VPW and the Snowstorm - What do you believe?

[Jim]

Since this important question won't go away, I thought I'd put it to a vote. I lean towards 4 or 5 myself.

Edited January 4, 2009 by Jim

[cheranne]

I would say to him (vpw)what kinda smack are you cracking!

[potato]

4 or 5 what? shots of whiskey, hits off the pipe, what?

[potato]

ah! I vote for 5 :)

[cheranne]

Me too #5

[waysider]

I voted for #5, he made it up, though I don't think that exactly reflects my opinion.

What I actually think is that he heard a similar story somewhere and made up his own version to personalize it, much like the story of his preaching to the trees that originated, in essence, from an incident that Billy Graham recounted of his own personal experience.

[Ham]

I suppose I should ask, which snowstorm? The snow on the pumps, or the torrential snows in tulsa, blocking his holy arrogances exit?

either way though, I guess the vote is the same for me..

Hmm.. hallucinated. Maybe it was a real big huff of DMT..

Kesey saw Lou Costello materialize out of a pipe once..

[frank123lol]

A self imposed hallucination,brought on by delusion of grandeur,not mentioned for years....

Then,when in the mogfot,he introduces it,Why some will think I am crazy....

Always have to have somthing that no one else has,showed how spurtual he was,smoking like a fiend,drinking drambuie from a coffee cup.messin with the women,he was supposed to protect.....

He was full of it,a snakeskin oilman promisin the world...knew it was to good to be true....

Daddy told me a good one,from his reachin up to the cookie jar,he spoke to me audibly,wonder how long he sat on that one?

[coolchef]

must of had access to good mushrooms!

jeeze, frank,i should have thought of it myself

daddy put shrooms in the cookie jar!

[Mark Clarke]

I'm not sure; we may never know the truth. I just don't know if we was a good enough actor to lie so blatantly. I've long leaned toward the opinion that he was so warped and/or deceived that he came to really believe his own BS. Has anyone considered the possibility that he really did see a vision, or even real snow, but it was manipulated by a demon (or "devil spirit" as we called them)?

[OperaBuff]

It would be interesting to know what a psychologist or psychiatrist could tell us about PFAL. Someone who could explain why the snow stories were presented when they were during the class; i.e. why did vp chose to tell those things when he did. How did he psychologically prepare our minds to accept such things? I absolutely believed him when he told them during my first PFAL class. I was hooked.

What do I believe about them today? I can't speak to their veracity because I wasn't there with him when they happened. Gosh, nobody else was either. But I know that without those snow stories, and without the story of him hearing the voice of God audibly, I wouldn't have been hooked the way I was.

[waterbuffalo]

I voted for #5, he made it up, though I don't think that exactly reflects my opinion.

What I actually think is that he heard a similar story somewhere and made up his own version to personalize it, much like the story of his preaching to the trees that originated, in essence, from an incident that Billy Graham recounted of his own personal experience.

I'll second that, waysider...

[ljn698]

every religion seems to have a story like this so-called "snowy gas pumps story" don't they?

of the people who are under the impression that the whole thing was just a cock and bull story

(which of course can neither be proven nor disproved)

how many folks think Moses made up the burning bush story?

or Joseph Smith made up the Angel Moroni story?

or any of the fantastic things cooked up by L. Ron Hubbard?

i could go on but you get the idea

the point of this is what difference does it make whether people believe the snowy gas pump story or not?

and to answer the question of the thread, given everything that has been discussed about this topic so far,

my leanings are toward the hallucination notion.

[George Aar]

Well, I've mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating.

"Snowstorms" were a frequent fallback position for Mr. Wierwille. In 1975 he and Howard were supposed to be in Seattle for a branch meeting or somesuch, and most everyone in the state had converged on a party room at some apartment house in the 'burbs of Seattle for a chance to get a glimpse of His Holiness.

We were all packed into the somewhat smallish room breathlessly awaiting the appearing of God's Chosen One, when we got an announcement from the Limb Leader (J#e Co#lt@r) that His Emminence, with great regret, had called from Reno and informed us all that he and Howard were snowed in and NO planes were flying out at all. Gosh, He sure wanted to be there with us, but, sometimes these things happen. (A few lines from PFAL about "believing" and such like flipped through my mind, but HEY!, this was TMOGFODAT, and you know how much the DEVIL was trying to thwart His efforts!)

Anyway, the Blessed DOCTOR did a little teaching over the phone, and we paid our respects and homage to His Greatness, and the meeting sorta petered out.

Well, the next day a somewhat more cynical member of the congregation called up the airlines to see if there really weren't any flights out. Lo and behold, NONE of the airlines had canceled ANY flights due to ANY sort of snowstorm in Reno. When this news was communicated to the limb, rather than thanks for the investigative work, the lowly believer got his azz handed to him (Can't ya just FEEL the LOVE?).

I've since heard of at least two other similar incidents from other ex-Wayfers, and read of one or two others in posts here or on WayDale. It seems like it was just a stock excuse that our Father-in-the-WURD utilized, maybe when he had a bad case of the Brown-Bottle Flu or somesuch.

I wonder if the Missus still believed them?

[potato]

<snip>

and to answer the question of the thread, given everything that has been discussed about this topic so far,

my leanings are toward the hallucination notion.

I'm very convinced it was not a hallucination. interesting thing about people with narcissistic or borderline personality disorder is that they're so easily able to rewrite history for themselves and everyone else that he may actually have believed it happened even though he may have made it up decades later. in other words, the memory didn't exist until he needed it to, and once he used it and it worked, it became so firmly entrenched in his mind that he could have passed a lie detector test because to him it actually happened, even if he also had a separate and distinct memory that it did not. as long as the true memory was repressed, snow on the gas pumps miraculously happened, but only as a memory. not a hallucination.

[Jim]

We were all packed into the somewhat smallish room breathlessly awaiting the appearing of God's Chosen One, when we got an announcement from the Limb Leader (J#e Co#lt@r) that His Emminence, with great regret, had called from Reno and informed us all that he and Howard were snowed in and NO planes were flying out at all. Gosh, He sure wanted to be there with us, but, sometimes these things happen. (A few lines from PFAL about "believing" and such like flipped through my mind, but HEY!, this was TMOGFODAT, and you know how much the DEVIL was trying to thwart His efforts!)

I remember that night because I was in Reno. Two other believers and I had driven up from Oakland that afternoon. It was indeed snowing. I spent most of the night driving home over Sierras in it, went to work the next morning after two hours sleep and damn near destroyed a $2000 computer because of my fatigue.

I don't doubt that Howard just looked out the window and said, "Nothin's fly'n tonight, let's stay here". OTOH, pilots fly in snowstorms all the time, particularly Alaska Airlines which would have been the best ride from Reno to Seattle.

Edited January 4, 2009 by Jim

[leafytwiglet]

I have no doubt he made it up but I sure believed it when I heard it.

HE was very Charismatic and they are usually very good liars...

I am not saying a compulsive liar that is something totally different.

But he may have really convinced himself that it happened .

Who knows.. I remember in the class thinking he wouldn't just say that if it wasn't so.. People must have already checked weather reports and such.. it has to be true.

Good Grief I was such a dork thinking anyone else was checking this stuff out.

[Thomas Loy Bumgarner]

voted #5 with 3 as a back up. btw, I bet if VPW saw something white on gas pumps, it was either crop dusting or manufacturing plant with air pollution. Or he was an early LSD experiment user, long before Timothy o"Leary.

[Ham]

I always wondered about that too.. but Hoffman's lsd experiments started in 1943.

[GrouchoMarxJr]

It would be interesting to know what a psychologist or psychiatrist could tell us about PFAL. Someone who could explain why the snow stories were presented when they were during the class; i.e. why did vp chose to tell those things when he did. How did he psychologically prepare our minds to accept such things? I absolutely believed him when he told them during my first PFAL class. I was hooked.

What do I believe about them today? I can't speak to their veracity because I wasn't there with him when they happened. Gosh, nobody else was either. But I know that without those snow stories, and without the story of him hearing the voice of God audibly, I wouldn't have been hooked the way I was.

...and there you have it.

I contend that the snow on the gaspumps story was the "hook" in pfal...If you bought THAT story, everything else was swallowed hook, line and sinker...Wierwille could have taught us that Alfred E Newman was one of the 12 disciples and we would have bought it.

I mean...God talked to this guy!!! That was the message he delivered and we sucked it up like Cooter Brown and a jug of moonshine...off to see the wizard, the terrible lizard of Oz, New Knoxville...

Yes...Wierwille's "snow stories" were definitely the hook in his con.

[GrouchoMarxJr]

...And let's not forget that this story still directly and indirectly...is the impetus for the current twi as well as John Lynn's dog and pony show...(as he recently invoked this story in his "Dr. Wierwille would be proud of us" crapola)...and of course how could we forget the newest member to the Wierwille lunacy club, J2P2 with his resurrection of the "vision"...

Smith with the Mormons had his encounter with moroni the angel (or some such thing)...Wierwille made his claim to the divine with the snowstorm stories...(which included the audible voice of God)...I guess God musta known the best time to catch Wierwille when he wasn't drunk...

This whole subject demonstrates clearly that Wierwille calculated this whole thing out...whatever else Wierwille was, he wasn't stupid...immoral, despicable, disgusting...sure, but not stupid. He pulled it off in a way that would have made Elmer Gantry proud. Snow on the gas pumps...freakin' genius! It was July of 1975 in Fredonia, NY when I first heard this and bought into it...after that...

...What a long strange trip it's been...

Edited January 4, 2009 by GrouchoMarxJr

[Mark Clarke]

It would be interesting to know what a psychologist or psychiatrist could tell us about PFAL. Someone who could explain why the snow stories were presented when they were during the class; i.e. why did vp chose to tell those things when he did. How did he psychologically prepare our minds to accept such things? I absolutely believed him when he told them during my first PFAL class. I was hooked.

Was the snowstorm/gas pumps story in PFAL? I seem to remember it first being made known in the book, The Way: Living In Love, not in the class. I'd be interested in finding out if there's any record of the story being told before TW:LIL was published (1972 or so?).

This whole subject demonstrates clearly that Wierwille calculated this whole thing out...whatever else Wierwille was, he wasn't stupid...immoral, despicable, disgusting...sure, but not stupid.

When I look back on his so-called "research" that no real scholar would take seriously, and his extremely weak grasp of Greek and even English grammar, not to mention his "hick" way of talking, I would tend to disagree. He was very manipulative and egotistical as well, but in hindsight he strikes me as being more twisted and delusional than a great master planner.

[leafytwiglet]

When I took PFAL it was in the class that is where I heard it.

There are many kinds of smart.

I am no dumb bunny but I also am no good at researching the bible. But I can plan like crazy.

VP was smart in the how to get people to come along for the ride department.

and do not let that hick accent fool you he had a pretty good plan and it worked.

The hick thing gave people a comfort with him that he was honest and a regular guy not some slick talking smart alack.

Edited January 5, 2009 by leafytwiglet

[Mike]

When I took PFAL it was in the class that is where I heard it.

Human memory is a fascinating thing. One thing I’ve noticed that’s universal to the human condition is that we trust our memory MUCH more than we should. This goes all the way back to Eve.

I’ve noticed that hardly anyone ever goes back to the sources of their memories, and hence hardly anyone ever discovers how flimsy it can be at times. Sometimes memory can be fascinatingly accurate, but many more times it forgets and/or distorts things, and can even invent things.

I’ve done many experiments with my memory to see that I fall square into the category I just described. It can be very interesting to re-visit the source of long held memories.

Just for the sake of memory calibration, quoted below word-for-word is the ONLY thing Dr mentions in the film class about the 1942 intervention:

The reason the Dead Sea is so dead is because it has only an inlet no outlet. The reason some people are so dead spiritually is because they have only inlet no outlet. They do not give. As you give you receive. As you receive you must give for it just works like this. As I receive God’s Word I give it out, as I give it out I receive.

Many years ago God said to me once, He’d teach me the Word like it had not been known for centuries, if I would teach it. I thought that was a pretty good idea until I really got into the depth of the Word, then I found out that as I taught it nobody believed it anyway cause they already had preconceived ideas on the accuracy of God’s Word. But I learned this that as long as I kept God’s Word He kept filling me. He kept giving me more. He had said, if I’d teach it.

And my friend Dr. Higgins used to call from Chicago from one of the great hotels there, where she had her office. She was an osteopathic physician and surgeon one of the greatest. She used to call every night between 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning to my office. And she knew that if I was still working the Word of God I’d be in my office at that time and she only asked me one question, "What did God teach you today?"

The snow storm is mentioned in Elena Whiteside’s book on page 178.

Sometimes class instructors read from that book or paraphrased it while running a class, so that may have been the seed of a “memory” that Dr mentioned the snow in the class.

[leafytwiglet]

Well I would be the first one to admit there are times when my memory can be faulty... but the snow on the gas pumps as a sign from god was on the Cassett tape we listened to for PFAL. IT was 1979... Spring time

and I have never seen the video taped version of the class.

I have never read the book you mentioned. I went out on the WOW field almost immediately after taking the PFAL class.

Listened to it two more times when I was on the WOW field and am pretty sure it was in that class.

But far be it from me to say I am dead right.

Maybe it was told at ROA while i was there, maybe recounted to the WOW's??? but in my head I hear it in conjunction with my first PFAL class.