Tzaia

That was undoubtedly part of what was released as "the class". I've got the set of CDs along with everything else CES had produced before 2005. A bit off-topic, but sister Sue is on the "elder advisory" team on JAL's new gig. I guess that means JWS and sis haven't patched things up yet. Another interesting tidbit is that what JWS teaches concerning a women's role in the church is very different than the former(?) idea that a woman's sole purpose is to keep him happy while he goes about studying the word.

II Tim 3:16 becomes a non-issue when one cherry picks what one chooses to believe is scripture. I don't have any problem with cherry picking if everyone is allowed to cherry pick. However, one whole Sower was dedicated to how it's somehow godly to walk away from a relationship if someone chooses different cherries - as those cherries are not the right cherries if they're not the same cherries as STF-I's choice.

Along with "creative," "luck," "karma," "yoga," "meditation," "can't," "won't", and "no".

Sure it is - but try telling that to someone who had taken more classes than you.

About the most recent "Sower" "Our Contender article, “Should Women be Silent in the Church?” by John Schoenheit demonstrates through examination of the textual and cultural evidence that women’s silence is not God’s will. As John says, “The weight of evidence leads to the conclusion that 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 35, which says women should be silent and not speak in the church, was not part of the original God-breathed Word, but was written by a copyist who had strong feelings about women’s participation in Christian meetings.” An excerpt from the talking point about JWS's book "The Bible: You Can Believe It" contained here: http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=346 "This book is a defense of the accuracy and integrity of the Bible. It examines and refutes many of the most common criticisms that have been raised against the Bible. It shows that the biblical text is reliable and the text can be trusted. It shows that the accuracy of the text has not been compromised as it has been passed down through the ages. It shows the Bible is complete in 66 books and none of it is missing." Which one is it?

As an unashamed self-help junkie, I have a whole collection of pretty much every motivational speaker and writer out there, including almost everything Steve Covey has written. There's something to glean from them all. I think NLP is fascinating and have looked into that as well. I've delved into Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence. However, I have found Bruce Lipton's work in the biology of perception, belief, and spontaneous social evolution the most interesting to date. I don't look at these things as being an end-all. They're tools. Personally, I think NLP's co-discoverer Bandler is crass in the way VPW was.

Sounds kind of like a colonoscopy.

But boinking other people's wives was ok.

I just puked a little in my mouth...

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I was blissfully unaware of the whole suggestion of a leader is tantamount to a command nonsense. I didn't think the leadership could walk on water. Being the way I am did not make things easy back then because people were used to having their way with you, and they could be pretty nasty when you didn't let them. A few things happened that made me very aware of what I was dealing with, and that caused me to be even less likely to subject myself to behavior that I considered abusive. That probably saved me from a lot of what people report here.

You do bring a certain entertainment factor to the boards as I enjoy watching people go to great lengths to defend their truth as though it is "the" truth.

duh

Before I became involved in TWI, I had a years-long background in the psychic sciences including ESP. I also was a big believer in hypnosis. Once I became involved in TWI, I was made aware of the dangers of those things, so I stopped trying to read people's minds and made myself unavailable to suggestion. That meant I had to be told those things directly. No one ever told us to forgo health insurance or walk away from our families. The family thing may have been suggested, especially if a family event conflicted with a TWI event, but due to the suggestive nature, any suggestions to that effect were ignored. We were point blank told about being on time after coming in late a few times due to circumstances beyond our control. There was no excuse as far as the twig leader was concerned, so I didn't sweat it anymore. If I knew I was going to be late, I just didn't go.

Yes, I remember - and not lovingly.:wacko:

I had a friend invite me to a branch meeting where Good Seed was playing. I had heard them often at a local bar. I was unaware that it was a branch meeting until the teaching started. It was nice to see people having a good time without alcohol and I responded well to that. Then I stupidly signed what I believed was a non-obligatory green card, only to find out later that I had (apparently) made a promise to God himself. I started dating a guy who was an AC grad. That made us unevenly yoked. He paid for my PFAL class. I never went any further than that, which in hindsight was a wise move. We got married, had 2 kids, and as hard as I tried to fit in with TWI, I could never do it on the terms that I felt was best for our family, so it never happened. My husband, who had already done all the stuff that it took to be an AC grad and done the WoW thing, told me that I wasn't missing a thing. Once I read the WoW rules and commitments, I had to agree. Fortunately I was able to retain most of my cynicism through 8 years of being dead weight in TWI - as the way I was treated didn't make it hard. My role was far more active in CES, but I still retained my cynicism, which became useful once CES started acting more like TWI.

Of course TWI and the splinters are not 100% wrong - that would be (relatively) easy to spot. If one accepts TWI's basic premises in how it came to believe there were 4 others crucified and all the other "errors" in orthodox belief pointed out in the foundational class, it becomes pretty hard to deny that it's all there for the learning. Those points, which are rather trivial (IMO), are the bait that sucks one in. Bait doesn't have to be big - just enticing and enough to cover the hook. I don't know if it was all intentional or not, but once one starts down that path, it's pretty hard to extricate oneself from that line of thinking, particularly after the inevitable censoring of any sort of critical thinking. This is what sucked me in and kept me in a splinter for a lot longer than I was ever in TWI - the premise that the NT was "scripture" and therefore "god-breathed" and "inerrant" and "can't contradict itself" and that orthodox churches had lost that connection - and here's the undeniable "proof". I firmly believed that until late 2002, even as I was actively attending a regular church. As I attended church, the differences became non-issues as I became less enamored with the need to feel like I had to be aligned with an organization who needed to be right at the expense of every other organization. For me that was the key - they ALL think they're right, but at least Presbyterians don't feel the need to continually castigate every other organization for perceived errors in understanding, and that was refreshing. It didn't hurt that CES became quirkier and more set in its ways as time went on. In the beginning there was a lot more freedom to think and speculate, but as it developed its own doctrines apart from TWI, it became more like TWI when defending its doctrines. I was done with all of that and I really didn't want to be around it anymore. The mental gymnastics that it takes to accept the "can't contradict itself" part forces one into leaning on others for the necessary understanding of all the other crap TWI and the splinters teach, because even a non-critical reader can see that the text contradicts itself all over the place, which is vehemently denied by TWI and every splinter. It takes someone who is really good at bending logic without making it obvious to keep people blind to the glaring inconsistencies. VPW was really good at it; LCM was not. CES is pretty good at it until one strips away all the premises that must be adhered to in order to accept the logic. None of that matters anymore. For me, it all boils down to how people are treated. I can't speak about any other splinter, but how TWI and then CES treated people was what ultimately turned me against them. When the idea of being "Christlike" is basically treating everyone else (including followers) like idiots or moneychangers, that's the kind of "Christ" I can do without.

Yawn...

Nucking futs?

My definition is a bit looser - anyone who was in TWI and went off an started their own group because they just couldn't deal with the doctrinal differences of already established churches.

chockfull - it's a mentality that permeates even one offshoot that I know of.

Jail? - not a criminal offense. BG Leonard and others could have sued for copyright infringement, and TWI would have probably had to pay monetary damages. But no one pursued it. I don't get that. It appears that the guy was untouchable. His plagiarism was known outside TWI. It was reported in various newspaper articles. People in TWI chose not to believe it, including me. VPW was self-published. Nothing more than that. Many resort to self-publishing when manuscripts aren't picked up by the large® publishing houses. Makes one wonder if he even tried. Did TWI do it's own printing and binding?

That's the irony.

And while the Aramaic project was (probably) the closest thing to real research ever done (my opinion), the "research" that got the most attention was the blockbuster discovery that adultery and fornication were actually sexual sins and not referring to spiritual matters. When this was brought into the open, several of the women who had formerly thought they were being sexually healed and performing great works for the "man of God" or whomever else they were servicing, discovered they were not receiving spiritual blessings, but were being used. TWI managed to keep much of this unknown to the really faithful who continued to submit to the sexual predators until someone wised up and sued. What came out of all this was that there were two distinct set of theologies - what was written, and what was unwritten but spoken to a select group and practiced. What little research that was ever done was done away with to eliminate the possibility of further discoveries.

As fallen-away out-of-fellowship people who are obviously born of the wrong seed, we don't matter. And I'm fine with that.