chockfull

The best thing any couple can do for a marriage is to remove TWI from it. They don't belong there anyway.

My viewpoint lately is that is because institutions are set up by man not God, despite man's ego-laden opinions about how their particular institution is indeed God's main and only vehicle on earth to get His will done. That's man's delusion and hubris talking. Christianity is not for institutions. It is for the common man. The poor, downtrodden, sin-laden common man. It is meant to be shared, for free. Not for a man to build up his own tower of Babel based upon it. If Jesus came to virtually any institutional Christian organization based upon his name today like he did on earth as a simple man 2000 yrs ago, he would probably be cast out, much like he was by the Pharisees and rejected by Israel and their institutional religious systems and structure of the time. So my conclusion is pay no attention to the false posturing of man and the institutions he sets up in God's name. We already have a mediator, and that's one for the common, the downtrodden, the broken. And he mediates for free. We don't need another mediator like RFR, the Pope, or any other form of local egotist leadership setting themselves up as a false mediator, interjecting themselves between man, Jesus Christ, and God. Where you see a religious hierarchy, there will be evil. Run the other way. Hang out with the sinners, like Jesus did, and keep your heart pure.

To me it was the unwritten messages sent from above and the vast dichotomy between them and the public "promotion" proclamations that were really the worst. To really promote body, soul, spirit is to promote a full and rich life, in which you have time to develop your body and soul - like the hobbies we showed off in residence. You don't have your whole week with every spare minute sucked up by meaningless rote meetings where people regurgitate already boring STS teachings and Way mag articles. You have time to exercise, to prepare healthy food to eat, to have hobbies in the community and the friends that surround them. TWI may have promoted body, soul, spirit with their mouth, but their actions were opposite. Same with marriages. I would have to say I've seen more marriages broken up by TWI clergy than held together or saved. It's always a commitment to TWI thing, coupled with suspicion and accusations towards whichever in the couple would share less with the leader. Like a prisoner of war scenario with rewards for snitching on other prisoners. In fact, that was the case in general, not just marriages. Individual family? Yeah, right. You don't have time to go to your kids sports games, you have to be at a Branch meeting on Saturday, otherwise where's your commitment? The more responsibility you have in leadership, the more meetings are added. And those meetings are just a forum for some egotist to put their stamp on things. In fact, the higher the level of the meeting, the more really wacky $h1t I've heard in that type of meeting. God I would hate to be around the BOD and their paranoia laced little side comments. I've never met a more sin conscious group of people than TWI leadership. And they are the ones who should be strongest in grace. Education? With no student loans? And college prices rising exponentially year after year? NO, you don't promote education. Do you even have a college scholarship fund like ANY of the community orgs around? No. How do people on Staff's kids do it? They staff parents go on welfare so that the kids can get Pell Grants and go for free (well, not really free - my tax dollars pay for that cr@p). TWI pays staff people less than the poverty level so that their kids qualify. That org realistically would be labeled the least supportive of education possible by an independant evaluator. Health? No time to exercise, all your exercise time is spent making up reports about your weekly activities, which ironically includes mandated exercise. No money to buy healthier food. No time to prepare it. Cheap coffee, drinks with sugar and crappy processed snacks at all meetings and classes. Little sleep. High stress. The best choice I ever made for my health was leaving TWI. MOG Rules? Sickening. Disgusting. Just like Jesus wrote about the Pharisees - they place heavy burdens on people they won't themselves lift with their little finger. Then they criticize the burdened down for being overwhelmed and not able to handle it, while they live a life of comfort, low morality, and decadence. Very sick. God will remember this and repay.

For some reason this post gave me flashbacks. I've been noticing lately the emotional damage lately in my life wreaked by TWI's leaders and followers. It is real and tangible. It is nothing that putting on a Pollyanna face (or twig face) can fix, that just pushes it down deeper. I sure understand more deeply today Jesus teaching of "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees". Anyone getting sucked into this insipid cult needs to shock themselves into awareness before they are drawn too deep into the currents to swim.

They have my middle finger when driving by... :biglaugh:

The deeper we get into the "recovery" economy with a lot of bankrupcies, the more this is going to be the case in many places. This is a classic example of TWI's financial ignorance. They keep their people paying high rents, with leases with options to move every August so they can shuffle people around and control them better. Next, they are giving 15% of their net income away on top of this. And their time is consumed with endless meaningless meetings and the planning for them. The middle class is always in danger in America, but in TWI there really is no middle class. Not if they are complying with all the controlling rules.

you guys sound like you were so much more fun than your stupid leadership.

Well, I think the buying a home one is the biggest one I see TWI induced trauma over. You think about it - most people will do that when they get their career or trade started in their 20's, or when they get married and settle down. So as you are kind of getting at, the experience from that time to now puts people behind when they leave TWI. Buying a home is hard enough. There are so many variables. Place, cost, location, age, etc. And with the economy recently, people have bought homes and then found the value 50% underwater after only a few years in areas. And many of those things are impossible to foresee. Add onto that people having fear from years of teaching how having a mortgage is wrong, evil, opens your life up to the adversary, etc. and you have a person that should be going into a financial transaction with a sound logical mindset now approaching it with more of a superstitious mindset waiting for the other shoe to drop. All that spells problem. I think the more people react extremely and just reject 100% of TWI's teachings, the easier it will be for them to make sound logical decisions. Of course none of us are there, but at least that attitude will help root out all the BS implanted in our brains over years.

Yes, whenever I run into the remaining local TWI sycophants in the community, it's an interesting experience. It's kind of like I'm a celebrity, except for they have a much more retarded look on their face. I hope I didn't used to look like that to ex-TWI members - now that would be downright embaressing. :) One thing I refuse to do, though, and that's to give up my city and the control of it to these retards. Now, that I'm not in TWI, I actually have roots in this city. This is my city. It's not TWI's city, or any of their itinerant migrant workers or residents who happen to live there. They don't really have roots in the community, thus they don't belong there anywhere as much as I do. This goes double for the leadership. They'll be gone anyway in a couple of years, and probably not in favor any more. That's just statistics. With how TWI bites and devours their own, no leader now will probably have any impact 10 years from now. Just look at the survival rate at the top, like for instance, the VP position, and the turnover rate there, and that gives you a great indication of the corporate culture of the rest of the org. No, this is my city, including the community events there. The reason there are community events is due to people with roots in the community, that own homes, vote locally, and pay taxes. And no, TWI members, renters don't pay taxes. The schools your kids attend are paid for by everyone elses property taxes. So my answer to some TWI newb who would witness to me at a local community event would likely be something like "why don't you do something of real value to the community before you ask for participants for your little group from the community. there are givers and takers, and you guys are takers that are brainwashed into thinking you are doing others a favor. even the LDS missionaries offer to do service for you when they come to your door when you're not interested". And giving people "the greatest thing you could give them - the Word" is simply a lie that you are believing. What you are giving them is 3 meetings a week and a teachers schedule for topics to teach on, a boring teaching tape and hookup, and a vanilla magazine. Oh and I forgot, a class that will teach you to look down on other Christians and replace your family and friends with fake ones. And pay for it while you're doing it. And, after all that - excie's option of punching them in the nose is a perfectly viable alternative

Not this. I think those who find this kind of love to be blessed whenever it occurs. I have a close relative that found this recently - the news brought me great joy. It's not something to obsess over, but if in the course of your life this happens to you, please count it a blessing.

The only thing you can do about lost time is make up for it.

You mean like time and money? Things we all had an abundance of on the WOW / Way D field?

And here all along I thought that STFI carried enough double entendre in the mnemonics alone to last John Lynn for a lifetime.

Picture of said WOW-mobile:

I kind of like the "let no man put asunder". It gives you a heads up that there will be dumb@$$es that will try to, that you have to fight. And yes, the word dumb@$$es is completely interchangeable with "TWI leadership", so feel free to substitute that in if the l33tsp3@k bad language offends.

This is kind of how cults operate, and how cult leaders operate. They put themselves in the middle of the relationship between an individual and God, now all communication has to involve an intermediary. Get the dumb@$$es out of the middle, and conversations with God actually become enjoyable again.

Didn't stuff like this happen in that Steve Martin movie "Leap of Faith"??? Flim-flam artist tactics all the way. On real revelation IMO it isn't that complicated. If you talk to God a lot then He will talk back to you, although with Him rather than a whole lot of chatter, it's just a nugget once in a while, or a lesson. A still small voice.

L-O-S-E-R If marriage is instituted by God and defined by the Word then "what God has joined together, let no one seperate" means that the commitment is not based upon some dumb-@$$ organization.

Great thread guys. One interesting point. What we were taught in TWI is that the adversary counterfeits truth. So for any lurking TWI members on this thread, this means you are going to be questioning what is genuine and what is counterfeit, and initially at least you are going to be looking for the counterfeit here at GS cafe. Now if this PFAL live filming was the fulfillment of what VPW claimed, that God told him He would teach VP the word as it hasn't been known since the first century, how is it that when you examine the details of it, more and more it looks like an ego trip and fraught with human error? PFAL was the culmination of VP stealing BG Leonard's ministry and teachings, putting in all his material, and running with it. His ego was so huge and his budget was so low he couldn't afford an extra week filming for his health. He couldn't afford to hire film crew, thus BOD + HQ Staff did it. He scored big with it too - current assets are at around $53M.

OldSkool, That's so awesome bro. Phenomenal news - so happy for you guys. Yeah, "the world" as TWI used to denigratingly call community has some fantastic people in it. The World: Will give you a kidney TWI's BOD: Will try to get blood from a stone There's so much deliverance from God outside of false organizations like TWI. To me, many of the people in the org now seem semi-institutionalized.

I still have Bibles and basic concordances/lexicons on my shelf. I have TWI materials boxed up in the garage, not because I can't bear to get rid of them, but more like for the same reasons I still have college textbooks in the garage. Also, I think I'm not throwing everything out just because "Burn the Chaff" day teachings in TWI I felt were full of cr@p. No, devil spirits are not going to invade my life because I still have a vinyl version of Led Zeppelin "Houses of the Holy" and Fleetwood Mac "Rumours". It's just stuff. Maybe I'll throw it all out next time I move. Or maybe not.

Pffffftttttt - what a joke. There's a big fail. Or the joy of marking and avoiding your own children. What, no Mother's Day card? There you go. Now that you have power, you can f up other people's lives like you've f'd up your own.

Or perhaps "I am starting to realize what a skeezy ole scumbag perv I have been while building a cult empire. My conscience is bothering me so I will express it in a pithy parable fashion that someone could include in LifeLines".

Sure Ham - kindred spirits and all. I do enjoy interacting with the peeps at the Cafe. We all have an inner strength borne of suffering I think. That's not all bad.

Wierwille's legacy? $52 million in assets amassed by duping the masses. Successive leaders that are three-fold the children of hell he was. And a ministry that is exactly opposite of the poem he plagiarized and re-titled "Ode to the Way Corps".