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Thanks for your words Raf. Im a bit emotional this morning after hearing the news and (for once...lol) really couldn't string the words together in an apporpriate manner to express what you said. I really liked him on a personal level but I just couln't follow him into another ministry when asked. I wish I could have done more for him on a personal level but stubbornness is a key word here. I respected him and my heart goes out to his loved ones.

A. A complicated man with a complicated legacy. In many ways, the embodiment of my post-TWI determination not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. He truly believed, as many of us once did, that we were privileged with something extraordinary but imperfect, and he dedicated his life to improving it. Along the way he embraced and promoted some indefensible stuff, and he defended it with a stubborn passion that would be admirable in the service of a more worthy cause. When he met me, I felt broken. He did his best to heal my heart, to restore the sense of spiritual family I lost at a time of personal crisis. He refused to judge me or condemn me. I admire his dedication. As it gave way to stubbornness... let his legacy be a warning.

We didn't see eye to eye. I wish his family well. I did like his sense of humor. And he led the charge against the way. Opened the eyes of many.

Yeah, this. Just how in the heck this became a platform to push masking and vaccines is beyond me - should we blame John Lynn for being dead without a vaccine or mask? This sort of stuff makes me not even wanna post here. And I mean that with all love and respect for those who chose this thread to push those agendas - not cool.

That was my thought too... but I figured this is a time for eulogy, I chose not to say it out loud.

Rocky thanks for that You Tube ! My wife recently read her book and shared a lot of scary stuff about her experience...Tonto and I will make some time to catch that interview - and I'd better get my a$$ in gear and catch up on my reading list so I can read her book too.

Thanks skyrider. As I peruse different stories, read Leaving the Way and Undertow, I feel very lucky that my involvement was comparatively superficial before I got out. I had just returned from my WOW year and was heading to the Way Corps myself. I had been involved in twi, in a significant way, for about 3 and a half years at that point, and after reading various accounts, it seems that the real abuse (all varieties) and oppression occurred to folks in the Corps and at HQ--those of us out in the world just went to our day jobs, and twig and witnessed, blissfully unaware of the hardships and problems at HQ--and of course we would not have known about the research discrepancies by the research department since that was covered up. Coming in from WOW to the ROA 1982, I was chosen by my branch leader to go on stage during an evening meeting in the big top with two other WOWs to do an interpretation or prophecy, depending on what VPW requested--like we would do at a twig meeting--but in front of all those people. After the meeting, I was approached by my prior Limb leader and other Corps members about how exciting it was to be chosen to do this, based on my loyalty, yada yada. Three days later, I was in the deprogramming, and left twi before joining the Corps, which I was scheduled to start the following month. I now feel like I dodged a bullet, and while the whole experience was very difficult for me in its own way, it really paled in comparison to some of the stories I have been reading about. I am grateful for the deprogramming, as I am not sure I would have left on my own, but who knows, seems like that is right around the time VPW stepped down and things really started hitting the fan--perhaps I would have joined the many who left after seeing all of the problems. At any rate, thank you again for sharing your story.

jrglade.....thanks for your kind words. The answer to your question is "no"......the information that I gained from this deprogramming experience did not have any bearing on my decision to exit twi. In reality, it was the accumulative effect of all those red flags during my corps training, years on staff at headquarters AND the insanity of following martindale's directives when all the corps grads were mandated to be full-time employees/slaves. Yes, I'd been questioning things as early as 1978 during my corps training. One of the biggies for me was how wierwille treated elder corps grads who were leaving twi. He publicly castigated and berated them for leaving him/twi....calling them cop-outs. It was very disturbing to me.....something that I later came to more fully understand as untoward secrecy [link]. At several junctures throughout my twi tenure, I was ready to "jump ship." But like so many things in life, each year brought a mixed bag of blessings and challenges. My wife was deeply invested into twi and did not seem to question the myriad of inconsistencies (hypocrisies) that floated under the radar at hq. We were busy beavers doing all we could to serve in our work assignments and beyond. Neither one of us had any inkling that there was sexual predation at the highest levels of twi. Had we stayed on hq-staff for a few more years, it might have hastened our departure from twi. But when we were assigned to three years in Canada, the fresh air of life filled our souls once again. Without the suffocating mandates of "central command"........our strength to give and serve was renewed. Holding out hope against hope.....I, for the longest time, thought that twi would "Move Beyond Wierwille." Where were the gift ministries (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers) that would keep us in alignment with God? Surely, we'd hold fast to our liberty in Christ Jesus and not succumb to legalism and man-made doctrines, wouldn't we? Nope. Wierwille, martindale, geer, rivenbark........power was wielded from the top-down. And, twi became worse than a religion. Twi became a cult. And......still is.

I love the Shining reference! Funny!!! (instead of saying Redrum try saying Drambuie backwards ) I don’t recall that though - we were Family Corps 11… however my wife Tonto was assigned to grounds for her last corps assignment work block; among other tasks they also mowed; I asked her about the maze of hedges and she said there wasn’t a maze but down by “the nuns’ wading pool” ( that’s what they called it) the pool was surrounded by tall shrubs.

Of course, I've heard that too. I tend to think that some of us who grew up in various cultures and subcultures that were intolerant to homosexual individuals may not be closet gays themselves... but those of us who did live through macho cultures and religious cultures like twi have had the opportunity to grow out of that intolerance. I might be reasonable to figure that those who have left those intolerant cultures but remain intolerant themselves MIGHT have some of those tendencies. Some time in the 1990s, I started recognizing the humanity in persons who were attracted to persons of the same sex. Now I have plenty of gay friends.