Oakspear

I think we're coming at this from different directions OM. First, I did not label Wierwille's character explicitly as good or evil. Second, the way I understand character, it's not something that flips back and forth as you do different things during the day: you help an old lady across the street at 1:00 PM, you have good character; at 2:00 PM you steal a piece of fruit from the corner grocery you now have bad character. Your character is the complex web of motivations, opinions, upbringing, etc that makes you the kind of person who will both help that old lady and steal the fruit. Everybody's character is on a continuum that may range from altruistic to 100% mean S.O.B. - Wierwille did both good and evil. It was indicative of his character that he could talk about believing and the love of God and everything else that sounded good in PFAL and lure young women into the motor coach and lie and encourage others' adulation. As I replied to Oldies, I don't agree that it's a "fact". Some of you guys saw your TWI experience as good. In retrospect, I can't say the same about mine. You look at Wierwille as someone who "taught you the Word", I look at him as someone who used the bible to manipulate and gain power.

Who you are influences how you process what you know. For those who chant the "Wierwille's character doesn't affect the TRUTH he taught" mantra: Every single person who made it though PFAL and stayed active for even a short period of time did so because they believed that Wierwille was telling the truth in PFAL. Why did we believe this? Because we did our own research? Usually because we took Wierwille's word for most of what he said, and the things that we "investigated" on our own we did using assumptions and premises that we accepted from Wierwille. No, we believed what was in PFAL largely because we decided that Wierwille was trustworthy and that he knew what he was talking about. He convinced us of it himself. If we had known from the start that the man was a liar, if we knew that he sexually abused young women, if we knew all the negative "character flaws", would we have even listened to anything he said? It's only in retrospect, in hindsight, that we try to justify believing what we were taught. This is not to say that everything that he taught was wrong. But teachings such as "every woman in the kingdom belongs to the King", the whole concept of the MOG, unquestioned following of leadership were open doors for abuse. The framework of his interpretation necessarily being the only correct one fed into his apparent need for adulation. It doesn't matter how full your head is with knowledge, with facts, with TRUTH, if your heart is rotten, than what does it matter?

Hope springs eternal...

While I agree that a better biblical case can be made for a unitarian God rather than a trinitarian, Wierwille's arguments against the trinity generally involved misrepresentations of what trinitarians actually believed. There are enough "unclear verses" about the nature of Jesus Christ that either side has to concoct explanations that aren't all that logical to make them "fit like a hand in a glove". I disagree that a trinitarian is inherently illogical. That being said, it's very possible that Juedes was initially spurred to speak out and write against TWI due to Wierwille's anti-trinitarianism; some of his positions are simple doctrinal disagreements. However the bulk of what he writes goes a lot deeper than that, addressing Wierwille's shoddy "research", including incorrect and shifting definitions of Greek words, and plagiarism. Despite Wierwille's claim and our belief otherwise, TWI was very much a cult of personality and much of what we were taught in PFAL and in TWI in general was based on our willingness to take Wierwille at his word. Despite our pride in being "workmen of the Word", we, for example, took VPW's word that the definitions of allos and heteros, dechomai and lambano and others, on which so much doctrine was based, were right, when a little genuine research would have shown us otherwise. PFAL was based, not on the bible, but on what Wierwille said the bible said. What he said it said was that knowledge was more important than heart.

There you have it...you think TWI, CES, what have you is bad? hey, they never ripped out anyone's still-beating heart!

Everyone's going to have positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses in their lives. Those character traits are going to affect not only what you do, but how you think. How you think will affect what you teach others. Filling your head full of knowledge is useless if your heart is filled with garbage.

good stuff

Dr. Juedes made this comment in "Episode 8": Interesting counterpoint to the position that "it doesn't matter what his failings were, he taught us the Word". Character flaws will come out in your ministry and do great damage if not controlled. One point that was made was that virtually all of the qualifications for a leader in Timothy & Titus are "character things"

I'd say that saying an organization is not a group is splitting hairs pretty fine.

You're welcome Ah...you and I apparently operate from a different premise. I don't believe that such an animal exists. Despite my position that no such thing as "GUARANTEED, ABSOLUTE CORRECT TRUTH and DOCTRINE" can be found, it can easily be demonstrated that PFAL did not do what it was advertised to do. My beef with PFAL is not whether or not there was "truth", or even usable, practical teachings, in it, but that the premise of PFAL is that there is a GUARANTEED, ABSOLUTE CORRECT TRUTH and DOCTRINE and that PFAL is it. The so-called keys to research were flawed and much of what was taught was not based on the scriptures that it was claimed they did, but on one man's opinion. If by "TRUTH" (wow! caps and quotes ), then, no. I found some things that work for me, but I am under no illusion that they have universal application. No offense meant, but that's a the same song that most, if not all, PFAL fans sing. I believe you. I've not seen anything in your posts to indicate that you do.

While I believe that some of what is contained in PFAL lines up with the bible, the class as a whole is such a mix of made-up definitions of Greek words, illogical conclusions, shaky application of the rules of grammar, keys to research that aren't necessarily so, and ideas that apparently were pulled out of his foot, it is my opinion that anyone who is using PFAL in any way as a basis for their beliefs hasn't really done any objective research. Recently on another site, a contributor posted something, using something Wierwille said as his "proof" that it was so. Something from PFAL that most of us wouldn't even think of questioning. Others challenged him on it and asked for independent verification. It took a month a googling to come up with something that indicated that Wierwille was right, and even then, there was some room to take the opposite view. My point is, there's more to researching what's in PFAL than merely reading the verses and verifying that they read the way Wierwille said that they do. Or even cracking open a concordance. A lot of what we learned about how to "work the Word" is freighted with assumptions that aren't necessarily true.

This is a wee bit off the topic, but not only was the centrally mandated debt "policy" illogical, but you had leaders out in the fellowships putting their own spin and interpretation on it. My oldest son lived with our branch/limb coordinators for a year. He worked two part-time jobs, the paychecks from each were low enough that little or no federal taxes were being withheld. When he did his taxes he found out that he owed a couple of hundred dollars to the IRS. The idiot leader pronounced that my son was in debt and therefore, sinning :blink: I tried to explain to him that my son's tax liability was a bill, just like anything, like a utility bill, and not debt. Idiot leader insisted that the only way to avoid being in debt over taxes was to have them take out too much so that you would receive a refund. Funny thing, Howard Allan suggested at a teaching at ROA '94 that it was better to break even or pay in a little rather than have the IRS hold your money interest-free all year.

Where did you get that from?

It means (to me) that what he taught is accepted unquestioningly, what he did is excused, and arguments are "resolved" by referring to what Wierwille said. No, of course not. But often the acceptance of the "some" is without question, and the like-minded fellowship is groupthink. No. But often those who do so think that those who don't "recognize" those things are looked down on.

How ironic that they want to get this guy shut down for speaking his opinion. On any pro-TWI site I've ever heard of you get banned if you express any anti-Way opinion or even for asking the wrong questions.

[Regarding the "Muslim mortgage", I heard about a similar thing in Israel among ultra-Orthodox Jews. ] It's amazing that these back-door TWI mortgages are not viewed as debt. What's the difference between owing to a bank and owing to a relative? For that matter, why is the obligation to pay rent every month not an debt according to TWI's definition? When I was still "in", my HFC propunded a plan that he had found in a book called War Cycles, Peace Cycles (forgot the author). The plan to buy without going into debt involved a complicated plan whereby you would buy a percentage of the property, and the seller would retain partial ownership. In other words, if you were buying a $100,000 house and put down a $10,000 down payment, you would own 10% of the house. If you changed your mind, you would get 10% of the profit from selling it and the seller 90%. The more you paid to the seller, the greater the percentage that you would own, until presumeably you would reach 100%. This HFC claimed to have began buying his home from his parents in this manner, but his parents died and he inherited the house (as well as the profitable family farm) from them. He touted this "plan" locally, and even wrote a paper about it and sent it to the BOT. I never heard of anyone esle doing this anywhere, but it continued to be promoted as a way to buy a home without going into debt at least through 2001 when I was booted out.

dmiller: Being part of the whole does not negate individuality, both can coexist. Functioning as part of the greater culture does not require sacrificing our uniqueness. I think the issue here is not so much that he was seeking a photo op, or that he was using the Koran rather than the bible, but that he is part of a religious minority that is the majority religion of people that we are fighting against and whom commit terrorist acts. Do you think that this would be an issue if he was part of a peaceful Buddhist sect?

A good illustration of how Wierwille in some instances put together stuff from other authors rather than coming up with the research himself us when he copies things while obviously not understanding them. Wierwille & Bullinger had slightly different takes on the geneologies of Jesus in Matthew & Luke. Wierwille taught that Matthew was Mary's geneology and that it was the royal one, Bullinger taught that Matthew contained Joseph's geneology. Bullinger referes to this in his appendix on "The Lord's Brethren" where he discounts the theory that Jesus' named brothers are Joseph's from a previous wife. His reasoning is that older sons of Joseph would be ahead of Jesus in the royal line. Wierwille, in his chapter in The Word's Way on "The Lord's Brethren", uses this same argument, and the same wording as Bullinger, even though Wierwille did not teach that the royal line came through Joseph. He copied, but did not really understand what he copied.

not new, but it is real: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

What's sad is that Wierwille probably could have attracted just as large an audience if he had been honest. If he had been straight up about where he got his information, if he had eschewed all the crap about hauling over 3000 volumes to the dump and using the bible as his exclusive handbook and textbook; if he had just told us that this part was from Stiles, this part was from Bullinger, this part was from Leonard, etc. "Accurate" or not, most of us wouldn't have cared. Maybe this honesty would have sent a few folks looking for Leonard or Stiles, but I think that Wierwille's superior marketing of his "product" would have attracted the crowds of the young and hungry either way. It didn't seem to hurt his credibility with the bulk of wayferdom when he extensively footnoted Jesus Christ Our promised Seed; it didn't siphon off a bunch of people following Ernest martin, did it? But no, he had to lie about it; he had to represent himself as the recpient of the greatest revelation since "The first century".

dmiller: I see your point about unity and all that, but not everybody is a Christian, although the majority are. Somebody made a point earlier about a Christian using a bible in a Muslim country. At least in some, like Saudi Arabia for instance, you can't. Is that right? I don't think so, and I doubt that you do either.

If you recognize his right to do it, what is it that you disagree about?

I believe you. maybe you should get out more. ;)

Can't agree onthat one, Y, not at all. I doubt that even at the time a new word or expression is coined, it's meaning is exact. With exceptions of course, the meanings of words are largely subject to the point of view and interpretation of the hearer. While I wouldn't expect a plane to land in a school zone either, what does the sign "School Zone" mean, and just as importantly, imply? Is it just that there is a school there? Or are there special speed limits and increased penalties for drug trafficking? Is it an elementary school, or a vocational school? And even among languages, the Hebrew of the OT is notoriously un[/u]exact, there were no vowels in the original, let alone puncuation. Hebrew is a language that is rich with figures of speech, which make it very inspiring and poetic, but difficult if you don't get the figures. And don't forget that language grows and evolves. Who can't think of an example of a word or phrase that means something completely different now than it did when we were in high school?