Steve Lortz

I heard POP the Corps night G33r first read it, and I think it is still relevant to this day. All POP did was raise serious, fundamental questions about our involvement with the Corps and TWI, without giving ANY answers! It took me nearly a decade to reach closure on leaving TWI, and I started out with a LOT of information that many other people still don't have. For years after the reading of POP, people knew that SOMETHING was wrong, but the leaders of TWI were doing their best to sweep it all under the rug. Bring all of it from under the rug. EVERYTHING! EVERY BIT OF IT! There are still people working on obtaining closure from the ordeals they were put through by those remorseless predators. Love, Steve

Thanks for the dialogue, Trust And Obey! You're giving me a workout, and it's good practice for the defense of my thesis I'll have to give when I finish writing it! Back to some basics: What IS spirit? Words have literal meanings, but as they are used in metaphors and similes, they take on figurative meanings as well. The literal meaning of "spirit" (ruach in the Hebrew, pneuma in the Greek) is "air in motion". And that is the earth/water/air/fire/ether element "air"... "in motion". Ruach and pneuma both can be translated as "wind", "breath" or "spirit". Wierwille taught that Adam was originally a three part being, body, soul and spirit, and man's spirit was the part that was created in the image of God. When Adam and Eve sinned, their spirits died, and they went on as body and soul "empties", as TWI came to call non-wafers. But Genesis 2:7 doesn't say that. It says God formed man, NOT his BODY but man himself, from the dust of the ground. When God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, man BECAME a LIVING soul. It doesn't say man acquired a living soul... it says he BECAME one. Adam (and later Eve, too) was a two part being, a soul component made up of dust, animated by a breath component. Breath is respiration,air in motion. All breath is spirit, air in motion, but not all spirit is breath, air moving in and out of a material,mortal soul. What died in the day that they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? The animals God had them kill in order to cover themselves with skins. It was a substitutional sacrifice pointing forward to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. I think freedom/responsibility is the aspect in which God created Adam and Eve in His image, and that has never died. Without quoting a LOT of scripture, the Bible associates identity with the human dust component. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Man's identity is never associated with his respiration. Now, back in the days the Bible was being written, nobody had the electronic monitors we have in hospitals today. They didn't even know what the pulse meant. The most accurate way to tell if a person was alive or not was whether or not they were breathing. If a person had air moving in and out of him, he was alive. If a person didn't have air moving in and out of him, he was dead. So the literal air in motion "spirit" took on the figurative meaning of "life force, as evidenced by the power to move." Moving air moves other things, giving "life" to them. In Genesis 1:2, where the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, it means the life force of God interacted with His creation, moving and imparting life to it. When people die, they are buried in a hole in the ground. That's why "hell" is underground. Avoiding another bunch of quotations, there is no consciousness in death, because the person's mortal, material soul is dead. Not much hope in THAT! Then comes Ezekiel 37 and the valley of the dry bones. God has the son of man speak to the bones, and they come together, flesh comes up on the bones, and the flesh becomes covered with skin, but the Israel does not yet live. God has the son of man prophesy to the wind (ruach = "spirit"), to come into the people, and they lived. "13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves. 14 And shall put my spirit (ruach = "spirit") in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD." Theologians call this the promise of the "eschatological spirit", the spirit of the last times. THIS is the promise of the Father referred to in Acts chapter 2. God was able to raise Jesus from the dead by giving him this spirit, the spirit of resurrection life. He could do that because Jesus was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Then on the day of Pentecost, Jesus was able to pour out "the gift of the Holy Spirit" which was promised in Joel 2, unto all those who "call upon" his name. I think the phrase "the gift of the Holy Spirit" in Acts 2 means "the Holy Spirit, of which the gift is a part" because the Spirit poured out that day was not the whole Spirit of resurrection life. That will be poured out when Jesus returns. The dead will be raised, and those who are still alive will be changed. I capitalize "Holy Spirit" because it is fully God, the life force of God as evidenced by the power to move, combined with the fully human personality of Christ Jesus. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the one place where "Jesus is God". Every person who is a Christian has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. According to Paul, that's what makes Christians Christians! Now I hope I haven't gone off on a rant! And if you can poke holes in what I've said, please feel WELCOME to do so! I need the feedback from people who care! Love, Steve

I wasn't upset by your post, TrustAndObey! In fact, I find it very helpful. I was in the hospital in intensive care for a week last August, and I dropped out of school this semester. I'll be strong enough to go back in January. I've been doing some extracurricular reading in the mean time, especially regarding sanctification because the faith community which founded and supports the school I attend came out of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement of the late 1800s, and one of their distinctive doctrines was that of "entire sanctification", that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a "second work of grace", and when a person receives this second work of grace, that person is incapable of sinning anymore in this lifetime. But it's something nobody ever explains, because they all take it for granted. I recently read Paul & Judaism Revisited: A Study of Divine and Human Agency in Salvation by Preston M. Sprinkle, and it helped me understand a lot of things. Part of what I've been doing here is figuring out how to articulate some of the things I've learned (since I ain't writin' any papers this semester!) Sprinkle compares the things Paul wrote with the things that were written in the Qumran community (the Dead Sea Scrolls). First, Sprinkle defined "salvation" as "the restoration God brings to those in the covenant community." First century Jews in general believed they were in the covenant community as a matter of birth. The Qumran community regarded itself as the believing remnant of Israel, and to become a member of the community, you had to clean up your act first, by doing the works of the law. Paul said a person could become a member of the covenant community by grace through faith in the resurrection and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Nobody could become a member of the New Covenant community by works of the law, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed us from the law of sin and death. It is by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit that a person becomes a Christian. That doesn't mean a person has to set through session 12 of PFAL or anything at all like that. It means a person simply gets humble in their own heart before the Lord, and when a person does that, the Lord gives them the Spirit of the New Covenant, which enables that particular person to hear straight from God, and do the specific things Jesus wants that particular person to do. After a person becomes a Christian, that person becomes responsible to do the things the Spirit leads them to do, and those things are not grievous. And Jesus is the ONLY person who can judge how well a member of his body discharges their responsibility. There are NO cookie-cutter Christians. So stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free! That's what sanctification under the direction of the Holy Spirit is! Love, Steve

I agree with the things you say about sanctification, Trust And Obey. You hit the nail on the head, but what Wierwille taught about the quote from Joel 2 in PFAL was wrong. Wierwille taught that Peter meant "This is LIKE that which was spoken by the prophet Joel", but that's not what the Word of God says. Peter said "This IS THAT which was spoken by the prophet Joel." That's exactly what Peter meant, and Peter was right. The outpouring of Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was the outpouring prophesied by Joel, and by Ezekiel in 36:27 of his book. The outpouring of Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is the enablement of the New Covenant. The dispensationalism Wierwille taught is baloney, pure and simple. The Church, the body of Christ, is composed of the believing remnant of Israel, under the New Covenant promised to Israel in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31, with believing gentiles grafted in on the same basis as believing Jews, by grace through faith in the resurrection and Lordship of Jesus Christ. What does the phrase "the promise of the Father" mean? Where was the promise made? It was made in the "Old Testament"! Love, Steve

When I was involved with TWI, I did not pay attention to what other Christians were teaching, because I thought EVERYTHING they taught was contaminated by the "errors" they taught. When I realized that I, as a follower of TWI, had been teaching error also, I considered that those errors had NOT contaminated the truth that I had been teaching, too. And the same thing was true of everybody else. After that, I paid more attention to the parable of the wheat and the tares (weeds that can't be distinguished from wheat until harvest time) in Matthew chapter 13. There are wheat and there are weeds in EVERY faith community (as they like to call them in theological circles). There were wheat and there were weeds in TWI. Unfortunately, the weeds were in the upper hierarchy. There are wheat and there are weeds in EVERY religious organization! Every church teaches a degree of truth and a degree of error. The Lord sets people in his body where it suits him! The fact that the TV minister you reference thinks the Lord has revealed something to him that He hasn't revealed to anybody else, and something as important as sanctification, raises a red flag in my mind. The fact that the minister and his followers think that the Lord Jesus Christ, who went onto the cross to save us, is going to condemn people to Hell because they don't fall in line behind this particular minister, is just too big of a red flag for me. When people condemn other people to Hell, they are usurping the authority of the Lord. Jesus Christ is the ONLY ONE who can judge who is and who is not worthy of salvation! I'd like to know the title of the particular version of the Bible they are trying to sell, if you'd care to post it. Thanks! Love, Steve

Working on my master's, I've had a few courses on church history the past few years. Who ever told you that PFAL was immaterial in Christian history was very nearly 100% correct. PFAL effected a minuscule number of us, maybe about 100,000 or so, but it wore off fairly quickly. I don't think there were ever more than about 30,000 active at any one time. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity were the fastest growing component of the Church in the twentieth century... vastly larger than TWI. Love, Steve

I've been considering this... As far as I can see, "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved", which means whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit at that time, which guarantees that person will be raised from the dead or changed when Jesus Christ returns. What does it mean to "call upon the name of the Lord"? I think every person is confronted with an opportunity to decide to be arrogant or humble. My decision to be humble enabled the Lord to work his will in me. I think THAT is when I "called on the name of the Lord". I think it is a personal as well as a communal experience, and I think the personal experience is VERY unique to each individual. The communal aspect is baptism. The process of sanctification, being guided by the Holy Spirit, can be accomplished only after a person has received the gift of the Holy Spirit (which is NOT necessarily the same thing as SIT in public). So, yes, the only way to progress in sanctification is through Jesus Christ, but I am suspicious of the pastor's claim that he is the only person who knows what the truth is, and that his way is the only one. I don't believe true Christians walking by the Spirit dismiss other Christians the way Wierwille did, or the way this pastor seems to be doing. Love, Steve

I agree with you, twinky, 100%! Love, Steve

It seems to me that God put his hand over my eyes when I first got involved with TWI, and then, when I got to the time and place he wanted me to be, he took his hand off. I didn't "bolt", but I disassociated myself immediately. And took as many other people with me as I could. Love, Steve

"1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. "2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. "3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: "4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:1-4 Does Romans 8 really say we are righteous and sanctified without qualification, teachmevp? Was Wierwille righteous and sanctified when he was drugging and raping his young followers? That IS what Wierwille believed and taught, but that's not what Romans says. Salvation is the restoration God brings to those in the covenant community. First century Judaism held that people needed to change their works BEFORE they could be admitted to the covenant community. Paul differed in saying that God would justify the ungodly on the basis of grace through faith, permitting them to change their fleshly works AFTER entering the covenant community. This is necessary because people CANNOT change from fleshly to spiritual works before they've received the Spirit. But once a person has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, that person becomes RESPONSIBLE to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. If people want to be declared righteous at the bema, they need to change their works from fleshly to spiritual. We are RESPONSIBLE now, newlife, and by God's mercy and grace through our Lord Jesus Christ, we are able to respond properly if we decide to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Don't let anybody talk you out of your responsibility, because your responsibility is also your liberty. Love, Steve

I don't know who you're talking about, but I've been studying sanctification lately. Wesley got concerned about sanctification because he thought "real" Christians should eliminate as much sin as possible from their lives, and it was obvious to him that people didn't automatically stop sinning just because they became Christians. So he posited two "works of grace", the first being "regeneration" when a person becomes a Christian, and the second being "sanctification" when a Christian eliminates sin from his or her behavior. Wesley thought that a person COULD receive "entire sanctification", where the Holy Spirit removed all sin at one time, but that sanctification is almost always a gradual lidfe-long process. During the late-1800s, the Wesleyan Holiness Movement started emphasizing entire sanctification, and they associated it with receiving the Holy Spirit. In order to receive entire sanctification, a person would have to "consecrate" himself (it was mostly guys, the women knew better) and he would become without sin here in this lifetime. Sanctification was magnified as a "second work of grace". William Seymour, the pastor who led the Azuza Street Revival came out of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement, and Pentecostal theologians came to regard "baptism with the Holy Spirit" as a "third work of grace" to empower Christians for service. Personally speaking, I think sanctification is the process of eliminating sinful thinking and behavior from a Christian's life. I think it's a gradual process directed for each specific person by the Holy Spirit working in that person. "It is God that works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." I think it is done by the renewing of the mind, as set forth in Romans 12:2. The Bible promises complete sanctification, but I don't think that will come to pass until Jesus appears and we are all either raised from the dead or changed. I hope this helps some. If you've got more specific questions, newlife, I'd be glad to see what I can dig up. I'm curious about the TV minister you refer to in your post. Love, Steve

I don't understand your logic, zbrick. You caricature things that other people say, and then get pi$$ed off at your caricature, without ever considering what the people have actually said. What is up with that? Love, Steve

Wierwille was, pretty much, a cloud without rain. Love, Steve

There is nothing more than tradition to say that "Luke-Acts" was written by "Luke", the physician mentioned in Acts and Paul's letters, but scholarship generally agrees that "Luke-Acts" was written by a single author from a variety of sources, both written and oral, as indicated in the prologues of both books. And they were written in Greek, even though some passages may have been translated from Hebrew or Aramaic sources. Here is an example of the kinds of discussions that go on: My link I personally think that Luke-Acts was written by Luke as the legal brief to be presented to the magistrate Nero appointed to hear Paul's case in Rome. As a result of persecution against Greek-speaking Christians after the death of Stephen, the Word "moved out" from Jerusalem to Antioch and points beyond. These Greek-speaking Christians used the Septuagint, and the Greek forms impressed themselves deeply into the Christian tradition. The Septuagint also had a secure place in Second Temple Judaism. There were many Jews of the diaspora who no long spoke Hebrew or Aramaic. That's why the Septuagint was made in the first place. Love, Steve

skyrider and waysider... you have nailed it! Love, Steve

I had a great advancement in my thesis project this week! I received permission to use the Septuagint for Old Testament studies that lay foundational work for my interpretations of Acts 2, partially on the grounds that Luke ALSO used the Septuagint for his references to the Old Testament! Here is my interpretation of Acts 2:1, "And while the day of Pentecost was being completely fulfilled, they were all together for the same." More as work progresses! Love, Steve

Like I said, I think I'm fairly sympathetic to your point of view, but I don't understand your seemingly unwarranted antagonism to the people who post here. Considering the subject of "toxic doctrine", do you have any idea what you are really talking about? The Christological disagreements of the early Church were settled by the time of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The result was what is popularly called the doctrine of the Trinity, but it's not what people think it is. It is that Jesus Christ has two natures, he is both fully human and fully divine. Do we understand that now the same way they understood it 1,562 years ago? No, we certainly do not! I'm inclined to believe the dyophysite feature of the trinity resides in the gift of the Holy Spirit rather than in the man Christ Jesus. Do you think the Lord Jesus Christ is the active head of his body? If so, then Jesus could have negated the doctrine of the Trinity ANY TIME HE WANTED TO during the last 15 hundred and sixty-two years. But he hasn't. Jesus can work far better with people who accept some form of trinitarian belief than he can with people who teach that he is absent, and then usurp his position in the minds of their followers, the way Wierwille did. And what do you mean about "eternity" in Heaven or Hell? Romans 10:9&10 don't say ANYTHING about Heaven or Hell OR eternity. It says that people will be "saved", period. If you want to know what Paul meant by that, you have to go to Luke 18:18-30. "Eternal salvation", the phrase in Hebrews 5:9 is soterias aioniou in the Greek, which means "salvation belonging to the age" in reference to "the age to come" rather than belonging to what Paul calls "this present evil age" in Galatians 1:4. To receive "eternal life" means to receive the Spirit of resurrection life in the age to come", and the gift of the Holy Spirit received by Christians since the day of Pentecost is the earnest that we will receive the Spirit of resurrection life when Jesus returns. I've been doing my homework, zbrick, as well as exposing the toxic doctrine propagated by Wierwille and his progeny. So, I don't understand, why do you have such a burr under your tail? Love, Steve

In some ways, I'm fairly sympathetic to your point of view, zbrick. But you aren't doing yourself any favors by attacking WordWolf in what seems like a mindless antagonism. There are lots of people who disagree with each other here, but the experienced hands have learned how to do it respectfully, without taking personal cheap shots at each other. Raf and I disagree about our conclusions sometimes, but I have utmost respect for his judgment, and recognize that we are coming from different basic assumptions. Speaking about never stop speaking God's Word, where does all your eternal salvation business come from? The phrase only occurs once in the Bible, in Hebrews 9:5, a section of scripture that Wierwille said is not addressed to the Church in "this wonderful age of grace". The verse doesn't say that eternal salvation is given to everyone on the basis of faith. It says eternal salvation is given to those who OBEY Jesus Christ. So what about Wierwille's eternal salvation? Did Wierwille jeopardize his by drugging and raping innocent sisters in Christ? Are those who still collude with Wierwille jeopardizing their eternal salvation also? It ain't as simple as Wierwille or his progeny would have it! Again, I say, I'm fairly sympathetic to your point of view! Love, Steve

"Don't stop, never stop, don't stop speaking God's Word, don't stop speaking!" I loved that song! It rings in my head and heart even as I type! The only problem is, it was never God's Word that we were speaking. We were speaking Wierwille's words. I remember inviting Jehovah's Witnesses into our house and trying to enlighten them about "the Mystery". It wasn't until later, after leaving TWI AND CES, and studying things for myself that I realized Wierwille's "Mystery" was a plagiarized hoax. I remember more than one stretch lasting more than 3 hours going toe to toe, verse to verse with trinitarians, without even thinking about the fact that Jesus is still alive, still head of his body and has allowed the doctrine of the trinity to stand for a good 1500 years or so, when he could have quashed it any time he wanted to. The "Word" we spoke was of Wierwille's "absent Christ". There were many things about TWI that I loved. Probably the greatest for me was the blue banner I had hanging on the wall in the living room of my home that read "The Word of God is The Will of God". But when I realized I had been unwittingly serving an organization so corrupt that its leaders knowingly countenanced the serial drugging and raping of young women, with NO compunction or remorse, I decided that I would no longer serve that organization in ANY way, and that I should spend at least as much commitment exposing the truth about the poisonous organization as I had spent promoting it. The Way International was, and STILL IS, a totalitarian organization. It requires a total and CONTINUING commitment from its promoters. It required a total and continuing commitment from ME. A commitment I believed I could make to my Lord Jesus Christ ONLY. It seems to me that the only proper response I can make is to a TOTAL and CONTINUING exposure of The Way International's corruption as long as that organization exists. Love, Steve P.S. - And I agree with krys about skyrider!

I enjoy teaching. I have for all my post high school life. I taught some life drawing courses as an "undergrad assistant" my first few years in college, and I was a ship's qualification Petty Officer (specializing in the anchor system), and an Engineering Department qualification Petty Officer (specializing in the gland seal and exhaust system) while I was in the Navy, years before I came to TWI. The Navy's where I learned how to give a lecture. I worked in the adventure game industry, where I wrote games and demonstrated them at conventions. Twig teaching seemed to come naturally, once I was a grad of PFAL. After I left TWI in 1987, I spent the years from 2003 to 2008 teaching humane letters to 7th graders at a small Christian interdenominational academy. I am currently working on a master's degree, nominally to acquire secular accreditation to teach. Do I have "the gift ministry" of a teacher? I dunno! Does it matter? Again, I dunno. I'm just doing what I like to do. I remember one time when I was preparing one of my first twig teachings, and I saw a verse and thought "I could really punch up my teaching if I tweaked this verse to make it say 'such-an-such'" and I even toyed with how I would present it that way. But I wrestled with the notion that if I did so, I would be handling the Word of God deceitfully. I tried not to do do that myself. It wasn't until after leaving CES in 1996, nearly ten years after leaving TWI, and already beginning to become familiar with WayDale, that I realized just how deceitfully Wierwille had handled the Word of God. Wiewille's deception could not have been accidental. He wasn't "The Teacher", he was "The Fraud". Love, Steve

There was also some misbegotten baloney about the school of the prophets from the OT. Love, Steve

The other day, I was thinking about John 4:24, where it says "God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." The reason I was thinking about that verse was because I wanted to compare it with II Corinthians 3:17, "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." Primarily because I am coming to the opinion that the dual nature (dyophysite) of the trinity exists in the gift of the Holy Spirit rather than in the man Christ Jesus. I think John was referring to speaking in tongues when he wrote about worshiping God by means of spirit and truth, but I think Pentecostals are wrong when they interpret it to mean that tongues is the only way to pray. In the Greek, the word translated "must" in King James is the word dei (pronounced "day"). While its primary meaning is "it is necessary", it also conveys the meaning "one ought to". While God has provided us a means to worship Him by way of Spirit, in tongues, and people who understand that ought to do it, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, and God is more than willing to accept peoples' prayers in whatever way they understand to pray, out of a genuine heart. Love, Steve

You are right about that, Twinky! The Biblical scapegoat was something God provided so His people would have a legitimate way to deal with their guilt. TWI scapegoating (and political) are lies people use to avoid their own responsibility. Love, Steve

The scapegoating follows from the inability to recognize the errors you've committed. I didn't see this as directly in TWI as I did among the leaders of CES after the Momentus debacle. They COULDN'T allow themselves to recognize the true source of the damage they caused, so they rationalized every kind of misconstruction possible to blame the victims rather than their involvement with Momentus. I know this must have happened big-time in TWI, but I wasn't close enough to the big shots to see it there. Love, Steve

"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes..." Proverbs 12:15a "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes..." Proverbs 16:2a "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes..." Proverbs 21:2a If you think, over and over again, that something is okay, your heart will come to believe that it IS okay. That's why Proverbs 4:23 says to keep our hearts with all diligence, because out of them are the farthermost limits to the boundaries of our lives. That's why Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things. If you tell your heart over and over that it's okay for YOU to bend the rules, to shirk your duty, to be disobedient, to plagiarize others and pretend YOU are an apostle, to require people to send YOU their tithes and offerings for your opulence, to show a grandfatherly face on the main stage at the ROA, and then melt innocent peoples'faces behind the scenes... your heart will tell you that those things are perfectly okay! If you've told your heart over and over again that God's grace makes you clean, even as you drug and rape your followers, then your heart will reassure you that what you are doing is perfectly clean. Werewilles' attitude was one of arrogance, he knew better than God did. I have neither seen nor heard of any evidence that he became humble before his death. His attitude of heart was the reason he could not fathom anything he had done wrong. In his own opinion, he HADN'T done anything wrong! Love, Steve