chockfull

Both books certainly give a more accurate behind-the-scenes look at TWI and the real story than Elena Whiteside's "The Way Living in Love". That book was more like the starry-eyed cult-think made-for-tv version of TWI with no look behind the scenes other than a conversation with Wierwille where he further embellished the snow story and the "revelation" confirming him as like the next apostle or something.

Including being involved in her kids lives as opposed to marking and avoiding them for their problems and cutting off all communication. What kind of mother does that? Not even those with a kid on death row. It's all right - Jesus Christ will make it all come out in the wash. I'm sure he'll be well able to point out all of the crucial points in the kids lives where if she would have cared at all or taken ANY positive action at all it would have made a huge difference. He'll be well able to point out the hypocrisy in micromanaging everyone else's life while her own is in shambles - neglecting her God-given responsibilities and politically manipulating moving herself into the presidency of a ministry - what a lie!!! People do lie to themselves and deceive themselves just like I John says. And when it all comes out at the return, people's works will be consumed and the evaluation will be that she had her reward - being recognized as "President" in all of it's little various manifestations.

I know this is old, but wanted to bring up a point. The accusation made was that this site is full of people who feel like their 20's and 30's were stolen in the '70's and '80's. In every accusation there is an element of truth, so I thought I'd dig into it. For there to be a group of people who used to be associated with an organization that feels this way means that there is an organization that abused people in the '70's and '80's. One isolated incident is an anomaly, however, the vast majority experiencing the same thing means that perhaps the person with blinders on is the one that still is in the organization and still excusing away the abuses of the organization while blaming the victims of the organization. Is it really the vast majority? Let's look at numbers. Out of all the people, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, who took TWI's foundational class, how many are still associating themselves with the organization? Current membership is purported to be in the 2000 - 3000 people in the US. So even taking the least total number of 100,000 FNC graduates and 3000 current members, this points to about a 3% retention rate. Corps grads? Less than 5%. What does this show? At the least common denominator that TWI sucks at taking care of their own. Would you find a university with these numbers? Never - even the worst retention rate university. Any organization that is financially dependent upon membership contributions with that kind of retention rate basically is circling the round bowl treading water to avoid being flushed. The ONLY way this org is surviving is hording the property and money garnered during its heyday of the late 70's and early 80's. You have a very legalistic group at the top that operates on strict obedience to the President. You have a paranoid political environment at the top where everyone is afraid and no free thought or expanding or dissenting opinion is tolerated. You have the private lives of the people at the top in direct opposition to what they teach publicly. The sneering down-the-nose look at ex-TWI members like those on this site who are piecing their lives back together and living them with the freedom that God intended rather than the indentured servitude to Pharisees that TWI offers kind of depicts the exact attitude that you will find pervasive throughout all of TWI leadership. It's sickening to God's stomach. Those Pharisees need to repent. But they won't because they think they are too egotistical. They will not receive reproof and correction from the scriptures. The real motto of the leadership - the Way Corps is not "It Is Written". It is "It Is Position". Because of primary concern is the position of the person speaking, not the scriptural truth of what is being said. Christianity is designed for the masses. For the sinners. For the downtrodden. It was never designed to construct a hierarchy of idiots whose greatest reward in life is their stupid little positions and titles. As scriptures state, they have their reward. The rest of us can live our lives and develop ourselves with our Lord and Savior to lay up rewards that are not paper mache and plastic like that.

Just wanted to start a traditional Merry Christmas greeting thread for everyone. One that involves no 'Nilla Wayfer holiday song rewrites, one that no longer wonders whether or not when a Way leadership wishes you "Happy Ho Ho" that they are actually talking about prostitutes. What are my plans? 1) Rum n Eggnog 2) Singing Jingle Bells in the Original ( I put a little "uh" at the end just to emphasize that I'm NOT singing about SIT) 3) Gifts 4) Fantastical whimsical stories about Santa and Reindeer 5) The megawatts in the outdoors (Clark Griswald, look out buddy!!!) 6) A smoker going all weekend 7) More Rum n Eggnog (Eggnog optional)

It's all fine. With all the arguing on this thread I don't fault people for not dropping that mindset for a bit while we adjust. Really, either way with the approach should be just fine. The most important thing we did to make it so was to get out from under the abusive authority of a cult.

Your post carried a side tone insinuating that word studies such as the ones we did in TWI were wrong, and that you "rely on the experts" to do your language study for you instead of doing word studies. I simply have and expressed a different opinion. And I also pointed out that to us, Wierwille was an expert at one time, so at least to me that merits caution as to which expert I want to rely on, and a preference for checking experts work myself. As far as controversial or argument, at this point on this thread, if I express an opinion there are at least 3 people (you, waysider, wordwolf) who will take it the wrong way, immediately contradict it and try to draw me into an argument. Raf has refrained from this lately. I'm not arguing with you guys. I tend to go beyond simple sound judgement and discernment in association to teachers - in my experience, the teacher's position is one of power and there are many teachers, not just TWI ones, that succumb to this and make poor judgements which creep into their teachings. So I prefer to listen to experts, yet check their work myself. If you have a different opinion, great, but my expectations are a lack of personal attack or snide comments, and behavior commensurate with a Christian person in discussion. If that's too much of a problem for you, I don't really have to post on this thread ongoing. Valid observation.

There is nothing harmful about looking up the Greek words dechomai and lambano in lexicons and concordances. I can do that without subscribing to anyone's theology.

How about it?

Yes, I've heard this TWI line before. This is used to justify paying overqualified staff members minimum wage or just over "on a need basis". I just recently read a study that was trying to correlate money to happiness. The interesting results were that the correlation disappeared once the income rose a percentage above the poverty line. So the one thing left out in that analogy is that it's also possible to not have any money, and lack a lot of things. Actually, that is common sense. If your baseline needs are not being met or if meeting them consumes all of your energy, then you are going to lack a lot of things. Once you get into the middle class range, there's a lot more leeway. TWI causes the problem by their lack of care for their own people, then uses rote clichés to convince people the problem is with them, and all prosperity, satisfaction, happiness requires is to adjust their attitude and obey their cruel taskmasters. This is evil, this is using people, and this by any just means SHOULD cause TWI to lose followers. And it is. It just takes a little more time to manifest what with all the lies propounded in their public position. It's even more evil when they pay their leadership position people better - so the people tasked with fielding the complaints and keeping people happy themselves aren't experiencing the problem and have an unspoken threat hanging over them such that if they aren't 100% compliant that their positions and salaries will be busted back to the minimum wage range.

I absolutely agree with you that the approach of TWI is to lay out a theology and mask it in "literal translations according to usage". However, the underlying encouragement to search the scriptures was a good thing. What they meant by search - not so much - God doesn't need us reading the blue book over and over again for hours trying to extract some deeper meaning from it. In mainstream Christianity there is a wide variance to people's approach to and attitude on scripture study. And again, post-TWI people have to make a conscious decision on which way they want to go there. As far as "word studies", to me this is no different than what I do in reading - look up words unfamiliar to me in a dictionary. It expands my understanding and connection with the author. I don't really see a way in which this would be a harmful recommendation.

Me too, but as the proverb says don't let the hypocrites keep you from church, and don't let the megalomaniac cult leaders shoddy research keep you from Bible study!!! I don't want to nitpick words here with you. I was responding to a comment that stated in so many words that Bible study isn't the way to make scriptures speak deep meaning to us. My point was that no Bible study certainly isn't a better way to accomplish that.

Studying scripture, involving looking at original languages, and utilizing tools such as lexicons which are like a dictionary for a dead language like Koine Greek, is not something that is anywhere near unique to TWI, as much as you would like to tie those two together. Ignoring study, and trying to figure out which "expert" to follow, IMO is not a better recipe for "making scripture speak deep meaning to us". Following the wrong person is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Many scholars don't give the LXX - Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament the same kind of weight or nuance translation that they feel was given to New Testament Greek translations said to be done by Timothy and Paul. Just pointing this out because the OT records of Amnon and Tamar and the agape word translation there would be from the LXX. It would be generally more accurate to work with the Hebrew in these records as that language in the OT was protected by the jot and tittle notation.

To me the whole point of the sidetrack on ciphers was just to note possibilities. My approach on what God would or would not do is more scriptural.

At this point I am viewing this as a possibility of why SIT would not be deciphered by linguists, but as far as direct evidence to support this, all I see is the I Cor. 14:2 indicating others won't understand. I would consider it a stretch to try and extrapolate from that verse any kind of proof or conclusion that God would be using encryption techniques on the tongues language He would be energizing. I just leave it as a possibility that if He states in scripture others won't understand that He has some kind of means of ensuring that is true. So for anything research or write up related to me it would be a footnote. My blend of logic and scripture. Yours may differ.

So out of those four things, two of them basically are just using a different language to mask a message. This is EXACTLY the same as SIT. As far as your point #3, I think they actually used native Navajo terms to describe military terms. So instead of inventing a new term not existent in Navajo, they would use the Navajo word for "mountain" to describe a military term of some sort, then there was a one-page description of those terms. I've seen that sheet somewhere. I'll link to it if I find it. Cryptography is an interesting study. Null ciphers and substitution ciphers are the most basic, both in use in Julius Caesar's time. There have been noted advancements in computer cryptography as well, including the current standard AES. Here's a writeup - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography I think if an actual Navajo was recruited to listen to the messages they would get the code terms. It would sound like "The big red bull is under the sun eating" or something like that. Without knowing what military terms were represented by "bull, sun, and eating" they wouldn't be able to decipher the exact message. I also think part of the appeal of the Navajo language was that like most other native American languages, it would be much harder to find someone that uses that language outside of the US. Yes there was additional encryption of word substitution going on. The only point I was making about this is that if man can come up with fairly effective means of encrypting messages using languages, that it shouldn't be too hard for God to do the same thing to uphold the integrity of what He seems to be instructing people to do in I Cor. 14, to circle this sidetrack back around to dealing with the topic at hand.

No its not my position. SIT has a normal interpretation of language in scriptures if that is not a figurative reference to the tongue, which we have discussed has possibilities. So I'm OK with a general description of languages. However, in I Cor. 14:2 I see a scripture that indicates when a person SIT, others hearing the message do not understand. I do not really trust in the interpretation of that which indicates only the people present don't understand, but others studying the tapes may understand it. I think it means directly what it says clearly in the verse. I also to this point haven't seen clear evidence that linguists have ruled out languages in the messages. And after reading the tower of Babel record I wouldn't put it beyond what God could do to ensure that SIT couldn't be tested. One easy way would be to energize dead or extinct languages. Then no scripture would be contradicted if someone understood. Unless there was a specific miraculous occurrence where it was understood. All the code references indicate to me is that language that is not understood makes an effective encryption tool that wasn't broken by experts in WWII.

Yeah. That argument doesn't exactly represent my views there. Plus, it smells like bait.

Here's a more detailed writeup of the movie - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windtalkers The movie is well done if you ever run across it cheap on DVD like I did. Here's a military fact sheet on the Navajo Code Talkers - http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-2.htm

Well, I would expect that if whatever is going on is energized by God, then for it to be some kind of language to me seems like a reasonable assumption. The assumption that if it is language that someone on earth can understand and decode it is another assumption. That's the one I can't agree with. I see the basic definition of SIT to state others won't understand. Thus that would be my expectation, rather than assuming you should be able to understand it. But since I can read in the Bible instances where it is understood, and have heard anecdotes stating the same, I'm not ruling that out.

okay fine. I did read a lot of "conclusions" written by article authors. IMO there has been a lot of mixing of this with stating things as fact on this thread. If it's redundant to state the lack of proof in the definition then sorry. I'm just generally stating my issues with the "free vocalization" term and that's involved. what I personally accept as evidence is not something I would expect you to. Some of this would be in the form of personal anecdote. I have incidents that to me seem miraculous in nature over my life in conjunction with my relationship with God. But beyond that there is an element in faith of believing in the things that cannot be seen. Me accepting SIT as language. I guess I would describe that more as me accepting SIT as a spiritual message encoded in some sort of construct resembling language or using language to encode the message. If that is the same thing then OK. But I do see things like in that movie I keep referring to "Wind Talkers" where there was also a figurative encoding of the message in addition to the Navajo language encoding it. A tank division would be described as a herd of buffalo or something. If I brought it in it was from reading it in Samarin's article. I did print that thing out to make it easier to read. It was not in a searchable .pdf format.

So what are thoughts on Sola Scriptura vs. Fundamentalism? Are they the same? Different? What's the perception?

Yes this is absolutely the way TWI functions. For example, the motto of the Way Corps was "It Is Written". This produced some real heart-felt Bible-thumping sermons. Yet in reality the way TWI functions is "It Is Position". It matters little what scripture says, but matters greatly the rank of the person saying it. Yes, again the labels thing - not sure if I'm applying them correctly. Stereotypically TWI and ex TWI members are fundamentalist and republican because that's the slant of the thinking, but you're right - plenty others do diverse things.

I'm just summarizing Wikipedia articles as I'm reading them in case it might lead others to read the same links. In modern Christianity there are a TON of labels. I don't really know if I'm getting them all correct and keeping them all straight. This may be a "similarities" and "differences" conversation. I'd say if you lump in Lutherans with all other Protestants, compared to Catholics they would be considered fundamentalist. I don't know if the strict label applies at all. And Raf, I'm not sure where all of this is leading currently. I'm just reading, investigating, and writing down some notes. And trusting God it will lead somewhere but I don't know where currently.

Hahaha. It seems to me that man is trying to mimic God's performance at the tower of Babel with the Tax Code!!!! And for your "Stop That" event, if there is indisputable proof that doves cry, does that mean the artist formerly named Prince will be performing?