drill in Lima where we had a luncheon with military including wives. The two hour drive was exhausting especially since we had little sleep the night before and all the coffee in the world was not enough to keep me from nodding off occasionally. My wife was sleeping on the passenger side. I was finally in Toledo when going toward an intersection I fell asleep at the wheel. The light turned red and I didn't know it. The brakes slammed on right at the light. Then I awakened seeing cars whizzing by and looked up at the red light. I can't remember hitting those brakes myself. I think I did and my foot was on the brake. I just don't remember hitting the brake or remember the last half block I drove. After that, I was wide awake, rather shaken, and safely got to my destination. That's all I can say about that. Eagle

Rascal, I know where you come from. I remember talking to a gut who thought of comitting suicide because he was confronted with not tithing because his paycheck was so small he couldn't afford to eat and tithe. I spoke the New Testament to him throughout the night and by the end of that night he was thrilled about there being no law for the New Testament believer to tithe. In fact, after that, he was so turned on to God, on his next paycheck, he dumped the entire thing into the kitty. But not the TWI kitty. He dropped it off at a Catholic church that helped poor people in the town. Of course, I had to feed him the following week. But he was so thrilled for God, I didn't mind. Eagle

That would possibly make Hillary Rodham Clinton and William Jefferson Clinton like half-alien brother and sister. No wonder Hillary didn't want sex with this guy. And then we have Bill going after human women, like the Nephilim days...ewwwwwww.....gross!!!!!!! (from my daughter-in-law)

So TWI was great? It seemed great at first but the fall was even greater... Eagle

I don't mind if CFF or CES does that. There isn't really that much legalism involved in those organizations. (There are a few renegades in each splinter group, however, that like to believe that the new group is another TWI, and try to lord it over people. I am sure that this is not what the leaders want in these groups. It is easy to tell those individuals to get lost.) Eagle

Thanks, everyone! Actually, I was going to post the book here when the update was made but somehow I couldn't let this thread go by, I guess. I am updating the book because a lot got by editing and I had originally written the book in British-style puncuation, a habit I picked up from my graduate school days when I had international professors. I am redoing it in American style puncuation. The research update includes finding where Wierwille used the Greek word "sun" when trying to prove four crucified with Christ. I originally said I could not find where he got that. Well, I found it as part of a compound verb form, so have noted it in the book. His conclusion on that word is still debatable, though. Much of it came from already posted articles on my website, that finally I had to take down to make more room. Rather than let them go into oblivion, they were made into a book. There are twelve chapters, the last not dealing with Wierwille at all but the Da Vinci code. I do address the Lamb of the First Year in that chapter, though. If you have already ordered it off of Amazon for Christmas, then I'll need to know, because I would like to arrange for you to get the updated version free of charge. I'd rather wait for people to wait on this though. It is like buying an unfinished product. I don't want anyone to do that. When the book is REALLY completed, I'll post again here. I'll give a review of what is in the book and let people decide then. But if you did buy this book, the book is still good, but I'd rather get your email address and later your address to be sure you get the updated version free of charge. So please try not to buy it now. I have only so many free copies to pass out. Then again, I want the best for everyone. I hope some do not mind my stand on some of TWI doctrine. I figured if there was any tolerance of it, it would be here at GS. God Bless and Merry Christmas to all! Eagle Stephen John Spencer

I wrote one - debating a lot of VPW's doctrine. I didn't get personal with Wierwille's or Martindale's life. I also didn't relate anything much about my experiences in the Way. The book is on Amazon.com and several internet book stores including Barnes & Noble, Target, and sites like that. A few bookstores in the United States picked it up. I am updating the book because I found things that got by editing and also updated my research on one topic. So it will kind of be a second edition. I don't recommend buying it just yet because I prefer people get the updated version. I still owe some people a copy of the book but am waiting for the update. For anyone that wanted to know, the book is called The Genesis Pursuit: The Lost History of Jesus Christ. It is not a big seller but it has sold...but then again, I didn't write it to be a big seller, just to let persons looking at TWI what the doctrine was like. It was also written to comfort a lot of people suffering from accusations by TWI against them. Well, that's mine. God Bless GS. Eagle

I had no idea that 10 second clips were to be given away free on airtime. That would make sense. It was about 5 seconds...must have been local. But what timing...right after the game.

It was toward the end of the game, if not the end of the game, and right after it, in Lima, Ohio where I was watching the game with my troops, we saw a TWI commercial flash on the screen. My First Sergeant saw it, so it wasn't a flashback. It was the Singing Ladies of the Way, perhaps an older filmclip, and the clip said "The Way International". It was about 5 seconds long. Please tell me someone else saw this, too. The horror. The horror. - Apocalypse Now Eagle

Agree wholeheartedly, Exie. TWI gave God a bad name. They have a chance to turn that around if they take it.

I remember devil spirits as a kid - one was a monster in my closet and the other one was under my bed. I couldn't step right out of bed or the devil spirit would grab me by the ankle and pull me under the bed, which was the entrance to hell. I had to leap off of it in the morning. At night I kept the covers over me. Devil spirits could not get through covers. Eagle

I hope the angle was just right: Click on the picture to get video. Eagle

My memories there came from the 1986 Advanced Class. I had a great time. Best time in my life up to then. I had done some resistence of regulations, but that made it all the more...fun. Wasn't there a large pond out back behind the buildings where we met to talk the word and have a small campfire? Anyone remember that or did I just dream it? Eagle