penworks

This thread reminds me of running into people you knew slightly while in TWI but now years later when you run into them you don't know what kind of reaction you might get if you talk to them. In about 1995, about 8 years after I left TWI, I was working in an office in FL at the front desk. One day a UPS guy came in the door to deliver a package. We looked at each other and I realized I knew him from TWI long ago. I think he was trying to figure out where he knew me from but before he had enought time, I left the room and waited until he'd gone before returning to my desk. Call me paranoid, but no telling what he might have said. I wasn't sure whether he was still in TWI or had left and didn't want to take any chances that he might confront me for leaving or something. I sure didn't want my co-workers to know I'd been in a cult. At least back then...people wouldn't have understood.

For those interested in interpretations of scripture and how they affected the creation of the USA, check out the PBS series on God in America. It just ran on public television earlier this week. It's a good overview of the various sorts of Christianity we've inherited. God in America

Stephen Prothero, the author of Religious Literacy that I mentioned in the opening of this thread, just appeared (along with other history and religion scholars) on PBS's 3-part series called, God in America. While the show is not that comprehensive (it's only 6 hrs. total) it is a good overview showing how religion and politics came to be so intertwined in this country. AND it naturally includes info on the development of fundamentalism which TWI is part of, particularly in its belief in the inerrancy of the scriptures and rejection of Darwinism. Visit God in America Cheers.

How much did you know about your own religion (if you had one) or about any religions at the time you took PFAL? Lately in the news I've been coming across articles covering religious literacy and remembered I knew nothing about most religions at the time I first took PFAL class. I did know plenty about Catholicism, since I was raised a Catholic and a little bit about evangelical Christianity because of involvement in Young Life in high school, but any other world religions - nope. Of course, I was only 18 when I took PFAL but I had no curiosity, really, about other world religions or even the origins of Protestantism or evangelicalism or fundamentalism or what they were all about. Perhaps if I had known there were more choices out there, I would have been a better informed student in PFAL and seen through some of the misrepresentations in the class, like the "first century church" was a unified force when it was actually very diverse and unorganized. Pick up any library book on early church history and you see this. Anyhow, for those interested, follow this link to an article in the NY Times today on this topic: Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans Also, a great book on the topic is one by Stephen Prothero with a chapter listing all sorts of concise definitions of terms: Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't Prothero's latest book is God in Not One, which I have not read yet. Cheers

Welcome to the cafe, Gerry. Enjoy!

I was all about them, indeed. Some people might now ask: Was Paul's behavior "true Christian" behavior? He said people should follow him, too, since he "fathered them in the Word." I'm NOT saying Paul was anything like VPW in any respect but this one. Am I missing something, or did Paul have a "right" to demand that of his followers? What do you say to someone who poses this question. Someone asked me this once and I couldn't deny Paul sounded like he was on an ego trip, too. Just sayin'...

Here's an example from my memory - When the leaders of the Way West and the Way East respectivley, D*op and H*efner, left TWI in about 1972, VPW told those of us in the Corps they these men had copped out or tripped out or got deceived by devil spirits (these terms all amounted to the same thing). They'd turned their backs on the Way. The logic was the Way taught the Word, so that meant they'd turned their backs on The Word. And what should we do when someone does that? Obey what the Word tells us to do, like in I Timothy 1:20. In that verse, Paul says of two people who opposed him, that he "delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme." Additional logic went like this: Since TWI taught God's Word accurately, God had his hand on TWI, so if you left TWI, then you left God's ministry.

Thanks for the link. I think this is a good report. Interesting how a few things are a little different than when VPW was running TWI. One difference: he said original sin was masturbation, not lesbianism. That was a new Martindale decree. And all the mark and avoid names weren't in place so clearly as when LCM was in charge. Under VP, anyone who left was tricked by the devil, period, and he'd quote a verse or two that said not to fellowship with them. Anyhow, thanks for reminding me how hideous a group this is and how ashamed I am that I ever bought into its hideous beliefs like denial of the holocaust. Makes me want to continue speaking my story of "escape" with more determination than ever. Peace, Charlene

I simply don't have anything else to say in this particular thread. How can I comment on something I don't think is real? Anyhow, it's fun reading and I always learn a lot here. Cheers!

Mmm...maybe I need to go back and read Acts but it seems to me for the most part, someone DID organize a lot of it...named Paul. I understand you view the activities "back in the 1970s" etc. as a great movement of God, etc. as you describe. At this juncture, I guess we part company, since I have doubts about that interpretation of what was going on...emotionalism, yes. Evangelism, yes. What the nature of those things are bothers me and since to be honest I no longer hold the assumption of Christianity as valid, i.e. we're born in sin, separated from the Creator who created us and need a savior, I should probably bow out of this conversation. Cheers

Some thoughts.... I agree that VPW co-opted anything good that came to Way followers, claiming it as a direct result of his "accuracy of The Word" teachings. I agree that the enthusiasm many of us shared produced some undeniable benefits that come from a loving community -independent from the manipulations of VP or anyone else's control. The Way Tree sructure was the device of control, for sure. Your post reminds me of a moment I had while on the Bible Lands Tour sponsored by TWI in 1986. At the time, I was a member of the Research Team. We'd just published the Aramaic Concordance (not the Interlinear yet) in August before the ROA. The Bible Lands Tour group, led by other people on the Research Team like W*alter C*mmins, Joh* S*hoenheit, etc. gave their interpretations of the gospels and O.T. records as we visited each site, like Bethlehem, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, etc. One day our group (a large one) took several boats across the Sea of Tiberius, also called the Sea of Galillee. While I sat there in my little seat, with a life jacket strapped on and surrounded by enthusiastic Way people, I felt left out. I was wondering what our organization was really doing. Did we have any right making money off of Bible teachings, especially a harmony of the gospels? I did not agree with the validity of doing that project, but I was not directly involved in it. I wondered what Jesus, having crossed this very body of water at one time, would think of us? What he did, at least what the gospels record, seemed a lot different than the gymnastic-style so-called biblical research we were promoting. By this time I doubted the validity of a gospel harmony and thankfully had nothing to do with the "research" being taught on this tour. I was on the perimeter of the research team, working on the Aramaic projects. Doubts were rising more and more every day for me. On this tour, some days I felt the enthusiasm for what WJC taught when he taught in the evenings - simple things like practicing the compassion that Jesus had, but then I picked apart so much of the rest of the teachings that there was hardly anything left to like. By this time I'd been in the ministry for 15 years, so throwing it all away was a tall order. There must be something left to salvage. By the time we got to the other side of the Sea and disembarked, I was confused but at least the control TWI had exerted on me for so long was loosening up and I was thinking on my own, sorting through what good I had experienced, what bad. The bad could all be traced back to VPW and his dogmas. The good came from knowing some great people and from keeping me focused on the more contemplative aspect of my life with what I called God at the time. The TWI offshoots issue is of deep concern to me, which is no secret since I wrote about this in my article on GSC, "Nostalgia for TWI research raises questions." My concern has to do with this: without confronting what fundamentalism is, how cults work, or admitting facts about VPW (his alcoholism, sexual predator behavior, stealing of other's books and selling them as his own work, abuse of power, money, sex, you name it) the people who continue to promote his "research" and his ways of running a group, are doing a great dis-service to themselves and others, in my view. The antidote: appropriate education about religion and the Bible and cults and fundamentalism; critical thinking; and continuing to tell our side of the story... Make it a good day, Pen

Thanks for sharing your story with us. I thought you offered a powerful analogy using ice. I'm going to go ahead and quote it here for everyone, since I think you illustrate how many of us felt as we tried to recover our spontaneous responses to life while shedding TWI's dogmas. To some degree, I know I shut down my real, honest, individual responses to life's situations while under the influence of TWI indoctrination. When trying to shed those old TWI dogma-drenched thoughts (like the world was my enemy), I was also trying to regain my identity as I swam to reach the "exit cut in the ice above" as you put it: You wrote: "the feeling i felt after years of having left The Way was as if my mind was under ice. such as to a victim who ice dives and the oxygen cuts off,like a freak accident,the victim looks for an opening while struggling to survive,and dependeing on the depth of the dive results in whether he will make it to the exit cut in te ice above. Under ice hypothermia can set in very easily if the conditionals are at the slightest bit altered or tampered with causing the BODY temperature to slow down but still function enough to survive in a coma like state. In this situation the victim may see the opening exit but,not be able to get their because of hypothernmia."

Thanks. I used to have a copy of this in the old days...tossed it out when I moved once.

Almost anything is possible but not everything is probable or likely. IMO, the question is: Is there credible evidence that shows these things happened or didn't happen, depending on the item. Personally, I can speak on issues regarding research, and other topics involved in my own personal story, but I can't comment on some of the rest. Some of you know TWI was a fundamentalist cult, and so we need to understand fundamentalism before we can see what went wrong with the research based on it. (I will shamelessly plug my memoir and article posted on GSC's front page (use the link below in my signature line). Here, I'll point out the famous research escapade - That VP stole the holy spirit book from J.E. Stiles and sold it as his own work. On the topic of VP's sexual predatory nature, I suggest reading Kristen Skedgell's latest blog entry Predators Prey. She makes a great point about people who find it hard to believe he preyed on women, etc. Denial is at the root of that unbelief if you ask me. MAJOR denial. Make it a good day, Pen

Another part of this whole mixed bag is this, IMO - some folks treat the Book of Acts (and the rest of the Bible) as if it were journalism, recording the activities of THE one and only, authentic Christian activity going on at the time. For me, the idea that TWI was in any way, shape or form like the "first century church" is a fiction that existed only in VP's delusional mind. It is ridiculous, as pointed out already in this thread. Wierwille made a bogus claim by even using the phrase, "the first century church." One major reason is because there was no unified "first century church." Pick up any book on the history of early so-called Christianity and you see that right away. This topic gets far more complicated, I think, when we consider how "orthodox" Christianity was sort of firmed up (but not really) HUNDREDS of years after Jesus died and still is scattered around in a multitude of forms called denominations. Let's not kid ourselves...it's doubtful anyone knows "without a shadow of a doubt" exactly what Jesus intended his followers to do since we have so many translations and interpretations of the N.T. Usually the Sermon on the Mount is a good place to start to figure out what he intended but who really understands statements like: the meek will inherit the earth? Much less how to "apply" that "truth" in their lives? Paul, bless his heart, further muddied the waters by forming his own version of Christianity (the one Luke wrote about), Barnabas went off somewhere when Paul disagreed with him (who is to say Barnabas was wrong since we don't know what really happened), and James and company stayed in Jerusalem doing their thing. Not to mention the Gnostics, etc. who had their own views. It was a diverse time, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...still is IMO. One good source for info on this is: Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths we Never Knew, by Bart Ehrman. It may be of use to some of you. I believe there are a bunch of threads here on GSC that have some good background info on this, too. Cheers.

I've tried to find this site. Can you post it here on GSC?

Exactly. I don't think anyone can claim without a "shadow of a doubt" to know the original intended message. We have some good educated guesses from scholars, but those come only after YEARS of study in the history of the text, languages of the texts, etc. This subject raises a lot of issues for me, but suffice it to say, this point was one of many that caused me to finally resign from the Research Team in 1986 and leave TWI. BTW - Some say the poetic language of some parts of scripture, i.e. Pslams, is very musical...music and poetry have a long history together. Good writing often correlates to the rhythms of music.

I like the whistle blower analogy. Friendlyjoe, just remember that everyone has a right (like you do) to their story of their TWI experience. There are always more than two sides to every story, and it's up to us as adults to get all the information about something in order to make sound decisions for ourselves. Isn't that part of being educated? Sometimes that involves facing facts we don't like but might need to know for our own good. In my view, TWI has propagandized since its inception on a variety of topics and so I'm interested in sorting through it to cut through the hype of it and discover the nature of the system I was in for so long. It's not called a cult for no reason. Cheers.

Maybe you could make their day with posting this link on their page: http://www.precastconcrete.org/~messiah7/tw_reviews.htm

You mean someone posted the link to that VP tape on your facebook page?

While that may be true, the fact remains we can not retrieve what we lost. We can make amends with people, but time spent is time gone.

The fact sheet "For Those Who Want to Know" published in about 1979 pretty much states this, too. "Part of research is not to find something new in the Word, but to establish in your own heart the inherent and inerrant accuracy of the truths of God's Word for yourself." That statement assumes several things that VPW never proved to begin with. The first being that the whole Bible (he calls God's Word) is inerrant (without error). In my view, the statement really says "study VP's teachings over and over and don't try to do your own research."

I think this claim appealed to people's sense of honesty. Most of us like to think we'd change if we found out we were wrong about something. TWI transferred that sense of honesty to doing what they called Biblical research. Did anyone stop to think there could be ALARMING side effects to changing what you once claimed to be "the truth" and nothing but the "accuracy of the Bible"? Consider this: many people who based serious decisions for their lives on that "accuracy of the Bible" VP claimed to teach in PFAL, could not undo their decisions (like dropping out of college to go into the Way Corps) as easily as TWI might undo what they'd previously taught. I'm sure I'm not the only one who alienated family members over what I claimed was "the truth" I learned in PFAL. How does a person gain back those lost years of familial relationships after TWI decides one of their original doctrines they once claimed was "the truth" is wrong?

In 1970 when I got involved, I, too, was promised TWI changed their teachings when "new light was discovered," etc. That became impossible for several reasons. To me the most glaring reason is this: VP had already taught "the Truth" in the PFAL class (inside flap of PFAL book states it is "The Accuracy of the Bible,") so how could he come back and change what he'd taught and still be considered credible? The documentation for this claim of changing is on a handout sheet, "For Those Who Want to Know," although it is confusing to understand since whoever wrote it was apparently confused, too. See my post #82 in this thread: Change when learn something new