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The way international is built on victor paul wierwille, not Jesus Christ. Sure, they mention his name at the end of a prayer and they love to talk about his accomplished works, but otherwise they have nothing to do with him. That's anti-Christ btw. In practice they completely side step Jesus Christ and have no fellowship with him. The Bible clearly states otherwise: 1 John 3:1 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” The content of way international books is a hodge podge of sources that tickled the ears of wierwille and gave him a schtik to sell - classes, books, etc. I don't care that his stolen materials quote bible verses and sound spiritual - wierwille's materials are loaded with lies. As for Wierwille, the following versus handle his ilk. 2 Timothy 3:1-7 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

vpw's bait-and-switch was sometimes used right in pfal, but other times it was not. If 100% of all you knew about vpw came straight from pfal tapes/films and the books of that class, you'd be surprised to hear that vpw claimed to have been appointed by God. In pfal, vpw was specific about the holy spirit field being a field to which he had dedicated his life. Period. It was a few years after the filmed pfal class that the 1942 Promise was ever spoken to anyone, whether spoken to the early corps or put in print in "the Way-Living in Love." If you focused exclusively on the class, you might be surprised when someone said that vpw made such a claim. (I know because I was surprised, and I felt uncomfortable about it, for reasons that went right back to what vpw taught about revelation.) But lots of people were taught this- AFTER being taught pfal, and after buying into it. Second, yes, pfal ended with references to the church epistles- in the actual film. When you sat a class, the staff would advertise reading pfal materials for 3 months or more. Why was there no such advertisement in the pfal film? One, there WERE no pfal materials to study way back when the film was made. There were a few pamphlets, and that was it. LATER, we got "Christians Should Be Prosperous" - and all class coordinators were instructed- by vpw- to make sure that was read early in the class. So, I'm sure someone will insist that this was NOT something vpw pushed. I'm sure someone will suggest that- since it wasn't in the filmed class, that vpw had nothing to do with it. So, it's important to remember what he DID say on the subject. Over the years, people complained about his practice of "put aside all reading external to pfal for 3 months" thing. Did he take this moment to correct people, and redirect them to read THE EPISTLES for 3 months and chide them for switching to vpw books for 3 months instead? NO. He did take the time to address complaints. He didn't say "My detractors confuse the Church Epistles with twi materials." He talked about the complaint of 3 months of only twi materials. He DOUBLED DOWN on it. Rather thah say "It's 3 months of the Church Epistles, read your Bible!", he emphasized that people should do it. Then he got cutesy, "I'll make you a bet. If you put aside all newspapers and magazines for 6 months, when you pick them up again, they'll be just as negative as they were 6 months ago. I will add, however, that they may be MORE negative." So, once there WERE pfal books, vpw instituted the practice of having the students told to focus on THOSE for 3 months, even if the films/tapes said to focus on the church epistles. Thirdly, the final segment of pfal had a bait-and-switch built right into it. Even though vpw liked to read Ephesians 6:10 to crowds and make like he didn't want people to follow him, but rather The Lord, in pfal he did a bait-and-switch. "Finally, my brethren, I want you to be strong in the Lord.' Strong in the Lord, not strong in what a theologian might say. Not strong in what a Bible teacher may say. But if that theologian says what the Word says, if that Bible teacher says what the Word says, then you've got to be strong in what they say. " This came at the end of 12 sessions where we are all aware he'd been badmouthing all other teachers and theologians as useless for learning the Word, and putting himself forth as some great one, indeed, as the sole Bible teacher who understood what we needed, who didn't actually plagiarize others, but was the SOLE source of sound teaching. So, after 12 sessions of selling himself as the SOLE Bible teacher saying what the Word says, he said that- if you find a Bible teacher who says what the Word says- then you've got to be strong in what they say. What does all of that say, once stripped of the jargon? "God is telling you to be strong in what vpw is teaching." It's that simple, that's what he was dancing around, INSINUATING, IMPLYING, SUGGESTING, but never having the guts to say directly, leaving that for other people, all so he could say "I never said that" if asked. All of that is as elaborate a set of THEATRICS as I've ever experienced.

To the best of my recollection, I think wierwille said something along the lines of that and then stressed we should read the epistles that were addressed to us. Your use of the word “Filtered” is poignant because it brings to mind how wierwille’s closing instructions were interpreted and applied. I think you nailed it in suggesting the PFAL lens was the filter. I can relate to that in a very real way by one of the first of many incidents where I was corralled into limiting my reading to PFAL material. I was so excited after the first time I took the class that I kept reading and rereading the entire Bible all the way through and would jot down questions – which I would then present to my Twig coordinator. To be fair – most of my questions were over stuff in the Old Testament and the gospels – not sure if his frequent redirecting me to review PFAL stuff was simply following “the teacher’s” instructions in session 12, or that my questions were way outside the scope of the PFAL material. The mental filtering promoted by wierwille was absolutely necessary to affect the cognitive dissonance he wanted his followers to experience. This stuff got me to recall an older article on psychological filters (see below ) – oh, and another interesting tie-in with Skyrider’s initial post about theatrics – there’s a part in the excerpt that gets into attention-grabbing tricks…and it also touches on why we buy something and how we tend to pay attention to info that reinforces our beliefs…which makes me think of the darker angle – being constantly directed to focus on PFAL material to reinforce a certain mindset…anyway here’s the article: Media Impacts - Unintended Consequences: How Media Can Affect Almost Everything – Psychological filters Amidst the grayness of this information, occasional messages stand out. Some break the pattern. They defy expectations. They spark curiosity. We pay more attention to these messages. Something about them screams “different, new, or unique”. Advertisers and advertising agencies spend a huge portion of their time and budgets trying to harness this principle. Messages that break the pattern help gain attention. They also help people remember information longer. However, dissonant messages do not necessarily hold people’s attention, nor do people automatically find them motivating or believable. If your minister came to Sunday services in a clown suit, people would notice. They would talk about it. Whether they found the minister credible would depend on whether the gimmick reinforced his message that week or was simply what advertisers call a “borrowed-attention device.”... …Most of us usually pay attention to information that reinforces our beliefs more than we do to information that challenges them. As a result, any individual has, at best, a partial and imperfect picture of external reality. We also tend to pay more attention to messages that affect us personally than we do to those that do not affect us. When we need a new car, suddenly we see car ads everywhere. We start reading them. We research safety ratings. We actively investigate. Once we have bought a new vehicle, our interest in reading more diminishes. We focus our attention on other things. From: observations: psychological filters End of excerpts

When I was in FellowLaborers, as a group, we focused almost exclusively on Way materials. That's all that was taught in our nightly twigs. The rationale for its exclusivity was that it had been tested and proven to be accurate. However, as individuals, we were supposed to read Ephesians every day. (As if we had time to read ANYTHING) Now, our weekly FL night teaching was hit or miss and could be about anything or nothing or maybe just a scream-fest to highlight our failures. As for the PFAL class, I seem to remember VPW challenging us to put away all secular materials such as magazines , newspapers, etc., and reading nothing but "The Word." (Filtered, of course, through the lens of what we had just learned in PFAL.) I don't recall him limiting that to the Pauline epistles. But, that was over 50 years ago. Who knows what tricks my memory has played on me? Surely, someone, somewhere, has a transcript of session 12. Regarding the original post, I have to agree, it was the theatrical nature of the presentation, not the content of the information, that reeled us in and hooked us. As a new grad, you faced this reality every time you witnessed and failed to elicit a response from the listener. That's why we were urged to get people into the class, rather than try to teach them the more convoluted concepts ourselves. Presentation, not content, was largely responsible for our infatuation with the materials.

I think some folks may have missed a key point in Skyrider’s first post. wierwille’s theatrics in PFAL were a bait-and-switch to rope people into his twisted ideology. Since wierwille’s dramatics were just a gimmick to sell his cult-dogma, it’s possible some folks got sucked in by merely reading the PFAL material even before they took the class – as some have mentioned on Grease Spot. I think wierwille’s exciting performance in the PFAL class may have served as an aperitif - a small Kool-Aid tinged drink taken before the main course of indoctrination to stimulate one's appetite for more. After graduation I was encouraged to help get another class of new students together, so I could sit through it again – this time for free - and I would get even more cult-dogma drilled into my head. double whoopee with a twist As Skyrider and other Grease Spotters have pointed out time and again – wierwille’s pseudo-Christian façade of respectability…credibility…spirituality…authority was not sustainable. And most glaring of all his pretenses was the fact that in his typical teaching topics and in his appalling lifestyle had nothing to do with Christ. In my opinion, seeing the way he treated others makes me wonder if he even believed Christ was in devoted TWI-followers.

Yes I did. In the Corpse. For much more than 3 months. I mean how many times can you dissect the camera analogy in first chapter of blue book? What I learned after dissecting it was that most of the collaterals were thrown together by VP secretary loosely compiled from sermons. Materials there were stolen from contemporaries like Norman Vincent Peale. Other sections were previews of books to come out later, written by the research team. I mostly learned that plagiarism is a team sport. And that you can’t excuse it away any more than sexual impropriety.

I still don’t understand. WHAT is there to discuss? I thought my post was brief and to the point. You said you had time to kill but now you don’t maybe you waste more time saying I-don’t-want-to-derail-the-thread-so-I-won’t-bring-it-up-for-the-umpteenth-time