waysider

" What I find amazing is that the testimony and teaching of someone who never met the guy and who wasn't taught by anyone who had was given...well...more importance than the guy who was the reason for the whole movement." THIS!!

"Why people choose to remain comfortable in the tiny perverted lockbox of vic's gawd, I do not know." Here's an article that might shed some light on the matter. The research is not very large in scope but it certainly gives pause for thought. "Feeling like you're an expert can make you closed-minded."

The AC is where I heard it, as well.

All because of the "to whom it's written" drivel. PFAL: A class on accuracy.... built on a foundation of private interpretation.

There was always an undercurrent of sentiment that if you were interested in the *milk* of the gospels, more so than the epistles, you weren't really ready for the *meat* of Ephesians.

DWBH said: "Get some new charts please." That's solid musical advise for someone who's been singing the same old songs for too long.

Ahhhh......the salt covenant....forgot about that one. It was used in many ways but especially as a declaration you would never leave the one true household. I did that one, long ago. And then there was the pinky swear. I did that one, too. :P

I wasn't around for much of the LCM years. Most of my memories and experiences are from TWI#1. I took the class in 1972.

"I don't remember VP calling twi the "true household of God". Apparently you're suffering from selective memory. That basic concept is scattered throughout the tapes, books, classes and various class materials. Why do you think Wierwille said you would never find the rightly divided word anywhere else like you would in The Way? What do you think all those teachings were about that differentiated between the household and the family? What did you think it meant in the Advanced Class when VP taught about needing to be in fellowship (with God and with the believers) to receive revelation? Why do you think he said your life would be a miserable failure if you ever left the fold? He must have stated some variation of that very idea literally hundreds of times. On another note: What's that got to do with the letter being discussed?

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

I've been loosely following the recent news event detailing the beating death of a 19 year old man who expressed a desire to leave his cult's fold. Here, in contrast, we have an incident in which a congregation "shook the hand" of a man who wanted to leave and symbolically said "Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya".

TWI seems to have dropped off the radar because the only presence they ever had was as a tiny blip. TWI did not lose "all" their people, as evidenced by even a cursory search of sources. Their money? Last I heard it was somewhere in the 50-60 million USD range. That's not a fortune in today's economy but it's still a lot of dough, especially when you consider that some of it came out of our wallets. Whether or not anyone considers them dangerous is irrelevant. What makes them dangerous is that their doctrinal DNA continues to influence peripheral organizations like SOWERS, TLTF and so on. None of this, by the way, has anything to do with VPW's resignation letter. I'm just sayin'

I wanted to add to this rather than edit... Some might argue that, because you are the one who is modifying your own behavior, that the fault lies with you. (The old "gun to the head" routine) However, if you are basing your decisions on false or misleading information being fed to you, the fault must be shared by the deceiver. Example: You buy a used car. One of the factors that motivates your choice is low mileage. You later find out the seller altered the actual mileage. It was your decision to buy the car but it was the seller's choice to bias the deciding factors.

In PFAL we were taught to "Stand, no matter what happens." (paraphrased a bit) You can't do that without modifying your own behavior. In doing so, you become an active part of the procedure. That's what makes it so difficult to recognize.

"Let me get this straight. If I attend any church ONE TIME, then they own my soul for eternity?" What? Who said that? "Why didn't E&R church get rid of him sooner if what he was doing was so unethical?" Who really knows? Just because they didn't get rid of him doesn't prove or disprove anything. "People who join cults aren't "brainwashed" Well, maybe not initially but long term exposure and adherence to the tenets of a cult can certainly alter one's thinking and behavior.

For once we have a situation where a flow chart might actually help us understand the complexity of the situation.

At least in the REAL kindergarten we got a tasty snack and they let us take a nap when we needed it.

I'm curious about what people did before Darby proclaimed the existence of administrations (dispensations). How did they explain discrepancies and make everything fit like a hand in a sock puppet? Did they understand that the canonical sequence doesn't coincide with the chronology of the writings? Were they aware "there were only 3 kinds of people who ever lived. on. the. earth."? How did that impact their lives? Inquiring minds want to know.

That's a real gem right there, I tells ya. A bonafide gem!

There seems to be a date missing. It's the date that indicates when he took all his extraneous materials to the city dump (where the fire never ceases) and began to rely solely on God and the Bible for his spiritual enlightenment.

I don't think anyone meant to imply you can't or shouldn't use quotes to make a point. To suggest they did is being a bit disingenuous. You seemed to have a point in mind that you wanted to stress when you quoted Channing. What was that point? If you can't or don't want to address that point honestly, please don't drag this into a meta discussion.(ie: a discussion of the discussion, itself) Get back to the point at hand or start a new thread to address your concerns. As for Momentus, if you truly have no knowledge of the Momentus fiasco, you probably have very little understanding of the history of the organization or individuals you have chosen to defend here. Perhaps educating yourself on that issue would be an enlightening experience for you. As someone in an old 1940's movie once said, (obligatory quote) "It couldn't hoit, bruddah." edit: My Dad (may he R.I.P.) used to say "Poop or get off the potty chair." How's about that for a useful quote?

"As for my qualifications, I suppose you're right. I have no theological qualifications ... outside of the holy spirit the Lord gave me and the Bible in my hand. It certainly is very humbling. The wonderful news, however, is that I'm among very good company, since these were precisely the qualifications of most of those biblical characters we know and love. I'm sure glad that the Paul didn't hold Peter to the same standards of authenticity that you seem to want to hold me to, brother. The funny thing is, I was under the impression that a person's true credentials come from Jesus, since the Bible teaches that "... it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends." Oh, here we go again, comparing ourselves to Biblical figures. Guess what. you're not David, you're not Paul or Peter or Jesus. You're just an everyday guy, living a delusional life in the 21st century, imagining yourself to be a key player in some noble "spiritual" movement. In reality, you're a simple pawn in the God-Game, just like the rest of us were long ago. You're the guy on the 11 o'clock news who got hoodwinked out of his life savings by some seemingly sincere shyster. You might be a perfectly nice guy in real life. I wouldn't know. I've never met you. Continuing to live the TWI/PFAL/VPW/JAL charade for your own sake is one thing. Promoting it to others as a panacea for their problems is entirely something else. And, when I say "something else" I don't mean something good. When I was a kid I loved to read. I did a lot of book reports. You find out quickly that you can't simply regurgitate paragraphs or rephrase statements to make them appear original. Right or wrong, you had to give your own take on what you felt the book was saying. So, with that in mind, what is Channing saying? Do you draw any correlations? How is it relevant to this discussion? What Channing may or not be saying is nowhere nearly as important as the idea of speaking your own thoughts, your own mind, rather than continually defaulting to a parroted encore of previous performances. In a nutshell: Think for yourself. You'd be surprised how far you can go beyond what you were taught, despite Wierwille's assertions to the contrary. edit: spelling

Note that in the upper right hand corner, Wierwille does, in fact, declare himself to be the recipient of a legitimate doctorate. (TH. D.) It was 1957 and the falsehood had already been established. (You do know he wasn't REALLY a Dr., don't you?)

Well, then, how about a summation? You know, kinda like, "The point being stressed here is (fill in the blank)." In other words, if you had to briefly give the essence in your own words, what would you say?

Can we get the condensed version?