Steve Lortz

Speaking about moving beyond Wierwille... Where... or exactly WHAT was Wierwille? By teaching the "absent Christ" and assuming a "mantle" as the man of God of the world for this our day and time, Wierwille substituted himself for Christ in the thinking of his followers. Substituting one's self for Christ is one of the real meanings of "antichrist" in the Bible. And the Bible doesn't say there's just one antichrist. I John 2:18 says there have been many antichrists ever since the first century, and that they were originally Christians. Moving beyond Wierwille means rejecting his substitution of himself for Christ. All the people who have tried to assume Wierwille's position as the man of God are trying to move beyond him as an antichrist. Love, Steve

Notice that I did NOT say that "CG hadn't earned anything." I wrote that he thought he had earned the right to be the President of The Way International. If you study his course material as closely as you read the posts here, then it's easy to see why you can't seem to notice his errors. Love, Steve

This is the quote that triggered johniam's speculations about who earned what and how. It was pretty obvious from The Passing of a Patriarch that Geer placed an extraordinary emphasis on how much he had done for Wierwille and "the Word" and how little appreciation he had received in return. I repeat, "Wierwille's doctrine was rotten to the core... to the core. The offshoots may have tinkered with this teaching or that, but the core is still rotten, and it rots those who follow it." Geer was the most impressive of all the Wierwille imitators I ever saw. Love, Steve

Much of what you say is true, teachmevp, but not all. VP taught us that sin is no longer an issue, because he wanted to take grace as a license to sin. There are still consequences of sin, just as there are still consequences for foolishly trying to violate any of the laws of creation. Building foolishly on the foundation Paul laid will not result in the loss of salvation, (I Corinthians 3:15) but it will result in loss of rewards. There is no "age of grace" in the Bible. In Ephesians, Paul wrote that God had extended grace to the Gentiles under the New Testament, and that God had given him, Paul, the responsibility for proclaiming that grace. Darby distorted this verse to turn the responsibility (dispensation) into an "age." That was bogus, and Wierwille used it to rationalize his own willijngness to sin. Thought you want to know what vp was teaching you. Love, Steve

Geer thought he had earned the right to be the president of the Way International because he had been Wierwille's conscienceless henchman and toady, but the old MOGFART picked Martindale instead. So Geer decided to bide his time and concocted Wierwille's "last will and testament." The Passing of A Patriarch, which Geer read about a year after Wierwille's death had two purposes, first, to menace the Trustees with the threat of exposing the adultery if Geer didn't get his way, and second to try to magnify Geer in everyone else's eyes as large as he was in his own. Wierwille's doctrine was rotten to the core... to the core. The offshoots may have tinkered with this teaching or that, but the core is still rotten, and it rots those who follow it. Love, Steve

It's hard for me to feature anyone who heard Geer read The Passing of A Patriarch regarding him as anything other than an egotistical megalomaniac intent on blackmailing his way into a position of preeminence that he hadn't earned. Love, Steve

Lynn, Schoenheit and Graeser (CES) were willing to move beyond Wierwille (the law of believing, the lordship of Jesus Christ) until they published something themselves (Don't Blame God, articles in Dialogue, monthly tapes). Once it was published under their own names, then the only changes that could be made to the doctrine were to make it even more extreme. Wierwille's "idiom of permission" became a Pillsbury Doughboy God who has no foreknowledge and Who only giggles when anybody punches Him in the stomach. Wierwille's "get to whom addressed correct" became The Administration of the Sacred Secret. They went beyond Wierwille briefly to practice servant-leadership, until they got involved with Momentus. Then they went WAY BEYOND Wierwille in open, shameless abuse of their followers and of each other. Love, Steve

Individual people can move beyond Wierwille... but only by leaving The Way International behind. But that's not scary. By walking away from The Way International, you can begin walking with Jesus Christ by way of the Spirit! Love, Steve

Looking back on Lightbearers from the inside, it seems as if it were deliberately designed to prevent us from actually caring about any of the people we came in contact with, including our partners. Love, Steve

I broke down on Lightbearers and deliberately manipulated a couple to get them to sign up for PFAL. When we got back to Gunnison, the Corps Coordinator consoled all the people who hadn't got anybody signed up, and I thought, "I violated MY integrity for this!?!" That was when I started to plan leaving the in-residence training at the end of the block, and just before Geer read The Passing of a Patriarch. On the topic of how things were marketed in the first century, in Advanced Greek we translated what the prof called a "mystery document." I thought it was a description of Alexander the Great suffering from a seizure disorder, but it turned out to be a description by Lucian of Samosata (a late-first, early-second century AD writer) writing about a travelling-magic-user who delivered prophecies and "healed" people. This magic-user was named Alexander the False Prophet. He would chew the roots of certain plants in order to foam at the mouth while he delivered his prophecies, and he would stand next to a box with a hole in it. After a person paid him for a prophecy, a snake (sock-puppet) would come out of the hole and move its mouth, and Alexander would throw his voice into the puppet snake, and deliver the same kind of prophecy that a person could find today in a Chinese fortune cookie. Technology may be higher today, but we can still be just as stupid! Love, Steve

Thank you, excathedra. You are very gracious! Love, Steve

A few weeks ago we finished reading Matthew Avery Sutton's Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (2007). McPherson was probably the most effective, yet also the most human in every sense of the word, evangelist in the twentieth century, including Billy Graham. Without McPherson's Four Square Gospel, it's hard to see how evangelism could have stayed as lively as it did, though I think Graham would still have had a lot of influence. In a sense, McPherson kept evangelism from dying out with the fundamentalist movement after 1925,and Graham brought it back to a degree of genuine respectability. VP himself has had a minimal effect on Christianity as a whole. His depredations wreaked havoc in the lives of far too many individuals, but from an organizational point of view, The Way International was as evanescent as a breeze. In terms of doctrine, he turned out a mish-mash of plagiarized ideas that could not hold together under anything more than the most sophomoric analysis. There is NO Wierwillian school of thought. Organizationally, TWI probably stopped running on anything other than momentum even before Wierwille retired, and it commenced to disintegrate within a year of his death. What's left is a miserable retirement scam for a few crooks and their blind toadies rotting away in an Ohio cornfield. As cults go, the Mormons, the Moonies and Scientology have had more real influence, and the People's Temple, Jim and Tammy Fay Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, the Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate have been more spectacular. The Raelians seem to be on the rise now. How exceedingly strange it is that TWI's lecturing drones on and on, long after all other signs of life have dried up and blown away! Love, Steve

Good consideration, Ham! It's a cinch nobody today knows exactly what the ancients meant! Love, Steve

I agree 100% Wierwille WAS the culprit. To me it seemed that Geer and Martindale were fighting to demonstrate which one of them could best kiss the dead man's a$$! Love, Steve

What WordWolf says makes sense to me. I'm just finishing my last semester of advanced Greek, and I find very intriguing what I have learned NOT. Prepositions at the basic level can have mathmatic exactness and scientific precision, more so than in English, but at an advanced level, they might NOT (notice the use of subjunctive mood). Tenses have more to do with the type of action (progressive or punctiliar) in Greek, NOT as much with the time of action as in English. Greek infinitives can NOT be translated exactly into English, since Greek is an inflected language and English is not. Greek participles can NOT be translated into English as well as Greek infinitives can. Greek does NOT have gerunds. Nearly all of these grammatical considerations came up in class when we translated John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14 from the Septuagint. ALL of these arguments came up in the early church councils, and those guys understood the Greek nuances much better than we do. They still disagreed, and the only way it was settled was in 381 AD when Theodosius laid down the law. By the way, the ancients had some very different ideas from ours about what it means to exist. Is being itself a thing? Is it solitary? If so, how can "coming into being" come into being? The ancients did not attribute what we think of as "perfection" to God, because they thought that would put limits on Him, and He can't be limited. Love, Steve

Hey, John! Who the heck are you talking to? You quoted a post that I put up, but you do it in such a way that my name does NOT appear! Why? You quote Luke 8:38. Are you meaning to imply that you are a fox, being crafty and clever to have a hole to hide in? Howzabout Romans 12:7 or II Corinthians 8:21, providing things honest in the sight of all men? Love, Steve

I remember the oral examination when I qualified in submarines and earned my dolphins. One of the things I was required to do was to explain how I would accomplish the boat's mission if various other people in the crew were dead or disabled. I'm sure you remember that as a part of leadership training in the submarine service, Galen. It was NEVER part of leadership training in the Way Corps. If there was a casualty (fire, flooding, etc., small as well as large) aboard a submarine, one of the first things that had to be done was the senior qualified man on the scene had to declare himself "in charge at the scene" and report as much to the officer of the deck. From then on, all communication flowed through the man in charge at the scene, and there were various conditions where the upper levels of command had to trust the judgment of the man in charge at the scene. That was also a part of the exercise, as well as the training for leadership, aboard a submarine. There were several other factors of naval leadership that were ignored in the Way Corps. According to Petty Officer 3&2 the three basic requirements of naval leadership are 1. good moral behavior, 2. personal example, and 3. administrative ability. The reasons were these: 1. if you lie and cheat, your followers will feel it's okay to lie and cheat on you, your followers will NOT treat you with respect if you treat them with disrespect, 2. you have to be able and willing to do yourself anything you ask your followers to do, and 3. administrative ability is tertiary and trainable. There was another principle of leadership that was recognized and discussed in the Navy, but totally ignored in the Way Corps: you cannot delegate responsibility without delegating a corresponding authority, but ultimately, you are still responsible for the responsibilities you delegate. There were several times when I took responsibility as a coordinator for things my twiggies messed up. That was before I went in residence. Leadership in TWI was NOTHING like the genuine leadership I experienced in the military, and Way Corps training I received had NO SUBSTANCE similar to the training I received in the Nuclear Power Program and the Submarine Service. The scales fell from my eyes after Geer read The Passing of a Patriarch on Corps night. Martindale and the top "leadership" exhibited all the leadership skill of deer in the headlights. When Geer was finished, Martindale just dropped the phone lines without say anything memorable. All the Corps were wondering what the hell was going on, and what we needed to do to fix "the ministry". Martindale seemed to be silent about the whole thing for weeks. Finally word trickled down that the problem, according the President of the Way International, was that the people who were running the foundational classes out on the field were too slack. Martindale flipped the responsibility UPSIDE DOWN! HE was the PRESIDENT! He was blaming the people who were FARTHEST from the center of power! The ONLY people who were actually doing ANYTHING to grow the organization! Martindale had NO IDEA of the practical steps that were necessary to run a foundational class on the field, much less to accomplish the mission of taking the Word Over the World. Instead of fixing things in order to accomplish the mission, Martindale simply declared the mission accomplished. That, my friends, was the result of Wierwille's thinking. When I saw that, I realized Wierwille had NEVER allowed real leaders into position near him, but only yes-men and yes-women. I served under some jerks when I was in the Navy. I had to. I couldn't pick and choose. Sometimes ministers can be jerks, but Jesus Christ is NOT a jerk, and I don't think any of his genuine servants are the unmitigated kind of jerks Wierwille and his dedicated followers have been and continue to be. Love, Steve

Hindsight is 20/20..... :-( My Mom and Dad taught me that there are people I just ought to be respectful of. Wierwille destroyed THAT naivete. I haven't followed any religious leader since without first having a one-on-one with that leader regarding Jeremiah 17:5 "...Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departheth from the Lord," and letting her or him know that it is the Lord I trust, not them. There is NOTHING... NOTHING... about The Way International that was not originally, intentionally perverted by Wierwille. The only way any good came from TWI was by God turning to good what the adversary meant for evil. Love, Steve

You know, waysider, an antichrist is not a solitary bugaboo found in the book of Revelation. According to I John 2:18, there have been many antichrists in the world since the first century. An antichrist is an "against-Christ", but that doesn't mean one has to argue against the idea of there being a Christ. An antichrist can be against the true Christ by setting HIMSELF up in a place that belongs to Christ. Weirwille set himself up as the man of God of this our day and time, to carry out the will of the "absent" Christ. The reverence that people hold for Wierwille is reverence for an antichrist. And that's why I, like you, no longer choose to sit idle and remain silent while people give to the phoney con-man reverence that rightly belongs to the Son of God! Love, Steve

I am glad you were born, Roy. I am glad you share your life with us here. With love and a holy kiss from Steve

Who the heck are you talking to, John? Are you talking to me? I don't wear any rings. What am I to make of your contributions to the conversation that goes on here? Do you have a bone to pick with somebody in particular that you aren't explicitly addressing your remarks to? Back in 1980 or so, when Wierwille started talking about appointing a successor, I was in favor of Walter Cummins because I respected his research. The more I learned about research both inside and outside TWI since then, the more disappointed I became with EVERYONE. Dishonesty was at Wierwille's heart from the beginning. Dishonesty was at the heart of Power For Abundant Living. Dishonesty was at the root of the Way Tree structure. Jeremiah 17:9 says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The desperate wickedness in everybody's heart is the temptation to believe we know as much as God knows. That was a temptation Wierwille gave into and many of us followed. I know I did. Oh, the endless agony of listening to Corps lectures in residence. Oh, the ultimate agony of listening to The Passing of A Patriarch when ALL the demonic forces came flying out! Love, Steve

That WAS a good article, excie! I've arrived at the place where I believe there is NO doctrine which cannot be turned into heresy, and NO faith community that cannot be turned into a cult. We ALL have to exercise our own judgment. Love, Steve

Dear Roy, I have been diagnosed with the mild form of bipolar mood disorder. I know that I haven't experienced problems anywhere near as intense as those that bother you. I am glad you are my brother in Christ, and I'm glad you are finding the help you need. We are all looking forward to the day when God will heal us all! with love and a holy kiss from Steve

Good analysis, WordWolf! One way of distinguishing the difference between "cult" and culture is that the leaders of a cult endeavor to make their followers deployable to a hidden agenda. Love, Steve

So... where was I when my meds kicked in.... Systematic theology has gone out of style... what does that mean, you may ask... Back in the Reformation, the 1500s, when the reformers rejected Roman Catholic tradition and took "Scriptura sola" as their motto, they couldn't really put "Scriptura sola" into practice. Somebody has to explain what the Bible means to people who don't know. It's not like it has an index! Luther took a stab at explaining the Bible, but it was Calvin with his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) who really put the SYSTEM into theology. Systematic theology relies on the SYSTEM rather than the direct context for interpreting a passage of scripture. Systematic theology rests on a number of assumptions that are just taken for granted. A big one is that whichever canon a person believes in is complete and comprehensive. Another is that a word or phrase has the same meaning where ever it is used, unless some obvious signal of context indicates otherwise. These were the same principles Wierwille put forth in PFAL, and that we used for doing word studies. A corollary to these assumptions is that the original autographs (free of transmission errors) cannot contain any "contradictions." Therefore, anything that looks like a contradiction must be rationalized or harmonized away. That is, the SYSTEM must be further developed to do away with the actual meaning of what is written. The biggest shock I received when I began to work in the School of Theology was finding out that I cannot do word studies the same way I did in TWI. I cannot take it for granted that , say, Paul and Luke mean the same thing when they use the phrase "to be saved." First I have to demonstrate from Luke's writings what Luke means when he uses the phrase, then demonstrate from Paul's writings what Paul means, and THEN I need to compare and contrast what each one say it means "to be saved." The present (?) way of doing theology does NOT view the Bible as a single, long monologue. It views the Bible as a giant, multiplex conversation. It is full of different points of view, and its meanings are derived from the interplay of those points of view (under guidance of course, of the Holy Spirit). To do away with "apparent contradictions" reduces the Word of God to a single dimension, literally, a single string of letters in one long line from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 (depending on which canon you've chosen). In reality, the Word of God is multi-dimensional, composed of hundreds of DIFFERENT points of view. Yet these different frames of reference ALL point to the single absolute truth of the resurrection and Lordship of Jesus Christ! I am only now beginning to appreciate some of the differences between the four gospels and the book of Acts. If I were to look into the differences between Acts 1&2 and the post-resurrection events of the gospel of John (which I will probably be doing about 2 years from now), I would begin by finding out as much as I can about Luke's and John's purposes in writing the things they did. All for now. More later! Love! Steve