chockfull

Run for the hills. Run for your life. And then call us when you get there.

Happy Household Holidays? D@mn, son, can you get any more vanilla Jesus than that?

Merry Christmas Greasespotters!!!!!

Yes, um, THAT Jesus movement. You know, the one that featured the "Groovy Christians of Rye NY" on the cover of Life magazine. The one that VP made such a big deal out of? Yeah, that one. The one that started with the Christian ministries of Steve Heefner and Jimmy Doop that VP came in and stole? Yes, that one. It's well documented here on GSC for your reading pleasures. You mean he is still a walking snoozefest? That guy has to be among the most boring teachers ever. The old "renewed mind" class? The only thing keeping me awake in that was his bow tie.

One interesting thing to me describing the fruit of TWI is all of the accounts of how people have to "rebuild" their lives after leaving. Yes, I've experienced this as well. The question that I have for people to ponder is that if TWI is as they profess the greatest "household of believers" since the first century, why would deciding to fellowship with another group of Christians as opposed to TWI cause such trauma? Why the need to rebuild from the ground up again? I mean compare this to the vast majority of other Christians in the world, Christian organizations, churces, etc. It is very common to run into a friend or neighbor who has switched churches. There doesn't need to be some horrible reason for it other than "it fit them better". Also, to run into scandal with churches is fairly common as well. Some churches collapse over it, some split, some move on with new leaders. Never anywhere do you find the kind of whitewashing of the image of the fallen like in TWI, or all of the drama surrounding it. This is nothing more than the fruit of a damaging cult. This fruit shares nothing in common with mainstream Christianity, but shares everything in common with other destructuve cults. People leaving are devestated, don't know how to care for themselves, don't know how to fellowship with other Christians, hold a normal job, pursue a career, make friends like normal people. The impact of TWI and cults like this is pervasive. Jesus taught us to know people by their fruit. TWI you can know by their fruit. Damaged and bruised fruit.

Yes, and these TWI leaders are like moral lepers. This is why scripture talks about consciences "seared with a hot iron". They continue to think they are right, holy, God's true representative, and yet the fruit they produce is putrid. Lives corrupted, people hurt, but they still sit in their councils and judge in error. VPW like a leper couldn't feel the pain he was inflicting on his sexual victims. LCM the same way. Their warning systems are long gone.

I think seperating out what people did from what God did is a good thing and important for deliverance. It's probably a fair criticism that some of us don't tolerate that well. However, to be fair sometimes I think you are deliberately baiting people. Yeah, people in society and mainstream Christianity don't know how to handle the "I've been in a cult" story well. I usually leave that part out, and just focus on the Christianity part. Just because God delivered me while I was under the authority of those idiots doesn't mean that I have to continue to be stupid enough to allow myself to be under any semblance of their authority in the future. VP was a flim-flam man, a snake oil salesman. The bulk of his "escapades" took place in the years of his life he was 55-65 yrs old. Not exactly the years one's libido is raging rampant. Probably more chilling was his false vision of himself as how he was "healing" these previously abused girls. VP came off very charismatic, which is why he fooled so many. LCM and RFR couldn't pull his act off. A screaming Okie lunatic and a controlling, stepford-positive southern hag somehow just don't seem to pull in the numbers. He also taught us to worship him as a "father in the Word". That's where the leaven really keeps him encrusted.

I don't think it is all bad. To me the question is kind of like asking "Were the Pharisees all bad?" Paul grew up a Pharisee. The good parts about his training benefitted him once he was delivered. Jesus didn't teach people to only follow the good in the Pharisees and ignore the bad. He taught them "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees... a little leaven leavens the whole lump". And yet you have people justifying that kind of logic for why they stay in TWI. It's not all bad, so I'm just holding on to the good parts. NO. Sorry. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. You are leavened. As Jesus taught, it only takes a little bit of that doctrine to corrupt you. And yes, TWI are Pharisees. They place burdens on people they don't carry and wouldn't even lift a finger towards. They will lie to cover their sins and those of higher leaders. Like you described, they will violate even their own policies they set to further their abusive ends. I remember describing the abuse I experienced from TWI's leadership to another Christian. The first question to me they asked was "Are you still under their authority?" I actually had to think a little bit before answering "no". Both the question and my answer were kind of a wakeup call for me. We were so conditioned to accepting what those losers in leadership told us about ourselves. Part of my deliverance was to see that's what they are - a bunch of losers and Pharisees abusing people. My answer to that question now is "h#11 no, and I NEVER would accept that yoke of bondage on my life again". Is TWI all bad? No. Are the people all bad? No. So what? Even Satan has admirable qualities.

No, that's just being "self-willed". It's origin is stubbornness and blindness. There can be great truth coming from perspectives in education, science, religion, and yes, even authority. From authority there are great necessities in life to obey - like the laws of the land. Don't accept the laws of the land because of your "free will", then pretty soon you'll be talking about "free will" from an 8x12 cell, people will tell you when to get up, when to eat, when to exercise, etc. I really don't give one r@t$ @$$ whether you or anyone disputes my "findings". God led me to those findings, thus for my life they are truth. I am nothing like TWI now. That is part of the deliverance God has allowed me to experience. I don't plagiarize. I don't abuse people. I don't have a lust for the power of a position in an organization that doesn't amount to a gnat on an elephant's behind in the overall scope of things. TWI does all of those things. They will lie, cheat, steal, and all the while justifying it with "so the ministry be not blamed". Yet to you, I guess you learned to be critical of the scientific method. And how to put lipstick on a pig really well. Observing the consistent fruit in the lives of the leadership of TWI, that is blatantly obvious that free will doesn't guarantee good decisions. So yes, there is a myriad of alternate choices to following them. And the vast majority of choices are better.

1) RC Church - Has the most amount of money, followers, and if you attack them it's an easy step to group all major Christian denominations in. Calling all their trinkets, statues, necklaces, artifacts "idols" is an easy sell. 2) Women - this is relatively self-explanatory. VP shows his true misogynistic colors all over, but one highlight is in TW living in love. He would never receive holy spirit i.e. SIT "with any woman around". Nobody could exploit the young girls like VP did without having a low value opinion of women in general. That justified using them for VP. Just as a side note many times this type of pathology stems back to child abuse. I would not be surprised to see some form of abuse in VP's childhood whether by a parent, relative, or sibling. 3) Jews - this one to me is harder to pinpoint but I will attribute it to VP's known affinity for conspiracy theory.

This is an interesting parallel. An education and a career is a solution against radical fundamentalism. I would definitely consider TWI as radical fundamentalism, as their viewpoints are very exclusive of other Christian organizations and denominations. TWI itself keeps people in lower education tiers and keeps people from dedicating themselves to a profession through high levels of time commitments (average TWI activities are 5-7x per week) and alternative goals setting (i.e. Way Disciple, Way Corps in place of college and profession). TWI controls the amount of education people are likely to obtain through their debt policy (i.e. it is against "the Word" to be in debt for any reason including student loans). In this day and age an education beyond high school is a formidable expense. Most of the modern population offset this expense through federal student loan programs, which are approved quite liberally. Once a young person has an education, the higher salary they are able to obtain allows them to pay off the student loans throughout their working career at very negotiable rates. There are also programs such as working in school districts that have high levels of poverty that allow for the forgiveness of all student loans. But none of these are available to TWI youngsters. There are some exeptions to this - for example, many TWI Staff members are paid close to minimum wage. This allows their children to attend school - tuition and books - utilizing Pell Grants, which are free money for education for those living on the poverty line. So in other words, taxpayers with productive jobs who pay income tax and businesses within our country who pay high taxes pay for staff kids college. Not to derail too far but it's a travesty of justice that a small business owner taxed at 50% of their corporate income can't afford to pay for their own kids college but the 50% tax pays for TWI staff kids education. But back on point, for TWI members attending local fellowships, the high levels of control over finances (i.e. debt policy) prevent young people from attending college on the average. Professions are another category of control. To advance in a profession usually requires some dedication outside of normal business hours. This doesn't have to be extensive - maybe 10 hours a week outside. TWI however, with high levels of activity (for example, fellowships 3x/week, witnessing 1-2x per week, Adv. Class grads meetings, Branch, Limb meetings, leadership training meetings) takes up all of that time. Also, classes, which are run multiple times per year. The FNC is slated to run 2-3x per year (takes 1 month approx), INT 1x, other classes 1x. When classes are run, this takes up practically all time outside of work, all centered around the new students, but multiple hearings of the same material helps indoctrinate class crews also. So there is very little time to do anything towards a profession and the development of one. Things that are ruled out: Professional conferences (weekends usually conflict with some major TWI meeting), travel (some professions such as military are shielded from this in TWI), local networking meetings (or if you go, it's from a "witnessing" perspective), studying for advanced certifications, moving for a better professional position (have to consider the "household" primarily). So the members of TWI due to the amount of control of TWI have lower levels of education and profession. Now this is a generality, there are always those individuals that resist the system and maintain a certain amount of control over their own lives. Usually these unique individuals don't last long in TWI - they are chased out for various reasons. TWI is not an organization that tolerates free thought. But if you want to see the fruit of a cult - the negative impact of a cult - just look at these things. Control over education. Control over profession. Control over time and money. Base essentials that help an individual with individual freedoms and the development of free thought. Don't give these things up and don't let our young people do it either.

trololololololol

Didn't you know? We were ALL rocket scientists when we were in TWI. ;)

Yes, John, looking back on things I wanted to thank you for your work as well. I believe after reading one of your articles on VPW's 'research' I found a copy of JE Stiles book on eBay or another web book sales site and bought it. Comparing it side by side to VP's book and noting the publishing dates was certainly eye-opening, and for me it connected the dots on how deep VP's plagiarism tendencies ran. So for those that think and put things together, some of those nudges in the right direction have done wonders. I appreciate the efforts you've put into this.

Maybe. He also may be playing devil's advocate here and stirring things up to help himself sort out his outlook on TWI and his experiences. I don't really know the man. But I thought he said he had a wife and kids, and if they are 'normal' people then I would tend to think johniam is just trolling it up on the interw3bz. Again I guess you'd really have to meet them all to tell for sure. The truth has always to me turned out much stranger than fiction, my friend.

Honestly, I'd have to ask Sarah about it. Outside of her direct response there is no logical or reasonable way to confirm what was or was not damaging. I do know many of VP's grandkids were raised with the doctrine and expectation that men will cheat on their wives with other women. Would you raise your kids that way? Is that Biblical doctrine to teach your kids that by words and example? So just addressing this from a legal standard, you do realize that LCM was successfully sued for quid pro quo sexual harassment, right? This means that there was concrete evidence that LCM in one of the lawsuit cases used his position of power to elicit sex from someone who he was in authority over. Corporations have these types of scandals all the time. It usually ends in the person in power being fired because they broke the law. So whether or not you buy the 'authority negates consent', the laws of the land certainly are set up to prevent that type of abuse. VP had a whole system down to support his sexual depravity. There's a story here by Catcup of her sister's experience, where she confronted VP on what he did to her, and his response was "she'd better have pictures". VP would blackball anyone who spoke up and tell their local leadership they were possessed. Nobody in TWI would have doubted him. LCM the same. He convinced one girl that he saved her life by remaining at HQ and continuing to have sex with him, which caused her husband to commit suicide. His rationale to the girl was that the husband was going to kill himself anyway and would have killed her too if she went with him. One of the things that happened after LCM was 'busted' by being forced to lay out a laundry list of all those he slept with was that all the BOD confronted each one of those females and counseled them to show them how it was their fault too for consenting. What they didn't address though was how RFR and Donna would provide willing mistresses to married clergymen. This sexual depravity and corruption existed throughout all generations of that corrupt organization, whether or not any of us were aware of it at the time. Now they are trying to sweep it all under the rug and "hold onto the Word VP taught", not realizing that a little leaven of a Pharisee leavens the whole lump. The only real way to God's will would be to throw it all out, remove all those in power and start over. But those in power have too much invested to ever give it up. I think to summarize LCM's attitude towards women, he was a pig. And you sound like a pig too in this paragraph. JS's adultery paper was like a high school level word study on how adultery is wrong. Reading it, it should be apparent common sense what it contained. The amazing thing about the paper is the impact it had on all the higher leadership in TWI. If VP wasn't near the monster he's made out to be, if he had any humility to the Word, he would have responded to that paper according to the example VP himself taught of David in the OT. When the prophet Nathan confronted him over his acts with Bathsheba and having Uriah killed, he repented. VP did not repent. He had Schoenheit fired and bum rushed out of there faster than you could shake a stick. Sorry johniam, the evidence and logic is just piling up against your views and outlooks on this stuff. You might just have to take another look at your beliefs there.

I believe VP fully knew what he was doing was wrong, mocked the scriptures in that category, and had a good ole boys club with Howard Allen where they did the same. I recall seeing a little drawing in the motorcycle shed at HQ that was a cartoon of two fleas having intercourse, with the caption "flea fornication". That's the mark of the good 'ole boys club full of sexual predators.

Right. Because the Penn State and Syracuse guys were sexual predators, and VP just used rufees to .... ummmmm, wait. Oh wait, because those guys used their positions of authority to advance their sexual sins, and VP ..... ummmmm, yeah. Yeah, we can all see exactly how different they are. When it is shining on the threefold children of hell that he trained up to take his place. And when it's on people recovering from the damage in their lives from his and others under his tutlege's sins. And when it's on helping people recover from the negative and far-reaching effects of being in a cult for major portions of their lives. See - it's not about johniam and any blindness, weakness, or hardheartedness he has. No, it couldn't be about that. Let's deflect and talk about rainbows and unicorns. See, don't we all feel much better now? We don't need a movie. It was already on an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. Some cult leader lives on a compound and sexually takes advantage of the women under his authority. The DA Alex gets trapped out there and gets locked up for not understanding where the cult leader is coming from. He repeatedly tries to convince her how great he is. Then Chuck Norris kicks all their @$$es. See - we can get it all done in a 40 minute episode. It's much better than your movie because the cult leader gets roundhouse kicked in the head, while in your movie you pick on all the victims and excuse the cult leader. That book was mainly intended to help a very hurt and damaged girl recover from both sexual and spritual abuse. The person that abused her was VP. You see, when people are abused like that, telling the truth about it so that the abusers' sins are exposed helps them heal. People like you that belittle their story, blame them, and enable the abuser actually keep them from healing properly. So you inflict a similar damage on them by your hardheartedness that they originally suffered. Wow, talk about reach, touch and help. The Word is not negated by VP's actions. I really don't understand how you can't seperate out the Word of God from "the Word he (VP) taught". You see, they are different things. Jesus Christ said that no other foundation can a man lay except on him. Jesus Christ had no corruption in his heart like VP. He didn't live a poor witness like VP did. He didn't set up an organization of his followers to repeat, seal, and magnify his sinful ways. No, the Word of God as taught by Jesus Christ had and has much more positive influence. VP was a charlatan. He was used by the adversary. VP, by good words and fair speeches, deceived many. VP was a wolf in sheep's clothes. VP was of the category that Jesus and the apostles and authors of the Bible warned the readers and followers of the faith to avoid.

No, this is something the big Okie picked up being in tune with the same sonar waves that the Iraqi minister of defense was on during the Iraq war.

Just like you can't put lipstick on a pig and make it pretty, you can't build a Christian ministry on the foundations of a sexual predator and educational fraud and plagiarist, no matter how many layers of whitewash you coat it with.

I think I remember this. One guy who was a way grad was friends with a pastor of a church and convinced him to take the Foundational Class. He did, and so his church did. Over time, because they came from a church and were pretty tight TWI really wasn't able to control them sufficiently like they could others with the tactics they use - bully them into re-locating closer to some Way Corpse person. Because of no control - no twig. Over years of being sluffed off they eventually decided why bother and who needs them. TWI gravitates towards control. Always has, always will. In this they are diametrically opposed to the grace you read about in the Epistles. Practical, and doctrinal error. Hey - works for me. The BOD + Prez cab ARE a bunch of muppets dancing around with strings attached to the evil queen.

Yes you have a point. I don't want to rationalize to understand Scripture. But I don't want to ignore the tools either, like translations, definitions, and figures of speech. I think a portion of intellectual honesty is to treat scripture with the same scrutiny as other books. We were taught in TWI to worship scripture in a sense. Without applying the brain cells that can easily become a cargo cult science rather than a genuine piece to stimulate the heart and intellect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

I actually find Jbarrax's viewpoint refreshing. It is a change of pace from the stoic Fundamentalist view that to me came from TWI. Some of the issue in my mind here centers on the "sacred cow" of scripture contradiction. To some it's the cause of denigrating scripture and devalueing it. However, I don't find it such. One example - I as a parent can tell my children one thing one day, and then on another day say something totally different. Now this is not a state I strive for as a rule as children need consistency and direction much as God's children. However, the challenges in a child's life and a day's event can sometimes dictate saying different things at times that the child should focus on. Does this mean my advice as a parent is valueless? I don't think so - I put a lot of effort into it to be right and help children turn out better than their parents. So if I can have that attitude, what about myself as a child of God? Can I accept that sometimes God will instruct me to answer fools, and other times not answer fools? I can. I believe that my personal relationship with Him, including common sense, scriptural study, the gifts/manifestations area, and wise counsel can all contribute together to help me go in the right direction, including wisdom in certain situations. So in that I can accept those verses in Proverbs as somewhat contradictory, and search for additional answers to help me find the right application for what I'm dealing with now. I don't have to resort to the old viewpoints of "well if the Bible has one contradiction it would fall to pieces" which is a viewpoint I believe was instilled by a false Fundamentalist teacher. I think needing to resort to interpretation trickery of different types to explain away apparent contradictions is not completely intellectually honest, although I do acknowledge that God has enough foresight to call attention to contradictions to give us tools to help our limited minds through it. Funny enough - these things speak to me as well. The different manners people approach God and the truth of what each needs to do in their lives can be complicated. To me the contradictory advice given to Zaccheus and the rich young ruler illustrate this. But I guess I can use the word "contradiction" without it triggering all the things it does for some others. With the rich young ruler - dude's got a lot of material baggage he's going to need to deal with to make it work. Zaccheus - just a humble soul. No such hinderances. IMO the grace / works package and putting it together in daily life is something EVERY Christian struggles with and it's an ongoing thing. At least it is for me. It's resolved in Christ for sure, but there's plenty of people that rest on that victory and never live for Him again. I really appreciate the rebuttal and discussion. If I go on my heart feelings and ignore investigative work then it is I that am being lazy. I need some more effort, some more work to complete that picture. I do agree that without that effort conclusions are sloppy, intellectually dishonest, and also too common nowadays.

Hahaha. The Facebook "unfriend" feature... Making being shunned by a cult as easy as pressing a button

You've been kicked out three times, and you're still going back? WOW. First, why would you do that? Wouldn't you learn after being shunned three times that there is something wrong with the group? How can you possibly talk about the "acceptance" of twigs with your background? Second, regarding the logistics - most don't have this luxury. For example, for most people if they were kicked out in an area, the dumb@$$ leader that kicked them out would be around to ensure they could NOT approach a new twig to be welcomed back. The fact you're in the military afforded you recourse where normal TWI followers have none. Because everyone is welcome at the Way? Really? It seems like a really nice world you have constructed for yourself. But it's nowhere near a real one.