TheHighWay

Now that you mention it, I think my second set of notes from the field were from an Advanced Class Weekend. I had forgotten they started doing those locally. Agreed. It all seemed normal and even "good" to me at the time.

Okay, I've dug out my notes on these sessions. Based on the dates, locations, and my vague memories Craig first started sharing this stuff with the 17th corps the night before their graduation. By the time corps week came along he'd decided there was enough important stuff in that one sharing that he simply played the recording of it for the rest of the corps, calling it the Galatians tapes. Then, as the year progressed, he decided to play the tapes for the folks on the field (calling them the Leadership Tapes) and eventually he added more info and they ran Leadership Tapes II the following spring on the field. At some point (I forget if it was for LTI or LTII) they made listening to them mandatory for all Advanced Class grads or you were considered disloyal and rebellious and booted from twi. Basically what these tapes are about is Craig explaining to his own satisfaction what happened during the FOG years. He said he thought that the only way to heal from the CG experience was to examine it closely and he used two word studies to back that up -- tarasso and luo. He said that any believer could get all scrambled up (tarasso) and make bad decisions and that the way to combat that is to rebuild the Word in your thinking step by step so you are strong enough not to get tricked next time. He spoke about the fruit of the spirit superceding the law, and to "Let your LOVE abound yet more and more in knowledge and all judgment" (Phil). He then went on to say that you can tell who is causing division by their actions and its outcomes (works) and that the way to defeat the works of the devil is to dismantle them piece by piece (luo) by teaching the Word (which exposes the devil's works) and by not compramising or hiding from the truth. He then spent a great deal of time going through Job, equating the miserable comforters to CG and the others. And, as others have mentioned he goes into a lengthy list of devil spirits that Chris Geer "must" have been operating in order to pull off such a deception on the BOT and the Believers, blah, blah, blah, blah. The truly sad thing is that many of the things he said about CG and company could very easily be used to describe HIM and his following of mini-mogs! --- I marvel that I couldn't see that at the time. I was such a stooge! And, much like the last time I sat through WAP, he would teach something accurately straight out of the Bible but anyone who had been involved with twi long knew that it wasn't what was being practiced!! For instance: "To destroy his works, we help people. We cannot afford to be selfish." and "If your intent in reproof is to make someone feel bad or to show how much smarter you are than everyone else in the room, you are out of alignment and harmony." ---- HAH! Anyone who sat through a reproof session in the 1900s knows this was EXACTLY the attitude of a lot of the leadership at the time, and if they didn't act this way Craig castigated them in front of everyone during corps night, parading out all their faults and foibles for all to jeer over. I swear, reading back over my notes it was hard to make sense of them now... first because there were big gaps where I just listened (or fought to stay awake) and didn't write much down, and second because it's all such BS!! So VERY glad I'm out!!

Removed - the topic is Waybrain, not another poster

That was EXCELLENT, Seth!!!

John, Welcome to the 'spot!! And thank you being here. From what I see/read, you have a wonderful perspective of someone who has been through it, and now can see behind him with understanding. Add your professional training and you are armed and primed to help folks like us. Thank you for making yourself known here! Don't mind the in-house bickering. It's just the way we get along. Although it does make me curious if folks from other cults have the same varying degrees of holding on to past beliefs that we have here... ? PS -- loved the cult-escapees' strengths list.

Well, what do they expect us to do with all the $#!t they fed us for so many years, except vomit it back up to get that undigestible crap out of our systems!!

No... I don't think they ever did. This production was never black-listed as were so many other items removed from the bookstore when one of the primary performers/teachers was booted from twi. However, it's hey-day was long before CDs and DVDs came out. I've never heard of a copy of either the audio or the video of AOS on disc.

Thanks for the info, Ham. I saw JP in one of the pictures on their site and wondered, but I didn't know who's kid v2p2 was for sure. But somehow I had been thinking that JP was aware of how corrupt his dad was/became and didn't want anything to do with any of it... especially after what happened with his mom. Now I see it's just twi he wants nothing to do with. He must be in deep denial of what/who his dad really was. This is just sad and pathetic, really.

Well, I don't expect or demand that from anyone. I do expect (and even 'demand') that they seek out those they specifically know they harmed, and ask forgiveness, and openenly avail themselves to those who feel they were harmed and want to resolve things. And I have no knowlege of him doing either, really. No question, VF was one of the hot young up-and-comers in twi and as such, acted like an arrogant, bullying @$$, just like vpw taught them. And if his group really is so closely patterned after twi as others have described, I must also question its motives and feel sorry for anyone associated with it. It's just, as I said, his letter seems lacking in the blatant ego seen in other offshoots, and it gives me a little hope that maybe he's become a better person in his old age.

I didn't have any first-hand dealings with Vince while I was in twi, except to hear him teach. My first impression of his ministry's belief statement page is, "yup: just another offshoot." http://kingdomready.org/statementofbeliefs.php However, as I read his letter of introduction: http://kingdomready.org/vincefinnegan.php I didn't see the arrogance and ego that is so obvious in some of the other offshoots. He clearly believes twi started out good and taught a lot of good things in the beginning (which I would personally question) but when he talks about it spiraling downhill, he INCLUDES vpw in the mix, which most of them refuse to do. He also says he knows that by being leadership at the time, he helped convey and continue bad policies that hurt people and that he's sorry. This seems to me to read like a genuinely heart-felt letter. I kinda think he'd be one that you could approach with an old grievance against him and he'd try to make it right (in contrast to so many we know of who refuse to talk to anyone from their past or act like the ones they hurt are the big sinners). Just my two cents.

Brilliant!!

Rascal, I agree with your analysis 100% !!!!

That was my thinking as well... doesn't look like anything "formally" from twi (like transcripts from a book or teaching), it looks more like someone's personal notes on these twi subjects.

"What was forbidden...?" Have a seat, this could take awhile...

BINGO!

Mmm... not sure I have the 'scope' to answer you as far as "ministry-wide" on this but I can tell you what I do know first-hand. Because I (and others in my area) spent our days working at a computer and often had to go online for our jobs, our local leadership told us more than once that it was okay for folks to utilize the internet for work or to go to a specific site like amazon.com to order a book or something. Since the BC was someone who kept his lips locked firmly on twi's backside, I'm pretty sure this was the ruling from HQ. I was also specifically told that surfing was a waste of time, and that there WERE anti-twi sites out there, that they were full of lies and run by copouts hoping to snag a few followers for themselves. Looking back it seems funny that they had to point out to us that intentionally looking up such sites was obviously gonna get you into spiritual dark-land because there was no reason for any right-thinking believer to do such a thing. Clearly they had to have known people were doing it, or at least tempted to do it even before the Allen lawsuit. I do remember that as the lawsuit hit, and in the days after, the directive "Stay off the internet!!" was repeated more often and more frantically, with no clarifications, so I'm sure many people thought it meant stay off entirely. And maybe that's what they really did mean but I went by what I had originally been told was okay. There is no question twi knew about WayDale long before most of us innies did, and I think you are right in assuming they knew the kind of damage it could do to them. A lot of us became disgruntled by the way they handled the lawsuit situation and went online looking for more information. (twi would have served their own purposes better by telling us a few more details, eh?) And yet, I NEVER expected to find a site like WayDale and I especially NEVER expected to find people I had admired and respected posting information there that very quickly brought it home to me that twi had been lying to me for a long, long time! The funny thing is, I had done a search on twi and found (and read) a copy of POP about a year before I ever heard them say, "Don't surf the net." At that point I was still drinking the koolaid so it didn't impact me much, except to reinforce my perception that Geer was a arrogant idiot and that "those anti-way sites" were just run by evil, hateful, cop-out types. The WayGB just doesn't understand that if someone is happy with twi, it doesn't matter what they read, it will bounce right off them. But if someone has gotten to the point where they know in their own gut that something is rotten in Denmark, what others may say will only CONFIRM to them what they already think. Sorry guys... no devil spirit influence causing the change of heart, just cold hard facts.

Well, keep in mind the "stay off the internet" command actually started when the net was fairly new and not everyone had access at home and at work. Even during the first lawsuit it wasn't meant to say you couldn't use the internet for "legitimate purposes". What they meant was "don't randomly surf the net with little or no specific purpose in mind"... You know, an idle mind is the devil's playground. Of course, they felt justified in saying this because it fell right in step with their dictates about using time wisely (hence having us all submit weekly schedules broken into 15-minute increments)... uh, duh, like taking over an hour each week to sketch out such a schedule was deemed good use of time, lol. Once the lawsuits hit it became: Don't go looking for trouble. (aka Don't go looking for dirt on twi.) Since no rule-abiding twi-bot would have a website of any kind, let alone one about twi, OF COURSE the only thing you could possibly find was a bunch of low-life copouts spewing a bunch of lies about twi, so why would you even look in the first place?

That's exactly the point that I got to... I thought, "If this was being under God's umbrella of protetion, it couldn't be any worse outside of it."

Actually, I totally agree... The thing that I remember about Rico and Robin particularly is that they both were desperately seeking ANSWERS. Not that most of us weren't, but without going into personal histories here, these two wanted it more than many of us. As I posted earlier, once they decided they had found the source of all ANSWERS, they never looked back. So, I think the part that was "missing" is not intelligence but the strength to face their own fears and demons. TWI is their crutch and they've leaned on it so long, they don't know how to function without it.

Funny enough, I ran into my "innie contact" today so I asked some specific questions about what was and was not covered in the class. From this person's responses it definitely sounds like it is Martindale's class with just a couple changes. (no lesbian eve)

I'm gonna fight you on this one, guys... Rico was a nice-looking guy and not in any way average or a "dumb brute". In fact, he was deeply thoughtful. And I think that's what got him in trouble. He convinced himself so thoroughly in the beginning that twi was right, that he's never gone back to re-examine new evidence that has come to light since then. He BECAME a dumb brute, but he certainly didn't start that way!! He was He was fun and people naturally gravitated toward him. And Robin was nice looking, but very much a tomboy and certainly not what most people would call a "stunner". She was strong and stubborn and feisty. It took her a long time to decide to believe in twi and God at all, but once she did, she too was sold out. She was a very up-front person and told you exactly what she thought. I found it refreshing (if not a bit intimidating at times.) Together, they could have been amazing and dynamic: his sensitivity and enthusiasm, her strength and focus. But, true to form, twi changed them both. Robin was made to conform to twi-leadership-wife standards (frumpy styles, bad hair, fake-looking makeup) and because of the level of lockbox-mentality expected of leadership, she lost her outgoing straight-forwardness. Rico became a frozen-smile hard-@$$ who will protect twi's best interests at any cost.

Thank you for your post, Livinlarge!!!! VERY enlightening, indeed.

QUOTE: Previously spiritual yet soft-spoken, Johnson returned from a two-week course of intense Bible study in Ohio this summer emboldened. ... That’s big stuff. And Johnson was a big sight when he showed up at The Way International headquarters for advanced Bible study in June. Definitely sounds like Johnson went to the Advanced class this summer and came back loud and proud. ------- QUOTE: “You never want to try to force anything on anybody. That’s not how it’s done,” Michael Johnson said. “I might say, ‘Hey, man, we’re having fellowship. Feel free to come hear the Word and apply it in your life.’ It’s non-denominational. Nobody’s trying to get anybody to join anything.” Sam Johnson said, “We are not Bible freaks, so to speak, that everything that comes out of our mouth is quoting scripture, because that is a turnoff. It is Bible studies.” ------- You know, I rememer having that same youthful enthusiasm and excitement... that same belief in the product and the group who was selling it. I guess as long as there are people who are hungry for SOMETHING to fix their lives, there will be a market for twi. Really sad.

I know someone who took it recently but has been a little reluctant to show me the materials so I am not sure who's class it is based on, although I get the distinct impression from other peoples' posts that it is probably based on LCM's class I do know for sure it is a taped class and there are multiple teachers.

After VP died, and POP was read, Martindale felt betrayed by those he thought supported him and it all turned inward. We said we were doing outreach and we went through the motions but all we really ever did was purge the household (over and over and over again) and we treated any newcomers the same way. (not exactly the way to keep folks coming back!) I think Martindale was hoping to get the household SO clean he would never have to worry about getting stabbed in the back again. Poor thing... he'd already been stabbed in the back years previous by ol' Vic's lifestyle training. And once it became obvious that Craig would come between the BOT and their money, well, that was the end of Martindale, wasn't it?