waysider

If I may, I'd like to tweak this just a bit. If you join/follow a cult, knowing or ignoring its true nature, you are responsible for your words, actions , decisions and emotions. If your involvement is the result of deception, the deceivers must share in the responsibility.

We had a similar conversation HERE.

"However, in fairness to what is truth and what is fiction, the research fellowship at TWI (at least in the initial years of its formation) did display a reasonable amount of openness and tolerance to "new thoughts" and ideas." There is someone who posts here who was part of that. Perhaps she'll offer a response if this thread should catch her eye.

Everyone takes away something different from the story. The big thing I take away from it is the blatant hypocrisy of Wierwille vowing to never preach another negative. Once we got past the basic classes and committed to one of the training programs, we were guaranteed to hear all the negative directives we could ever imagine or want.

"am I a lemon?" I'm pretty sure you're not a lemon. Do you look like this?

I don't think I expressed my point very clearly here. My point was that perhaps Paul was doing the same thing we did, mistaking glossolalia for what is described in Acts. Is that clearer? I hope so.

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) from Through the Looking Glass Jabberwocky 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought– So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came wiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't know what it means. We do know, however, it has an organized structure.....verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives. It may be a nonsense language, but it is, in the end, a language.

"(it is an art, NOT a science)" If this is art, are we drawing conclusions?

It wasn't simply a matter of him not stopping it. He instigated and perpetuated it. The overlords who followed were less skilled in disguising it.

Hello, Roy This sort of thing typically belongs in the doctrinal forum as it does not directly relate to the workings of The Way. (The Way already assumes the answer.) That being said, I noticed the timer said it is over 2 hours long. That's probably a bit longer than I would personally care to invest in a video. Thanks for taking the time to post it, though.

Well, you really should, you know. Now that you're aware, you really have no other choice.

"Paul very plainly states in I Cor. 14 that he spoke in tongues "more than ye all." Yet, there is no mention of him doing so in Acts." Is it possible he wasn't doing the same thing they were doing in Acts? Maybe this misunderstanding of what it is goes back farther than we suspected.

People in abusive domestic relationships get these types of questions, too. It doesn't excuse what happened, it shifts the blame. "did it originate with him?" Yes, I believe it did. If you stick around here long enough to get a comprehensive, objective understanding of how "the ministry" evolved, you begin to see that it was corrupt from its very beginnings.

Spirituality is a perception of reality upon which people base their beliefs and subsequent actions. (Whether spirits actually exist is a whole separate issue.) When someone exploits or abuses the (spirituality type) perception of others, they are committing spiritual abuse, thus negatively affecting the lives of those holding the perceptions. edit: Perception abuse might be a more accurate term but it's too nebulous to grab anyone's attention.

"Do you ascertain that when you SIT their must be folk present to understand the SIT?" No, I ascertain maintain that, when or if you speak in tongues, it should do what speaking in tongues did in the Bible, which is produce a language. It should have form and substance like a genuine language. Whether someone can specifically identify it or not is a moot point. "SIT is not a TWI exclusive thing - get over it, SIT existed before twi and will exist, well, until now." I'm not sure why or where you got the idea I thought it is. The glosssolalia style SIT we practiced in The Way is done by Christians and Non-Christians outside The Way and even existed before Christianity itself.

Loathing the Overlords That would have made a good title for a sequel to Athletes of the Spirit.

Fascinating. Acts 2 says they spoke languages that others understood yet I Cor 14:2 says no man understands.

That makes sense. Tests have shown that when you are speaking in tongues (glossolalia), a part of your brain (the frontal lobe) that is involved in reason and self control becomes less active. It's the opposite of what happens during meditation. In other words, it allows your brain to "chill out". HERE

A linguist would not have to prove WHAT language is being spoken. A linguist would only have to prove THAT a language is being spoken. Does it not concern anyone else that Non-Christians can do the same thing we did in The Way? The difference is that when they do it they sometimes call it improvisational acting.

The Jefferson Bible The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, was a book constructed by Thomas Jefferson in the later years of his life by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's condensed composition is especially notable for its exclusion of all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels which contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages indicating Jesus was divine. Source

It's a rephrasing of something out of PFAL. Remember the story of how the town drunk came to Sunday services looking for deliverance? (Session #1, I think) Wierwille preached on the negatives and evils of drinking. After the service, in the reception line, he sadly told Wierwille he already knew about the evils of drinking, he had come there to find out HOW to get sober. Wierwille said he was crushed and decided at that moment to never preach a negative sermon again. Yeah, how'd that turn out?

You're not missing anything. What you're seeing is an inconsistency. The Bible is filled with them.

"But, what if what they are doing or offering is, in reality, nothing short of disobedience, and that which they do does not bring or give praise or honor or glory to Him, with either their lips or their hearts?" You know, of course, there are those who would say this logic applies to The Way, as well.

I remember VPW teaching that you could use SIT as a surrogate for sleep. I don't know anything about the science of sleep but I should think that some aspect of that concept would be testable. In FellowLaborers, the effects of sleep deprivation began taking their toll. People started grumbling about it. Next thing you know, the men's coordinator called for a "branch meeting" (all 50 of us). He chewed us out first for grumbling and then for not speaking in tongues enough. He said if we spoke in tongues enough, we could bypass sleep altogether. Guess who overslept the next morning and was late arriving for our morning fellowship.