waysider

While My Guitar Gently Weeps.---The Beatles (Clapton played the lead, BTW.)

You are correct in stating that I was the one who introduced the biological aspect. My intention was to rule that particular aspect out of the discussion. When I took the Advanced Class, the implication was that every time you became sick, you either died completely or you died "a little bit", a cumulative effect, so to speak. ("Sickness is death in part or in whole.") Here are the original questions I posted: Questions to ponder: What (if anything) does this really mean? Is there any scriptural basis to support this? Did Wierwille, perhaps, simply "borrow" this phrase from some other source?

"Sickness is death in part or in whole." The above is a quote from the Advanced Class, a class that was touted as holding insight to great spiritual truths. I don't believe for a second that VPW was talking about cell death. If he was, it was certainly condescending of him to do so. Insisting that this justifies his statement only serves to trivialize the discussion and rationalize the fact that this is not a Biblical concept. I think most of us are well aware, to one degree or another, what cell death is and how it works. Ergo, we learned about it in ninth grade biology. In the context of the AC, VPW was clearly suggesting that this "sickness/death" relationship was a spiritual, not simply a physical one. Now let's move on and talk about the statement as it applies to the Advanced Class.

Didn't you already know that from 9th grade biology? Why did you need to quit your job, spend hundreds of dollars, drive "God only knows how many" miles and sweat through a miserable HQ summer to hear VPW present it like it was just handed down on a stone tablet?

oops---thought I answered that with a link on the last page. Anyhoo, you are correct about so I guess you get another go at it.

soul searcher Here's some more to chew on. It can get a bit "gristly" at times. It's my personal opinion that what we called speaking in tongues in The Way was really nothing more than glossolalia. When a person is practicing glossolalia, silently, to their self, it "anesthetizes", so to speak, the portion of the brain that allows the mind to process critical/conflicting thoughts. This has been shown by valid scientific studies. So, why is that relevant? Well, one of the big things that was heavily promoted in The Way was something called "the lift list". We were supposed to start and end our days with lift lists and squeeze them in where ever else possible. For example, a traffic jam was welcomed because it gave you an opportunity to run through your lift list. The lift list is a list of things you want to pray about. ("believe for" in wayspeak) The way it works is that you first select an item on the list. Next, you try to close out all distracting thoughts. For example, if you are "believing for" a new car, you might picture yourself driving down the street, on a beautiful day, in the very car you desire. You are supposed to be very specific and positive about the details. While you are doing this, you close out all thoughts and speak in tongues silently to yourself. If you are "believing for" healing from an ailment, you would, of course, picture yourself in a healthy state. Here's where it gets a bit sticky. The first item on your lift list was always supposed to be your "leadership". So, if you lifted, for example, VP Wierwille, you pictured him in prime health, speaking dynamically in front of large receptive crowds, etc. You always pictured him in a positive light. Meanwhile your mind was in a state that did not allow for any conflicting or uncomplimentary assessments of Wierwille. In other words, you were actively deluding yourself with a false image of the REAL VP Wierwille. Now, if you do that many times a day, every day for weeks, months, years and decades, it can be awfully hard to allow your mind to accept that VPW was, in reality, a very sick man who was in an almost constant state of inebriation, sexually preyed on hundreds of unsuspecting young women, (sometimes with the aid of date rape drugs) and siphoned huge sums of money from the ministry to fuel a hedonistic lifestyle. Cutting to my point, by speaking in tongues in the TWI prescribed manner, we were abstaining from healthy thoughts that should have led us to question and challenge what was really going on in the ministry.

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

Good question, soul searcher Here is the TWI answer to it from session #12 of PFAL ************************************************************* Speaking in Tongues. What it is for: 1. To edify you. I Corinthians 14:4. Jude 20. 2. To speak to God divine secrets. I Corinthians 14:2 3. To speak the wonderful works of God. Acts 2:11 4. To magnify God. Acts 10:46 5. To pray perfectly. Romans 8:26,27. ----a. No selfishness in praying in tongues. 6. To give thanks well. I Corinthians 14:17 7. To have the spirit bearing witness with our spirit. Romans 8:16 8. To know that you are a joint heir with Christ Romans 8:17 9. To strengthen you with might in the inner man. Ephesians 3:16. II Corinthians 4:16 10. To be a sign to unbelievers. I Corinthians 14:22. Mark 16:17. 11. It is rest to the soul. Isaiah 28:11,12. I Corinthians 14:21. 12. To bring a message from God or for God to the people. Must then be interpreted for it would be in public. I Corinthians 14:4,13,27,28.

I think it was in PFAL that VPW talked about Psalm 119 being an acrostic psalm. That is, in this particular case, that each section starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet which is then featured in that section. This is something that is completely lost when it is translated into any other language. That makes no sense to me when trying to ascribe a perfect or inerrant nature to it. Instead, it sounds to me like this was a convention of the language that was used at that particular point in history. It's difficult for me to accept that God would assign a level of perfection to a particular passage when the essence of such perfection would be lost to all but a handful of scholars.

To avoid fainting, keep repeating-----It's only a movie, only a movie, only a movie----

That may be "stretching" it.

Now here's an idea that's crossed my mind more than once over the years. If, indeed, the record in Acts 2 is historically true, perhaps we have it all bass ackwards. In other words, maybe they spoke their own native tongue but people who were unfamiliar with that language were somehow able to understand them. Honestly, I never "researched" it or anything like that. It's just one of those things that crossed my mind now and then. But, if there is any reality to that scenario, we sure wasted a lot of time and energy on something that was misinterpreted from the get-go.

I vaguely remember something like that being on an SNS tape from about 1975 or so. I could be mistaken.

Well, some people may not like the answer to this question. It has to sound exotic so that it will tickle the ears of new recruits. ("babes" in TWI lingo) In fact, a big part of the Intermediate Class (the class that specifically deals with tongues, interpretation and prophesy) is consumed with what we called "excellor sessions". These are, for all intents and purposes, sessions that are dedicated to enhancing the public presentation of the "utterance manifestations". In these sessions, we did things like start our tongues with specific or sequential letters of the alphabet so they would sound like they had variety. (Amakala Boshenta Colisto Devetzo------) And, we did things like making sure our "tongue" portion was relatively equal to the "interpretation" portion of the message. We sang in tongues. We had mock conversations in tongues. We did exercises where we varied the dynamics. All this was done so that it would have flash and excitement when done in a "believer's meeting". You won't find "excellor sessions" in any version of the Bible.

---------------Napoleon XIV

Adding a bit on "isolation". It's not about being locked in a room all by yourself, although, I suppose it could be. It's about associating only with people who think like you and support your belief system. You can have a regular job in the 9-5 world and still isolate yourself if you never interact with those people in a meaningful fashion. The Way used this "not unequally yoked with unbelievers" mantra to bolster our isolation. It functions in a way that facilitate an unhealthy outlook on reality

Actually, someone WAS killed. He was run down by a tractor trailer as he hitched to L.E.A.D. In addition, one of our very own posters on GSC was kidnapped and raped. This L.E.A.D. story is just one of many. Another former poster here was maimed for life during the rodeo school phase. What you need to know to see this in perspective is that, even after these terrible accidents happened, The Way continued to subject people to these dangers, with little regard for anyone's personal safety. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of similar accounts throughout TWI's history. Suicides, child molesters that were intentionally shielded and hidden in the system, wife abusers, child beaters, people who died (yes, died) trying to "believe" for healing when they desperately needed medical attention.---- and so on. Here is another one that deals with L.E.A.D. EDIT I apologize for the inappropriate joke I posted during the course of the linked thread.

You're always welcome to stop by for a "Sunday Morning Shoutbox Special".

Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes. I've posted before about a certain middle of the night emergency meeting in Fellow Laborers that "just so happened to coincide" with a certain middle of the night emergency meeting that was taking place in the Corps.

I think it is important to note, at this time, that people literally lost their lives because of this doctrine. Consider, for a moment, all the pain and agony that was suffered due to the L.E.A.D. program. People were raped, robbed, lost appendages, killed in traffic accidents and committed suicide because they trusted that their "leaders" were acting on revelation. They trusted that their "leaders" would be "spiritually sharp enough" to know that something was drastically wrong. They ignored their own better judgment and common sense in favor of "the law of believing" and a blind confidence that God would surely "tell" them if danger was imminent. It's not just some quirky, nutty, innocuous way to go through life. It's a very dangerous way to conduct one's thinking. For most of us, we learned to think like this in The Way.

Missing It and Hyper-vigilance "God always tells you but you don't always listen" so it's your fault you didn't see the low tire that caused the accident.The Christ in you saw the low tire and told you but you weren't in fellowship. That's why you didn't notice. Either you were "believing to have an accident" or you were "not believing to hear the small still voice". It all comes down to "you". Better do a "check-up from the neck-up", Mister, if you ever want to lead God's people. Gotta get "sharp as a meatball and twice as juicy " if you're ever going to outsmart the old adversary. You better get your nose back into PFAL, speak in tongues "like a house afire", rework those retemory cards and stay on-guard at all times 'cause the adversary is like a lion roaming the streets, just waiting to pounce on you at any moment. *************************************** Of course, after hearing this speech for the umteenth time, you didn't really need anyone to actually give it to you. You could give it to yourself . Never mind the fact that you'd been up half the night working on some half-baked ministry assignment and it was very dark where the car was parked. That would just be seeing it from a "senses realm" perspective.

For what it's worth, one of the things taught in The Way was that you can't ask/tell God to give you a sign. (ala "dew on the fleece"), though this is exactly what Wierwille himself claimed to have done in his tall tale of seeing "snow on the gas pumps" and hearing God's audible voice.

It gets pretty crazy after a while. ----For example You notice one of your tires needs air. Well, that must be Christ's eyes behind your eyes that noticed it. You notice that a room has a stale odor. Well, it must be the keen sense of smell that Christ's nose behind your nose has that caused you to notice. Pretty soon, you start to believe there is no real value to your own powers of observation. Plus, every little thing that you do notice seems to have a heightened sense of value. How could it not? God thought it was important enough to point it out to you.

soul searcher "Listening to the small still voice" had a metaphorical aspect, as well. This was, in part, what the Advanced Class was about. You see, in the Foundational Class, we were taught that, when the new birth takes place, Christ takes up a permanent residence inside you. (ie: Christ in you----session #5) This Christ in you is supposedly what gives you the ability to speak in tongues and converse directly with God on a spiritual plane. It's geared toward the benefit of the individual student. Then, in the Intermediate Class, we were taught how to operate speaking in tongues with interpretation and prophesy. (forth telling, not foretelling.) That was supposed to be for the benefit of the immediate group as a whole. Do you sense how this is building.? Next, in the Advanced Class, the message is that this "Christ in us" gives us the power to do things that will benefit the entire ministry. So, here's where it gets metaphorical. Because you now have Christ in you, speak in tongues to benefit your own spiritual growth and can operate tongues with interpretation (or prophesy) to benefit the immediate group, you are taken a step farther. In this step, you are taught that it is "Christ's eyes behind your eyes, Christ's ears behind your ears, Christ's nose behind your nose. etc." So, in essence, it means that, even though something may be too trivial for your own ears to pick up, it's supposedly possible for the "Christ in you"'s ears to pick it up. This concept was applied to all five senses. Now, what people would do is observe something they assumed was beyond the realm of ordinary observation and deduce that this was the small still voice of revelation from God.Here's an example. Suppose you are preparing meat that has a slightly "off" odor. Naturally, this MUST be God "telling you" that the meat is spoiled. I'm sure you can think of a multitude of similar examples. So, it's not just about hearing audible voices or seeing hallucinations, though Wierwille did, in fact, claim that he did.

Greenlife.----Yes, I remember it. It was made from a combination of cold processed grasses. It was the only nutritional source ingested during the now infamous Colocleanse. (colon detoxification regimen involving a week long fast, accompanied by ingestion of volcanic ash bentonite to scrub the bowels) Controversial, to say the least. It was said that there was enough nutritional value in Greenlife to supply all your daily requirements. One poster here, in particular, can tell you how destructive such treatments can potentially be. Liquid lecithin was a big craze, as well. It was supposed to sharpen you up mentally so you would be ready to receive revelation on a moment's notice.