Number 2-

The Preoccupation with devil spirits and as a result of that, holiness and legalism

I vividly remember VPW giving two warnings, which he mentioned many times. I'm surprised that they never made it into that pamphlet of quotes… He said that if TWI ever got off the Word in the future, it probably would be into legalism. His second warning was regarding holiness, which he mentioned almost every time he taught Ephesians 1:4. He discouraged going down that road. At times he would go further into the subject, recounting experiences where he encountered people who had gone off the deep end into holiness. His illustrations showed that they became hypocrital, self-righteous and arrogant.

However, I do not think that the holiness thing was what was in the driver's seat on this one. I believe that it was the preoccupation with devil spirits. Yes, we need to know about them, but some classes of believers can handle more information than others. (What I mean about classes is Clergy then upper leadership, staff and leaders in training, then mature believers (Advanced class grads) then maturing believers (non-Advanced class grads and finally new people. Jesus Christ gave the correct perspective to the apostles (leaders in training) after they came back rejoicing that even the most powerful spirits were subject to them through the name of Jesus Christ. He said, "Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven."

Jesus Christ knew about the dangers of getting this subject out of perspective. He knew about the principle of what you look at you become. He also knew about the slyness of the enemy and how he can trick even the very elect at times. way II got this one out of balance and began teaching remedies to situations that were based upon the fear of devil spirits. lcm got preoccupied with the born-of-the-wrong-seed stuff and taught it to the classes of believers who couldn't handle it yet (should have been just clergy), and soon everyone was seeing seed-boys around every corner. They took a comment VPW made about "everything gives off something" and came up with that ridiculous practice of going through your house and tossing out anything which could be evil. Who decided what was evil? More and more it was LCM's henchmen. My little trinket on my end table reminds me of good times, but they would think that it might be evil, so they'd force me to throw it out. The holiness thing was supposed to protect us from devil spirits but it morphed to become an amulet to give us success. What about Acts 3:12? Peter and John just healed the lame man at the temple gate and all the people were staring at them. He said "Why look ye so earnestly upon us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?" The holiness thing got out of balance and soon our God-given righteousness was being replaced by legalism and the rest of our sonship rights ended up being eroded.

Once believers were off of that strong foundation and subject to fear, they could be swayed whichever way satan wanted them to go. Hence, when lcm went on the anti-homo tirade, what actually happened was that he scared us away from one set of devil spirits only to run into the clutches of another. That genuine suspicion thing was a doctrine of a devil and as noted in another thread (Top 10 lies #10) led the entire ministry to become fear motivated instead of love motivated.