poae

I was watching this series yesterday and realized how similar The Way and The Children of God started out. I mean they were both "the cool" groups, had their own rock bands to draw people in, they even both had their versions of "flirty fishing". Then Berg kinda went off the deep end, but listening to the beginning of it sounded so eerily similar. Also, why doesn't The Way ever end up on these shows??? Just remembered this place after I watched it.

Hm. I was raised being taught Christ was born in Sept and Christmas was a pagan holiday, etc etc. (Pretty much what everyone else said.) However, my Mother always said we Celebrated Christmas for the tradition and love as a family. So we still celebrated and still said, "Merry Christmas" and she let my baby brother believe in Santa Claus when he got old enough to catch the idea from daycare. But of course she wasn't connected to the HQ and taught us in our home with old tapes from the beginning and her classes and she loved nothing more than to find what she'd call "loop holes" in the Bible haha. I had no idea it was such a big deal. We always had a great Christmas. :)

oooooooooooooooh coffee. how i love coffee. :) thank you and happy new year (soon) also!

Hi. :) I was baptized (well prophesied over because they don't believe in baptism), born and raised inside of TWI teachings. My parents attended the classes by Dr. Wierwille before my siblings and I were even born. They were teenagers, also their siblings attended and my Father and his Uncles left during the big fall but my Mom still listens to Wierwille's tapes and we had all grew up by her teaching or various little 'twigs' and Offshoot 'twigs' that other family members attended. Now, thankfully, everyone is out of the entire business of it except my Mom who likes her tapes but she's pretty tame and open minded now. Anyways..... I guess I kinda span the timeline. =) My Dad has already told me a lot about the history but I found this site really interesting. Anyways, it's nice just to know there are other ex's out there. I really had no idea it was this crazy. Haha. I mean, I knew some of the people from our fellowships were a little weird and some of them really hurtful to a lot of us with their teachings but my Mom always retained this air about how Wierwille was so great and the early days were so wonderful and how it's corrupt now, etc. I had absolutely NO idea of the enormity of it all. I guess that's just how it is or how it was before the internet. At least I have some good memories and at least I can forgive and love people in a way not many can because of how I was brainwashed as a child .... but a huge part of me is relieved to know I was right for leaving all those years ago and my leaving rippled across the family to where finally in 08 the last of them left. Coulda been worse! Anyways, I was happy to find this place and also to find some people wrote some books. It's the weirdest feeling in the world to find out I was born into a cult, that most of what I was raised to believe as fact was wrong and just the enormity of it! It seems to small and confined when you belong to some little group but to find out how deceptive that is and how the corruption was actually so widespread. Geeze. Insane. Anyways. I'm 30 now and the TWI still kinda floats around in the back of my family so every so often I get curious. I'm glad to have stumbled here amongst fellow ex-wayers. mandapoae