The corps program was NOT what I'd signed up for.....it was NOT spiritual training in the Word. It was cherry-picking verses that furthered the wierwille agenda......the man who was a lazy kid and never held a real job. Yeah, the man who plagiarized his way thru school and into a sleight-of-hand-ministry. The man who would be MOG in all his reflected glory. The chickens have come home to roost in this debunked, cobwebbed henhouse and a fox still has access thru the rotten floor boards.
That's what happens when one doesn't know the Lord......he tries to be a Simon mog-sorcerer.
In the cold light of day,
it makes perfect sense that the corps program was rotten, and the few times people came
out as successes were due to the fact that they were successes going in and the program
failed to ruin that for them.
Let's look at what went into the program...
Who designed it? Was it a man with training in leadership programs and decades of
practical application and pastoring, a man who'd gotten his hands dirty on the mission
field in other parts of the world, a Mister Rogers of gentle admonishment?
NO.
It was the brainchild of a man with an entirely different agenda. He started out as a lazy
child, running off for hours in the woods and shirking his chores-consistently. He became
a teenager who was a showoff and a bully. He looked for a career where he could use his gift
of gab and personality for success-he considered business and music, but settled on ministry
as a cold business decision. (It was a year after he COMPLETED HIS MINISTERIAL DEGREES that
he ADMITTED he'd first heard- and believed- that the Bible was the Word of God. That means he
was working as a minister for a full year BEFORE believing that, by his own admission.)
By the accounts of his admirers, he bullied his own congregation, and his own accounts document
him chafing at having to answer to ANYONE. Years later, he encountered the JE Stiles and BG
Leonard's works (books, classes) on the Holy Spirit, and his work completely changed in a short
time. He also began reteaching Leonard's own class with a new name, with all the material identical
but people fooled into thinking he had originated it. He continued to teach Leonard's material for
the rest of his life, supplementing it over time with the works of Stiles, Bullinger, Kenyon,
and a few others (but primarily their work).
Once he heard that there were hippie Christians on the West Coast, he went out to recruit them
and had a peculiar agenda while actually recruiting them. (He claimed God Almighty was all right
with ORGIES but wasn't thrilled with them. It's shocking to hear a minister claim God's all
right with extramarital sex of any kind, or any sex other than that between a married man and
a married woman, but vpw came up with God being all right with ORGIES. No verses about orgies-
he claimed that the verse that said it was good for a man not to touch a woman meant that it was
a gradient between "best" (marital sex or abstinence) and "worst" (with ORGIES as not the worst,
I shudder to imagine what would be "worst" to vpw.) He asked for details about participation in
them, what it's like. Technically, he never said he specifically was looking for an invitation
to one or asking how to get invited, but that level of questioning is rather specific.
So, vpw returned, having conned a bunch of young folk into thinking that himself was some great
one, and that this man was the great power of God. They all showed up for the work of Leonard,
Bullinger, Stiles and Kenyon, and were given a side order of "obey vpw" at the same time. So,
he now had a sales/ recruitment force, composed of Christians who had been making a big difference
on the West Coast, and now weren't quite as effective but were still changing lives in between
shilling for vpw. What to do now?
Well, he now had the impressionable youths hanging on his every word, paying for his classes, and
paying 10% of their income. He upped the ante. He set up programs for them. For a fee, he would
let them travel for a year at their own expense and sell pfal to people (while still tithing,
of course.) For a tuition, he would run a leadership training program for people on grounds.
What qualifications did vpw have for that?
Less than none. He lacked the pastoral personality (like Mister Rogers) for bringing out the best
in people. He lacked the hard grounding in Scripture he claimed- that was all plagiarized from the
authors he ripped off. He lacked the academic training to impart intellectual knowledge from
university- he studied HOMILETICS, which is the least rigorous field, academically, that they
offered (their softest option.) He lacked ANY kind of leadership program training of ANY kind.
(vpw was typically lazy and never put in EXTRA work like entering programs.) He claimed he was
going to base it on the military- but he had no military experience! So, he based it on some
wild ideas he picked up from movies and television, and said it was based on the military.
vpw made many claims as to WHAT the corps was supposed to be based on- but they were all talk
and the program never resembled anything he mentioned. The supposed resemblance to the military
was laughable and based on the misconception that soldiers are supposed to salute and obey
without question, and that he would be the one all the corps would salute and obey. He told the
Bible fans that it was based on Acts, but the conduct and actions in Acts looked NOTHING like
what vpw was doing. There was some Bible study, and exercise, and physical labor-
all of which was done at the student's expense, and students were allowed to enter and to stay
"as long as their money holds" with nobody turned aside who could PAY.
Then there were some people who were told it was about "accomplishing feats" or some other
circus-sounding things. Why were there so many inconsistent explanations about what the corps
was based on? vpw didn't base it on anything- he was improvising the whole time, and telling
different people what they wanted to hear, whether it was military, or studious, or Biblical,
or super-heroic, or whatever. When someone came along with a good idea, he slapped it into
the program as he was going along (like the Spring cleaning thing.) When bad ideas or lack of
preparation caused problems, vpw went into attack mode and blamed the participants for being
inadequate in some way. But there was, eventually, some professional training he did bring
in- Dale Carnegie stuff on SALES. The corps were trained in SALES, in how to sell the class,
No professional training in anything else- and, naturally, vpw plagiarized the Dale Carnegie
stuff- someone who went into their program came back to teach it to the corps with no money
going back to Carnegie.
There were lots of fringe benefits available to the plagiarist who set all that up. With
a campus of young folk who worshipped him, it comes as no surprise (in hindsight) that he'd
plan out some extramarital sex (the kind he missed on the West Coast.) What IS a surprise
is that he did a great deal of planning- the kind he never did for the programs.
He set up a system for finding the most likely women to victimize (making the "From Birth
to the Corps" papers mandatory and using those to troll for victims.) He set up locations
to best accomplish this (how many places did vpw personally have to sleep? His bed at home,
his office's couch, and the outfitted bus when parked meant at least 3 just reserved for
him and private when on campus.) He set up strategies involving lowering inhibitions-
teaching that and plying them with drink and drugs in the drink. He set up strategies to
play on their sympathies- saying his wife was unable to do anything for him so he was
going without. He also set up a cadre of conspirators. Step 1, they would contrive
to get the victim in place for him. Step 2, they would appear and move the victim if it
looked like she was going to refuse to cooperate. Step 3, they would "counsel" the
victims afterward so they wouldn't go to the police or anyone. Step 4, they would rush
her off the campus and ruin her reputation if she showed signs of talking.
All of that happened, and all of it meant he put in more work to facilitate rape than he
put in to actually running a leadership training program.
Yeah, the phrase is in the Bible, but it doesn't have this specially anointed connotation Wierwille put with it. I think the phrase applies to women as well. If you're a Christian, Jesus Christ is supposed to be Lord meaning that if anyone is THE Man of God for our day and time, it's Him! Again VP preached the "absent Christ". Call it what you will, but it's not Christian doctrine by anyone's definition.
Jeremiah 17:5 says, "...Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD."
In a nutshell, that was my experience of the Way Corps training. And Wierwille's "man of God" doctrine was definitely an exercise in turning one's heart to the MOG and away from the Lord!
If you're a Christian, Jesus Christ is supposed to be Lord meaning that if anyone is THE Man of God for our day and time, it's Him!
Yeah......READ THE GOSPELS and see what Jesus Christ emphasized to certain individuals. Look at the compassion, the concern, and love that he had to unburden those who were heavy laden.....or to heal the brokenhearted. He embodied hope, strength, peace, patience, etc......even the unbelieving centurian was moved to proclaim him as The Son of God.
What did we see from twi's "man of God"?? ---- Arrogance, belligerence, callousness, impatience, brash, demanding, etc.
Most often, these moggies were the antithesis of Christian virtue. I vowed to the Lord to NOT be like them.
Forget the *stage-persona* of wierwille.......that was ALL for show.
What veepee was in real life, to me, was a heavy-handed elitist on a self-acclaimed pedestal.
He was the mogfot of the world.......and pfal sound clips were his spiritual pedigree.
The man centered his world around himself......decades before I ever heard of him.
And, he enjoined "a magic circle of forced conformity" to accomplish his works.
Twi's mog-doctrine is a fabrication of their lust of the flesh.
Yeah......READ THE GOSPELS and see what Jesus Christ emphasized to certain individuals. Look at the compassion, the concern, and love that he had to unburden those who were heavy laden.....or to heal the brokenhearted. He embodied hope, strength, peace, patience, etc......even the unbelieving centurian was moved to proclaim him as The Son of God.
What did we see from twi's "man of God"?? ---- Arrogance, belligerence, callousness, impatience, brash, demanding, etc.
Most often, these moggies were the antithesis of Christian virtue. I vowed to the Lord to NOT be like them.
Forget the *stage-persona* of wierwille.......that was ALL for show.
What veepee was in real life, to me, was a heavy-handed elitist on a self-acclaimed pedestal.
He was the mogfot of the world.......and pfal sound clips were his spiritual pedigree.
The man centered his world around himself......decades before I ever heard of him.
And, he enjoined "a magic circle of forced conformity" to accomplish his works.
Twi's mog-doctrine is a fabrication of their lust of the flesh.
But...but... but...
I heard some good Bible there. He taught me The Word.
How could all of that evilness be true if I heard some good Bible there?
My father was not particularly anti-TWI, but he was anti-stupid. He didn't like it very much when anyone, especially his son, rattled off statements that weren't well thought through. When I was in TWI, my dad was the age I am now which is in his 50's. One day, for some unknown reason, I said to him, "Dr. Wierwille is the man of God for our day and time". Not one of the brighter statements I had ever said to my father.
He responded with, "What do you mean by that?" So I told him that VPW was God's man on earth for us today to teach us the Word.
So he said, "Like the Pope? Do you think Wierwille is the Pope?"
"No no no", I said. Then I went on some sort of soliloquy about how God showed VPW "The Word" but I avoided the part about the snow and gas pumps.
After I finished, my dad asked me, "So how does one become the man of God? Who decides that? Is there a committee, is there some sort of umpire, what?"
I just told him how VP promised to teach the Word like it had never been known since the 1st century if God would teach it to him. So that made him the man of God.
My dad said, "So this Wierwille guy has some sort of special insight, right?" I said yes, he did. Then my dad responded, "So that's all it takes. Study the Bible, claim you have some sort of special insight, then proclaim yourself the man of God. Is that pretty much it?"
Then we went off into an argument where I defended Wierwille and my dad kept saying things about who decided this or that to which the answer kept coming back that it was Wierwille and only Wierwille that decided that he was the man of God. To end the discussion, my dad said something like,"Look, you want to do this Way thing fine. But let me tell you something, Wierwille's selling and you're buying". I shook my head in pity at how spiritually "blind" my father was. Isn't that something? I lamented at what I perceived was my father's blindness. Yeah right.
Broken Arrow, that was a great story, lol. I'm sure most of us have our own version of something like that in our past too. I know I do, lol. I think it was a certain beloved greasespotter here who once posted that for Christmas she gave her entire Catholic family copies of JC is Not God. :biglaugh: That still tickles me to this day when I think of that.
At another time I had a similar conversation with my father about the wonder class, PFAL. I actually had thoughts of him sitting through the glass and basking in the wisdom of the Word of God for the first time in his life, the poor blind man.
So I said, "PFAL is the greatest teaching on God's Word since the 1st century".
So he asked, "Have you studied all the past Bible teachers over the last 2 thousand years to be able to make that statement? Even if you have, who is it who decides whose teaching is the 'greatest'? What do you mean by 'greatest teaching' anyway?"
I think I said something like, "Ummmm..."
Then he said, "That comment you made...it's called 'hype'". He again said, "They're selling you're buying."
I marveled at just how "carnal" my dad was.
My dad was a pretty wise man actually but it was all lost on me at the time. what a gift I had! Still, I think he looked forward to the day when a coherent thought would actually form in my brain.
Broken Arrow your killing me. :jump:/> This could be a thread in and of itself. Seriously. The things we did when we were waybrained and how foolish and unspiritual our parents/others(natural men) were who were so carnal minded. Oh my gosh. I know I spoke in tongues in front of people. Yeah, that really impressed them. :rolleyes:/> lol!
And now I really need to get back to work, well...it's Good Friday, I guess I can take off early.
I was not quite as fortunate.....my family actually bought what I was selling.
:(/>
Everybody but my dad ended up in TWI and we all were saddened by his "lack of spirituality". He passed away in 1980 due to a heart condition. Good man.
I was not quite as fortunate.....my family actually bought what I was selling.
:(/>/>
Waysider: Do you mind if I ask how old your parents were at the time? I'm just curious. Were they over or under 50? Because over 50 people are pretty set in there ways. That's why I'm curious.
editing to say I'm sorry about your dad Broken Arrow. That was way too young to die. :(
Waysider: Do you mind if I ask how old your parents were at the time? I'm just curious. Were they over or under 50? Because over 50 people are pretty set in there ways. That's why I'm curious.
Well I actually have to hand it to them for being open minded. Seriously. And I bet they were nobody's fool either. The thing that actually attracted people was the REAL Word they heard. You know?
Well I actually have to hand it to them for being open minded. Seriously. And I bet they were nobody's fool either. The thing that actually attracted people was the REAL Word they heard. You know?
I'm not sure about the "REAL" sort of thing. My Mom didn't know a whole lot of scripture but I think she understood the overall messages it conveyed much better than many of the so-called leaders. She knew tons about how to love your neighbor and treat everyone with respect. Without that much, the rest is just another Sunday School lesson.
Oh gosh! I remember going to my mother's Catholic church...the one that I Was raised in, sigh... and demanding to know about speaking in tongues, I KNEW they had small catholic groups that did that. Mind you, this was back in 1979/80... and the deacon or whatever title he held, told me YES, they do have these small groups that do that. I was trying to prove to my mother, that this was real.
Well...in my zeal to prove this, I ran across a lady who was part of the "info team" at that church. I remember to this day. She said, I just try to walk in LOVE. I don't worry about that stuff. I thought she was a simpleton and walked away disgusted.
Wierwille preached a lot of things about God and the Bible that were true, while at the very same time he taught things that contradicted exactly the truth he was preaching.
All of us who became involved with TWI were suckered in by Wierwille's deception...
Wierwille preached a lot of things about God and the Bible that were true, while at the very same time he taught things that contradicted exactly the truth he was preaching.
All of us who became involved with TWI were suckered in by Wierwille's deception...
Love,
Steve
Steve, all I can contribute right now is a big AMEN! to your post. That sums it up nicely.
Broken Arrow, your dad was a man full of insight and clearly had a very sensitive sense of smell ... for BS.
Look ... VPW plagiarised Bullinger, Pillai, Kenyon, Leonard - he gave himself credit "for the way he put it together" - then called himself the MoG - but he never gave any credit to those he plagiarised from as (perhaps) also being MoGs. Which they surely were, in a way that he most certainly was not. Yet none of them would claim such a glorification. They were diligent workmen of the Word, students themselves and teachers to others, but walked with humility towards their God.
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skyrider
And.....the mog-doctrine spread throughout the whole of twi.
The corps went forth with indoctrinated loyalty.
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WordWolf
In the cold light of day,
it makes perfect sense that the corps program was rotten, and the few times people came
out as successes were due to the fact that they were successes going in and the program
failed to ruin that for them.
Let's look at what went into the program...
Who designed it? Was it a man with training in leadership programs and decades of
practical application and pastoring, a man who'd gotten his hands dirty on the mission
field in other parts of the world, a Mister Rogers of gentle admonishment?
NO.
It was the brainchild of a man with an entirely different agenda. He started out as a lazy
child, running off for hours in the woods and shirking his chores-consistently. He became
a teenager who was a showoff and a bully. He looked for a career where he could use his gift
of gab and personality for success-he considered business and music, but settled on ministry
as a cold business decision. (It was a year after he COMPLETED HIS MINISTERIAL DEGREES that
he ADMITTED he'd first heard- and believed- that the Bible was the Word of God. That means he
was working as a minister for a full year BEFORE believing that, by his own admission.)
By the accounts of his admirers, he bullied his own congregation, and his own accounts document
him chafing at having to answer to ANYONE. Years later, he encountered the JE Stiles and BG
Leonard's works (books, classes) on the Holy Spirit, and his work completely changed in a short
time. He also began reteaching Leonard's own class with a new name, with all the material identical
but people fooled into thinking he had originated it. He continued to teach Leonard's material for
the rest of his life, supplementing it over time with the works of Stiles, Bullinger, Kenyon,
and a few others (but primarily their work).
Once he heard that there were hippie Christians on the West Coast, he went out to recruit them
and had a peculiar agenda while actually recruiting them. (He claimed God Almighty was all right
with ORGIES but wasn't thrilled with them. It's shocking to hear a minister claim God's all
right with extramarital sex of any kind, or any sex other than that between a married man and
a married woman, but vpw came up with God being all right with ORGIES. No verses about orgies-
he claimed that the verse that said it was good for a man not to touch a woman meant that it was
a gradient between "best" (marital sex or abstinence) and "worst" (with ORGIES as not the worst,
I shudder to imagine what would be "worst" to vpw.) He asked for details about participation in
them, what it's like. Technically, he never said he specifically was looking for an invitation
to one or asking how to get invited, but that level of questioning is rather specific.
So, vpw returned, having conned a bunch of young folk into thinking that himself was some great
one, and that this man was the great power of God. They all showed up for the work of Leonard,
Bullinger, Stiles and Kenyon, and were given a side order of "obey vpw" at the same time. So,
he now had a sales/ recruitment force, composed of Christians who had been making a big difference
on the West Coast, and now weren't quite as effective but were still changing lives in between
shilling for vpw. What to do now?
Well, he now had the impressionable youths hanging on his every word, paying for his classes, and
paying 10% of their income. He upped the ante. He set up programs for them. For a fee, he would
let them travel for a year at their own expense and sell pfal to people (while still tithing,
of course.) For a tuition, he would run a leadership training program for people on grounds.
What qualifications did vpw have for that?
Less than none. He lacked the pastoral personality (like Mister Rogers) for bringing out the best
in people. He lacked the hard grounding in Scripture he claimed- that was all plagiarized from the
authors he ripped off. He lacked the academic training to impart intellectual knowledge from
university- he studied HOMILETICS, which is the least rigorous field, academically, that they
offered (their softest option.) He lacked ANY kind of leadership program training of ANY kind.
(vpw was typically lazy and never put in EXTRA work like entering programs.) He claimed he was
going to base it on the military- but he had no military experience! So, he based it on some
wild ideas he picked up from movies and television, and said it was based on the military.
vpw made many claims as to WHAT the corps was supposed to be based on- but they were all talk
and the program never resembled anything he mentioned. The supposed resemblance to the military
was laughable and based on the misconception that soldiers are supposed to salute and obey
without question, and that he would be the one all the corps would salute and obey. He told the
Bible fans that it was based on Acts, but the conduct and actions in Acts looked NOTHING like
what vpw was doing. There was some Bible study, and exercise, and physical labor-
all of which was done at the student's expense, and students were allowed to enter and to stay
"as long as their money holds" with nobody turned aside who could PAY.
Then there were some people who were told it was about "accomplishing feats" or some other
circus-sounding things. Why were there so many inconsistent explanations about what the corps
was based on? vpw didn't base it on anything- he was improvising the whole time, and telling
different people what they wanted to hear, whether it was military, or studious, or Biblical,
or super-heroic, or whatever. When someone came along with a good idea, he slapped it into
the program as he was going along (like the Spring cleaning thing.) When bad ideas or lack of
preparation caused problems, vpw went into attack mode and blamed the participants for being
inadequate in some way. But there was, eventually, some professional training he did bring
in- Dale Carnegie stuff on SALES. The corps were trained in SALES, in how to sell the class,
No professional training in anything else- and, naturally, vpw plagiarized the Dale Carnegie
stuff- someone who went into their program came back to teach it to the corps with no money
going back to Carnegie.
There were lots of fringe benefits available to the plagiarist who set all that up. With
a campus of young folk who worshipped him, it comes as no surprise (in hindsight) that he'd
plan out some extramarital sex (the kind he missed on the West Coast.) What IS a surprise
is that he did a great deal of planning- the kind he never did for the programs.
He set up a system for finding the most likely women to victimize (making the "From Birth
to the Corps" papers mandatory and using those to troll for victims.) He set up locations
to best accomplish this (how many places did vpw personally have to sleep? His bed at home,
his office's couch, and the outfitted bus when parked meant at least 3 just reserved for
him and private when on campus.) He set up strategies involving lowering inhibitions-
teaching that and plying them with drink and drugs in the drink. He set up strategies to
play on their sympathies- saying his wife was unable to do anything for him so he was
going without. He also set up a cadre of conspirators. Step 1, they would contrive
to get the victim in place for him. Step 2, they would appear and move the victim if it
looked like she was going to refuse to cooperate. Step 3, they would "counsel" the
victims afterward so they wouldn't go to the police or anyone. Step 4, they would rush
her off the campus and ruin her reputation if she showed signs of talking.
All of that happened, and all of it meant he put in more work to facilitate rape than he
put in to actually running a leadership training program.
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skyrider
Three words: THE ZERO CORPS
Wierwille didn't have the ability or discernment to properly run a corps program. He charged in
full speed ahead to follow his lead with zero tolerance er, "teach and train these young people
in Christian leadership".......and when he flat-out FAILED, he blamed it on the students and shifted
the blame to them. What a low-life whiner.
The MOG status was an end-around scriptural term that he drudged up for generic reasons. See....a
"man of God" is legit scripturally, BUT IT DOESN'T PIN ONE DOWN TO ANYTHING SPECIFIC. And, that's
what wierwille always was looking for: no accountability. He could then run and hide behind
his desk [rather than hiding in the woods as a kid] and not have to be accountable.
Oh, he did claim to be a "teacher".......but that could be molded to about any agenda.
So, all in all......wierwille had the ability to sermonize [homiletics] from the works of speechwriters
[plagiarized works] and that was it. No track record of accomplishments. No missionary work....except
going to India and writing a booklet [mostly plagiarized?] on foreign missions. Always hitchhiking on
the work of others.
The idolatrous stench has permeated every fiber and fabric of twi.......even their red drapes.
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Broken Arrow
Yeah, the phrase is in the Bible, but it doesn't have this specially anointed connotation Wierwille put with it. I think the phrase applies to women as well. If you're a Christian, Jesus Christ is supposed to be Lord meaning that if anyone is THE Man of God for our day and time, it's Him! Again VP preached the "absent Christ". Call it what you will, but it's not Christian doctrine by anyone's definition.
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Steve Lortz
Jeremiah 17:5 says, "...Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD."
In a nutshell, that was my experience of the Way Corps training. And Wierwille's "man of God" doctrine was definitely an exercise in turning one's heart to the MOG and away from the Lord!
Love,
Steve
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skyrider
Yeah......READ THE GOSPELS and see what Jesus Christ emphasized to certain individuals. Look at the compassion, the concern, and love that he had to unburden those who were heavy laden.....or to heal the brokenhearted. He embodied hope, strength, peace, patience, etc......even the unbelieving centurian was moved to proclaim him as The Son of God.
What did we see from twi's "man of God"?? ---- Arrogance, belligerence, callousness, impatience, brash, demanding, etc.
Most often, these moggies were the antithesis of Christian virtue. I vowed to the Lord to NOT be like them.
Forget the *stage-persona* of wierwille.......that was ALL for show.
What veepee was in real life, to me, was a heavy-handed elitist on a self-acclaimed pedestal.
He was the mogfot of the world.......and pfal sound clips were his spiritual pedigree.
The man centered his world around himself......decades before I ever heard of him.
And, he enjoined "a magic circle of forced conformity" to accomplish his works.
Twi's mog-doctrine is a fabrication of their lust of the flesh.
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WordWolf
But...but... but...
I heard some good Bible there. He taught me The Word.
How could all of that evilness be true if I heard some good Bible there?
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Broken Arrow
My father was not particularly anti-TWI, but he was anti-stupid. He didn't like it very much when anyone, especially his son, rattled off statements that weren't well thought through. When I was in TWI, my dad was the age I am now which is in his 50's. One day, for some unknown reason, I said to him, "Dr. Wierwille is the man of God for our day and time". Not one of the brighter statements I had ever said to my father.
He responded with, "What do you mean by that?" So I told him that VPW was God's man on earth for us today to teach us the Word.
So he said, "Like the Pope? Do you think Wierwille is the Pope?"
"No no no", I said. Then I went on some sort of soliloquy about how God showed VPW "The Word" but I avoided the part about the snow and gas pumps.
After I finished, my dad asked me, "So how does one become the man of God? Who decides that? Is there a committee, is there some sort of umpire, what?"
I just told him how VP promised to teach the Word like it had never been known since the 1st century if God would teach it to him. So that made him the man of God.
My dad said, "So this Wierwille guy has some sort of special insight, right?" I said yes, he did. Then my dad responded, "So that's all it takes. Study the Bible, claim you have some sort of special insight, then proclaim yourself the man of God. Is that pretty much it?"
Then we went off into an argument where I defended Wierwille and my dad kept saying things about who decided this or that to which the answer kept coming back that it was Wierwille and only Wierwille that decided that he was the man of God. To end the discussion, my dad said something like,"Look, you want to do this Way thing fine. But let me tell you something, Wierwille's selling and you're buying". I shook my head in pity at how spiritually "blind" my father was. Isn't that something? I lamented at what I perceived was my father's blindness. Yeah right.
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RottieGrrrl
Broken Arrow, that was a great story, lol.
I'm sure most of us have our own version of something like that in our past too. I know I do, lol. I think it was a certain beloved greasespotter here who once posted that for Christmas she gave her entire Catholic family copies of JC is Not God. 
:biglaugh: 
That still tickles me to this day when I think of that.
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Broken Arrow
At another time I had a similar conversation with my father about the wonder class, PFAL. I actually had thoughts of him sitting through the glass and basking in the wisdom of the Word of God for the first time in his life, the poor blind man.
So I said, "PFAL is the greatest teaching on God's Word since the 1st century".
So he asked, "Have you studied all the past Bible teachers over the last 2 thousand years to be able to make that statement? Even if you have, who is it who decides whose teaching is the 'greatest'? What do you mean by 'greatest teaching' anyway?"
I think I said something like, "Ummmm..."
Then he said, "That comment you made...it's called 'hype'". He again said, "They're selling you're buying."
I marveled at just how "carnal" my dad was.
My dad was a pretty wise man actually but it was all lost on me at the time. what a gift I had! Still, I think he looked forward to the day when a coherent thought would actually form in my brain.
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RottieGrrrl
Broken Arrow your killing me. :jump:/> This could be a thread in and of itself. Seriously. The things we did when we were waybrained and how foolish and unspiritual our parents/others(natural men) were who were so carnal minded. Oh my gosh. I know I spoke in tongues in front of people. Yeah, that really impressed them. :rolleyes:/> lol!
And now I really need to get back to work, well...it's Good Friday, I guess I can take off early.
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waysider
I was not quite as fortunate.....my family actually bought what I was selling.
:(
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Broken Arrow
Everybody but my dad ended up in TWI and we all were saddened by his "lack of spirituality". He passed away in 1980 due to a heart condition. Good man.
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RottieGrrrl
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waysider
They were in their mid 40's.
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RottieGrrrl
Well I actually have to hand it to them for being open minded. Seriously. And I bet they were nobody's fool either. The thing that actually attracted people was the REAL Word they heard. You know?
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waysider
I'm not sure about the "REAL" sort of thing. My Mom didn't know a whole lot of scripture but I think she understood the overall messages it conveyed much better than many of the so-called leaders. She knew tons about how to love your neighbor and treat everyone with respect. Without that much, the rest is just another Sunday School lesson.
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RottieGrrrl
Oh gosh! I remember going to my mother's Catholic church...the one that I Was raised in, sigh... and demanding to know about speaking in tongues, I KNEW they had small catholic groups that did that. Mind you, this was back in 1979/80... and the deacon or whatever title he held, told me YES, they do have these small groups that do that. I was trying to prove to my mother, that this was real.
Well...in my zeal to prove this, I ran across a lady who was part of the "info team" at that church. I remember to this day. She said, I just try to walk in LOVE. I don't worry about that stuff. I thought she was a simpleton and walked away disgusted.
Geez.
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Steve Lortz
Wierwille preached a lot of things about God and the Bible that were true, while at the very same time he taught things that contradicted exactly the truth he was preaching.
All of us who became involved with TWI were suckered in by Wierwille's deception...
Love,
Steve
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RottieGrrrl
Steve, all I can contribute right now is a big AMEN! to your post. That sums it up nicely.
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Twinky
Broken Arrow, your dad was a man full of insight and clearly had a very sensitive sense of smell ... for BS.
Look ... VPW plagiarised Bullinger, Pillai, Kenyon, Leonard - he gave himself credit "for the way he put it together" - then called himself the MoG - but he never gave any credit to those he plagiarised from as (perhaps) also being MoGs. Which they surely were, in a way that he most certainly was not. Yet none of them would claim such a glorification. They were diligent workmen of the Word, students themselves and teachers to others, but walked with humility towards their God.
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