chockfull

Raf, I'll give you my take on it. As a forewarning I don't agree with you, but I respect where you are coming from. I've experienced the "gifts of the spirit" in mainstream denominational Christianity and in TWI. For me I just consider the "praying in the spirit" thing a normal part of my prayer life. I pray with my understanding, I pray in tongues. I've heard the interpretation/prophecy thing in mainstream Christianity and in TWI. I've been edified, I've also been around where it's an ego trip. I do think TWI is puffed up about this category, and in handling it projects a "spiritual elitism" that is unhealthy and sets the groundwork for a lot of arrogance and control of people. In direct opposition to TWI's arrogance, I believe the scripture and especially how all that stuff is set within the "love" chapter in Corinthians. I firmly believe that if people are in a prayer group and want to worship God and love one another, that these messages will be honored by God. I really don't think God cares as much about whether one guy interprets his own or another guy does. I think the excellor session stuff with all of the "practice" on starting tongues with the letter "c" and all the 3x in a row tongues/interpretation is a bunch of malarkey. It's just a vehicle for people to get all puffed up and judge their brothers in Christ and get into the foolishness of comparing yourself to one another. I'm sure TWI fans will sputter "but, but, but people need instruction". No they don't. Most of the so-called instruction in VP's classes maybe he put in there because of his own hangups about lying about it to Oral Roberts and his experience. I don't know, but it turned into a huge legalism endeavor. I say pray. If you're inspired, pray in tongues. I don't really know if that's the "glossolalia" thing people describe or something else, and I really don't care. It's just part of my prayer life and my relationship with God and my Savior. If you pray with a group and everyone wants some inspiration and is up for it, do it. But if nobody ever does, still love is greater. Oh, one more thing. All the bodybuilder talk about making yourself "spiritually strong" so you can "operate the revelation and impartation manifestations". Yeah that's crapola too. If God needs to speak with you He can find a way you can understand. If He needs to you do something for Him same thing goes. He can let you know. It absolutely will have nothing to do with how much you walk around doing glossolalia while you're doing laundry.

So one of the things I remember is that during the 2 lawsuits (Allen, Barnes), Louis Columbo (Rozie / TWI attorney) had deposed Martindale and basically forced him under fear of prosecution for perjury to detail out a list of all of the women he had affairs with. This came up because the Allen's attorney had brought up questions and seemed to have knowledge during the preliminary depositions of some of these affairs that Martindale had not disclosed to Columbo. Reportedly this list was pretty long. After that, TWI took this list and I think mostly the VP - HP - had meetings with each one of these women and/or couples to "counsel" them that this was wrong. The idea they presented was that it was also the girls fault as they had to have a motive of getting something out of it. So blame the girls. This "blame and guilt tactic" also discouraged or headed off further lawsuits. The fallout from these meetings is that many couples where the wife was having an affair with Craig they moved them down from big shot positions to little shot positions. Other situations the girls were smarter, and basically traded upon their silence for a better assignment - full-time paid assignments mostly. From the fallout of all these "counseling meetings" there were a number of higher-ups that became fearful of their activities outside of their marriages, and chose exit paths at that time before they were caught. I think among big shot leaders, it would have been almost impossible to not have run up against these types of scenarios. Certainly Wayne of CFF tells stories about having confronted Craig on this. Ralph's GS Radio sharings indicate his knowledge of this and confrontation of this. I think Schoenheit probably wrote his adultery research paper without any knowledge of the pervasiveness of the practice - maybe in response to an incident of someone who came to him in confidence. He probably didn't realize the pervasiveness until he was fired. Some big shot leaders partook of the adulterous fruit. Others did not. I suppose it's a possibility that some were unaware, but at some point it would have to be more of an ostrich head in the sand unaware, or unaware because they looked the other way on purpose scenario.

Happy b-day socks!!!!

I've found some comfort in promises in scripture to help out the realization of decades lost. Joel 2:25a I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten. Comfort in the promises of God sure beats the heck out of rationalizing it all away and constructing statues to a moral midget.

I think it was a control tactic, to get all of us calling in to verbalize our compliance with their policies on a weekly basis. So much of TWI's standard practices are exactly like that. Rote repetition enforcing their structure, hierarchy, and our compliance to it.

Not wrong IMO. It establishes a pattern among the big shots, the entitled ones, the users.

Absolute winner in my book.

IMO they are sold a load of cr@p0la about being "the true remnant". This is why they tolerate the decline of the ministry and the lack of numbers. All it takes is one little old bespectacled white hair making some comments along those lines down her nose, and they are brainwashed again. I bought into that for a while. The few, the proud, those that have maintained their commitment, etc., etc. What freed me from it? God. I used to believe all the party line they back up from the OT - you know, the "pay your vows" verses, and the "they have sworn and they will perform" from some military battle speech in the OT. Then I actually read the teachings of Jesus where he instituted a new teaching in grace, where instead of vowing all these vows, just say what you mean. Thus I was free to develop the opinion of "NO", and free to say it freely. Then I started taking back my life, and God started restoring the years the locust had eaten. I don't think another person or church was involved in that process. Just me and God. He let me know through my prayer life and study that I didn't have to be beholden to Pharisees due to some stupid vow. There's a higher law now, brought in by the teachings of Jesus Christ. It's just as revitalizing as being saved by grace not by works. Sorry for all the verse paraphrasing, but since this isn't the doctrinal forum, I kind of feel like if I included all those it would seem like a teaching. And I ain't teaching, just telling a story of my life.

What do I think of VP? He was a drunk charlatan plagiarist megalomaniac sex offender who didn't have the human decency to not cheat on his wife. If he was my "father in the Word" then I'm totally screwed.

IMO God created emotions so that I can tell the Way to F off for abusing me with passion.

Incredible display of lack of understanding of music. I agree with the classical pianist.

I think this concept is more aligned with Jesus teachings than the mega-churches building edifices to men. Jesus came to bring salvation to the common man, the sinner. Not to provide a career path for those adept at swaying others.

Yeah, they wouldn't allow "secular" influences. "Sexular" now, was perfectly ok. What a crock.

Waiting for the next leader in TWI is kind of like this: Waiting for Godot

My only response to this is for us all to sing to Rosalie a resounding chorus of "if you're ugly and you know it hit your face" (from another thread).

Amazing story Steve. Funny, looking back the healings and miracles I've participated in have had not a thing to do with TWI and had everything to do with God, another person, and a need. Not one signed up for the class.

I liked the "roll away" song. It always helped my mind transcend being treated like a child, despite the intent of all the butt nuggets leading the songs.

I don't know about doctrine, but everything almost in this physical world decays. When my Savior comes back, I'm hoping the next world or this world upgraded or wherever we get to stay won't.

I agree Steve. If there wasn't a genuine love element among the leaves I probably would have picked up on the hypocrisy as I saw that in church. I think even the local Corps around me at the time showed genuine love. oh, you're a gem excie. we all love you.

Apparently from looking at the fruit of VP's life what he considered the "abundant life" was 2 planes, a Coach, unlimited gifts from minions, motorcycles, a driver/butler/personal servant, unlimited flowing Drambuie,unlimited cigarettes, and multiple young sex partners. Of course that is different from what he SAID.

When I look back on my origins and start with TWI my weakness was an egotistical appeal to knowledge of the scriptures. On a college campus, which the Way was infiltrated into at that time, it was very easy for some to spout off VP's flawed research and appear knowledgeable. Combine that with being treated cruelly and judged by some of the on-campus standard fare Christian organizations, and the obtuse viewpoints of those teaching my religion classes with PhD's, I was easy pickings. I ignored the support systems in place with my regular denominational church and followed the yellow brick road down to the land of Oz. It took decades to pull back the curtains and see the moral midget wizard pulling the strings of all the puppets. The underlying truth of course is "knowledge puffs up, but love edifies". However, with an undeveloped mind as a youth, it's very easy to mistake the "love bombing" of The Way with the genuine love shown in the scriptures. Would I have been prey for any other organization? I don't think so. Many orgs were vying for my attention at the time. I think the unique blend of "love bombing" combined with the flim-flam hustle pitch and aura surrounding VP and his "research" were the perfect cult storm for me. I guess everybody is different. And amazingly enough, that's OK. :)

PIFFLE cuts the life expectency by 20 yrs? Or maybe it's the other ignored natural laws, like boozing it up and smoking like a chimney? Except for George Burns probably had a cigar and a scotch on his 100th b-day.

On FB I stay out of commenting on political stuff, and other controversial stuff. I don't unfriend people for being narrow-minded idiotic bigots. If I did I wouldn't have any friends Just kidding. When I post on FB I consider that at some point somebody wanting to hire me is going to Google me and lead to that content. I don't trust companies like FB to keep anything private long-term in spite of controls they have in place.

Yeah, that's the gist. Right now they're putting work in whitewashing and de-ifying the Veepster's image. Attacking little V2P2 who is implementing many original VP tenets wouldn't help with that effort at all.

Yeah, and now I feel bad about teaching genuine things under the authority of a non-genuine organization. All that did was help to keep people in a cult longer. But thankfully, the BOD being what they are, Rozie could not tolerate ANYTHING she was not micromanaging, so they came down on the Corps and made us "stick to the syllabus" and teach only directly from there and cover everything written. So we were all relegated back to delivering the same kind of milk-toast vanilla elevator music garbage that you hear from the STS. Rozie's motto "if it has personality, kill it". Probably comes from so many years of repressing her own internal tendencies and whitewashing what appears to the outside.