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Or perhaps old puke from last night's bad drunk. It's still fun to make fun of memories of them worshiping over the porcelain god and speaking in liquid screams. Shot 'o Drambuie anyone?

What happened to all my prayers? Ya know, before I ever heard of The Way, I had no idea my prayers were second rate. Then I got witnessed to and found out I had it all wrong. See, you can't actually talk to God like you talk to everyone else. You have to have this special language, that they speak in the land of Lo Shanta, or God won't have a clue what you're talking about.And, God can't talk back to you either unless you talk to yourself in this new language lots and lots every day. And you have to make a real effort to expand your vocabulary, too, or God will just keep telling you the same stuff over and over again. Heck, I've even heard people say they prayed to God for answers (without the Lo Shanta stuff) and, presto, someone from TWI appeared to invite them to Twig and sign them up for PLAF. But, how can that be if God can't understand your prayers in the first place? So then my question is this: What happened to all those prayers I said before I heard of TWI?

In my former splinter group (River Road Fellowship as led by V. Barnard) we did the whole, "We are a whole world unto ourselves, isolated in a rural area" thing and it $ucked bigtime. Every perception of truth was tightly controlled by the supposed Apostle. It seemed to me like over time things just got more and more warped. Eventually it was heresy to even question such "apostolic" blunders as him teaching the Lord would return in 1997, 2000, uh er...2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and even the latest that I've heard on the grapevine 2011. Not to mention the oppressive atmosphere which led to such unfortunate things as teenage girls announcing in fellowship that,"I am married to the Christ in Victor." So while they constantly congradulate themselves among themselves it seems pretty obvious to me that they only grew more dangerous and absurd as time went on. And I really don't think they'd openly come around GSC to state their case either, but they'd say it was because of all they "unbelief" here at GSC I'm sure. But I am certain it is because that even though they imagine themselves to be winners that they would simply be confronted for what they really are. I feel justified in my concerns for Caleb and his fellows.

So without further response from Caleb is this how we are to see this exchange end? One young man takes a small step out of the Mississipi swamp and into a place where all his beliefs he must knew may be challeged. He gives an aggressive post with a direct threat while claiming he will be handling questions and conversations for months to come. And as soon as a teany little bit of heat arrives he steps out, omly to never be heard from again. OMG I would like to believe the young man is o.k., but nobody that knows anything is saying! Is he being shut in with a bunch of faithful for a patented TWI style "healing". Are they mad at us enough to foolishly desire to carry out the feelings of anger in the initial post? Is the young man strong enough to realize that our intentions were for his own good and it may be that his "manoGod" is the real villain? But even though v2p2 may well be carrying out that role I do personally feel compassion for a young man who himself has been indoctrinated into his supposed life's purpose. TOO MANY QUESTIONS, TOO FEW ANSWERS. IMO

Maybe irrelevant.

Its not old news for all of us that gave our time & money for a rot hole place called THE WAY INTERNATIONAL that claimed to be a place of god. It wont be old news until no one is standing for or preaching their crap and that land in ohio is washed away . and only then will it be old news !!

Oh for Pete's sake, Oldies..........quit SPINNING and DANCING around the room. Wierwille BETRAYED his committed followers......most notably, the WOWs and the Corps. As a young and naive WOW, catcup's sister came face-to-face with wierwille's sexual motorcoach lusts and, when she refused, she was kicked off the WOW field. And, its well documented on the forums how wierwille went after the Corps women..!!!!! Can't you see the snare...??? With no accountability for his actions......and being in a well-protected, multi-tiered yes-men hierarchy, wierwille's TRUE COLORS CAME FORTH. What he was.......behind closed doors..... was his TRUE CHARACTER. Those public appearances were just showmanship......no more, no less. Wierwille BETRAYED "his" corps........he sold many of us down the river. He couldn't even keep his commitment to us regarding THE CORPS CHALET. He gave it to his top yes-boy......craig. There is a HUGE chasm between............freely serving God without compulsion as opposed to being manipulated by a con-man who winks with his eyes and speaks with his fingers (Proverbs reference). But hey.........if you, Oldies, want to stay deceived about "the good ole way-daze" have at it. Doesn't look like too many folks here are buying what you are attempting to sell.

Well, obviously, those prayers were thrown in the same cylindrical file as those of the Catholics, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Penticostals, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and all the other various and sundry Christian brands. You see, you have to get it JUST right or God won't pay attention. Misunderstand HIS Wurd, pray "improperly", or believe "wrongly" - NO SOUP FOR YOU! There now, doesn't that explain how loving and faithful The Almighty is? It's all YOUR fault. The truth is so simple...

I wonder if they like millet.

hmmm

not really a side rail, since I did rant on about a few things and M. W@l@ce's tendency to lie was right up there. I also remember that "teaching", and it became very much part of everyday life. "it's ok to lie to unbelievers to protect yourself or the ministry" was doctrine. I guess M@rk and a lot of others have put it into practice as "it's ok to lie to everyone to make yourself and the ministry look good".

thank you to the anonymous writer for taking the time to put that together. it sounds like the same twi I left in 2006, only more mummified.

ah, them! context is everything. I was just talking about them somewhere else, as a matter of fact. they are asleep. drones. I suppose some of them are so damaged by being raised inside they will never recover. they will abuse because they were taught to be that way. I don't know that I can say they're all abusers, though. you'd know better than I.

well hell, they'll never take me back now!

it's when you put a hash in front of a word, like #theway or something like that, so people can find tweets about certain subjects. I read it's been successfully used for organizing rallies and other stuff, like the #amazonfail hash brought attention to amazon's catalog mess. made me wonder if there are any hashtags in use for twi subjects.

LOL! gawd you make me laugh. do you know what first sale is, where it came from, and where it's codified? since you obviously don't, I'll explain it. first sale doctrine (later expanded to "exhaustion of rights") regarding a copyright holder's control over copies they have distributed was established by case law about 90 years ago and is now codified AS copyright law. I'm not jumping around anywhere, I've been speaking to the same point all along, which is whether or not twi has any rights to control copies without proof of ownership. if they didn't report the copies stolen, didn't have anyone sign contracts for lease/rent/lending, and in all likelihood the statute of limitations has run out on any possible cases of theft(which would have to be proven in court), it's all likely moot at this point because twi has no rights to the tape sets floating around. very unlikely. they'd have to prove they own the set to get eBay to take action against a seller like that.

I agree with you, but I bet he could have passed a lie detector test if he was in his narcissist zone. I think he had delusions of grandeur and creating stories was no different for him than giving a factual account of what he had for breakfast.

The only guy who can answer those questions is currently feeding the worms.

Try this on for a non-sexual twist. Wierwille insisted LEAD participants had to hitch hike from Ohio to New Mexico and back. Guess what? That's illegal in most parts Ohio as well as many areas they would have had to pass through. Wierwille lived in Ohio most his life. If he didn't know that, he should have. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. People WERE raped, beaten, even killed as a result of this decision. He was complicit.

I just always assumed English is not Pond's first language. I PROMISE, I am not being rude, but that has been my thought when reading her posts. Pond, is English your first language? It might help others to know if this is not the case. Sometimes your posts are confusing to read. . . I am not assigning motives to your words. . . just seeing if maybe it is a language issue??

What or whom exactly on this site has zero integrity?

we have no reason not to believe anyone is lying about their story unless it can be proven they are. for instance, I don't assume you're lying about being at Emporia, or that your wife worked for vpw at HQ, although I have no way to corroborate your testimony. I just don't have any facts on which to claim your statements are untrue. I also have no reason to believe that the women who've told their stories about being raped by vpw are lying, therefore, like rascal, I will accept them as factual unless I have good reason to believe they aren't.

Now why would we want another case when you've already declared that "the context was VPW."?

Their testimony stands!..I agree 100 %.... First hand tetimony is only dismissed when the testamony is proven to be invalid...sorry Whitedove...you lose again. ...but you must be getting used to that by now.

I guess that I don`t understand NOT being offended and talking about the perves in sheep`s clothing. It is unconscionable NOT to shout from the roof tops the crimes of vp and twi....lest people spend the rest of their lives trying to apply the foolishness that we believed was *THE truth* given to a man by God. When people know who and what these guys were, what they did to our brothers and sisters, we are free to begin the healing process, begin growing again as people. Without the truth, we are forever stuck living false teachings and accepting the blame personally for their failure.

This is not an anti twi site, I think that is a dishonest statement. What it IS...is a place to tell what happened to us in twi...tell our stories. If twi had been a place of blessing and growth, then that is undoubtedly what we would be writing about here. Unfortunatelty, many of us experienced privation, abuse, and had crimes committed against us....so THAT is what is discussed by those whom experienced it. Gosh....If twi had been the God centered group that we had been led to believe, (and don`t we all wish that it HAD been) we wouldn`t have anything to talk about here now would we? Dove, maybe what you ought to be asking yourself is....Why you would need to come to a site and spend a decade trying to discredit the experiences of other posters. The whole site isn`t a lie, the participants aren`t all liars.... Maybe the error is in your perception of what you understood twi to be. This place is for talking about twi ... good, bad or indifferent....too bad more of us weren`t better treated, the flavor of the place would be a little different.

Not at all Dove, It`s just that I don`t use second and third hand opinions of other people to call into question posters veracity or to try to obstruct their testimony as to their personal experiences in twi. Pretty silly to accuse me of not wanting you to post your 2nd and 3rd hand information here at gs, when you have been doing it for years. What you DON`T like is that someone has challenged you on the hypocracy of insisting that there be documentation, and a legal conviction in order for someone to be guilty of a crime, when you yourself have no personal knowledge or experience of what you claim others are lying about. People are assaulted every day, murders go unsolved, that doesn`t mean a crime wasn`t committed. That doesn`t mean it didn`t happen, or the damage inflicted wasn`t real. No, we will never bring these guys to legal justice in THIS world, but one of the things we ARE permitted to do is discuss our experiences, call into question the morals, ethics and beliefs that led these criminals to believe that this was acceptable to do to people. In so doing, maybe begin the healing process and grow beyond the toxic doctrine that empowered them, and kept us enslaved.

those incidents have been documented, here at GS, where anyone can read and refer to them.

thing is, the "word" was supposed to make us stronger. the "ministry" was supposed to be a safe haven. I'd already been hurt. spent time in therapy, was making good, positive changes in my life. the "promises" of god attracted me because I wanted to be stronger, serve god, and be around people who lived a loving lifestyle. twi was just not the place to find that, and the damage done by leadership put me in a place worse than I'd come from. so yeah, life hurts sometimes, but I find that in post-twi, now that I'm in a place where I've learned to think for myself, I handle the hurt better and I'm not in constant fear of someone melting my face over trivialities. I'm better equipped to handle the tough things in life now that I've shed the false trappings of pretended strength we were taught in twi.

Geisha is of the female persuasion. . . did you just call me clueless, a devil, take the Lords name in vain, call me self-righteous and a failure all in the same breath? You must be tired now. LOL Classic!

Well, I'm not Steve, but I would submit that that the only way any human has ever observed ANYTHING is by way of the senses. "Believing first and then seeing" is simply a textbook method of being taken in. And I would also posit that in the Bible quotation noted, that Thomas is the most virtuous one of the lot. Demanding proof is not an evil practice. It's a disciplined approach to figuring out REAL answers in life instead of accepting fairytales as guidance. "Believing first" never discovered any cures to disease or launched any satellites. Nor did inquisitive skeptics ever ride off on a Crusade or fly an airliner into a skyscraper...

actually, you have quite often used logic to try to prove PFAL is god-breathed by referring to the teachings of vpw himself. now, vpw said this: he claimed himself that the keys he's reveal would work with a mathematical exactness and scientific precision, so the rules of math and science must apply. your position "PFAL is god-breathed" is exactly the problem posed by the liar paradox. thank you for explaining that much more clearly and beautifully than I ever could :)

yes. all were expressly forbidden. I think that clas also had a lot more emphasis on the man being the head and the woman being his servant. since I was recently divorced, it pretty much seemed designed to make me condemn myself.

Boy, I'm glad I can't remember much about this class. I do remember one class where there was some dissection of Song of Solomon and the alleged sexual allusions in that - was that CFS? Or maybe New Life (a Corps class)? That's really all I think I remember and sincerely don't want to drag anything else back into mind. Too right, P-Mosh. I've always wondered why Americans are so prissy about a breast or a bare bottom. It doesn't have to be provocative. And bear (bare?) in mind that most movies are Hollywood so shot with US money and manage to have body parts on display. Yet the whole hippy "free love" thing emanated from the US - in other words, the display of body parts didn't have anything to do with loosening sexual boundaries in the US. The violence and wanton destruction in some US movies is horrendous. Gratuitous. And I think that watching too much violence without also showing repercussions does break down mental boundaries. But that's another thread should anyone care to go there.

I don't see you starting WW3 WD. However... Edited again - I stand corrected by potato - it was your question to skyrider I was referring to.... Since you and I disagree on a number of issues - please do not take my comments as starting a personal WW3 with you either. I think the obvious answer to your question for potato is rather simple. You know, as well as I do, that a significant percentage of people (I'd wager some number >50%) were wrapped up in that organization enough to feel guilty about NOT doing as told. This is not isolated to TWI - you can trace it to plenty of other organizations - even those non-religious - heck you can extend it to some 1960's hippie communes. There have been plenty of posts here from people "admitting" to feeling bad about decisions/actions they made/did "back in the day." It is clearly not an isolated phenomena - and those who posted that thinking here on GSC tend to have a more activist mentality. I wonder how many people felt that way and just drifted off without coming here - without posting - and did whatever (hopefully got a life). I have a somewhat personal perspective on rebellion within the ranks - since I had a reputation for it even while still in but I am not going to post it publicly. Edited for some grammar errors

I think that in Wierwille's case, that he was more than happy if he had you thinking well of him and searching for those secrets. I bet people have wasted decades on that particular treadmill. Say what you mean and mean what you say only applied if the decievers wanted to know where you really were coming from in order to counter your influence as it applied to dominance. (added in eding) I'm going to go now. Catch up wit ya later.

do we think humpty was an egg for the same reason we think jesus was a white guy with blue eyes? illustrated children's books?

signs of a liar: I saw a lot of these in vpw's videos, and even more so in lcm's.

I noticed in session three, he scratched his nose 3 times with his right hand at 3 different points during the teaching. I think that means that his words in that session were completely, completely, completely blessed. Shhhhhhh!!------It's a secret. The DaVictster's Code Coming soon to a theater near you.

LOL I knew somone would make a joke

yeah, exactly. I seem to remember it, too. eventually I'll dig out all my books and old syllabi and be able to look things like this up. could it be in the intro to one of the class books? is the cassette class identical to the film (later video) class? did vpw maybe mention it during another class that was still making the rounds in the late 80's/90's?

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

John and Yoko, 1971. "So this is Christmas And what have you done? Another year over And a new one just begun."

Twi is SMALL POTATOES........because everything they do is SELF-SERVING, SELF-GRATIFYING and SELF-PRESERVATION. Twi does nothing for society. They bury all their "talents" in a hole and claim that they are "believing" God. Twi is a fear-based corporation.....captivated by fear of losing it all.

A lot of people started out with that same notion - we are really reading the Bible. Wow! This group has come up with some great stuff and presented it in a way that I've never gotten in a church environment. I really felt I was in more of a give and take environment. That was my hook. I personally never got the whole "Father in the Word" thing; too much like the pope. But I really liked the idea of studying the Bible in depth and discussing what I read. Ironically, the more I studied, the more I realized how many people were restricting their "study" to what happened to be taught in the tapes and discussion was limited to agreement with the teaching or how to practically apply whatever was taught. There was no evaluation of the accuracy, or determining whether some "private interpretation" on the part of the teacher had been used. I remember saying to my husband that I thought we were in a research and teaching ministry, but the lack of independent research and independent thought was unsettling. I thought I was joining a group of believers who were seeking to be smart about the Bible and therefore smart about life, but they really weren't using their heads in many areas of their lives. Ironically, many of those people were being rewarded by leadership and being made leaders, or made to feel important in other ways. Those of us who wished to remain independent were subtly (or not so subtly) told to toe the line, especially once LCM was at the helm. Once LCM took over, the whole leadership vetting process was a study in what not to do. Unfortunately, every splinter group out there has chosen to emulate LCM's openly yes-man mentality.

I don't think I'm one of anything, really. I'm currently without religion

There are so many variables: when you got in, when you got out, who the leaders were, whether you were a leader or a well-respected long-term believer, were classes being run, how much money you were contributing. They all have a bearing on whether your memories were good, bad or indifferent. Another factor is how much you had invested in believing it all was right; what kind of things you would consider insignificant and were willing to put up with. I agree, in general, with the premise of this thread, that the longer you were in, the greater the indoctrination and the greater the attempts at control. However, the same actions could be perceived in vastly different ways, depending on one's mindset. For example, in the mid-nineties, local leadership made it their business to criticize several aspects of my personal life, and put a lot of pressure on me to change. At the time I accepted this interference, believing at the time that a leader had the right and responsibility to correct "error" in this manner. In hindsight, I now believe that the leader's actions were wrong and that I was wrong to allow it. For most of us who have left TWI there is a line that gets crossed. For some the line was crossed during PFAL and we never really got involved. For others it was the so-called loyalty oath letter, for still others it was actions of local leaders or a realization that there were doctrinal contradictions. But the line usually just didn't pop up from nowhere one day. There was a continuum: at one end was "this is great" and at the other end was "I'm outta here".

Kit......yeah, some took pfal but were more focused on their goals and stayed grounded. Others, like me...... followed "the leader" into the indoctrination process of "committed service for God." In hindsight.........I see the many RED FLAGS. Heck, there were several flying back in "the good ole days"..... the hype, the celebrity-mog status, the undocumented snow-on-gas-pumps, the inresidence isolation, the money-spending constraints while inresidence, the stifling of showing emotion, etc. Back in the 70s......witnessing to bring others to a twi-fellowship was tough. Imagine TODAY.......the internet, the ex-way community, lawsuits, re-written twi history, the ousted martindale, pathetic involvement, an aging following, top-heavy staff personnel, etc. etc. The short stay might be NO STAY at all.

are you pulling my leg ?