Oakspear

David, are you following me? :D-->

Doesn't matter if anyone believes it or not, does it? There was a definite problem (broken bone, attested to by the bone sticking out of your skin) and a definite solving of the problem (bone sliding back in, puncture closed).Usually the "healings" consist of: I prayed and my cold went away...seven days later. :P--> Things like that are different from believing or disbelieving someone's account, it's more along the lines of "yeah, so what?"

Nothing wrong with having a little structure, chaos isn't that attractive a theme for a meeting ;)--> I went to a charismatic group one time; everybody was talking at once, mumbling in tongues while other people were talking; mumbling "praise Jesus" or whatever while others were praying...I found it very irritating, and disrespectful to whoever was talking. On the other hand, Way meetings in the nineties could be too structured. I recall having to call or email my fellowship coordinator or his wife with the "order of service" if I was going to "lead the meeting". I would have to list every single thing that we would do, what songs we would sing; what we would pray for and who would do the praying; who would be called on to manifest, including which ones would S.I.T/interpret and who would prophesy and in what order. The slightest deviation from what was considered proper was vetoed. I was reduced to leading Sing Along The Way songs with different tempos and time signatures than normal just to mix things up a bit. God himself could have told me audibly to pray for something different, or call on someone else to manifest and the twig coordinator would shoot it down.

By the way...yes, I do believe that the supernatural can and does occur (hey, I can get my skeptic's card taken away for that) and yes, I have been in a car wreck where I thought I was going to die and walked away unscathed.

outofdafog: Let me see if I got this straight, and really, I mean no disrespect to you, just want to understand what you're saying. The Driver: "Every bone in his face was crushed...parents came and hired the best plastic surgeon in the country to put his face back together from a picture. That is all they had to go by" Driver's Wife: "a broken neck and ruptured spleen" Driver & Wife: "both seriously injured and required extensive hospital care and rehab" Other Guy: "died from his injuries a day later" You: "I got some good pain pills from the hospital that night and the next couple days discovered bruises all over my body that I never even knew I had. Up one side and down the other. I had to soak in a hot tub for relief" and "The very first anxiety attack that I suffered was in a car. It was horrible. It grew to agorophobia...triggers my panic attacks...I am currently on medication for that and am still very fearful of driving. I hate the interstate or any highway that is fast. I will find the country route" I'm sorry, I'm missing the miracle. Okay, I know that you are alive, and didn't sustain any major injuries, but one out of four people in the incident died, one had to have his entire face rebuilt, which was so bad that they needed photos to tell what he looked like; and you still have lingering effects of the accident. And the guy who died wasn't even the one responsible for the wreck like the driver was, he was just a poor schmoe who wasn't the recipient of a "miracle". Too bad that those TWI b*st*rds claimed that he "wasn't believing, put the blame on the victim...it's always your fault that bad things happen...unless you're a MAN OF GAWD, then you are "tired of the fight", or whatever. Hey, I'm sorry that that happened to you, sorry that TWI tried to make you all look bad in the aftermath, but where's the miracle?

Even when "in" I viewed those who voted according to what TWI said as idiots. Study the candidates and issues and make up your own mind. One-issue voters are usually not too well-informed, in my opinion. There was always a problem in TWI politics anyway. Wierwille and Martindale were essentially conservative, yet most conservatives were against abortion, which TWI was for; many conservatives were also pro-Israel, which TWI was against. Republicans also tended to be "anti-cult", former Senator Dole being one prominent example. The craziest example of mindlessly toeing the TWI line was when Clinton was President: Martindale mentioned in passing that we'd be better off with one party in the White House and the other controlling Congress. One woman in our fellowship, who despised Clinton, voted for him because of that remark.

Uh, yeah, okay -->

When I first got involved, everybody got revelation. "Father, which way do I turn, right or left?" - "God, do I buy Tide or Surf to clean my clothes in?"; as ridiculous as it sometimes was, everybody was equal, and many of us were convinced that we were receiving revelation, why not the leaders? Later, probably the 90's, it was the leaders who got revelation because...uh...they were leaders! We were led by the hand (or the ring in our collective nose) to believe that of course leaders were getting revelation, that us "true believers" never gave it a second thought unless we were willing to chuck it all.

Even though I never saw any genuine revelation, for years I thought that they still got it. I wanted to believe that what they taught was right, that God was in TWI. Until I made some stupid financial decisions and got into credit card debt after having previously retired all my debts, and hid it from "leadership". For several years I was allowed to attend two advanced classes, several advanced class specials, teach at and run fellowship meetings, and particiapate in other activities that were barred to people in debt, all the while, not only in debt, but LYING about it to the spiritually discerning "leadership". And they didn't find out about it, until my then-wife told them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending running up credit cards or lying to anyone, but here I was, engaging in what TWI considered the biggest obstacle to godliness aside from homosexuality, and no one got revelation about it. Even though I accepted the six-month probation that they subjected me to, and even sincerely wanted (at the time) to get back in TWI's good graces, the knowledge that no one knew, no one figured it out for several years caused the seeds of doubt to grow and blossom. By the time the lawsuit was announced and I started posting secretly on WayDale, I didn't think that there was a chance in h#ll that anyone from TWI would get revelation about anything.

When I got out in 2001 they were not referring to RFR as "The Woman of God" or anything like that, but she was still being treated as such by TWI "leadership". Her suggestions were still equivalent to commands.

They don't justify it, Belle; they just give the "present truth" about their website (and probably wayfer-run websites like the insipid "Family Tables") and pretend that they never said any different.

TWI was infamous for changing the rules, and pretending that they'd always been that way, without ever admitting that what had come before was an error or in need of changing. The subject of the Man of God was one of the more recent examples.

I nominate Catcup to head the Cafe Research Department :D-->

CFF is headquartered in Tipp City, Ohio. The leaders are ex-Way reverends.

Kind of true..if you are including telling them indirectly by letting identifying information slip.There are people in TWI who are tasked to reading this and other websites to determine if any "innies" are posting. They look for hints, and compare what people are saying to what peopel are saying in their fellowships. This is not speculation!!! - several of us were found out in this manner when we were still "in". Some of us use our real names as handles, others, including me, have posted our real names at times. Some folks just like internet anonymity in general. For those who are still "in", there are a number of reasons to stay in the closet.

I don't know...who's assuming that?

Here's what Howie wrote above his signature at the end of the POP: http://www.greasespotcafe.com/waydale/gallery/papletter.gif

I didn't give them up, but I sure ticked them off

Yay! No Way Disciples in Nebraska again!

Alfakat: You don't give WOWmobiles tune ups...ya just buhlieve Gawd!

Yeah def, you're right about pre-Constantine councils, but it was when the power of the state backed up the words of the church that a charge of heresy became something other than name calling. Your use of confederation, as opposed to fragmentation, is closer to what I meant, thanks for serving as my personal thesaurus ;)--> - difference of opinion was tolerated, not necessarily because they liked it, but because there wasn't anything that could be done about it. Even after Constantine, expulsion of heretics, and supression of heretical sects was only effective in areas controlled by Rome. The "Church of the East", sometimes called the Nestorians, operated inependently of Rome & Constantinople; the Copts, the Armenians, and the Monophysites all went their separate ways as well, since they were outside the sphere of governmental control.

Hide the fact that the babies were born from Vader?

I think a rift in the church was as likely as anything else. As a new faith, with no enforcement apparatus, what would keep groups or individuals with varying doctrines from splitting off from each other? Look at what we know: Biblically, Paul laments that virtually everybody has abandoned him; there is evidently a difference of opinion about who has godly authority between James and whoever else is with him in Jerusalem versus Paul and those he has ordained/appointed out in the gentile areas. Peter seems to be the leader at the start, but hits the road after a while. There doesn't seem to be a completely unified central governing body. There does seem to be one group attempting to set up an "organization" and Paul and other attempting to set up a "system" whereas the good news is propagated. What we know historically is that when Constantine the Great gave his approval to Christianity, "the church" was a loose collection of semi-independent and far-flung entities, despite the Catholic conceit that all was one unified, universal church, with an unbroken line of popes from Peter onward. It was not until the councils attempted to enforce uniformity in doctrine that some sets of beliefs came to be classed as "heresy". They never did. Christianity was fragmented from earliest times. Why not during bibliacl times as well?

Let's see... One guy in 1978 who was a childhood friend. He came up to me in a bar and asked about my green bumper sticker. Took the class, went WOW in Nebraska the year before I did, went into the Corps. One guy on my WOW year. Struck up a conversation with him on the street. Everything other than his name was a lie! He crashed on our couch for a while, followed us when we got reassigned to another city, took PFAL. The last time I remember seeing him was when my WOW brother and I were trying to collect money that he owed some other wayfers, he marched into a police station and told the cops that we were cult members and that he wanted protection. Another guy, in 1993 maybe. Met him in a bar, invited him to twig. He stuck around for a year before a class came together, went to the ROA, went as far as the intermediate class and left because he couldn't stand all the demands on his time.

Hey, I know Chip! We were WOWs in Nebraska the same year. Fruit soup...eeesh!