shortfuse

Why assume they have privately repudiated a doctrine because they no longer teach it publicly?

This is true. The Genesis 3: teaching is no longer publicly taught, but privately they still stand by it.

The furthest they went was one corpse night teaching in 2000 -- a limited private teaching not available to the rank and file members -- in which one sentence was uttered: "adultery is wrong." I didn't hear this teaching, but heard of it first hand from the local corpse who did. He was amazed because it was the first time he had every heard it taught in The Way. I never heard anything taught about adultery. The way it was done, I have no doubt that Harve Platig silently put the word "spiritual" in front of the sentence so he could claim honesty.

I challenge anyone, especially those who are still active members, to name one doctrine Craig established or continued from VPW The Way has since repudiated since he supposedly left (even that has its doubts). Doctrines may disappear from the public, but unless officially repudiated, they live on in the fantasy world of those who have risen high enough in The Way's pecking order -- having attained enough "spiritual maturity" to handle them.

Good point. I can't think of any doctrines that have since been repudiated. The class has been cleaned up, toned down a bit, and organized better. But nothing has really changed doctrinally.

I saw the prophecy LCM gave over RFR during her ceremony into the trustees/directors. He prophesied she would "heal this ministry".

Prophecy? or an act?

I remember that too. At the time I was thinking, "Heal the ministry? Why do we need to heal the ministry?" Clearly Craig knew the kind of hurt that was coming to everyone who had put so much trust in him. Looking back I think it was planned. They went so far as to publish the prophecy in The Way Magazine to underscore the importance of it.

Regarding Interpretation of Tongues and Prophecy, I have to admit that while there were definitely lots of repetitive uninspiring messages, there where other times where the relevance of the words was uncanny. It was those times where it was so timely and relevant the lent credibility to the premise that these were messages inspired of God.

Regarding the other manifestations, one thing I have observed is a superstitious attitude among wayfers. So eager for signs, miracles, and wonders and receiving revelation from God, they look for these things in the random coincidences of daily life. "I know it was God working in me to do such and such, because look how well it turned out." "It was really 'of God' that I got to the store when I did - just in time to get that last jar of mayo." Maybe these are dumb examples, but you probably know what I mean. Seeking after signs, you will find them everywhere.

I haven't thought about this in a while, we used to joke about naming future kids after VP's SITing in PFAL.

"LaShanda, Malakasita, get y'all narrow butts over here!"

You're probably right, but TWI doesn't release any membership figures (yeah, I know they have no membership ) so it would be harder to estimate these days than it was a few years ago when a goodly number of us were freshly escaped or kicked out of TWI. During Waydale & GS's early days, there were quite a few folks (including me, Washington Weather, Igotout & Hope, and many others) who had been involved when Martindale was ousted, so we could give fairly accurate figures. Who knows how much they've shrunk these days?

counting people at HQ and Gunnison I would put the number at ~3000 in the U.S. There are still 5000+ in Africa. Factor in any other internationals and I would put the number at ~8500. There are no published figures as has been noted, but that's a best estimate.

I heard from anonymous source whose reliability I cannot verify that The Way no longer includes in their Way of Abundance and Power (WayAP) class the segement on the Devil & Eve having sex.

Anyone hear anything about this? And if so, have they repudiated the teaching, or just removed it from the WayAP class?

If true, and since my public objection to this teaching was one of the reasons that I was thrown out of TWI, do you think I'll be getting an apology and and invitation back anytime soon?

It is not in the new video class. It has not been repudiated, it has just been removed from the class.

You are unlikely to get an apology or invitation back, but you wouldn't really be interested in that anyway would you?

what were the other categories? I forget...Stately and powerful....There was a gloom and doom one, too.

Sensual and Alluring

Sprightly and Devious

Stately and Powerful

Animalistic and Vicious

After that I'm not sure...

Sadistic and Masochistic

__________ and gloomy

Note: If you want to dress up as a "Five Star General" (you know, Daimon), the main requirement is more fringe on your sleeves. Personally, I've always thought fringe was devilish, but this production confirmed it.

Happy Birthday, man. Card's in the mail.

These are fun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Dog

Greg Bol@hak still heads up Camp G and is director there as well as one of the ''3'' vice-presidents........

Greg is there, but I think you mean to say V1nce McFadd*n.

And so is edited posthumously I found 35,000 usages on a Google search It' s a perfectly accurate usage unless you are looking for something to speculate about. No offence but from where you sit, with all the wrong facts it would be a bit hard to make any judgment on anyone's motives. Unless of course you just want to make s*** up as is par for the course. If you don't like the man fine, but at least be honest with your accusations and get the facts straight. Your reaching for something that is not there and IMHO your not even doing that well.

A bit of googling prove that you are infact, right and I was wrong. I have not seen one of these volumes from Geer, but I see now there is a precident for this. You can understand why editted posthumously by VPW would be very odd, I don't know where I got that from. Must not have been very careful in my reading. Again, I stand corrected.

Thanks for the LOVE, Dove. Go have a cup of coffee.

--------------------

LOVE FROM THE DOVE....

Without Coffee I Would Have No Personality At All.

in 2000 I was explicitely told by my FC to vote for Bush or horrible things would happen to our country. I can't help but think that directive came down via the corps night meetings or directly from the RC.

Well I can tell you that the Corps were specifically told not to use their authority in this way. That may have come down after your experience in 2000.

Sometimes I miss LCM and all his crazy tirades. He went too far lots of times, but he was never boring. Can't say that about The Way of today.

Largely because of the IRS troubles you mention, TWI of today stays away from making any political endorsements. People who desire to be envolved in the political process, even seeking public office, are encouraged to do so. However the ministry is not to be used as any kind of vehicle for promoting a particular candidate or political agenda.

That said, the majority of the wayfers do swing toward the Evangelical conservative side of politics. Standing against homosexuality is more important to many than a whole host of more relevant issues, imo.

So in answer to the question, nothing said before, during, or after the elections.

After Martindale's announcement of the lawsuit but before his ouster, he talked about reorganizing things so that the chief teacher and the president were two different people.

My feeling is this was Rosalie's direction. That is certainly how she has taken things, well actually there is no chief teacher. The president seldom if ever speaks to the public. This has diminished the potential for a Craig Martindale sized ego from cropping up again, but it also remove the key ingredient to their growth - a charismatic front man. Without that they have little draw. One way to view TWI is as a personality cult, both with VPW and LCM. Take that away and they don't know how to sell their group.

Good point from skyrider about the Corps Director's role. It is definitely an out-moded concept as is the Way Corps itself.

It would be appropriate to say they were published posthumously, but it would be unnecessary to include this on the cover of the book. It is self-evident once the date of the author’s death is known. The thing that is queer about the "edited posthumously by Victor Paul Wierwille" is that it literally means VPW was involved in the editing after he was dead. Now whether or not that is actually possible depends on your views about life after death, but there is no mistaking what TWI and VPW believed about this subject. "When you die, you're dead." You won't be editing or doing anything else posthumously, that is after your death. So it is a curious turn of phrase that is to my knowledge without literary precedent.

Why couldn't Geer have just said, "the transcribed teachings of VPW, edited by Chris Geer”? This is an accepted approach to posthumous publication of someone's speeches or writings. From where I sit it definitely seemed like Geer was trying to leverage Wierwille's name to improve his own credibility and marketability.

Last night I heard a teaching about the Food Pyramid, and while the subject of the Food Pyramid was being discussed, a most amazing thing happened. Way believers were actually encouraged to look something up on the internet! In this unprecidented move by the Board of Directors, listeners were instructed to view MyPyramid.gov and to even use a search engine (gasp) to find other Food Pyramids like the Harvard University version of the food pyramid.

I was just thinking how ironical it would be for wayfers looking for info on the Food Pyramid to get routed to GSC and find my post on the Food Pyramid. (and of course more importantly the rest of this site.)

I wonder if TWI has tried to shut them down yet.

Belle, I think they gave up defending the name "The Way International" some time ago. There are numerous variations on the name "the way" that are out on the web. They may have been serious about this years ago, but I think the legal defense funds are tapped if you know what I mean.

Anybody still in touch with him? I was wondering if he might have went to a TWI offshoot, or maybe just moved on.

From the Homophone Dog ... I think that's "on the heels of the devil." That's the way I've always heard it.

Sorry, I don't get what you're saying.

Anybody 'member how VPW would say something like this... "The word is so true, if you read it on the heals of the devil and believed it..." it would still help you, heal you, something like that. Was just thinking today, maybe that's a fine description of our good TWI experiences. Iit made us stick around, too. "There might be bad things about the Way, but it saved my life, family, etc." (as it did in some cases.) It made us lay aside other evidence in front of us because we saw some good.

Maybe that good was from what we believed on the heals of the devil.

Good question, Oakspear.

Harve was made the Corps Director after Craig resigned. After Harve stepped down from the VP role, no one was named as a replacement and the title has quitely disappeared. Rico Magnelli is the "Way Corps Department Coordinator". That's a cabinet level position which would report to one of the directors. I would guess that to be Rosalie, since she 1) would want to control that and 2) is the "Minister of Education" for the Way.

Like many of those high level positions it's hard to say exactly what the "Way Corps Director" did anyway. Just another empty title fallen by the way I suspect.

...and how about "Head of Research"?...now that's funny! ...Who's the head of research now?...the guy who owns the Strongs Concordance?

David Chavoustie

Speaking of ripping off the works of others, another ironic phenomenon would occur when I found the teachings of similar to TWI. It would seem like they were ripping off PFAL and VPW. As if either of these were unique to or originated from TWI. I remember several years ago when I first saw Joel Osteen (mega-church pastor out of Houston), this guy definitely must have had "the class". LOL. You know what we'd say next, right? "The value of the counterfeit is in its likeness to the genuine."

The closer they sound to TWI teachings the more counterfeit they must be!