Tzaia

The context is that this is something one should live by.

All I want right now is input on what this statement says to you. I'm not going to offer context or anything that might bias beyond that it is not from me.

I would be very interested in how you get this - strange or not.

Which makes them different than standard evangelical/fundamentalist due to the becoming part.

Nothing that happens to you, matters very much, or lasts very long; but the way you take it, matters a lot, and will last forever

Perhaps the gospel as "we" have chosen to see it. As I stated in my beginning thesis, I was struggling with a Christianity that gives people permission to act exclusionary. Jesus embraced the people who were religious and societal outcasts to the disdain of those who weren't. He didn't align himself with any of the major or minor players of the day. He brought something radical which has since been turned into an exclusive club. I don't ask that you take my word for it, or anyone else's for that matter. Read some of his stuff and make up your own mind. I'm now reading "A Generous Orthodoxy".

I think it was in 1982 when I became aware of beliefs that were being circulated around corpse that were not "available" to the rank and file twig member, such as myself. These things were not written down, nor were they circulated in Sunday tapes. I was told that one had to be a corpse member to learn these things. Later I discovered that some of this stuff didn't even make it to all corpse. Perhaps there was a corpse within the corpse and some of the super-secret stuff leaked out by mistake.

This is not outside of the realm of most of what passes for Christian teaching. The idea that we are continually under attack by the adversary for believing that Jesus is the Christ is taught in most evangelical/fundamentalist groups. Then you have the additional burden as a TWI believer that you are a special target of the adversary because of your more highly evolved doctrine. I happen to believe this tactic was used to keep people from seeing a true cause and effect of the doctrine.

Well, it does sort of prove that what goes around comes around.

Holy Sh!t. It's a computer generated profile based on "information" gleaned from search engines. Call it artificial intelligence.

I finished book 2 and started on book 3 - the book about "hell". Book 2 was ok. I might need to read it again to "get" it. Book 3 was revolutionary in how he believes Jesus deals with the subject of hell. Since I had done some research on various afterlife belief systems, his discussion of the history of afterlife beliefs was similar to my understanding. Two major points - he believes in salvation by grace. He also believes in judgment based on "works". He believes judgment will not be about how well you worked the word, how right you had the doctrines, or even how much you "spread" the word, but how well you aligned your life to live according to Jesus' kingdom on earth message. Very interesting perspective.

I never met the woman. I heard she was a good woman. Longsuffering comes to mind. Most, if not all of us have no idea what went on behind closed doors between VPW and his wife. I have never been able to figure out why people stay in abusive situations, but I know that two things motivated my mother to stay - fear of the unknown, and the hope that she could change my father's behavior. Maybe that was Dottie's motivation. These women really do love their husbands despite the abuse and the humiliation. That love makes it almost impossible to get them to look at their situation objectively, much less deal with it. Then you have the whole submission thing. Abusers, in particular, seem intent on exercising their "rights" in a relationship. This submission thing can be incredibly subtle as can abuse. It was so ingrained in the TWI culture that most people didn't see it until they were out. Openly contesting much of this behavior was not particularly well received. I have no idea how she is going to be judged. I know that most of us here want to see some level of godly justice when it comes to how these people are dealt with. I doubt if she will get a free pass.

Brainfixed - I am so sorry for what you were put through. Some parents (and nearly all childless people) have this notion that children can somehow be "trained" to do or be anything someone wants them to be. And some parents have a way of doing that, but it never happens through abuse. You are smart enough to have figured that out. What you might have to figure out now is how to turn this indescribable evil into good. I can't tell you how to do that, because everyone has his/her own way. What helped me was to realize that my parents didn't lay awake at night thinking of ways to f**k us up. I had to come to the conclusion that what they did was the best way they knew how to deal with life. Some of us seem to be far more outwardly traumatized by what happens in our lives, while some of us do and feel things not realizing that what we are doing or feeling is a direct result of what happened to us. TWI made use of emotional blackmail to keep people in line. Telling people they'll be greasespots by midnight is emotional blackmail. Holding the "adversary" over your head is emotional blackmail. Mark and avoiding people is emotional blackmail. Pitting children against their parents is emotional blackmail. Susan Forward wrote a very good (and easy to read) book on the subject.

All of you did.

It was that ability to BS at will that gave him an air of credibility. I never got the preoccupation with sexuality. To me, homosexuality is like guys wearing a hairpiece: You ignore it unless they want to talk about it.

ewwww

Some people just like raising a stink.

"A New Kind of Christian" is the first of a trilogy. I'm now reading book 2: "The Story We Find Ourselves In".

TWI was and is a veritable smugfest. One had to be very careful about how one presented oneself in order to avoid being smugged by others in the group. Everything in TWI was geared toward raising the level of smuggness. It was thought of as such a good thing.

If the original post has a smugness to it, then that is what you are interjecting into it. It's not my intent. What I have been trying to do is make sense of some of the experiences that people have shared here. So I ask questions. There is a reason why I keep asking, and I am trying to do it in the least threatening manner possible. I want the people who may be reading this forum anonymously to hear what so many told themselves that made all of this ok at the time. Maybe they will see themselves and realize that what they are experiencing as a religion has little to do with God and a relationship with Jesus, and more about being right. Every person who has been involved in TWI has lost something as a result, whether it be relationships, opportunities, time, innocence, or even their lives. They did it and do it so they could and can have that sense of being right and being involved with an organization that teaches "truth" and therefore secures the faithful a better place in the new world. VPW told people not to take his word for anything that he taught. It was good advice whether he meant it or not. In retrospect it truly served as a warning, and it still does. Some of us heeded the warning. I'm more than happy to share what that cost me at the time. Many did not, in what turned out to be a bad call. Those of you who allowed yourself to be pressured into unquestioning loyalty can help those who are still in by explaining how you were pressured and why you felt the need to conform. You can tell people how that worked for you. I can help people by sharing how it felt not to conform; what kind of stress that brought into my life, and how that worked for me. Most of us survived whether we conformed or not. Now we can step back and evaluate what can be learned from the experience.

I was 24 and it was the '70s. Perhaps I had been burned enough previously that I was more careful. I went through about a 2 month period when I was on fire, but then I started seeing things that just didn't sit right. I was mostly an outsider in TWI. It just didn't feel right.

Recently I was reading in a worship magazine where retreats where people were isolated from the world for a time (like 3 days), and involved emotional intensity, were useful for identifying people with sociopathic tendencies and weeding them out. It appears to me that at the higher level of involvement in TWI, the higher the incidence of control freaks, narcissists, and sociopaths. Is it possible that the same strategy was used in TWI to identify those people to put them in high places?

My my my - what people were willing to do to avoid conflict.

I heard about the statue and saw a few pictures of trustees in people's homes. I felt like those displays bordered on idolatry, particularly since pictures of Jesus were considered idolatry.

That's the one thing I really remember during the PFAL class and from reading the "collaterals" - don't take his word for it. Clearly, clearly it was a warning. I didn't take his word for anything (but really saw no real straying from his basic premise of scriptural interpretation beyond the tithe and how he thought the law of believing worked), and I think that's what "saved" me from going down the rabbit hole and spared me much of the anguish of finding out he was a fake. I always saw him as a fallen human and was amazed when people acted as though he could do no wrong. I wondered out loud to my husband one time how people would deal with VPW's inevitable death and what would happen to TWI. Would people finally get that he wasn't all that special? Then given his cause of death, that his ability to "manifest" his core beliefs didn't happen, (I get the answer to that - to blame the "unbelieving" followers as a means of deflecting the reality) It still didn't sink in until the power struggle between LCM, JAL, and CG for control (in retrospect, I do consider JAL's letters to be an attempt to persuade TWI's members to defect) that VPW might be the root cause of TWI's "issues". Anyway, no one who read the materials can't say they weren't warned about taking VPW's word for anything. Keith has said he was told personally, and it's in writing in the collaterals. Why did you (who followed him down the rabbit hole into WoWland, Corpse, Lightbearers, and FL) not heed his warning?