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i keep reading about how many people were told they would be "greasespots by midnight" if they left twi and i keep thinking about how many times i was told "the word" gave parents and husbands the "right" to kill "disobedient" children and wives and i know that taking my chances of being killed by the "adversary" was less dangerous than staying in twi and being killed because of that insanity. there are many kinds of real death and one is that instant death that everybody is afraid of but another is a slow death that kills the soul first and leaves the body with chronic problems that erode the strength and the life. getting beaten all the time may not have killed me but it caused chronic problems that will kill me so what does it matter when i die if i die because of the beatings? when i die it won't be because i left twi and became a "greasespot" because the "adversary" got me, but because i couldn't get out soon enough and twi insanity got me.

There were only two "successful" African Americans in twi that I can think of: L*nnel J8hnson and Claudette. I think L8nnel was ordained by vic.. don't know about claudette. That's two out of.. how many.. hundreds? Maybe there were a few others.. as far as liberty lobby and spotlight is concerned.. isn't it intriguing that the guy who said NEWSPAPERS were so darn "negative".. stories about murder, accidents, suicide, death.. were so "bad" for believing- which is a straw man to begin with- adopted different kind of "negatives"- stories of government takeover, murder, and intrigue? maybe vic should have put his newspapers and periodicals down for a while, and read the bible..

I was at that meeting also. The pattern that it set, at least in my area, was that whoever was running a meeting could do or say whatever they wanted. Martindale said that whoever was running the meeting (in that case, him) had free reign. I saw "leaders" take this attitude often, especially in "confrontation" meetings. Martindale...he should have been a diplomat :D --> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice...but in practice there is Oakspear <!--graemlin::cool:--> [This message was edited by Oakspear on December 19, 2003 at 18:41.]

There's a significant body of opinion here at the Café to the effect that VPW knew that PFAL / TWI was a scam – out to get money, and that he wasn't a genuine minister but (wording differs) a shyster, charlatan, snake-oil salesman, etc. It was set up as a scam, right from the beginning. It is also widely believed at the Café that he plagiarized the principal books (PFAL and RHST) and also used other people's work which he passed off as his own. It was a scam. People here are happy to say that. And those same people are happy to give Mrs Wierwille, Dotsie, a free pass. She is seen as a victim of VPW's sexual profligacy, and there seems to be no doubt that she was aware of his behavior in that direction. But ... does she deserve the free pass? She was with him right from the beginning. She supported him in his early years. She was a woman who could speak and act for herself: she ran away with him (apparently). She wasn't cowed by his "greatness" then. She was around when he was thrown out of his original church. She participated in his trip to India. She was there when he began to get involved with BG Leonard. She must have seen BG's book in the house; probably read it. And surely the original founding trustees didn't get together without discussing it with their wives? And yes, it was "another time" when she was younger, when VPW got going with his "ministry," and it may have been harder for a woman to leave her husband – but women did leave their husbands and did divorce them. So…does she really deserve the free pass? Didn't her support help the TWI juggernaut get off the ground (before it crushed her too!)? She didn't speak up right in the beginning, when she knew and could nip it in the bud. Doesn't that silence, and her enjoyment of the "benefits" make her also a scammer?

my opinion.............no free pass deserved!.............classic enabler and co-dependent............she knew of all der victoid's shenanigans..........and , for reasons known only to her, she chose, willfully, to suffer the indignities of vic's perversions and relentless megalomania............i saw her cry..............i saw her yell............but i NEVER saw her publicly defy what she knew to be his lies and vicious use of human beings to fulfill his personal lust and demons!...........she shared his bed........she bore his children, (well, at least 5 of them anyway), she kept his secrets, she covered his lies, she tolerated his meaness and cruelty to her own kipp family................she alone knows why...........i surely don't!................peace.

Behind every great man stand a great women. or something

Uh.......for me, Ruth Madoff comes to mind.

Before her kids were old enough to take her in. When they were just little. So it would be hard for a woman to leave her husband, with several small kids; don't know what support if any would have been available. Her own family? But...if she knew he was plagiarizing the work of others, and didn't say anything, that makes her an accomplice. Maybe he did keep her in the dark; he refers to discussing things with Ros Rinker. Hard to think that he didn't discuss with Dotsie. Or did VPW scam Dotsie, too? Any early Corps want to weigh in here?

There is a provision in the law for disobedient children to be taken to the elders and stoned. . . . are there accounts of this ever being carried out? Sadly, I have no problem believing this was taught as justifiable behavior.

I am not sure what was said after I left. . . but, I never heard anyone say that the bible gave parents the right to kill a disobedient spouse or child. That would have penetrated my foggy brain. I have always been disgusted and shook about the practice of female infanticide in rural parts of China and India. . . . even when I was in TWI. I would have taken note of that. Martindale did say something about . . . . if it were old testament times. . . and homosexuals. I can imagine it was not a leap for him to include cop-outs or disobedient "believers". It wouldn't have been worse than swatting a fly to him. . . wasn't there even a song? The "adversary" was always nipping at our heels. . . typical TWI. . . giving the devil control over the power of life and death while totally discounting God's role and purview in creation. Hmm, we had more faith in Satan's ability than God's. That is something to consider if we dare. Maybe that is part of the soul killing you mention. . . . or part of the cause of beatings and cruelty. We had some really obsessive traits in TWI. . . . we did train our eyes on evil.

The post about Oakspears 8 year anniversary got me thinking. Does anyone know of any situations where someone chose TWI over their spouse and are now alone and regretful? I know of someone who let others decide about the one she loved. She chose TWI and let him go. He married someone else and is very happy. She isn't, she regrets it deeply. I think this happened a lot. Any stories of this out there?

Yeah!!!! Glad to hear it! The best revenge is living well. :) (Not sure who said that or something similar) JT

Maybe not, but they made very clear who you were NOT supposed to marry.----Kinda limited the field.

Welcome, Alex, good to have you here. You are another European believer? Jeepers, marry this person or be put on probation? :blink: :wacko: Haven't heard that one before, at least not so blatantly. I do remember LCM yelling one lunchtime and saying "I'm not gonna tell you who to marry!" but then again, at the same time they did engineer situations where one person was eased out of the marriage so that the other spouse would be able (they hoped) to marry someone they thought s/he would be better married to. You know, husband stands up to leadership (especially protecting wife), he gets eased / kicked out, they want to marry her to someone less protective so that she will be prey to those with less Godly intent. I don't know about the salt covenant being unbiblical; most weddings were and are celebrated with a feast (both families eating together) and the food would be salted. Would indicate peace between the families. I can see it would be a burden though in the TWI situation, where if you broke your salt covenant you were spitting in God's face. What a laugh, who caused most of the marriages to break down? I am going now before I get too worked up. Very interesting subject and it would be good to hear from spouses who stayed and (presumably) have since left. Spouseless.

I read what VPW tought about the shoah (holocaust). I want to know what he thought about african american and latin american : was he racist toward them ? He was only against jews ? There was a racial discrimination in TWI ? in the way corps ?

Yep.. or something..

one of my students just "caught" me on Greasespot. "hey, are you with the way?" "uh, no . . are you?" "no, I grew up in it, my parents left" "me too, though my folks are still in" "craig martindale was a pervert" "I hate those mo-fos" "me too!" he he lol

Later on in Roa 79,Wierwillie shouted out that there were fbi agents in the crowd. How did he know or were they even there?We will never know... Given what I have read here,about his theories,He(wierwillie)really did want us seperated out.I really hated it when roa went to "internationale)in 78. More control more micromanaging...........

That Jonestown stuff at AC79 , came out on a night when the power went down, and they couldn't tape the 'regular' class, so they used it as an opportunity to supply the 'information'. I've never thought of it until just now, but I wonder if the power went 'conveniently' out. I recal them making a big deal out of using the situation to give us this 'special' stuff. In light of how Wierwille went ballistic when Joe C#@lter missed a camera cue, he seemed to not be too concerned about a major power outage.

Tragic in one way but probably heaven-sent from her perspective. I imagine meeting you might have felt like many of us finding a home here with the other misfit ex-wayfers. It's pretty cool that you reached out to her. You could have just let her go. Not everyone stops to help others. JT

Brainfixed, I don't know what injuries (physical or mental) you suffered, but suffer you did. I don't want to sound trite, but you can probably overcome a lot of chronic problems. You are already learning to think better and more clearly (in fact - getting a sound mind, LOL), and that will give health and strength to your whole body. TWI has already damaged your early years and sucked the life out of them. Don't give them the satisfaction of ruining your later years or expecting your life to be foreshortened. Live long and happy, and prove them wrong! TWI insanity IS of the "adversary." So many of their pronouncements are insane. Stay well, be happy

Brainfixed - I am so sorry for what you were put through. Some parents (and nearly all childless people) have this notion that children can somehow be "trained" to do or be anything someone wants them to be. And some parents have a way of doing that, but it never happens through abuse. You are smart enough to have figured that out. What you might have to figure out now is how to turn this indescribable evil into good. I can't tell you how to do that, because everyone has his/her own way. What helped me was to realize that my parents didn't lay awake at night thinking of ways to f**k us up. I had to come to the conclusion that what they did was the best way they knew how to deal with life. Some of us seem to be far more outwardly traumatized by what happens in our lives, while some of us do and feel things not realizing that what we are doing or feeling is a direct result of what happened to us. TWI made use of emotional blackmail to keep people in line. Telling people they'll be greasespots by midnight is emotional blackmail. Holding the "adversary" over your head is emotional blackmail. Mark and avoiding people is emotional blackmail. Pitting children against their parents is emotional blackmail. Susan Forward wrote a very good (and easy to read) book on the subject.

Disobeient children were stoned in the old Testament. Lcm taught it more than once and I heard it through out the nineties.

gee that sucks! I was a (military wow at the time)living with 3 Army guys but not the one I wanted to marry. I understand I can go fight and die for my country but can't marry who I want when I want! Just DUMB!

Brainfihed (((Hugs)))) What a pot of dang they were dishing out... I am so sorry you were subjected to this kind of lying .... that some one made up to intimidate people. We heard the Grease spot thing but what you are talking about is on so much of a smellier level.

Ok---Now picture yourself living in a commune with about 50 other people, half are men, half are women. You can't marry an "unbeliever" and you can't date outside the commune. (There were exceptions made for people who married Corps.) And there was a "no sex" policy for singles. That's a pretty darn funky situation to find yourself in at 25 years old.

Thank you.Yes I am. TWINKY : i was talking about the salt convenant in the celebration of mariage, when man and woman took salt each other. I think this is unbiblical because when the mariage end, way believers are affraid to date someone because they will broke a salt convenant. This is not good : they don't have a convenant after the divorce. And There is no record in the Bible about the salt convenant in weeding ceremony after Actes 2:1 and no record in the New Testament.

Can't remember who, but I seem to recall one of our posters has personal ties to someone involved in the logistics of bringing the bodies home.

I seem to remember the explanation as......Jonestown was a government/military experiment gone awry. And further, the planes flying back to the U.S. were empty...??? Could be wrong on this....as I got sick during AC79 and missed two days of it.

I wonder how many takover theories the sowers were subjected to..

In my state, one guy's wife left with the limb coordinator. Does that count? JT

Rascal, How about when fundy groups tell you: 1) if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are lost and damned for all eternity? (That's a helluva lot more dire situation than being a greasespot by midnight, wouldn't you say?) 2) that you should not be supportive of homosexuals or homosexual rights, such as same sex marriage? (And we all know what Craigger's spewed re: homosexuals, hmmm?) 3) (often) tell you that being a political/cultural liberal is going against God's Laws or some other such claptrap? (Yes Virginia, we all have seen one form or another of this _controlling_ and _abusive_ behavior from a lot of fundies. Try reading Politicks and Tacks or other political boards if you don't believe me.) Or how about when someone decides to leave the church, give up the gospel, or (((shudders))) becomes an atheist? (OMG OMG OMG) :blink: I could show you account after account of those who walked away from God/Christianity, and they are: 1) treated like a pariah by their own families, and even kicked out (talk about being Marked and Avoided, hmmmm? And how is that approach compatible with keeping families together? WTF is up with that? ), 2) even run the risk of losing their jobs (especially at some companies that are 'run on Christian principles'. Yes Virginia, that happens also) I could name a lot of other situations like this, but my main point here is there is a helluva lot more kinds of 'cult-like' behavior and abuse being practiced by fundamentalist, and even more mainstream churches, and many people don't take notice of this. Practices (that I've mentioned here) that if practiced by TWI and other 'cults', would readily be added as evidence of why those groups are 'mind control cults'. Ie., what's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

The full quote is: "Nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they believe is going to hurt them."~ Deborah Layton, member of the People's Temple

Wasn't a lot of folks rebelling against their parents and the culture? They weren't so much joining something as trying to be different/seperate from something else?

FLO was a two year, in-res. program that was the brain child of E.B^rt*n, the first Ohio limb leader. It ran on the TWI year,not the calender year. (ex.: August,1974-August,1976 =FLO3) We (the 50 or so FLO) lived communal style in an off-site apartment complex about a half hour away from limb HQ. The program, itself, was based at the limb HQ in rural Ohio, about an hour and a half drive from Int. HQ.. The property (5 or 6 acres?) had an old "party/banquet house" that we called the BRC. This is where we had our FLO meetings, held classes and ate dinner each night as a group. There was also a farm house that served as home to the limb leader and family. In addition, we worked a rather large "garden" on the back potion of the property. This served to provide the 49 or 50 of us with quite a bit of our fresh food supply. B^rt*n was in charge during FLO1, FLO2 and the first year of FLO3 (1974). There was also a coordinator for the men and a coordinator for the women who were chosen from amongst our ranks. It was E.B. who recruited me with the concept of spending two years of study in the Book of Acts with a view toward returning to our home areas as better prepared leaders. In 1975, the last year of FLO3/first year of FLO4, E.B. went back to Int. HQ and was replaced by H@w!e Y, who was called back to Int. HQ after one year. At the end of that year (all years started in August, right after The Rock)H.Y. was replaced by J!m M!ln3 who was in charge of the last year of FLO4 and both years of FLO5. (FLO4=8/1975-8/1977//FLO5=8/1976-8/1978) After that, I think Pat and Donna S. became limb leaders but I am not certain of that. Things got especially "intense" during the last year of FLO4 and during FLO5. Is that enough information to answer the question? edit: There was a guy who posted here a couple years ago (LNM) who said he was FLO1. He said it was a one year commitment and more like a Way Home, which is an entirely different animal.

Well,I am the opposite,i left,Wife stayed,I listened to the likes of Hope Rich and even e-mailed Oakspear (remember Oak?),Anyways Wife quit going to twi(I suspect they gave her a very hard time). We are closer than ever,have spent alot of time together. If a spouse is still in,sometimes you got to be patient. One question I asked her early on was did you marry me,or twi? Guess you now know the answer to that one.

part#6--- audio missing

To anybody who may have missed it, PBS "The American Experience" (IMHO the best program to ever appear on T.V.) did a program recently titled "Jonestown, The Life and Death of The People's Temple". Though describing an altogether different cult and incidents specific to that one, the parallels to WayWorld thought and actions were staggering. And in that organization as well, conspiracy theories and paranoia ran rampant. I think it should be required viewing for any Wayfer, former - or especially - current ones. "Nobody joins a cult"

I think we may have come frightfully closer to similar outcomes than many people care to admit to themselves.

'old wayfers just fade away' yes,devolop lives,get an education,realize we dont need no stinkin ministry to be a part of something bigger. Since I live in a moderate small town,I do talk to innies. They have been respectful,I have been respectful,no harrassment,i said several years ago,I did not want anything to do wit the tway.

Not in person for many (10+ ) years. No bumper stickers for about as long. I do see some on web sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc. Good to know that the internet is now blessed by WayVille. Anyone know when being online was no longer instant possession? Just curious. Weirdest encounter with an ex-wayfer? A guy at an airport with his kids wearing a really old WOW jacket. I asked if he was with the Way and he said "no." No explanation. "Were you ever a WOW?" "Yep." Man of many words.... Dumb me HAD to ask why he still wore the jacket then. His answer? "Uh, I like the color." JT

Oh, and then there's the Greasespot barbecues we've had the last three years. Lots of ex-Wayfers there! George

they "require" you to change it every year

I haven't seen a Way bumper sticker in almost 20 years. Do they still make them? Do they require their people to put them on their cars? Do they still mainly serve to hold their cars together?

I run into them every once in a while. I work in a grocery store and I see a few from time to time. Current wayfers too. Recently the daughter of an ex-wayfer guy and a current wayfer mom talked to my wife about performing a wedding.

If I run into an ex-wayfer, it's usually deliberate. I have a number of friends who used to be in TWI, but I didn't hang with them then. I don't hang with them now because of past affiliation. I hang with them because I like them.

Once in awhile--but not very often, maybe once every few years--After 20 years out the ones Ive run into seem to be either in the 1.) Gee's we were totally f'ed up-good to see you--glad we got out, what are you doing now? group 2.) I have no friends , I used to know you 25 years ago so let me be clingy and annoying to you now 3.) What are you doing with "The Word" now clan. Im not much on reminiscing, the people who want to relive the "good old days" really make me want to run at full speed as soon as I see an opening

This is more of a WOW story than a Corps story although it involved my corps coordinator on her second year (out on the "field"). At WOW training at the Rock of Ages we were told no drinking for the year and we could not work outside our city. My corps coordinator was one of the greatest believers I have ever met (to this day and this happened over 20 years ago). Also, she hated rules and regulations that didn't make sense and if they didn't make sense to her she would break them and suffer the consequences. Anyway, we had a really hard time finding a house especially since we had three young (under seven) children (none mine) in our family. Also, ten days in, my WOW brother splits. So we finally get our house (no furniture) and we decide to celebrate. My corps coordinator comes back after calling our limb coordinator to let him know we had found a house and moved in. She says, " I told him we were going to celebrate"......but I didn't say how as she with big smile on her face lifts her newly purchased six pack of Bud out of her grocery bag (Note: kids were asleep). I knew right then and there everthing was going to fine....and it was. Many, many people got born again that year. Also, a related story, we were told we could not leave the city for work. We had to stay in the city. So two weeks in, our money is running low because all of us were having a tough time finding employment to work around the kids school schedule. Anyway, I take this job for a day... moving furniture. I show up the next morning and ask the mover what time we will be back....he says 7 PM. I am thinking great...I'm gonna make some money. I get in the truck and we start driving..as we leave town I ask him where we are going....I find I am not only leaving town for the day but leaving the state!!! When I came back home, someone ask where did you move furniture....All I said was "you don't want to know.....but look at all the money I made (wink)!!!

I do remember an event similar to what CC posted. I have been thinking about this since the original post. Maybe I so long held the supression of the event that I have minimized its relevance. I do remember my wife and I exiting the tent and glossing over the occurance as 'The Man Of God has spoken', and left it at that conclusion. Looking back...The real Man of God walked off that stage. Just thots