Steve Lortz

...snip...

Word over the World may have seemed like a lofty goal at the time but it was rooted in fantasy.

...snip...

That and marketing... it wasn't really Word Over the World, it was PFAL Over the World... :(

Love,

Steve

I hope this is the appropriate place for a discussion of this question! I don't really view it as a consideration of doctrine so much as a consideration of meta-doctrine.

The question has interested me for some time, but I wasn't able to articulate it fully until today. I can pose the question now as a result of three activities in my life impinging upon each other.

1. My physical health has become much more fragile in the last six months or so. I am on oxygen. I have emergency antibiotics to take immediately if I think I'm coming down with a cold. My kidneys are not sending the proper chemical signals to my bone marrow to tell it to generate more blood cells. Consequently I have anemia that varies from day to day. Sometimes, when I'm getting a good supply of oxygen to my brain, everything is fine. Other times, when I'm not getting sufficient O₂ to the ol' grey matter, my thinking is sluggish, and my movements are erratic. I wear a "Help" button on my wrist in case I find myself incapacitated.

This morning I had Hebrew from 8 am till 9. While I was sitting there, I had to ask myself, am I up to translating these sentences off the cuff along with the rest of the students? I had to assess the speed of my mind. It wasn't good enough. This afternoon, I walked 6 blocks (round trip) to make a cash deposit at the Credit Union. Before deciding to leave home, I had to assess what I'd have to do to make it back. I knew places where I could cross the street with a light, and where I could sit if I needed to, The biggest question was, will I be steady enough? will I fall down somewhere along the way? I decided to go, and even though there was a time or two when my feet stuttered, I did okay.

I've had to become extremely conscious of everything that is going on inside my body (including when I poop and when I only fart), and WHY it's happening. I'll tell you what I was thinking about during the walk... but first, the other two activities...

2. I decided to take Hebrew this fall. I've ALWAYS been intimidated by it before, probably because I can't do fancy calligraphy, but one of the first things I found out was that I don't have to do fancy calligraphy. Hebrew has a very simple "block" or "square" style that is easy enough for me to do with mechanical pencils on lined paper. It also has a cursive script that our prof uses on the board. It's simpler than English cursive. I took a couple of years of Greek between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2013, so I have some experience to make comparisons.

I was surprised to find out that Hebrew is NOT an inflected language, which means parsing it is much simpler than parsing Greek.

Greek definitions are like saltine crackers, flat, precise and regular, with a modicum of flavor and a functional minimalism. Greek definitions are fragile like crackers, too! Hebrew definitions are like fruitcakes, multi-dimensional masses of possibilities, with fruit and nuts and other less identifiable things mingling in an irregular melange. Hebrew definitions will outlast mankind. The meaning of a Hebrew word, whether you are trying to find the right one to use, or trying to figure out how to translate one from a text, depends on how you slice the definition. Slice it one way, and the meaning will be entirely different than if you had sliced it another way.

3. The AU School of Theology is not and never has been fundamentalist The Church of God Reformation Movement (Anderson, Indiana) never participated in the fundamentalist conferences of the very early twentieth century. Therefore, the SOT has never taught that "the Word of God was perfect in the original autographs." Likewise, the SOT has never been caught up in dispensationalism. Some of the professors hold with inerrancy. Others do not. They have agreed to disagree on that topic. But students come to AU from many different denominational backgrounds, and the ones who come from evangelical protestant faith communities often find it jarring that so many of the things they were taught about the Bible in Sunday school just aren't true (those Sunday school teachings do not accord with objective reality).

Evangelical protestants (called "fundamentalists" before 1925) teach that since all scripture is God-breathed, and God is perfect, there can be NO CONTRADICTIONS in the Bible. If there is only ONE contradiction in the Bible, then the whole thing falls apart, it cannot be God-breathed, and NONE OF IT is true! This is something we all have to be aware of, and be caring for, when we deal with students who have not been here long enough to realize that the SOT is deliberately teaching that the love of God trumps doctrinal purity.

-----

So, what was I thinking about as I staggered toward the Credit Union?

Before I set out, while considering how reliable my gait might be, I thought of dynamic balance as opposed to static balance, the sort of thing a bicycle manifests. I googled it without finding much, but I found A LOT about the relation between static and dynamic STABILITY. Apparently it's a subject of interest among airplane designers. A plane is statically stable sitting on the ground. When a plane is in flight, there are many multi-dimensional forces acting on the plane. When a plane is moving along at a steady pace and height, with a steady attitude, it is considered to be dynamically stable. When anything happens to change any of those many, multi-dimensional forces, the plane enters into an oscillating movement. It swings back and forth in some direction. There can be three degrees of oscillation: dampened oscillation that gradually returns the plane to dynamic stability, recurring oscillation whose amplitude neither grows nor shrinks, and driven oscillation where the amplitude feeds back into itself until all control is lost.

So there I was intently focused on my internal processes so I wouldn't keel over on the sidewalk, thinking in terms of oscillation, when it dawned on me. Everything going on in me, from the air entering and exiting through my nose and mouth, to the cellular respiration where electrons are carried back and forth to power the chemical functions in each of my cells, in my brain and muscles, ALL OF IT, consists of oscillating motion in dynamic relationships. Those motions are generated and balanced by TENSIONS, contradictions of levels of energy that produce and direct MOVEMENT.

Life IS NOT static! It's very nature is imbalance and movement. The God of the Hebrews was NOT static! The imbalance and movement of life in creation is a direct reflection of the imbalance and movement of the Creator. If the Bible is God-breathed, it could NOT be static! The words of ink may sit there statically on the paper, but the ideas behind those words are in imbalance and produce flow... the flow of ideas.

Not only is the Bible full of contradictions, the very language of it is necessarily contradictory. Poetic knowledge is much more real than propositional knowledge because poetic knowledge is directly drawn from concrete human experiences, expressed in similes and metaphors. Contradiction (tension) is automatically part of the expression of poetic truth because no comparison (simile or metaphor) has a 100% correspondence to objective reality. Propositional knowledge is an expression of relationship farther abstracted from direct human experience. The language of propositional knowledge is mathematics, and as far as scientists have gone into such things as the Higgs Boson, quantum mechanics and string theory, their math still doesn't have a 100% correspondence to objective reality either.

Where did the idea of a static God who cannot contradict himself come from? Not from the Hebrew Bible, that's for sure! It came from Greek philosophers who defined perfection as static balance (that lacks the ability to move or be moved). Greek philosophers would have found Genesis 1:2b, "...the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters..." SCANDALOUS!

The idea that God can be a living thing is STILL scandalous to far too many people. The idea that his Word, the flow of ideas behind the ink on the paper, can be a living thing is almost inconceivable.

All for now... more later...

I love you ALL, and am thankful for your companionship through all of this!

Steve

Just for the sake of clarity, Wierwille didn't teach dispensationalism in the tradition of E.W. Bullinger. Bullinger was the father of ultra-dispensationalism, which goes something like this: A dispensation is a period of time when God deals with man in a certain way. When God changes his mind about how to deal with man, the new dispensation is in and the old dispensation is out (I feel like Heidi Klum on Project Runway!). But the change in "administrations" cannot come before the revelation of the change. The administration of the mystery could not begin until the "revelation of the mystery" to Paul... Therefore, the present administration did NOT begin on the day of Pentecost described in Acts chapter 2, but at some later date (exactly when is a point of contention).

The dispensdationalism taught by Wierwille probably came from whatever source B.G. Leonard was using in his class.

Lynn and Schoenheit are functional ultra-dispensationalists, even though they hold that the church administration began on the day of Pentecost, because they teach that God could not reveal the SACRED SECRET^TM before Paul was "broken of his Jewish mindset" (Momentus terminology) after he was captured in Jerusalem (Acts 21). Therefore, we are free to ignore whatever we want to suppress that Paul wrote to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians and Thessalonians!

If you find all this confusing, though, don't worry, GET A CHART AND GET A LIFE!^TM

Love,

Steve

Technically, Ehrman prefers the term agnostic to atheist. But yeah.

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

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

Does anyone else find it sadly/comically ironic that this whole brewhaha is based on a premise that isn't even Biblical? (ie: dispensationalism)

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

Thousands.

You realize he HAS to be counting people who have fled from him, CES, STFI, TTYL, LOL and whatever other acronyms they've conjured up since then, right?

He's counting me. I'm an atheist now.

He's probably counting Steve L. He's probably counting Tzaia. He's counting the thanks, and ignoring what happened later. You know, the results.

In my view, the inability of TWI offshoots, all taught the same principles at the same time by the same people using the same source material, to cohere on doctrine after leaving TWI is evidence that the task itself is flawed. Either the principles are no good or the source material isn't. (Or both, as I see it). You can't cohere on doctrine after TWI anymore than hundreds of denominations had been able to before TWI.

At some point you have to realize there IS no baby in the bathwater.

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

quote: And further......wierwille ADMITS that, oftentimes, he would take church congregants

to these conferences, classes, retreats, and events.

Let me get this straight. If I attend any church ONE TIME, then they own my soul for eternity? Why didn't E&R church get rid of him sooner if what he was doing was so unethical? People who join cults aren't "brainwashed". Their previous churches weren't cutting it. VPs sure wasn't.

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

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

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...

".....men whose capacities and advantages, whose patient deliberation, and whose improvements in humility, mildness, and candor, give them a right to hope that their views are more just than those of their neighbours."

SERIOUSLY??

You think this describes the subjects being discussed? Or, am I misinterpreting your implication?

Here's a newsflash.

The whole dogma of dispensations/administrations and 3 types of people is an elitist attempt to say "my dog's bigger than your dog.". It's the antithesis of what you seem to be suggesting.

(Unless I'm misunderstanding the meaning of what you are saying, in which case I preemptively apologize.)

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

The irony in in thinking that Christianity is anything but a cult. Seriously. The only difference is the outrageous claims are believed because people (not eye witnesses) (supposedly) wrote them down nearly 2 generations after some guy who claimed he was the son of god died. Since then, every sect that has arisen started out as a cult until it grew or out lasted its crazy leader long enough to keep afloat.

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