M. D. Vaden

But I do swoop out, and for a reason. Frequent use of this forum can "fix" a perception. I don't like to dwell here very long, because the purpose in Grease Spot, is understood a bit differently by stepping away from it for a while. Now check out this.... "Hey Vader. You some kind of child molester? You sound like one. No kidding. Anybody who draws a moral equivalency between teaching the bible fifteen minutes too long and the crimes Wierwille & Martindale (and their sadistic, self-serving toadies) committed against many Way believers has to be some kind of twisted, amoral freak. That's what you sound like. I'd say you are a sick puppy Vader, a Wierwillian monstrosity of the first order. I see no evidence of conscience in you. You are primordial slime, oozing into a pool at the base of the scale of human moral evolution. If I knew where you lived I'd tip the police to search your house and property. And your computer, too. You reek of depravity, even across the internet." That post is one reason this site doesn't keep some people around very long. The person who wrote it probably didn't spend more than a minute before their mind raced to write. Grease Spot is supposed to help people - and I'd like for it too, too. But it's going to get neutralized when users start slinging rude or false statements about well-known cititzens. What a disgrace, really. People have to take more than a millisecond or a minute before they disgrace themselves or the forum. The forum takes the biggest hit really. VPW, LCM or TWI are not responsible for all our problems. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. That's part of why this thread. Also, why I just "swoop" into the forum. The Grease Spot is very unique when read infrequently. It reminds me of a lady who hired me after lurking in the nation's most used arborist forum. It was interesting to hear her feedback about that website and how she percieved it as a "lurker" or person who was not "one" with the forum's frequent users. Oh... about sin. I know that actions in the bible were to bring different consequences than some sins. Like execution for murder, but not for lying. But the action of murder goes a lot deeper than just sin. But within the scope of "sin", I firmly believe that sin is sin. I don't believe that there are big sins or little sins. To me, stealing is sin as much as lying is a sin. So no matter what a leader in a church may have taught or led people to do, I don't see - in the Word - where that sin is higher or lower on the totem pole of our sins.

That reminds me of sin rating systems where some sins are rated higher than other sins. In one way, that may be true, such as a proud look or sowing discord between brethren.

I can see the images of the white shot glasses, but where are the glasses?

With all the posts about TWI, LC Martindale and WP Wierwille, doesn't it make sense to have a thread about us too? You see, it's one big body in Christ. Every member in particular is as important as another no matter who we are. Why limit the venting, sharing and information on Grease Spot to just TWI or Dr. Wierwille? Why not share and reveal the stuff about ourselves and each other on here as well? That would paint a much bigger picture. We all attended and participated in the fellowships. So even if TWI tried to coordinate or manipulate the meetings and fellowships, we are still the ones who taught, the ones who sang, the ones who recruited, the ones who led meetings, the ones who attended. So I'll go first. There was a Branch meeting in Portland, Oregon area where I taught. I was asked to limit my teaching to 10 minutes so another person could share. But, I squeezed out near 25 minutes because that's what I felt I needed to get the job done. The next person had to cut thier's short. Later, I realized that I was selfish, and most of my reason for teaching long was ego. Eventually, I figured out how I could have presented the same material in as little as 10 minutes. But I was stubborn, egotistical and selfish. Nobody in the audience knew it. But now we know. Now, who has a little bit of trash about themselves? I've already heard about VP Wierwille. How about you? We can't shift all the blame onto a few people. We still carried out many naughty or wrong things because we choose to. Dr. Wierwille could not have been in every state to control and influence everybody. Even his leadership were insufficient. We all did it. We are all responsible. We believed to act as we did as much as VPW believed to act the way he did.

Amazing ?? !! So you are saying that he was a sinner? That he did something wrong? What a revelation. I don't agree with all that Dr. Wierwille said, and certainly he (like you, me and "them") has done things I or we don't know about... ... but what I remember about the man is that his teaching delivered me from 100 more fears and problems than he ever would have caused for me. To a degree in Grease Spot, and to a big degree in the general populace that's not trinitarian, that's the hazard in making accusations against Dr. Wierwille even if you are absolutely right. The problem lies in the fact that many people were freed from many fears and edified in many ways despite small flaws; despite some secrets they may not have known.

When I read this, I thought this was an old post from 2003 or something. But then I saw the date. Inside information I gleaned from someone talking to a teacher for SNS twice in recent years, indicates a much different approach. Whereas previous teaching was constrained, the person teaching was encouraged, much more recently, to basically cut-loose with what they were really inspired to teach. I know the person whom the information came from and the teacher, very well; so I'm taking it as reliable since no other mouths brought it to me. That's not to say the TWI is on the high road to success, but I'd toss any notion of read scripts out the window... ...unless someone did an administrative change in the past few months.

If the cost of living, wages and fuel (to a great degree) have risen each of the past few years, would those figures be significant if they remained static?

This was a subject in itself that probably should have alarmed me more about the TWI's ideals or teachings. For the more part, I don't disagree with a great amount of TWI's teaching, but the "Jews" and "Halocaust" teaching seemed very awkward. The evidence, the locations and the number of witnesses is remarkable. As a group, the proclaimed "Jew" religion is still a worldly counterfiet, but they are people and reality is still reality. I never saw Schindler's list until 2005, and I thought that the film was a tremendous way to portray the worth of a life over the worth of stuff. If the witnesses and evidence of the Nazi's persecution of the Jew's is a fake, then we may as well say George Washington never existed either.

I like that posted reply. You don't seem to have jumped the gun or hopped into a band wagon. It reminded me of a verse "Thy words were found and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart" (punctuation?). I think many times about OT men who went to the already written word and took possession of the words as their own too. Nothing under the sun is new. Unless Dr. Wierwille knowingly concealed that other people had the same teaching as himself, it would not really be stealing or plagerism. Any teaching that Dr. Wierwilled had, could not have originated with anybody whom he supposedly "stole" it from. Because any valid teaching material would have been in the scripture for hundreds of years. Possibly hundreds of men and women would have recognized and taught portions of it through the centuries without a guarantee of it being recorded. Many critics that cry "plagerism" spend little time holding the spotlight on the people they think are the ones stolen from. Why don't they take it a step further; take it deeper by another layer? Did it originate with the person whom it was stolen from? Or did the other person plagerize it too. It can still boil down to the "from one extreme to another mentality". The important part is not the person with whom a teaching originated, but "what does the word say?" Is it the Word? It's again the game of putting the focus on a man or woman, and taking the focus off of God. When the focus is taken off God and put on any man or woman, that's an indirect and subtle attack of Satan: a way of gaining indirect worship. And the "pawns" that carry out that task unknowingly become Satan's little alter boys; Satan's little priests. Such men and women are then "dished-out" the little reward of feeling important, of apparently looking smart like they have solved some difficult case.

That's kind of a joke. dmiller had posted a URL which displayed a picture from my site of a forest. I swapped images in my site, which triggered an image change in that post because it was still pulling from my server under the first image address. That was my doing - just being pesky.

Yes, good country. By the way, did you know that by hotlinking to that image, every time this thread displays, whether months or years, my server bandwidth gets used up a bit? It does not copy that image to GSC's server. That's why I usually put a text hyperlink in posts. It took me a while to find that out myself. When you get a chance, edit the post so that it hyperlinks to that specific image. Maybe give it name like "mdvaden's Rogue River National Forest Photo". Then folks can click the link. Thanks. Now, I needed to borrow the title of master-derailer for a few hours. When you make it a hyperlink, use the new photo address on my Applegate page. I'm not going to rename it again - the image I swapped will be deleted in a day or two. I just added a "2" to the end of the scenery image and reloaded that webpage to my server.

You might be amazed how often often I've popped in and out of here over the years to see who says what, and how long they have posted. It almost reminds me of growing trees. I can pop in on a neighborhood, forest or grove of trees every few months and still tell if they are declining or improving in their environment by the characteristics. People are so similar, it's amazing. Trees, or people, you don't have to be around them every day to know if there is change. Change is still change. And lack of change is still lack of change. One interesting thing about some forums is the info space that shows the number of users online and the number of non-members. Everyone who is not logged in should display as a non-member. One arborist forum I visit has about 20 to 30 non-members reading the forum for every registered logged in member. It's almost amusing. I actually was hired from a lady in Beaverton, OR who had been lurking in the background for months reading posts. That's why I told some of the tree guys to watch their mouth in the forums regarding vocabulary - they will never know if good customer in online reading. One thing about healing - "He sent his Word and healed them".

The silversmith's of Ephesus were not christians either, but were still a "church" or "ekklesia". So based on either biblical terminology, or old Greek terminology, you are the participant of a "church" by participation here. You are here for a purpose - a similar purpose.. When I look at this forum and site, I see primarily a Christian base of concept and usership, regardless of the technicality about some non-Christians users.. If this is not intended to be a site of profit to the chiristian church, I'd like someone who represents the site to clearly state such - that it's not a christian site, but just a place for any person whosoever to ramble on about one particular religious group. I was under the impression that this site was christian owned, maybe I'm wrong. If it is, then this quote from the "who we are" part conveys a meaning to me: If it's a christian operated forum, then people are expected to "recover" if they are Christians capable of renewing their mind, being edified with the Word, and taking on an easier yoke. If it's not a christian forum, then people will not "recover" - they will merely transform or conform to another fashion of worldly living - if they intend not to believe and become a christian. That's my perspective as a christian. If the Way was bad for you, and you are not a christian, great: pick another alternative. I don't call any alternative to the Word "recovery" though. I lived in "recovery" land before I was a christian or knew how to believe the Word, and "recovery" in the world is not any real recovery. The world's "recovery" is just one cult after another - near-perfect counterfiets that could each have their own forum against them for information. Except that they are so subtle as counterfiets, that they still seem appealing to the non-christians, and to some christians. Outside of the the christianity of the Word, is the world. And that world has princes and rulers and it's wisdom. It has no recovery. Not God's idea of recovery. Maybe God's idea of a pacifier, but not recovery.

Slightly / Somewhat / A Little.The Word teaches a procedure in the law, proverbs, gospels and epistles, about how certain matters are to be exposed, proved, witnessed to, etc.. I don't think some issues in this forum follow those procedures, wisdom or profit. I won't post their link, but use Google and enter Jacksonville Applegate Fellowship Coursen That should bring it up. It's in Ruch with a Jacksonville address. The GSC is a church. Just as the church in the house of Aquilla and Priscilla, or the mob of silversmiths in Ephesus are both called an "ekklesia", so likewise are the participants of the GSC an ekklesia in the basics of participation. Assuming we are all christians, we still all have the ministry of reconciliation. So participating in an on-line forum or going to a restaurant does not remove us from adhering to the doctrine and ministry of the Word. Our conduct and conversation should be the same basic standard wherever we are, if there are enough christians to enable the practices and the doctrines. So from what the Word teaches, I view the GSC as a church. Maybe some people LEFT THE WAY, but I sure hope they did not come here thinking that they left the Word. If christians are going to come to this forum and claim they have some kind of profitable information or edification to dish out, I sure hope they plan to do it exactly as God, Jesus Christ or the Apostle Paul taught it should be done. I won't do anybody and good in here if I think I can add, subtract or change the Word in how I speak, edify, confront, prove or excuse in my conversation. Many of us left the Way International, but THE WAY still stands firm.

That is correct. We quit "attending" the ""fellowships"" last June just before moving to Medford. Actually, we are in Ruch about 13 miles west of Medford, with a Jacksonville address. I made a page for our new location > scroll down the page; several images: Area near our new south Oregon home The page link is also in the small drop-down menu at the bottom of my home page. Yes, I was impressed at how much some churches have advanced in many areas of the Word and teaching. It might be that the influence of the early Way and people who left it triggered part of that advancement. But now it's fairly irrelevant who caused what as long as truth is taught. I'm amazed at how many websites list E. W. Bullinger's work on figures of speech.

I like this thread. For months, I have not been on this forum, not so much that I was still at Way fellowships, but that 1/3 or more of the posts in this forum are worse in nature than current Way problems; and on par with past Way negatives. We moved to another part of our state. We attend what's mainly a trinity type church, but after I "just happened" to work next door to the ministers house, we had iced tea together; then I learned that he's meek to know more. The heart and caring in that church exceeds what I saw at much of the Way fellowships during the past decade. I'd rather attend where people lack some knowledge, but have some heart. The insight of this minister is quite astounding. He, and his dad, teach as good as any minister I've heard in the Way - aside from the few trinity comments. No wonder people flock to this church. It's congregation is a few thousand, with offshoots routinely occuring to keep the size down. They do have home fellowships and also believe in speaking in tongues for several of the reasons that many of us were taught in the Way. When I left the last Way fellowship, I confronted the coordinator about the "dry as a bone" nature of the fellowship. Over 6 years in two fellowships, only 3 or 4 people ever visited and nobody new ever stayed. That's the combined effort of 15 to 20 people witnessing (spinning their wheels) over a 6 year period. And the meeting structure was so redundant that it may as well have been a recording - led to a script it seemed. It's been challenging living in a new region of the state and starting business again from scratch, but in general, I feel great. My attitude is better, and I feel 10 years younger in my work. I'm more thankful for my work and what I have. And I enjoy the fellowship at the church so much, I go several times a week to hear the Word and visit with people, whereas I had to drag myself to one Way fellowship per week. I still greatly care for the people who I left behind. They are still my buddies, and I wish no ill or collapse of their situation. If they can rise to higher standards of fellowship - good for them. On the other hand, I believe there is truth in "what's in a name". The Way name has been seriously damaged, even if it were just for C. Martindale alone. Jumping back and forth between foundational classes was not a rock solid example either. It's a swaying back and forth. If the Way were to rise to a smooth running ministry according to the Word, I think they would do well to rename the group and file all required legal papers to change corporate entity. The internet is to heavily loaded about the Way International.