waysider

"So there I was was, getting nowhere with my basketball career, while I watched far less talented players advance their careers by leaps and bounds. I said "God, give me something that will make me stand out and I promise to lead others to the greatness of The Hoop. Just like that, the ball jumped out of my hands and spun in a most unconventional manner. Through the hoop it went, as snow began to fill the arena. And that, keeds, is how the hook shot came to be."

Santa Claus will always be real to those who never dare to question his existence.

That's just what bullies do. They take credit for other peoples' accomplishments. Sometimes it's blatant, sometimes it's subliminal. People who haven't come to the realization you eventually came to might go to the grave thinking that topic originated with Rivenbark or, worse, that she was the recipient of divine inspiration.. Your effort to understand it was not at all wasted. It served to teach you a much more important lesson about yourself and about the importance of validating sources. You learned from it. Those whose opinions remain the same, apparently, did not. Who's the winner?

Here's a problem that coexists with the idea of everything having to fit. (Or, maybe it's merely another facet of the same problem. I'm not sure.) Members of the inerrant camp are of the opinion that every individual word included in "THE WORD" must have originated directly from a divine source, as indicated in II Timothy 2:15. According to this line of thinking, God must have had some obvious or hidden motive in what He said, where He said it, how He said it and so forth. This assumes that the authorship was unquestionably divine. It's a major stumbling block. It's probably tripped up more people than we can ever imagine. As long as the stumbling block remains, nothing will ever truly "fit" in the way that advocates of inerrancy insist it should. People will continue to play Biblical Twister, Scriptural Pickup Stix, Divine Dominoes and Jehovah Jenga until the ends of the earth. In doing so, they may be be missing the forest for the trees. Ironically, people don't seem to have this problem when considering the lessons of Aesop or other writers of mythical works. They enjoy the freedom to explore outside the confines of perfection. Biblical students will too often deny themselves that luxury. It's a pity, really.

The lucky ones, that is.

......... But you could return to your old community if you were from an elite group that was influential or likely to bring in big money or bring in "big" names or you were part of one of the families that were highly connected in TWI. There was always a trophy mentality in The Way. "If we could just get (big sports/music/film star) to take the class, people will be lining up to sign The Green Card." It's a popular sales technique. We see it all around us. Some big name, popular star uses a particular product so "it must be good". They got special treatment in The Way. It was part of the marketing plan.

This should have been on The Green Card. "Enables you to trade your spirituality for a pot of beans."

I didn't see any indication of that. But, then, I can't really ask, can I?

Sorry, I should have been a bit clearer. I was referring to the guy who runs that Way of 21st Century site. Geeze, it's like he copied the gas pumps story and just changed the incidentals.

I just decided to look up a guy on facebook from the old days, before I decided to "move up the ladder". Something on his wall/page or whatever that thing is called said something along the lines of "Don't even bother to contact me unless you hold the teachings of VPW in highest regard." Yikes! You tell me..... victim or oppressor?

"(That being said, probably no one will care (or dare) to answer, but these are the kind of questions that I have pondered myself for many years." Take his prattle out of a religious context and his narcissism becomes much clearer. The "I'm not worthy" schtick gets a bit tiresome at this point in my life.

PFAL is the herpes virus of the religious field. It seems to disappear for a while and then...BAM!... there it is again.

Responding to this: "I am quite certain this forum thread will be offensive to some (depends on your circle quad) because some folks out there held corp folk in highest esteem (in some ways I still do) and some loathe corp folk just like I do. What I like most about corp folk is that mostly but not absolutely can validate the teachings of vpw and that includes all the things he took from folks like Bullinger, etc. but you would have to post on the doctrinal forum to do that which seems below some corp folk level. Yes, I recently learned about levels here on GSC, I was elated to learn I was down there in doctrinal being spoon fed, I am ignorant having not sat at the feet of the master so ask and listen on the most stupid things I am allowed to ask; guess I caught the elevator. You see, one of the primary things a person leaving twi wants to know is what is crap and what was true." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was never in the Corps. I was in a program called FellowLaborers. FellowLaborers, for those who don't know, was sometimes referred to as the bastard stepchild of the Corps. We were in-rez at Limb Hq for 2 years and followed the same set of principles as the Way Corps. We lived communally in a block of rental townhouses. (~50 participants/8 townhouses) One of the major differences between the Corps and FellowLaborers was that we were NOT allowed to have sponsors. We had to hold down full time secular jobs, in addition to our duties as FellowLaborers, and pay our own way. We had a housing fund, which covered rent and utilities, a "Manna" fund to cover the cost of our food co-op (can't pay=can't eat), a "household fund", which covered the cost of incidentals for our townhouses (6 to a townhouse), such as toilet paper, dish soap and various other exciting things. We also had personal expenses such as laundry, personal clothing, gasoline and the like. We had to ABS and were technically required to sponsor someone in the Corps. (I say technically because no one ever had much left over for such a requirement so it was virtually winked at if someone couldn't cover their pledge.) OK, with that out of the way, here's my point. People who weren't in the program seemed to think we were being exposed to some kind of in-depth Biblical insight, studying the meat of the word and all that kind of jazz. Well, the truth is, we probably read the Bible even less than you folks in the local twigs. Who had time? We were too busy weeding our communal garden, making mayonnaise from scratch or mixing huge batches of familia. We had no time to spend on any "in-depth" research. We read and reread and re-reread the same old stuff everybody else read (blue book, PFAL collaterals,etc) When we had our weekly teaching night, it was hit or miss on subject matter and usually pretty much focused on how much we had "screwed up" the previous week. We were never quite good enough. We weren't special. We weren't elite. People in our hometowns may have thought we were but, truly, we were not. We were just a misguided bunch of schmoes, trying to make it from one day to the next, with precious little time or wakefulness to ever look at the bigger picture. I can't speak for the Corps experience. I suspect there are fundamental similarities. So, please, stop thinking program participants have an inside scoop and can bring a more profound and scholastic understanding to the discussion, especially on doctrinal issues. Some can, of course. But, that's because of what they have to offer as individuals, not because the programs made them excel. I hope that made some sense.

"That's wonderful, Johnny. Now start your 'tongue' with the letter Q."

Making them sound like sentences and paragraphs was the purpose of excellor sessions. Why else would we have needed these sessions other than to enhance their theatrical-like presentation?

Someone should let him know that Wierwille wasn't really a Dr. He seems to enjoy flaunting his connection to VP to bolster his credibility.

You forgot to say "En Garde!", so, no, that won't work.

Meanwhile, out on the field, Joe Blow twig leader wasn't even allowed to use funds from the offering to buy a money order or pay for the postage to send it to HQ. Use your own money for the privilege of giving it away. I suppose we could have itemized that on our taxes. Oh, wait, we worked at crappy minimum wage jobs and never made enough to do a long form. So, yeah, there were different standards on the field than there were at HQ.

I don't think anyone has noted yet how Wierwille sidestepped the apparent scriptural contradiction by saying they weren't gifts to the individuals, they were gifts to the church.

"............ the 6th corps was all "thrown out" and had to come groveling back before the corps-program-doors opened back up." For those who may be wondering what that was all about: It was scripted, orchestrated, staged, coordinated or whatever word you find appropriate. It was all a show........They did they same thing in FellowLaborers, at the same time. It was calculated indoctrination, designed to instill obedience. And, they wanted you to think it happened as a result of revelation.

No issues. I'm just saying they typify the type of organization that might be discussed in this forum. They are a mini clone of the early Way movement. They have their own W.O.W program, L.E.A.D., hitchhiking and a mini corps type program, complete with the same set of principles used by the Way Corps. I imagine there is a nostalgic flavoring that some might find appealing. Oh, and displaying the Wierwille name probably generates some attraction, as well.

"This forum is to discuss offshoot ministries whose histories can reasonably be tied to The Way International." S.O.W.E.R.S. Nothing to discuss at the moment, just tossing this out as an example.

"Seems like this con came full circle.....when wierwille died of cancer, having taught in his advanced (cough, cough) classes that cancer is a devil spirit, a life of its own. So, was wierwille possessed when he died?" You have 2 options here. There may be more. These 2 come to mind. Option (1): We were following the teachings of a possessed man. Option (2): All that devil possession stuff was hogwash..... So, then, what else might have been hogwash?.... It's a gen-u-whine dilemma, I tells ya.

Fear is what gives rise to the fight or flight instinct. When we ignored that, during our time in The Way, we cast ourselves into unhealthy situations, such as allowing ourselves to be lorded over by people who didn't have our best interests at heart. For as much talk as we heard about listening to that small inner voice, you would think we should have known better. Ironically, however, we were taught to ignore the REAL inner voice and wait for "revelation". People literally died trying to follow that advise. Fear could have spared them from death.

This is just my opinion. The money from the classes was like icing on the cake, chump change, if you will. Wierwille's real goal was to establish a loyal following of believers who would ABS 10, 15, 20% of their income, payday after payday after payday. They could have given the classes away for free and still amassed a fortune.