Tzaia

Which would make one wonder if all life is "aware" in the sense that we are aware. No. But I do think that "spirit" and "soul" are far more intertwined than I once believed. I believe soul is what gives me life, while spirit is what gives my life meaning.

Continuing on my rant... What a leap of logic it takes to attempt to equate what happens to sub atomic particles if they are forced through one or two slits with what happens in the spiritual realm. But that is what everyone has done while in TWI to some degree - taken a leap of logic. As if there was anything remotely logical about harnessing the spiritual realm, yet over and over someone attempts to explain it in some sort of scientific terms.

The point is that we don't know. We don't know how "spirit" operates or whether it is subject to any "laws" as we know them. All we know is that periodically someone believes they have received or was born with some sort of special knowledge of the spiritual and provides us with some way of living that "guarantees" a certain outcome in the "eternal" realm. Then a religion is born. VPW wanted to stand out in a unique way. JW's already had a lock on the absent Christ, so he borrowed heavily from the law of attraction group, putting his little spin on it, and called it the "Law of Believing". That was his claim to fame. And a whole bunch of us bought it - literally. Some of us paid upwards to $200 to receive this "revelation". Who in their right mind wouldn't want to be masters of the spiritual realm?

As if anyone has been able to adequately define "spirit". We all think we know what it is, and many here were bamboozled by TWI's take on spirit and what was spiritual, but honestly, does anyone really know?

Not if you are a literalist - and that's my point. TWI was clear that Jesus had drawn the line in the sand. If choosing TWI (as it considered itself the stand in for the absent Christ) meant "hating" your family, then so be it.

Maybe, just maybe, if you can do it without seeming and sounding arrogant, condescending, and unloving, following all that law stuff to the letter is a good thing. I've just found very few people who think they have the answers who can carry it off without sounding and acting that way - including me. So (for the most part), I stopped trying to have the answers. In this realm I find I have no answers anymore, and I'm considerably less miserable and combative. So tell me, how can I love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind - and my neighbor as myself (Luke 10:27) while hating my mother, father, wife, children, and myself (Luke 14:26)?

That's what I remember. TWI's stance was similar to the JW's. TWI didn't come right out and claim to be part of the 144000 like the JW's, but I perceived WC as a sort of 144000.

Personally - I think you understand incorrectly. The Matthew/Mark versions of the story say that the veil tore after he died. Luke clearly states that it happened before. I won't even get into the notion that someone didn't get it right - that kind of flies in the face of the whole "God inspired" thing. The point is that the placement of when that event happened has significant theological implications - and 2 very different things are being said by way of where that tearing of the holy of holies takes place.

Gen-2 Just an FYI - there was no WWW to speak of until 1992. I was an alpha tester of Mosaic and one of the first non-commercial internet customers in my area - a major metropolitan area. We had a computer in 1982, but it just wasn't feasible to do anything online. Modems were incredibly expensive and so was online time. There was the occasional BBS and various discussions on them. I used to get UUCP feeds of various USENET groups, but my main connection was through FIDONET until the WWW was actually usable, which was sometime in mid '94. Before that there was Compuserve (very expensive), Prodigy, and early AOL. These closed systems weren't really for research, but the boards provided some insight into the workings of various religious organizations - mainly through their rabid followers and equally rabid detractors. The big breakthrough book in the 80s was Walter Martin's Kingdom of the Cults. I found his requirements to be somewhat self-serving in that all non-trinitarian groups were automatically lumped in as cults. And I thought he was very mean-spirited. Had he not been that way, I might have paid more attention to what he was saying, but I personally couldn't get past the attitude. At the twig and branch level, prior to the demand that branch leaders be WC, there wasn't a cult feel at that level. Definitely by the time someone decided to go WoW or WC, people started acting more that way. There were a LOT of us who treated TWI like church by only going once or twice a week, and kept out of all the inner workings. The few times I ever did participate at that level, I was so appalled by what I saw that I retreated from participating. My husband, who had done the college wow thing, twig coordinator, and AC, was not interested in participating at that level and as a natural born cynic, neither did I. Also, back then (mid 60s-80s), churches did a lousy job of reaching out to young people. We were ripe for the picking. I liked TWI because I didn't notice any sort of tracking mechanism (it wasn't out there for me to notice), I wasn't aware of a dress code, I didn't like church, and I was already charismatic from being involved in a pentecostal church. TWI was never in my face that much. Ironically, I became MORE involved in a splinter.

I don't think it represents the same thing in both. I think when the holy of holies was ripped represents whether the act was viewed by the writer as an act of atonement (Matthew and Mark) because it happened after his death, or whether it is viewed by the writer as an act of judgment (Luke) because it was torn before he died. I haven't read the (supposed) translation from the Aramaic to do any comparison, but I sincerely doubt if it's going to do any better job of "fixing" the fact that the Matthew/Mark versions of the passion are very different from the Luke account.

Was it ripped after he died on the cross according to Matthew 27:51, or was it before he died according to Luke 23:45? Just asking.

Exactly - and hear here some of us thought he was a frickin' genius.

http://books.google.com/books?id=p3OOU3wL9YIC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=all+without+exception+all+without+distinction&source=bl&ots=l5WcoZZzA8&sig=GGOgD3oueRwKos8f86bkAmAdSl4&hl=en&ei=EsL6S_WkLIfANavbhYQI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=all%20without%20exception%20all%20without%20distinction&f=false

I didn't get the whole needs and wants parallel as a balance thing. I perceived it more as 2 lines in the same plane. While he didn't explain it that way (or particularly well), my take was that we were to elevate our wants to needs as God wants to provide all our needs. In this scenario, it pays to be high maintenance. When I found out HQ staff was paid on a "needs" basis and that barely covered the basics, it seemed to me that TWI wasn't following its own teaching about that, because VPW made it clear in PFAL that people needed to elevate needs above the basics. So while PFAL was focused on being a prosperity gospel, TWI went on to redefine what that prosperity was supposed to look like after one took the class - unless one was VPW or one of his chosen. So to many it seemed perfectly logical to chip in money to buy VPW that chopper he so desperately "needed" while clothing and shoeing one's family with hand-me-downs.

I couldn't tell you the day VPW died without a thread like this. I can't remember when I found out that he died of cancer, but the irony wasn't lost on me as I had just had surgery for cancer. Of course people steered clear of me - devil spirits and all. Gee it could happen to the "best" of us. I think we can be thankful that a bunch of people didn't claim he was raised from the dead by God and seated at his right hand - taking the place of Jesus. I know when he was alive a lot of people (at the time) thought he was Jesus Jr.

No, no, no. Sugar Shack. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value=" name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

TWI became the very thing it disdained.

Needs. Are they hoarding food?

That's what separated us from those other "Christian" organizations. Imagine running into an old boyfriend at a bar and him asking me who I'm with and I tell him my new Christian buddies. It was *my* kind of Christianity. I didn't have to change a thing.

that LCM didn't tithe, much less "abundantly share"? I (vaguely) remember the "won't spit your way" thing and wondered how could God stand back and let someone fall so hard - unless his believing was under-par and his sharing wasn't at least 15% of his gross. Is he an example of what happens to a person who doesn't?

When the whole POP and 37 page letter hit the fan, I was given a box of information the size of a ream of paper filled with information. It didn't take very long to figure out what TWI was all about and our branch in southern Indiana left. We had come from central Indiana (we lived about a mile from the Limb) and that area was fractured in terms of people leaving. Of course we were M & A by all the people who chose not to leave. No one from our former twig who was still "standing" would even talk to me. One family in our former twig actually ended up going on staff at NK HQ, but they also left TWI after that experience. Another family who stayed in finally left after someone informed the wife that she would be asked to hand over her teenage daughters. This was while LCM was still in charge. I was happy that the family finally left. I celebrate anytime someone leaves. However, I really have had a hard time believing that people were literally being asked to relinquish their daughters in order to service leadership and that anyone actually complied. Were people asked to do that and did anyone actually do it?

The overriding theme from one of the other threads is that apparently TWI does not welcome "seekers" to its SNS. You have to be a standing established follower. I just don't get the feeling that too many people actively sought out TWI as their choice in church, more that TWI targeted people. Is that feeling correct? Were there things people were taught to look for, or was it just a blanket thing where everyone was asked?

Benevolence - it went a bit further than that. I sat in a "teaching" delivered to our ladies fellowship by our limb leader. He told us that guys needed "release" every 72 hours and that it was our duty as wives to make sure that happened. I remember sitting there thinking "chapter and verse, buddy." So then I cornered him after the "teaching" and asked him how his time frame fit in with Judaic law and the period of unclean. I asked him why God didn't take that 72 hour thing into consideration when creating all those laws. I think I made him uncomfortable. For all we know they may have all been doing the same woman.

I haven't been a part of TWI since 1987, so I can't speak for practices after that time, but my experience was that someone communicated numbers back and forth from HQ to twig leaders. We deliberately mailed our checks to HQ so that our twig leaders would not know how much we were giving. We never shared what our income was with anyone. Not that we weren't asked. One of our children was born early and had a lot of health issues because of prematurity. When I went to our twig leaders to request prayer, I was told my baby's issues were a result of our "lack of giving". Once I recovered from that remark, I wanted to know how that person could possibly know how much we were giving as we never gave through the twig. That's when I was told that the information was communicated to them from HQ. I went home and called HQ and told them that under no circumstances was our giving anyone else's business. That was the only time we were actually "confronted" about giving.

We only went once. I can't even remember what it was for - not a SNS - too far away to drive there and back. I was amazed at the size of the building for the area. When I walked into that auditorium and saw all those people in really bad blue suits and ill fitting clothes polishing brass and glass as if there was nothing better to do, I just thought "What in the heck were they thinking when they put all this in here?" And the looks on their faces. I halfway expected someone to slip me a note telling me they were being held against their will. I wasn't getting a more than conquerors vibe. It was more like I've been conquered. I found the whole experience very disturbing.