Oakspear

Historically speaking? The narrative from Acts may be true, or it may be false, but it's hardly indisputable. Nobody would die for a lie? Muslims die every day for the Koran...is that the truth? Nobody had a savior raised from the dead? There are numerous religions pre-Christian era who claim just that: a savior raised from the dead. Osiris and Mithra are two that spring immediately to mind. And why does somebody have to be wrong? What do I believe? Maybe when I don't have to run off to work in 10 minutes. Suffice it to say for right now that what I believe doesn't relegate what you believe to "doctrines of devils".

Sandman, Harry Osborne, the black "symbiont" costume. marriage...

But seriously folks... :B) How many people out there are convinced that what they believe is right, and everything else is either man-made or the doctrines of devils? Quite a few, I'd guess. Bliss' post illustrates for me a point that I have made at various times on these types of threads: People believe something because that's what they decide to believe, and interpret everything else in light of those beliefs, not becasue the bible or some other "holy" book says so. Because when pressed, most bible believers will resort to personal experience to back up whatever their holy book says. The question is then raised: why is one person's experience more valid than the next person's? If one person ascribes certain life events to the God of the bible, and I ascribe those same events to the Goddess; or Manannan, the celtic Sea God; or fairies; or extraterestrials or Allah...why are those beliefs less valid? Less divine and more "doctrines of men and devils"?

Good questions Sudo! They are also ''loaded'' questions . But, you know this. So, I will humor you. For me, it starts with belief. I believe in the goddess. Not ''a god'' , but GODDESS ALMIGHTY. Why? Because she manifests HERSELF in everything ........................so..I just do. Call it gut, faith, intuition, whatever.....I believe ( it's written in my heart.) No man can take that away from me. So, since I believe there is GODDESS, I then know that SHE CAN DO ANYTHING SHE WANTS, and therefore, would NOT leave us without witness. Therefore, I DO believe HER Witness. Is it literal/figurative? I believe in both. That holy men & women spoke, moved by the Spirit. So, therefore, my comments will always reflect this tone, that I , believe. Do I realize and believe that people have messed up / contaminated/ interpreted/ sinned/ dishonoured/ HER creation to the utmost? Carried out disgusting things all in the name of Goddess? Certainly. That doesn't deter me from believing She is. I've studied all the ways/methods/arguments over ''how we got here''. So? Like I said, Goddess is in charge, nor is She stupid. We have what we have. Use a multitued of resources. Who cares? I could study for 200 years and not know it all. I rest in the fact that She just wants me to believe in Her, and have a relationship with Her. Gerald gardner didn't have a written law or doctrine. Yet, he had a relationship with the Lady. To me that is the key. All else is dessert. Actually having a written standard so that we may know our God more intimately and our enemy to me is a good thing. Does it in its final form have errors? YUP! Is it perfect this way? NOPE. No man/religion/creed/doctrine can fill this position. All my OPINION of course......... [/font][/color][/size]

My mom is Irish on both sides with maybe a little English thrown in. My dad is Irish on his dad's side, his mom's side is Italian-Croation with a few other things thrown in.

I wonder how much the doctrinal positions in the class have been even looked at. In 2001, when Way Corps were "teaching" WayAP live, they pretty much just stuck to the syllabus, changing only Martindale's personal examples and anecdotes. At the time I wrote to John Reynolds, presenting him with a long list of things that I thought were doctrinally wrong with the class. I had spent the previous year spending a week or two on each segment, listening to the STS versions of each segment (for 24 weeks the STS topic was a segment of WayAP, and the subject in the fellowships was the same) and coming up with about ten pages of errors, inconsistancies, etc. John called me at home to attempt to quell my concerns. In response to my doctrinal questions, he referred me to T*m H*rr*cks, the region coordinator, who would be "teaching" the class live in a month or two in my city. According to John, Tom should be 'working the Word", to make the class his own in his preparation before teaching. A few weeks later Tom came to our fellowship and I spent some time with him one-on-one. He addressed none of my concerns. When I told him what John had said his answer was that he didn't need to work the Word, if the Trustees were behind the class, that was good enough for him.

In more than a few traditions, speaking in tongues is an ecstatic utterance that indicates...ecstasy. The words, or sounds, themselves often have no significance other than an as emotional outlet for the speaker. Not surprising that Christians would do this as well. Throwing in the expectation of interpreting the sounds is where the pressure and fakery comes in. I've heard several people in pagan traditions, including some native American sects, make sounds that are indistinguishable from what I heard as speaking in tongues in TWI or in other charismatic or pentecostal groups. Did someone mention excellor sessions? Even when I was at my most "brainwashed" I thought that practicing a language that God was supposedly supllying the sounds and words for was futile at best. "That you speak is your business, what you speak is God's business" was what Wierwille used to say. If that was so, then how could one become more fluent in a tongue? How could we call on people to start a word or a sentence with a particular letter of the alphabet? And why were some people's tongues the same every time?

It seems that the chief benefit of "getting born again", or "accepting Jesus into your heart" or "taking Jesus as Lord" or whatever terminology one's particular subset of Christianity esposes, is to get a get-out-of-judgement-free card. Everyone else gets judged on, what exactly? Where precisely is the cutoff brtween eternal life and the second death? So God, since he wasn't entirely clear on the scoring system for eternal life, and recognizing that "Plan A", the law, was too hard to achieve, comes up with "Plan B", the savior. Of course you have to take the word of those who say they have God's Printed Will ® for the need for a savior, that his actions will actually get you out of the dreaded judgement, or of the existance of this savior, or even of God! All of this rooted in the belief that the world is a crappy place, but that there is a better place somewhere else, or at least available later.

In January 1968 Wierwille visited the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco with the intention of visiting some of the younger people who were reaching people with their Christian message. He ended up meeting with a group that included Jimmy Doop and Steve Heefner...it may have been called "The House of Acts". At this time PFAL had already been committed to film and Wierwille played parts of it for the group. Heefner & Doop began using PFAL as part of their outreach, supposedly concluding that PFAL was what they needed in order to give their people a sound biblical foundation. Heefner & Doop withdrew from their former group and formed "The Way West", a corporation that was independent of The Way International (which may have still been merely "The Way Incorporated"). Heefner and his wife moved to New York to pursue an employment opportunity, while Doop remained in California heading up The Way West. Eventually Heefner incorporated The Way East in New York along the lines of The Way West. Both The Way West and The Way East were legally independent organizations that cooperated with Wierwille's group, using PFAL and buying Way books. At some point (early 70's maybe) Wierwille decided to centralize all operations and conducted a takeover of The Way West in the middle of a meeting, not informing Doop ahead of time. This was achieved by convincing the other 2 trustees of the Way West to vote Doop out and Wierwille in. Heefner got wind of this and resigned as head of The Way East before the same thing could be done to him. Another independent corporation in Indiana voluntarily meged with TWI, the organization in Australia remained independent and estarnged from Wierwille's TWI.

Right you are. I remember Martindale talking about how we shouldn't wait to catch someone "in the act", but that if we had a "genuine spiritual suspicion" we were to go to our "overseers", who would take some sort of action. Martindale enumerated a list a behaviors that he said indicated the presence of homosexual or lesbian spirits, whether or not the person was actually engaging in homosexual activity.

You're probably right, but TWI doesn't release any membership figures (yeah, I know they have no membership ) so it would be harder to estimate these days than it was a few years ago when a goodly number of us were freshly escaped or kicked out of TWI. During Waydale & GS's early days, there were quite a few folks (including me, Washington Weather, Igotout & Hope, and many others) who had been involved when Martindale was ousted, so we could give fairly accurate figures. Who knows how much they've shrunk these days?

The only way that the lay low strategy makes sense is if TWI is "THE" household of God, like they promote. If it is so screwed up that it requires a covert operation to fix it, then maybe it isn't worth fixing...ya think?

An apology might cause me to consider whether or not they've really changed as we hear from time to time. A repudiation might indicate to me that they can admit they were wrong about something.

I heard from anonymous source whose reliability I cannot verify that The Way no longer includes in their Way of Abundance and Power (WayAP) class the segement on the Devil & Eve having sex. Anyone hear anything about this? And if so, have they repudiated the teaching, or just removed it from the WayAP class? If true, and since my public objection to this teaching was one of the reasons that I was thrown out of TWI, do you think I'll be getting an apology and and invitation back anytime soon?

We had a similar situation in my area. The poor guy had been put on probation for something to do with debt & gambling, but when he came back 6 months later, every aspect of his life was examined, and one of them was his shoes. He was kind of "dorky", high water pants with the belt way above the waist, old fashioned shirts and wing-tipped shoes. He was picked on for using "thee" and "thou" in his prayers. He ended up getting the boot because he was pressured to buy new clothes. One of the women in the branch was assigned to go with him, to help him pick out something stylish. But he had no money, so he put it on his credit card. This was a no-no, since he was not supposed to take on any additional debt. So he was between a rock and a hard place. He bought the cothes, the woman ratted him out and he was m&a'd. He shops in my store and always makes a point of wishing me a happy birthday (his is the day before mine) every year.

why do you want it?

Must...resist...playing...mom...card...

Didn't mean that you put it crudely, but that it was put to you crudely. When did you live in Nebraska?

I think it's supposed to be a compliment, albeit crudely put Y'know, you don't hear too much about the 20-year old women calling us mature men "DILFs"...to them, we're just creepy old men...or invisible

So are you offended that he wants to do the horizontal mambo, or that he thinks you're old enough to be his mom?

Stupid sheep! D*mn them for being sheep! D*mn them to h*ll!!

Yeah and he could walk upright and had opposable thumbs too. btw, I think the figure of speech you were looking for a while back describing belittling rather than exaggerating is tapeinosis. Although what you described was not actually a figure of speech, they were literally belittling Brent Mydland (sp?) - the figure more properly would be where a millionaire might say "I have a few dollars in the bank".

As a no-longer-a-Christian, I find a certain liberation in not having to determine what the "will of the Lord" is in a given situation. Despite TWI's and other denominations' insistance that the bible is simple, there are so many ways to interpret the contents, that a one-size-fits-all "Will of God" is a pious myth. Or maybe a good scam <_< In that light, I find your initial post interesting, especially this quote: These days when making decision, I find that there is a multitude of sometimes competing priorites that must be considered: How will this decision affect my family? How will this decision affect my advancement or even continued employment? Is this decision legal? Will this decision get me beaten up? :lol: Is it something that I enjoy doing? What kind of example am I setting for my children or for my subordinates at work by making this decision? How will this decision affect my health? ad infinitum... The relative importance of these priorites may change according to the situation and the effect it has on myself and those that I care about. I have seen that those who are inflexibly locked into a religious system (this by no means includes all religious people) make decisions based on what they perceive their God's will is, often without regard to the affect or consequenses of the decision.

You can only miss someone who is really gone

:ph34r: Wow. It looks like he's really gone. :( Like my papa used to say: "Gee"