Leaderboard

I feel the same way – and there’s arguably a multifold rationale to my thought process: 1. wierwille wrongly taught each believer can operate all nine of the manifestations but that does not jive with I Corinthians 12:11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. NKJV 2. Due to the lack of documented evidence - besides the meager anecdotal evidence offered up by some – I lean toward a cessationism theology (which is the view that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, such as healing, tongues, and prophetic revelation, pertained to the apostolic era only, served a purpose that was unique to establishing the early church, and passed away before the canon of Scripture was closed (comp. 1 Cor. 13:8-12 with Heb. 2:3-4) …Although I am not one to assume I can squeeze God into a tight-fitting theological box…so I think these things can still happen – but in light of my #1 reason – it would be as the Spirit distributes them individually…and I should add speaking just from my own experiences I haven’t witnessed anything that would fall into the biblical definition of genuine manifestations during my 12 years of involvement with The Way International. 3. Nowhere in Scripture are there passages that suggest the need for “excellor sessions” for the utterance manifestations. “Excellor sessions” seem more likely an attempt to train people to become proficient at mimicking an “ecstatic language” – something that has been noted in various religions for a long time. It is interesting to note that in I Corinthians 14 in certain passages Paul's usage of “tongue” in the singular...several commentaries have observed that being in the singular form it’s probably referring to the gibberish of pagan ecstatic speech – since by any acceptable linguistic definition there would not be a variety of unintelligible meaningless languages. Gibberish is gibberish. 4. And furthermore, since Paul observes the obvious purpose of every language is to communicate (I Corinthians 14: 10,11) and edify some commentaries suggest Paul continues to use the singular “tongue” to speak sarcastically in verses 14 – 17 to illustrate the foolishness and pointlessness of speaking in gibberish - the speaker himself or herself could not understand it. What benefit is there to pray to God or to praise Him without understanding what is said? No one could say “amen” to such nonsense. In verse 18 of I Cor. 14, Paul returns to using the plural “tongues” to indicate the genuine gift… 5. To put the dubious practice taught in PFAL and reinforced by “excellor sessions” in modern terms it seems more like a learned behavior to me. But that’s just my opinion.

The worship manifestations were the ultimate "how" of how TWI "brainwashed" us all. Once they were able to convince every last one of us that we weren't faking tongues (we were, every time), they got to work convincing us we weren't faking interpretation and prophecy. The group cohesion that was accomplished by this shared self-deception was worth its weight in bullsh!t. Whenever someone new was initiated, the entire church came to reinforce him. That's exactly like the first time I did it! No, no, no, you're not faking. It can't be counterfeited, remember? Now on to interpretation. Here's how to fake it manifest it. We don't fake it of course. People who fake it say things like "muck and mire." If you find yourself saying "muck and mire," you're faking it. If you call God "Heavenly God," you're faking it. But if you sound like someone ran inspiration catchphrases through a Psalm-bot generator on Twitter, that's not faking it. Got it? Good. Now don't fake it! If you stumble, don't worry. It's because you've got stage fright. It's totally not because you're faking it and this practice is no more inspired of God than the average burp. Wow, you sound exactly like the tape we just played to plant sample messages for you to emulate as you learn to fake it I did when I first interpreted. Well done! God is working in you just like He worked in everyone else in this room who totally didn't fake it like you just did because you didn't because none of us are faking it and if you shout that the emperor is naked we will ostracize you as a devil spirit possessed lying liarface and you'll be the only one to admit faking it because the rest of us totally are not. Prophecy time! Now this is important. It's going to sound just like interpretation because it's faked in the exact same way the Bible says they produce the same exhortations, edifications and comforts. So what you're going to do is make sh!t up rely on God to provide the words. Unless the words are muck and mire. God hates muck and mire. YOU DID IT! ISN'T GOD WONDERFUL! Man, nothing blesses me more than knowing that the power that created the rings of Saturn and the diamond rains of Jupiter took the time to bless us with a message specifically for the people in this room, a message of such generic banality it sounds like it came from a random Biblical baby food of the day calendar. Hang on, now, hang on. See, something amazing just happened. See, I just joined an offshoot, and they think interpretation is going to sound different than prophecy, because interpretation should be a perfect prayer and praise to God and stuff like that, so, without faking it now, let's all adjust our interpretations to provide messages that are not the same as the interpretations we've been producing all along. Holy sh!t that worked? I mean Hallelujah! Just like the Word says, interpretations and prophecies are different after all! By the way, I know we said prophecies should be generic banalities, but did you know that they can be personal, too? Yup! See, the Bible says prophesy should leave the hearers amazed at the precision. Banalities don't do that, but personal prophecies do. How about that! You're producing personal prophecies just like the suggestion I planted in your head the Word says! Once you have hundreds and hundreds of people backing each other's bullsh!t, it becomes an act of shame to admit you knew it was BS all along. You can't buy that kind of loyalty. "You can say what you want about TWI, but they're the only ones who teach the accuracy of speaking in tongues." Yeah, sure they do. Sure they do.