rascal

Thanks cm, Your compassion is moving. I will attempt to understand... I guess that I am earnest in my insistance of attempting to see the whole twi experience clearly. What concernes me, is that in justifying wierwilles actions, by edxamining his background and upbringing, the culture of the times...etc....we are making him a little more *lovable* and his transgressions appear to be a little more *understandible* ....that we may in reality, still be being decieved, seduced, ....unable to spot the evil of the next man of the flesh with a good schpeal.... I am afraid that in minimalizing the culpability of ones choices, we will not be able to clearly see the evil coming next time.... You know, in vain is the snare set in site of the prey.... I think that is what Galations chapt 4 IS... the tool given to discern the wolves from the sheep BEFORE we let them come close enough to be devoured....further, let us... the sheep that escaped those ravenous jaws, those of us that saw the carnage of our destroyed flock, though we escaped bloddied and maimed....warn those unaware amongst us of the danger posed by that funny sheep that just doesn`t *smell* right. Those who escaped unscathed or who were oblivious to the suffering of the rest of the flock, were not witness to the bloody carnage.... may not in reality understand the gravity of the danger posed by those wolves who look like sheep, act like sheep, pretend to BE sheep. Sure they may have only occasionally devoured a straggler or two.... Shoot, once sated, those wolves were quite placid for days at a time no doubt.

Have you even read galations chapt 4 recently? You either are or you aren`t a man of the spirit. There are a list of characterisitics that define you as one or the other. Period! No wiggle room. A man of character does what is right whether anyone is watching or not....because THAT is what a man of moral fiber DOES! Wierwille earns our scorn and contempt for setting himself up as a man of the spirit..when his actions directly would demonstrate otherwise. Folks are evil and selfish because they CHOSE to be.....their back ground, upbringing, culture are no excuse not to behave in an honorable fashion..... that is precisely why being a person of character IS so tough. We were given the information in order to become of the spirit.... We were given the freedom to chose whether to be of the flesh or of the spirit.... We were given the information to discern one from another, in order to protect ourselves ..... We were given the instructions of how to *deal* with folks of either persuasion... I have no respect understanding or compassion for anyone who masquerades as a man of the spirit .... one who disarms peoples suspicions by utilization of the authority of the scriptures they teach in order to sate their lusts and fill their bellies at the expense of those they were to nurture. Jesus had no use for the religious leaders that did that in his day....no tolerance at all...called em all sorts of horrible names...held them in high contempt. I never saw him telling anyone to attempt to *understand* their shortcomings. I see no difference in the religious leaders who utilized their position of trust to steal that which wasn`t theirs, today or in biblical times. Scripturally, God took a mighty dim view as well.

For heavens sake Sir guess READ gallations ....It is absolutely clear... The fruit of a man of the flesh and the fruit of a man of the spirit...no guess work, no theories needed to explain away someones willingness to indulge in evil... Your actions tell the world ....one way or another.... either you are or you aren`t according to scripture. God gave us that guidline so that we wouldn`t fall victim to the false prophets no matter HOW good their schpeal was....no matter how much we want to believe that they were in some way good. I am arguing against coming up with theories that make bad behavior, low moral fiber, and lack of good character and even common decency somehow understandible and acceptible.

Angry post card from hell??? Anyone who ISN`T angry as hell has not come to grips with who/what vpw and twi were all about imo....

My flesh John??? My fruit demonstrates exactly who I am....it`s the same measuring stick ....nobody gets a free pass or is excused because they taught some scripture....that is simply a trick to avoid detection GALATIONS tells us how to discern who/what vpw really was behind the smoke and mirrors. There is no need to speculate about anyones spirituality........ A persons fruit says it all.

Galations says it all VERY clearly....there are two camps of people.....*Men of the flesh* and *men of the spirit*...God tells us how to identify either. The behaviors of both men land them squarely in the catagory of *men of the flesh* We are warned to stay away from folks like this, we are furthermore warned that they have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.... This takes all of the theories and guess work out of it. Anything else is just another attempt at rationalizing away their lack of honor, integrety, and moral character. What they did is and will always be considered inexcusable biblically, moraly and ethically. They were contemptible people who worked very hard to EARN our scorn and condemnation.....this of course is what happens though when you indulge in heinous behavior.

TWI used God and scripture to decieve people who yearned to be honorable christians of moral character, folks who simply wanted to serve God.....decieved them into serving and enabeling men of great evil to operate and destroy yet more of our spiritual bretheren.... With the best of intentions, we filled their bellies, provided them the means to hurt and cause ever greater evil....though unbeknownst to ourselves, we were agents of evil. They couldn`t have done it without us....I hope there will be a fitting punishment for such heinous betrayal. We were so afraid of becoming posessed and yet....sigh .... the very leaders we trusted were leading us by the nose straight down that very path.

The threat of posession was the ammunition in the gun that they held to our heads to assure obediance and compliance. Many of us did things that we found abhorrant, things that we would have never ever have been persuaded to do otherwise.....in order to avoid the ultimate shame of becoming possessed and thus estranged from God, our family and the body of christ. Death was a preferable option....some took it :-(

Just thought of another... Reporting criminal activities of twi members, leaders in particular to authorities would result in the posession of the person who reported the crime.

Not implicitly obeying leadership first time every time..... Talking/listening to cop outs..... Not putting God first ... ie having everything else ...family, job, self take a backseat to twi. Reading science fiction... Listening to worldly music.... Watching tv..... Not providing sexual favors for vpw. Not participating in a threesom with lcm. Not aborting *inconvenient* children. ALL accounts of situations where myself and friends were subsequently declared posessed after non compliance.

Sorry, Emporia in 84 for me. I had a wonderfull time, course as I think back....it was when I finally drank the kool-ade. I remember having to decide if I REALLY believed this stuff....it would behoove me to figure out how to be the best doulos/athlete/warrior for God I could be.....course that meant corps (for which I had no aptitude) I figured that God would have to develope some *natural leadership ability* in me if that was what he needed me to do....sigh

Sorry ((((TL))) What was done was unconscionable. We were so naieve, in our innocence, we never dreamed that twi didn`t have our best interest and that of our families at heart....sigh. In vain is the snare set in the sight of the bird I think is how the old proverb says it. They masqueraded as a spiritually wholesom group to quell our suspicions and lure us in close enough to ennsnare.

Outofthefog....nice sentiments, and I would be willing to seriously consider that as a possibility, however, I gotta tell you that as I understand it, from the folks that I have talked to that knew him..... vp was bending/breaking the rules all the way back to high school....his class mates rmember him as a real hell raiser...He was kicked out of his denomination for ahem *ministering* to his secretary, according to the locals....He really was a booger long before ANYONE was giving him adulation.... There was a damn good REASON why the good folks of NK never had any use for vpw or took him very seriously as a man of God....and it WASN`T because *a prophet is not without honor save in his own home town* (can`t remember the biblical quote exactly) like we were told. Most of them knew he was a bit of a scoundrel. I agree on one point... I think vp THOUGHT he wanted to be a mog...but only on HIS terms....the rules NEVER really applied to him...he was always above em. As far as LCM .... anybody who DIDN`T kiss his royal hiney and give him the adulation he required was shown the door in short order.... sucking up was NOT an option if you wanted to remain safe in God`s ministry under his protection. VPW and LCM both required from us that which wasn`t theirs to demand....both cleverly using our love for God and desire to be of service ... as the leverage to extort that which they had no right to. To blame us for naievly believing them to be the ministers that they presented themselves to be..... To blame us for the manipulation of the service,money, and lives that we selflessly offered to God into a means to sate the lusts and fill their bellies....is I think unfair. I don`t think that one can mitigate the responsibility of vp and lcm or blame their lack of moral character and shortcomings on us for simply loving them a little too much...

That is rich coming from JM Bell, lol seeing as she herself is reported to be gay.

Yeah n gotta learn to unpucker my lips....Lord I try, honest I do, but after decades of the diligent bu tt kissing of a humble believer........if I am not very carefull, I still find my lips inexorably drawn back to that perpetual pucker developed in twi....sigh

THAT would explain alot.....

I got in the first couple of times as well and now I get the same thing.... a grey screen, and no place to type.

Dunno STL, drugs or booze would be a heck of a lot less embarassing to explain away the lost decades of my life ;-).... Folks can understand and empathise with that a little better....but tell em you were in a religious cult though, and whoa nellie...they think you are NUTS! I wonder, at the age we were when we became involved, if twi provided a false haven ...a false sense of security for anxious, confused, youth....we learned to control our thoughts and pretend that the problems didn`t exist. I found that once exiting twi, my spouse and I both were faced with the very SAME issues that we had before entering. We were/are forced to deal with the issues of alcholism, anxities, abuses and traumas from our child hood. The problems never went away during those decades, they were just hidden. I don`t think twi was really any better than drugs or booze, it was just one more coping mechanism for folks needing help and had no where else to turn.... I wonder if rather than actually helping us, twi provided a false sense of security and hope....delaying the recognition of the issues that we needed to address...in reality, involvement might have prevented us from addressing our troubles in a healthy manner.

That *blessing* that folks recieved was really just part of the bait in the trap imo.... We just kept thinking that we were just SO blessed that we kept dragging others in with us....their wealth to be extorted, their lives to be coopted, their youth to be squandered.....their children to be sacrificed. In hind sight, I really don`t think we were all that blessed ....we simply THOUGHT we were *blessed*....because we were TOLD we were *blessed*...alla that renewed mind crap. The fact that while we were recieving our suppose blessings and education towards access to God, that the lives of our sisters and brothers were routinely being requisitioned and destroyed without compunction by those we trusted, leads me to believe that the ministry, it`s leaders AND it`s *blessings* were counterfit. I just don`t think that God would operate that way.... Think about it...while wierwille is telling us to our faces to *give our all for his highest* declaring the purity of his heart and service to God...piously leading us through the scriptures...he goes back to his motor coach to seduce, that failing top drug and rape our sisters...got any objections??? Fine you are hereby declared posessed...get the hell outta the ministry....can`t let our dirty little secret out to the great unwashed masses that couldn`t *handle* the spiritual truth of the grace we have in Christ....baaah. The blessings are as counterfit as wierwille himself. Ex, Personally. I do not think that it is so much that the blessings are *worth it*...rather a need for folks to cling to the belief that they were *worth it*.... in order to avoid having to come to grips with the fact that we were fooled, we were used, we were stolen from....and when every bit of value extorted from our lives, tossed aside as so much trash....that we spent a huge amount of our lives involved in something that produced great evil and harm to many. It is very difficult to accept the fact that we were not what we thought we were...*God`s elect*, *soldiers on the front lines of the great spiritual battle*....(shoot, truth be known, I think that we were tricked into serving on the wrong side)....that is a very tough reality to face....easier by far to cling to the hope that the percieved personal benefits somehow made it Godly....

Thanks hcw.

Amen Mick! Even after 10 years, it chaps my a$$ knowing what they have stolen from so many, and worse yet....using God and scriptures as the weapon of choice for the enforcement of their perversions.

VP simply wishing he were *the man he Knew to be* makes him nothing more than a mog wannabe .... the genuine article wouldn`t have done the things that he did without compunction.

Thanks for taking the time to fill in some of the blanks Jard....

Good question mell, no I don`t remember. All I remember is that he told us that we would hear it when we were peacefull....it would be a *still small voice inside of us*

I cannot get in either. When I click on the chat room all I get is a grey screen...it is like it half loads and then freezes. I miss alla my chat buddies :-(