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My study of this topic led me to believe that the New Testament strongly encourages generous giving without attaching a percentage to what qualifies as generous. There is no "at least." Your giving should be a reflection of your faith, your understanding of the Word, the extent to which you preach the word (in word or deed), your diligence in seeking the things of God, and your agape love. Ten percent was never a standard of giving for the church.

Yes. It's also a form of gaslighting. It's a control tactic designed to cause self doubt, because everyone is slightly wrong all the time, requiring reproof and correction. One must be "taught" how (H-O-W) scripture interprets itself rightly, otherwise it's man-made private opinion. Don't do it.... Dooon't do it!

Yep. When we say scripture we mean a written communication. In this thread we're refering to a book. Remember when everyone wore masks? You couldn't see smiles or scowls. It was harder to read people. Some folks are better than others at reading eyes for emotional cues. Those face to face interactions were missed, I felt. When stories are written, that's not a face to face interaction. But ongoing experience might change how you interpret a written story. I have changed my views on some stories over long periods of time, because I had changed. VPW's idea that scripture interprets itself highlights the static nature of his being. Scripture was supposed to be understood immediately and never change. That's ridiculous. I doubt he as a person changed much at all over his entire life.

The Old Switcheroo In PFAL wierwille said: you tell me what you think of Jesus Christ, and I’ll tell you how far you’re going to go spiritually. How cults work: you tell me what you think of wierwille, and I’ll tell you how far you’re going to go in The Way International.

It seems there's no reason at all to believe the India trip experiences. It's too conveniently inconvenient to verify. After that segment in PFAL, one of the sycophants at my "class" told a story about the "healed" Hindi's daughter being present at an advanced class or something at headquarters. That same flying monkey rushed to show me a photo of the 18th century French cemetery after the 4 crucified segment, as if that was evidence of anything at all. You can't believe your way to Truth. Belief is not required to find out what is true. Only a lie requires belief.

I'd give that claim a LOT more credence if it had a matching track record. If there were no Actual Errors for an Actual Errors list, I'd say that was remarkable, to say the least. pfal- and all of vpw's teachings- were visibly flawed- visible unless one refuses to consider the possibility they were flawed. For most people, that wouldn't really be a problem. Anyone teaching can mess up (although this particular field calls for harder work at quality control than some.) It's only when someone goes around saying God Almighty was personally involved with it, so it has no errors, THAT is when the errors REALLY become an issue.

In making up this story from whole cloth, what did vpw accomplish? A) He made Jesus Christ sound more like a maverick. Since vpw fancied himself a maverick (go over his own accounts of how he handled his first pastorate if you need proof), he tried to make JC sound more like himself. B) He made The Establishment sound WRONG. Again, putting Religious Authorities on one side, and himself and Right on the other side. C) He made it sound like all other Christian teachers were WRONG- and you could only trust HIM to get it right. All of that was part of vpw's campaign to carve out his own little empire among the young Christians. From the beginning, he'd preferred older Christians with money, but he wasn't able to impress them, he was able to fool the young and naive. So, he slowly tried to assemble the parts of a machine that would allow him to fleece a flock of young Christians. When his machine was ready, he still couldn't do it- until he heard about the Christian hippies of the House of Acts. He arrived there and did his full act- in between things like asking what orgies were like and saying God was ok with orgies- and manage to impress a handful of genuine Christians who were naive, and used them as his recruiting arm all through the 1970s.

It was worse than that. We worked secular jobs that we couldn't focus on to earn money to pay for rent for a large enough home to hold church meetings in. Then on top of that we sent in tithes and offerings from those earnings. All so we could have the privilege to work a fulltime non paid job doing all the leg work so jackasses in high towers can act important and make policy. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why 95% of their leadership training graduates have fled for more rational endeavors.