Steve Lortz

I stand corrected, Raf. Thanks for keeping me on the straight and narrow. Sometimes I wander too far off of it! By the by, for those of you who are interested, both Ehrman and Wright have websites, and the things they post there are vastly more enlightening and entertaining than anything TLFT posts on Youtube! Love, Steve

I took a graduate level course on the history and literature of the New Testament last year. I completed the first semester, during which we focused on the Gospels and used a text by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman started out as a fundamentalist, but his studies led him to atheism. That's okay, though, because his scholarship on the history of the New Testament is the best there is, and is not slanted in either direction. It's just plainly stated scholarship. I completed about two-thirds of the second semester before having to take a medical withdrawal. I intend to retake that semester this coming spring. During the second semester, we studied Acts, the letters of Paul, and the other letters. The main book we used as text for the course was Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N.T. Wright. Wright's Paul is 1519 pages of text with an additional 139 pages of bibliography and indexes; parts I, II, III, and IV, in two volumes. Some of our correspondents have remarked "All we know about Paul is what Paul, himself, told us." N.T. Wright would beg to differ. Part I is 347 pages long, detailing Paul's Jewish world, ancient philosophy, ancient religion and the first-century empire. Part II (218 pages) discusses what we can guess about Paul's mindset from what know about Paul's location in the Jewish and gentile cultures of his time. Part III (656 pages) considers the theology Paul developed in light of his participation in the thought-life of his time. Part IV (Paul in History, 250 pages) talks about Paul and empire, Paul and religion, Paul and philosophy, and Paul in his Jewish world. Paul's letters are not the only source of information about Paul. It appears that the author of Acts had a personal acquaintance with Paul during certain parts of Paul's ministry, and the picture Acts presents of Paul is significantly different from the picture we gather of Paul from Paul's own writings. Does that mean the Bible is truly God-breathed, and contains no contradictions? No indeed! But it does illustrate for us that we shouldn't make hasty decisions about what we believe or don't believe based on the caricatures we were all taught, both in the Way AND in Sunday school! Love, Steve

Love, Steve

Sometime in 1987, Sue Pierce came through Indianapolis and hosted a viewing of Athletes of the Spirit. It wasn't any old viewing of Athletes of the Spirit! Sue used the pause and rewind buttons and asked the questions at specific points "what did he say? what does that mean? and how does that line up with other scriptures?" She also pointed out the action on the screen and the special effects and demonstrated how they contradicted the words that were being spoken at the very same time. Almost the very first and the very last words of the entire production were "We are PROUD!" In the fall of 1987, I bought a 30 day Greyhound ticket and traveled around the country visiting people I knew, because I knew communications were being cut off at headquarters, and I wanted to report the things I had found out to my friends face to face. One of the things I prepared for that trip was a brief teaching on Philippians 3:17-19... 17 Brethren, be followers together [imitators together] of me [Paul], and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. 18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) There is a figure of speech in verse 19 where the causal order is reversed... the consequences (the end) is put first, and the initial cause is put last. Verse 19 could be properly translated "they pay attention to things upon the earth, which leads to being proud of things they ought to be ashamed of, which leads to their fleshly appetites replacing God in their thoughts and hearts, which leads in the end to utter worthlessness." That was a pretty good description of Wierwille and the leaders of TWI. Paul calls them enemies of the cross of Christ. Paul explicitly points them out as people who are not imitating him, Paul. But that HAS TO BE talking about somebody else! Surely it cannot be applied to the man of God of the world for this our day and time! Nor can it be talking about all the mini-mogs who continue to build their imitation towers of Babel. Love, Steve

It is always a joy to my heart to see you post, Tzaia! I hope you remember the congregational meeting of the Living Word Fellowship where I stood up and publicly repented of the foolish promises I had made during the Momentus training. That was the first time I publicly admitted to what a fool I had been. It was important to me to do so because we ALL (who took Momentus) had been public fools, and those who did not repent of the promises they had made were still being fools, and to my knowledge many of the key people have not repented to this day. That you were willing to support me in my admission of foolishness at that time will always make you a dear friend and companion in my estimation. If we cannot admit to what fools we are, and have been, how can we learn wisdom? Some people do not seem to be willing to admit to their foolishness, and as a consequence, they become blind to their own foolishness... I think we can all name names... not necessarily the same people for each of us, but SOMEBODY in our experience of TWI. Having been a fool should not carry a stigma. Continuing to be one should. Love, Steve

So Wassung has had some training in Syriac. Was he involved with all the Aramaic hoo-hah that was going on at HQ in the late-'80s? Some people hold that the books of the New Testament were originally written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek. Was Wassung involved with THAT? Love, Steve

When Wierwille bragged in PFAL about his brave, bold decision to take all his reference books out and burn them, he was discouraging us to look to ANY scholarship other than his own. If I had even a cursory familiarity with the treasure trove of things that have been written about the Bible by genuine scholars, I would have known that what Wierwille called "administrations" went out of fashion in reputable circles during the 1920s. Lynn, Schoenheit, et alia, are teaching a "package" that was debunked before most of us were born. They mistake their obsolete conclusions for "the Living Truth" because they have no acquaintance whatsoever with the living community of biblical scholars. Genuine scholars have a fan club, you know. It's called the Society of Biblical Literature. Google it if you want to know more. Speaking of garbage from TLFT, I watched this today I was curious because of the title "This Present Evil Age" That phrase is a quote from Galatians 1:4, and the truth that Paul wrote it to describe the time in which we live completely destroys all the things Wierwille taught about his wonderful "Church Age, the Administration of the Grace of God." You might want to sample a little bit of what Wassung is teaching, but I certainly wasn't able to make it through the whole 1:40:40 length. Not even close... Shortly after the 5 minute mark, Wassung makes the following, revealing statement: "How come what we teach or how we present the Word is just blown off? I mean... we're sitting here trying to help people with the Word and trying to make their life a better place on earth, and yet we're just blown off. People don't want to hear the accuracy of the Word, as we want to call it, you know, or the simplicity of the Word, the great fabulous deliverance available by those who operate the manifestations... today I heard they just want to feel good..." His attempt to answer his question sputtered out incoherently. The video has been up for about 50 days. There have been 378 views, five thmbs up, one thumb down. Was that thumb down YOU DontWorryBeHappy? Maybe it's because "the accuracy of the Word, as we want to call it" is really a systematic theology, and people don't want to hear systematic theologies. They want to hear the Word of God. Maybe people don't want to hear about "the great fabulous deliverance available by those who operate the manifestations" from people who are "sitting here" flapping their gums. Maybe they want to SEE deliverance delivered by people who are walking in the Spirit. Maybe it's because the content of the 1:40:40 is best described by the technical term, "prattle." If you listen with one ear, it seems to make sense, but if you start parsing the sentences coming out of Wassung's mouth, they say nothing real, and lead nowhere in understanding. All for now, Love, Steve

I'd sure be up for it, Ham, if all my medical regimens would allow it... I sure wouldn't try to go L.E.A.D. now... I'd be dead before the first night was over... :-( Love, Steve

So there I was... surrounded by multi-level marketeers... oh, wait... wrong story... So here I am, at the end of my adult life, in school with a bunch of folks at the beginning of their adult lives, who are training to be church leaders. The school doesn't teach just one brand of church leadership, but leadership that can be applied across a wide spectrum of Wesleyan style organizations. I have been forthcoming in my classes and casual discussion about being an aspiring cult leader when I was in my 30s. There has been one other Greasespotter in the student body while I've been there, and one of my classmates was born at Camp Gunnison the same block I was in residence there, and was raised in the post-fog-years TWI. His family is still with TWI. It strikes me that Christianity became a cult when Theodosius made it the only official religion of the Roman Empire in 381 CE. That was when Christianity became "here's a church and here's the steeple... open the doors and see all the people." To the extent that church is a building people have to go to on Sunday morning, regular Christianity is still a cult. The difference between religion in the United States and in all previous countries is that in all the other countries there was only one cult authorized by the state. In the United States, everybody is free to start their own cults. The School of Theology teaches that a "church" (or "faith community", or whatever you want to call it) is a web of developmental relationships indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That seems to me to be a workable definition. A cult is a web of developmental relationships, possibly, though not necessarily, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The difference between a church and a cult is that the leaders of a cult have hi-jacked the web of developmental relationships to serve their own hidden agenda. The purpose of the development is not to grow the individual members, but to make the individuals deployable to the leaders' agenda. The tack I have taken on "teaching" cult prevention at the SOT (I am a student, not a professor, so my teaching has to be indirect) is that every one of the students there is going to be exposed to cult behavior and could very well become a cult-leader her or his own self. I don't think what I am telling them sinks in, but it might come back to their memory when they need it. The SOT is not fundamentalist, so there is no attitude of "we have the truth and nobody else does." Sometimes the SOT has taken heat from the parent denomination because the SOT is not as doctrinaire as they would like for the school to be. The only general cult preventive I can think of is to teach people how to think critically, and to impress on them that critical thinking cannot be departed from without running grave risks. Our culture does NOT teach critical thinking. Both major political parties are cults, even though they are political rather than religious. The political/academic/media complex drives everybody into a cult mentality, one way or another... All for now, Love, Steve

At the age of 66, I am currently working on a masters degree in theological studies at the Anderson University School of Theology. The mission of the school is to form women and men for the ministry of biblical reconciliation. The religious organization behind the SOT was never fundamentalist, though they have a high view of scripture. Students come from various denominational backgrounds and are prepared to serve in whatever denominational structure they feel called to go into. Members of the faculty hold differing opinions on some major issues, but have agreed to disagree, viewing fellowship in Christ as more important than any kind of doctrinal "purity." Several of the younger professors are rising stars in the Society of Biblical Literature. I have been taking classes here since the fall of 2011. I have maybe a year or two to go depending on how my health holds out. When I originally came here, I had to ask myself if I was going to reveal the time I spent with The Way International. Sometimes when people ask my background I give them my smarta$$ answer that I am a Free Range Baptist... I believe in baptism but not in cages... but generally I have been open with people about my involvement with TWI, both in class and in casual discussion. Far from being looked down on for having been involved with a cult, people seem to be fascinated by the perspective that I can offer to the conversation. Right now, I am taking a class called "Spiritual Formation" which is odd because it's supposed to be one of the very first classes a student takes. All my classmates are in their very first semester, and I am in my what... ninth? One of the functions of the Spiritual Formation class is to encourage students to form habits that will help them succeed at the SOT... making budgets, managing time, participating in small prayer groups, telling stories, etc. ... many of the same things I was doing exactly 30 years ago in my first block in residence with the 16th Corps at Emporia. I have to go take care of some unexpected things. This will tie back into cult prevention when I get the chance to continue... Love, Steve

When I was involved with TWI, was I brainwashed? To what extent? How? Yes. I was brainwashed. I think an indicator was my use of the TWI jargon. I was brainwashed to the same extent as I used that jargon instead of my ordinary language. I was brainwashed through the voluntary renewing of my mind to the words of Wierwille in PFAL. Love, Steve

Back in the late-90s, when a dozen or so of us were beating feet away from John and his shipwrecks, it seemed to us that John's main problem was that he believed his own hype. In Biblical terms, "in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin." Proverbs 36:2 NIV. Not only can he NOT tell if he's right or wrong, he can't even care. Love, Steve

You know, johniam, there are broadly recognized ethics that go along with ordination. When a person accepts responsibility over a congregation that is associated with the denomination that ordained the person, it is not ethical for the person to draw members of the congregation away from their ties to the parent denomination. Wierwille drew members of his congregation away from the denomination that ordained him, to have them send their money directly to HIM, instead of to the denomination that was ALSO paying him. Wierwille was not interested in how well the E&R was serving its people. He was interested in how well everyone could serve HIM ONLY with their money! What Wierwille was doing was dishonest to his employers, and dishonest to the people who decided to follow him instead of their bona fide church. Wierwille has always been dishonest, from the beginning of TWI to the end of his involvement (R.I.P.). You need to stop and think about the things you say, johniam. Love, Steve

Thanks, DontWorryBeHappy... All I can say is "thanks"... Love, Steve

Now that I think about it, Jon Touchstone, you're the perfect person to ask! IS the cruelty of Momentus-style "iron sharpening iron" still an instrument in John Lynn's managerial tool box? Lynn won't come here to answer our questions himself. Love, Steve

I respect the conclusions you've drawn from your experiences, Tzaia. I can't argue with that! I value the contributions you have made, and are still making to my life! Love, Steve

I made this assessment of Jon Touchstone's attitude after noticing that the post was his first one on Greasespot... I've always been a sucker for giving a nube the benefit of the doubt. I was right in perceiving that Jon was admonishing US to "humility, mildness and candor," I just didn't realize why. The fact that a newcomer would choose to make his first post on THIS thread should have been a clue. "I refer to the duty of candid, charitable judgment, especially towards those who differ in religious opinion." The problem with that is... this isn't just about a simple difference in religious opinion. This is about an abusive con man. I think Wierwille was a conscious, deliberate con man. I think Lynn is a clueless con man, but a con man none the less, one who also is abusive. Why doesn't anyone from CES, STIFFY, TMNTF, or whatever the acronym for the next iteration is going to be, come on here and discuss the merits of their "package"? Why can't it ever be anything more than an appeal for us to pipe down about the error and the abuse in the name of "brotherly love"? Does John Lynn still practice Momentus-style "iron sharpening iron"? There's NOTHING humble, mild or candid about THAT! Love, Steve P.S. - After posting this I went to the TLTF website and found out who Jon Touchstone is...

It would seem to me, waysider, that Jon Touchstone is not imputing "humility, mildness and candor" to Lynn or any other TWI/exTWI leaders, but rather encouraging US to humility, mildness and candor in our zeal for OUR truth! Thanks to you both! Love, Steve

Depends on what you are calling "Christianity," Tzaia... Regarding everything that has been, and STILL IS recognized as "Christianity" since 381 CE when Theodosius declared, for POLITICAL reasons that Athenasian "Christianity" would be the only officially recognized version (for purposes of receiving governmental monetary grants), and all others would be recognized as lunatic heresy and punished accordingly, I HAVE TO AGREE with you! There are no two ways about THAT! I remember as a child learning this little trick to play with my hands, where I would interlace all my fingers inward and then chant "Here is the Church and here is the steeple... open the doors and see all the people!" with appropriate transformations of my hand arrangement. As long as we regard the Church as a building (or any other form of human structure) corralling a group of people... it IS a cult! I don't think that's how Paul viewed it. If he were to try to put it into terms of modern social science, I think he would call it a web of developmental relationships indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The whole point of conventional "Christianity" is to join a church (a building with a group of people in it) and GO TO IT. My experience is that REAL "Christianity" is to receive the gift that is Holy Spirit, and then to walk in accordance with that Spirit. As a person does so, the Spirit puts her (or him) in developmental relation with others who are doing the same thing. I think that, in the same way a blind pig occasionally stumbles onto an acorn, Wierwille stumbled onto the truth that joining "Christianity" is a matter of receiving the gift that is Holy Spirit... then instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to fully form the web of developmental relationships, Wierwille tried to hijack the whole thing with his Way Corps. I became humble toward the Lord, and he began teaching me things, all by myself in the Engine Room Lower Level of the USS POGY. Several years later, he led me into, and then out of, The Way International. During the years before I became involved with TWI, I tried to go join a little congregation up in the hills of Oahu associated with The Church of God Reformation Movement (Anderson, Indiana), but he gently led me away from it. He told me he and I weren't doing the same thing as the people there were doing. Now, forty years later, the Lord has flung me into the Anderson University School of Theology, a premier thinking department (real theology) of the Church of God Reformation Movement (Anderson, Indiana)... and I have the presentiment that my job is to teach the doctors here (REAL DOCTORS) the difference between genuine Christianity and the cult that goes by that name... Thank you, very much, Tzaia! for prompting me to articulate THIS thought on THIS morning! (I use the pronoun "he" to refer to the Holy Spirit, not because I think the Holy Spirit is the third person of a trinity, though in that case it should properly be "she" since pneuma is feminine, as is Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, nor because I am an unregenerate tool of the patriarchy, but because I think the gift of the Holy Spirit is a combination of the life-force of God the Father with the human personality of Jesus of Nazareth! I Corinthians 8:6 :)/> ) Love (and I mean YOU, personally Tzaia!), Steve

"Looking in the rear view mirror..." When I first read that, right after reading the title of this thread, I had a mental image of you driving a combine, skyrider, looking in the rear view mirror and seeing a bunch of TWI skeletons spewing out the back! :P Love, Steve

Thanks for posting that! The main crops in Hoosierland are corn and soybeans, and we don't usually see combines "wearing" the long reels. Love, Steve

That's a good way to bring the biblical imagery up to date, MRAP! I didn't know mechanical reapers could do that! Love, Steve

Indeed! Love, Steve

Thanks, WordWolf, for posting the link to the "How did the ordination of clergy thing work in TWI?" thread! When I started reading it, I thought "How did I miss all this?" and then I looked at the dates. During that time I was recovering at home from a massive hernia repair surgery, and I didn't have a computer at home yet. What an eye-opener in oh so many ways! Thanks DontWorryBeHappy for all the history you've filled us in on. I didn't get involved with TWI until 1980, and I often wondered what it must have been like in the days TWI was growing into what it had become by the time I became involved. Now I have a clearer idea, and recognize that all the chicanery I experienced from the reading of Geer's POOP to the time I left in '87 was an inherent part of Wierwille's co-option of ALL of us from the very beginning. Thanks, everyone! Love, Steve

Well, WordWolf... it's been a trip down memory lane... I think that during the twenty years John was involved as a leader in TWI (1967-1987), he became convinced that "he himself was some great one." And his greatness in his own eyes depended on believing that "The Way International was (past tense), from a certain perspective, one of the most significant movements in the history of the Christian Church." From the perspective of Church history, TWI at its greatest was insignificant. The largest church growth in the twentieth century was the Pentecostal movement. TWI was a spiritual hitchhiker on the coattails of the Pentecostal movement because Wierwille decided to plagiarize Session 12 of PFAL from whoever it was that originally taught it. Was that B.G. Leonard or J. E. Stiles? I don't think Wierwille could have come up with Session 12 on his own. As a theological fashion, Dispensationalism came and went long before 1967. It reached its peak in the fundamentalist conferences of the early 1900s, but became passe along with the rest of fundamentalism after the Scopes trial in 1925. Dispensationalism has been discredited in regular theological circles for long enough that Wierwille should have known it from his theology classes, if he hadn't been running off to marry Dotsie instead of studying. During the twenty years between John's first letter (1988) and his third (2008), a lot of things happened to John, but you wouldn't know it by reading his letters. In the early years of CES (late-'80s, early-'90s), John, John and Mark were very willing to re-examine the things they had taught in TWI. During that time, I would proof read their books before they were printed, and I made scripture indexes for some of them. But once they WROTE any conclusions, those conclusions were SET IN STONE. They would NEVER go back to reconsider whether their analysis had been right or wrong. And they started carrying some things even farther than Wierwille had. John, John and Mark took Wierwille's rather mild "idiom of permission" and wrote a whole book called Don't Blame God. They figured, some people don't want to believe because they think God is a big meanie. If we prove that God isn't responsible for anything bad, then those people won't have a reason to reject God. So they bent over backwards to PROVE that God can't be held responsible. Instead of making their case by quoting "the Word, the Word, and nothing BUT the Word," they began making their case with "surely logic dictates." In order to absolve God of responsibility for evil, they adopted process theology, without ever hinting that Alfred North Whitehead had already gone down that path. They had to restrict God's perception to the level of human perception. They tried to explain the accuracy of God's predictions by saying, not that God has foreknowledge, but that God is aware of deterministic factors of which we are unconscious. They had to limit God's knowledge, then turn around and deny human free will. All without having any concept of the implications of their pronouncements. By absolving God of responsibility, they were creating AN IRRESPONSIBLE GOD!!!!!!! All in an effort to win more converts to their ranks. When I realized they only wanted me to proof-read for typos, not for ideas, I threw in the towel. I bumbled along, an ignorant fool once more. Then in the mid-'90s came Momentus. What a hell of a cluster smooch THAT was!!!!!!! John swore an oath that he would totally ignore any damage that Momentus did to anybody, even if they died. We ALL swore that oath. I repented of swearing that oath when I realized how it was frying peoples' minds and hearts. To my knowledge, John has yet to repent of swearing that oath. I know that he knows how to do it. I demonstrated as much to him personally in front of 60 other people. Now we see him on Youtube, still trying to justify to himself that he is still some great one. I've heard from Greasespot that John is not well. I'm sorry to hear that. I pray for him to come to his senses. Love, Steve