chockfull

Numbers are going to be a calculated guess because it is in the interest of TWI to not have them published. I heard a sweeping figure on something I listened to that put them at 40,000 worldwide. In the USA the guess is about 250 members per region as an average and 12 regions makes it around 3000. They published attendee numbers for the advanced class so I thought that was in the 100-200 range. I am not standing by any accuracy for those numbers.

Yes I listened to Ems story. Grew up partially in TWI partially in a splinter. She identifies as queer and is married to another lady and is happy post TWI. Her story involves a father forcing kissing strangers on them and trying to control dating and abuse. I mean a lot of the problem behavior seems to have been the father. She mainly identified religion and spirituality to being mark and avoid and has an e-mail contact for herself with that in the title. Sexual abuse and shunning. I’m sure all the little moglets at the Way will find a way to blame her for the trauma. They are good at that. What they won’t be good at is standing in front of my Lord Jesus Christ without that smug look on their face giving an account of the impact like this their life caused.

In Craig’s day he would throw tantrums about a lot of research topics. He hated GMIR in the way mag and they mostly did away with any research there - he wanted to forge his own way in Bible interpretation. Which took the form of things like the Galatians tapes teachings. Which was mostly crying about his treatment during the fog years mixed in with seeing devil spirits around everywhere especially with any critics. He I think does not have an extremely high IQ and so he ran off anyone he perceived as smarter than him in research circles. He published the Acts book which he did most of the research on. I think Wayne Clapp was his trusted research associate for most of his endeavors. Wayne has a masters degree so is more formally educated or was. Then Rosalie basically disbanded the research department because there is nothing new to discover in scripture seeing as we already have the truth given to us like it hasn’t been known since the first century And the current brain trust is doubling down on PFAL except having modern relevant teachers teach it. So basically we have a worldwide ministry whose research roots are ripping off JE Stiles, Bullinger, and the Canadian ministers class complete with characters, repackaging it, and telling an origin story that is every bit as sketchy as Joseph Smiths is in the Mormon religion. And scholars who appear more Machiavellian than scholarly. What could go wrong?

Great news. I would expect this type of thing with you being published with your story and so active at the different events focused on cult recovery. I think John Juedes has also experienced quite a lot of this with people coming to him with personal stories. I rejoice with you at the positive results of your work and the genuine help you are providing others.

Yeah they are prevailing by the use of narrow angled lenses on the first 3 rows of the auditorium seating. And by ignoring the vast majority of Christs body outside their org. Prevailing as ostriches with buried heads.

Hey Hammy good to see you. Yeah a lot of questions. I just read this week an article declaring that over 70% of people in the United States profess to be Christian. That’s a lot even including fuzzy math. They broke them down into groups - Evangelical Protestants were the largest, Catholic, Non Evangelical Protestant, they even listed my fav cults Mormon and Jehovahs Witnesses as denominations with 16m and 8m as the lower numbered big denominations. I mean by sheer logic if God functions on grace and love that campfire is going to be fairly large. I just don’t see that campfire being the narrow angle lens on the first 3 rows of the VPW PW auditorium. That’s reserved for the zealots soon to implode.

Yes holding leaders accountable or even having them answer to some form of governance and licensing is key to their genuine function. Without that their heads blow up like a watermelon and they start having their greatest concern is their legacy and how God called them directly to not be accountable to anyone. These are checks and balances. US government has 3 branches of accountability to each other. Now this election cycle that is a real zoo. But it is a check on unconstrained action and power. The Ways leaders have never been accountable to anyone in the top positions and below that is sheer obedience. The exact same thing happens in their leadership body that happens in all the other cults where the power is similarly unconstrained. A few fat-headed idiots acting Anti Christ and placing themselves in Christs position as the head of the body. The adulation and the money flows upwards. The legalism and demand for obedience flows downward. I mean even the mere suggestion of moving to a democratically elected governing body got immediate personal phone calls from the BOD marking and avoiding them. You can look at their pictures and see the fat-headed superior attitudes in their body language towards others in the photos- you don’t even need to listen for the condescending tone directly.

It looks like Nate has just run into God’s Budget. Mike was right. Who knew? Now that will be $2.99 or 24 hours for the rest of Jesus words! My convos with Jesus are equally hilarious but I am out of image storage space on this server so I can’t post them. Must be Gods Budget.

So this app to me represents the embodiment of “the Word takes the place of the absent Christ”. Why? Because it is a trained LLM - large language model - trained on the Bible as inputs. So the answer to questions asked will be completely Biblically based. The initial reaction of pastors usually is some form of “heresy”. However after getting past the initial reaction pastors are giving it high marks. Why? My theory is usually spiritual leaders resort to answers that are a blend of scripture along with “God told me this”. The LLM app will have zero of the “God told me this” response and have a complete scriptural based response. So even pastors are able to separate out the intuition and guidance from the scriptural analysis. Also it can serve as a check and balance to the honest Christian. It can answer the question “How does my intuition stack up against scripture”? Or to put it another way “How does what I feel God is telling me line up with scripture”? Of course nothing is perfect but to me it could be an interesting addition to a conversation. “Hey let’s ask Jesus on the topic “ I guess like a lot of things here maybe I’m alone in my interest on the topic.

https://reddit.com/r/exjw/s/irDTr1rNp3 Everyones on medication. The JWs have a rate of 3x the average population with paranoid schizophrenia disorders. And much higher rates of depression. And yet they are the one cult that witnesses and proselytizes more than any other cult. If that lifestyle pattern was healthy then you would see different results. Giving every last minute of their life trying to “baptize” another in their religion and the rest of their thoughts trying to avoid any appearances of evil and disfellowshipping. And a suspicious environment where everyone “tattles” on each other to as high a level of leadership as will give them audience. I see similar patterns of behavior in The Way International. Especially as it involves leadership functioning and roles. Want a more abundant life, with 30% higher rates of depression and paranoia? Take the PFAL class. Ot grow a clue like the young people already are and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction!

I will say in that letter where Craig uses a description from Timothy about people floating around on their little piece of debris thinking it is a luxury liner - I've never heard a better description for The Way International than that - although he was using it to label Corps who left.

Hey Rusty welcome to the cafe for all us greasespots. It’s been a pretty busy summer for me! Now I’m off to make more spots with my grease. Melting into one big greasespot at midnight was way too limiting for me so I have expanded it into more of a SpongeBob endeavor as a short order frycook. Gotta stay happy and make that grease work for you!

Yes this makes it circular lol. We are humans in the image of God who has human characteristics. Lol This is the perfect timing for the Killers performance of Human. With the lead singer in a bird costume.

The idea of God as a social construct is plausible. But back to the original question I really wasn’t aware that a figure of speech like that in general use at the time would limit God with respect to having emotions or not. I thought it was the opposite - that it was describing He could have them like we do. Regarding Superman I would counter that Jerry Spiegel always had the vision of him flying but it was introduced developmentally with the comic story.

The Lord Jesus Christ appears in the greeting. But then disappears throughout the rest of the letter, which is focused on “The Way Tree” of “The Way International”, and the leadership that “God and Dr Wierwille appointed” There are so many more cults with “God Appointed” leaders than we realize. I mean you would think that Gods only job is to travel around and do miracles for crackpots to get them to start new cults.

Yes that “fog years” time with Craig, Geer and the succession had 80% of the people on the rolls leaving. After the exodus was over then they retained approximately $65 million in cash plus their properties with a much smaller payroll. This was the largest exodus.

I can forgive Stayed. Well within my capabilities. Has he asked for forgiveness? Sounds to me more like a lecture hit and run. We get quite a lot of those on this site actually. Lecture hit and runs. Is he of a mentally impaired or unaware state where he “knows not what he does”? LCM too. Knew him personally. He has never asked for my forgiveness for anything. Right now he is teaching new interpretations of books of the Bible to an imaginary internet audience and none of those teachings seem to carry any awareness of being wrong or changing. His own daughter has posted on here concerned about his ongoing influence. I mean sure I’ve got my version of Jesus blanket forgiveness for those who are unaware of their evil impact. Do these two examples fit the bill? Where does the verse in Romans about not taking vengeance because vengeance is the Lords fit in? If the Lord always forgave everyone and required everyone else to then what would He have to take vengeance on? This whole topic and the wrong dividing of scripture around it by the cult TWI has kept more people in bondage and whitewashed more evil by leaders than any other I know.

No what makes you an @sshat troll is to be lecturing people about “what God wants” when you don’t believe in God. What I meant about not rehashing it is not getting into stupid damn arguments about “forgiveness”. Kind of like this has turned into.

Thankfully we have some condescending @sshat to make up kidnap stories and tell us we are not forgiving enough. While misgendering us. thanks for pointing out how wrong I was to indulge our discussion there Victoria.

You mean because I actually read the verses related to the topic as opposed to just buying your one-line mandate about forgiveness? And ask detailed questions? Also, you’re an @sshat who comes on a forum and tells victims what they need to be doing according to you as opposed to what they are currently doing. That is called victim blaming you dense jackfoot. You’re blaming them for their current state because according to you His Highness they haven’t forgiven their abuser so they aren’t delivered. The fact that you don’t care what God thinks by your own mouth means you are a disingenuous jackfoot troll for baiting all of us in this conversation.

Hey Twinky! Thanks for the detail. Yes when you dig into it it seems pretty clear that this topic is nuanced in what scripture actually teaches. I read no cut and dried mandates for sure. The other side of forgiveness is justice. I see on all the real life crime shows victims being consumed and facing real impact from the lack of justice in their life situations. I see that on this site also. I see that in TWI leadership operations and decisions. They protect themselves at all costs, thwart justice and blame victims. It’s real tangible evil. I suppose in the context of things in the 3rd heaven and earth there will be no more pain in injustice and so people escaping the consequences of their actions won’t have victim impact. That seems the only hope for the perpetrators. And I only see that happening with repentence of their former actions and impact.

Let’s look at this forgiveness topic from another perspective. The BODummies recently sent out a “come on home” postcard to a certain select group in their list of former member/slaves. They did not send out the postcard to the entire list. Most notably they don’t like people who post on this site and will never invite them back. On this site we don’t blame their victims but help them recover. We don’t excuse their immorality we call them out on it. We have done no evil here. Why can’t they forgive us for telling the truth about them? Why aren’t people hounding them to forgive everyone who left for understandable reasons? They use worldly designated “statuses” on their records to help them not forgive. And most of those mark and avoids like the RNR group were people trying to help them right the ship. I think some people should take their forgiveness guilt trip and shove it right back down the throat of the people demanding it of them but not doing it themselves. That’s what I do.

This is at best a partial statement that conveys none of the details surrounding the related verses. Jesus 70x7 statement is in the context of the person committing the wrong asking for forgiveness, evidencing remorse, but falling short. Wrongly dividing scripture and reaching a conclusion where a victim should be blamed but a perpetrator should be excused is about the worst example of Christianity I can think of. It shows worse than any other religion I can think of who would hold perpetrators accountable.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071011022908/http://www.greasespotcafe.com/main2/ Here’s a wayback machine archive from 2007. All the links to Waydale documents are on the left and work.

Yeah Craig’s letters are also a real gem. Especially his rants about homos. He is very unhinged. I thought all those documents used to be around this site somewhere in a documents section free for all to access. VPWs are all in an archive somewhere on the web. Mods are they still here? I think I could go to the Wayback machine internet site archive and retrieve all the docs. They include letters and lawsuits. These series of letters to the “Way Corps” from TWI Presidents really highlight their thinking, control, and running of leadership programs. You see BITE model material all throughout.