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So first of all I do not automatically accept all the Wierwillisms bound up in your explanation as they don’t make logical sense. John 3:34 talks about in many Bible versions spirit without limit. There are 2 ways to look at it. One is that Holy Spirit is like a cake recipe and God added one cup of flour in the OT but the NT gets 2 cups of flour. With God not being a respecter of persons and me not being brainwashed by Great Pranciple charts there is another apparent interpretation even within Wierwille constraints. Without limit. What was the limit? In the OT it was conditionally based where it could depart from a person. In the NT we are born again of incorruptible seed. So it doesn’t depart. However Jesus refers to those with seared conscience who seemingly no longer see whatever messages upon the heart the Holy Spirit is trying to work there due to a deep thickening of the veins from a high fat Pharisee diet and practice. Then we get into the real meat of the relationship with Christ and that draws a distinction. Those who magnify the “law of believing” and those who magnify the Christ relationship. The law of believing folks have to resort to smacking that dashboard Jesus and wondering why it doesn’t talk back. The others have a prayer life actually. So my conclusion comes back to the limits being introduced by the false doctrine of PFAL and limits imposed by cults that explain why their followers never win in life. With an unlimited power source the self restricting budget experts who study collaterals for 20 years and no other free thought will predictably have a limited budget on how much God is able to help them. Breaking free of the false doctrine however places the Christian in a place where the truth can set us free.

As wierwille's twi grew in the 1970's, it made a quantum leap from the 5th corps to the 6th corps. From the numbers I remember, the 5th corps had 75 graduates.... whereas, the 6th corps started in Emporia with near 340 corps. It was a massive leap in numbers and could not be trained at headquarters, so the trustees searched for a location and took out a second mortgage/loan to acquire the Emporia campus. Along with this risk.... twi was ill-equipped to handle the free-rolling, rowdy individuals that were part of this 6th corps influx. Thus, heavy-handed measures came into play. One of my big contentions with corps training was that it was obsessed with obedience. Far too much emphasis was placed on following leadership..... rather than diligence or spiritual vigilance. Why the excessive need for obedience? Control. Corps coordinators made it a dominant priority to rein corps into a herd-mentality. In other words, twi FEARED individual thought (and questioning authority). It is far easier to rule by fear than to rule with love. At one point, they shut the corps program down with an ultimatum..... OBEY or LEAVE. Why couldn't they gather the body of corps together for an open dialogue? Why, even today, does twi give GSC the *silent treatment* after 20+ years? For the same reasons that wierwille highlighted certain verses of scripture in pfal and ignored others. He was working towards a manufactured outcome. Remember his little "story" in pfal when wierwille talks about "The sower and the seed?" And, now Maggie, wierwille asks, "What do you think the good seed represents?" And, Snowball Pete, "What do you think this good seed is?" Wierwille's point.....STOP THINKING about what you think it means and keep reading. Yet, time and again, wierwille injects his thinking into other verses as the class unfolds. It wasn't only the things twi highlighted thru the years that were relevant, but what things THEY DISMISSED and MEMORY-HOLED that spoke volumes. We came to pfal or corps training as individuals..... but graduated as a part of wierwille's "crack troops" or corps grads. Where in the scriptures does Jesus specifically call the men who followed him as "my disciples" in the possessive term? Yet, wierwille brands his corps as cattle.... "my corps." The corps letters were littered with this group-inclusive terminology. The Way International fear us. Why do they fear us? They fear we will have our own thoughts and speak up for ourselves. They fear we will become independent of their branding and no longer be subjugated to their will. They fear we will question their authority over us and relegated to the dustbin of history. They fear we will stand up for ourselves and start banding together. They fear we will become stronger and their influence will become weaker. They fear we will use our power against them as they fall further into irrelevance. They fear that we will awaken others to the deception that they perpetuate. They fear our free-thinking and tossing aside the burdens of fear and guilt. They fear that we are no longer captive to their authority. They fear we are independent. Philosopher Bertrand Russell quote (after devastation of WWI): Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid…Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

This record is a clear example of unlimited power. All discounted by the PFlappy expert as saying God was trying to have a budget discussion with Jesus. Hilarious. I mean exactly the opposite is true. Put yourself in the moment there. There is such unlimited power available that a woman is instantaneously healed by touching Jesus clothes and he felt the power (dunamis) like dynamite energize and cure the lady. Then he turned to make it a teaching moment, not on budgeting by Ramsey but on believing the fulness of the truth to receive the fulness of the power. I think we are bound by “budgeting thinking” more than we realize. And it’s a bondage thing not a freedom thing.

All these decades spent mastering a charlatan’s collaterals, yet not one ounce of effort to learn Greek! ”Virtue” is a peculiar choice by the KJV committee. (It’s not their only weird translation choice.) Literally, every other Bible version is more accurate than the KJV on this verse. Find out for yourself. Learn how to research. Learn how to learn. And the “virtue” didn’t go out of him like gas goes out of a car. He didn’t become depleted of a limited commodity in that moment. He felt it go out from him, he felt the movement and transfer of power, not the depletion of power.

Thank you so much for your post Chockfull. This is exactly what I meant in my post about Mike's reference to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It just makes me wonder if he even realizes the greatness and heart of Jesus in the verses he quotes about him or if he only sees them through his man-made "budgeting" lens. The former speaks of a relational understanding of our Lord and the latter speaks of a purely intellectual-lala-land concept of Jesus in the Bible (imo).

You're correct Rocky, Romans 14:13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. Along with that verse, I think Ephesians 4:14a and 15 are also helpful verses to remember when discussing scripture in an open forum: 14a That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine...15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: Cheers!

I recall LCM saying that in many an after-meeting when I was in residence…but often he dealt with our more immediate concerns – like sleep deprivation – about which he liked to quip something like you’ll get to sleep all you want in heaven… I think that must have been the double secret way corps principle and it even had a retemory verse: …the wicked…cannot rest... Isaiah 57:20 yeah that way corps program was wicked alright... …all praise to him who lets me sleep zzzzZZZZ zzz ZZZzzz

apparently you did you have been doing that a lot lately spider's-web-of-deceit sense is tingling who? what? where?

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even specially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities. From: The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom