waysider

Do we really want to go there?

Wow, I just knew I should have joined the Corps. Even leaving a second rate operation like FellowLaborers wasn't as easy as all that. I mean, who knew you wouldn't be threatened with having your marriage destroyed, your career destroyed or having threats leveled at your family? It's a real shame Wierwille didn't have "enforcers" who could pay friendly social visits to outspoken opponents. Of course, there was always that grease spot by midnight thing, but other than that....

Talking about TWI now: In Ohio, the location of The Way HQ, having sex with someone who is incapacitated is rape. Wierille's victims who were incapacitated through drugging were raped. It's straightforward. Some victims complied under the threat of dire consequences if they didn't. Threats were made to the effect of ruining people reputations, careers, families and who knows what else. Sex by coercion is rape. Wierwille and Martindale used their positions of authority to persuade others to have sex with them. In Ohio, this is defined as rape. Others who were not sexual victims, but knew what was going on, were sometimes threatened with physical violence to silence them. They used the business (TWI) as a vehicle to willfully commit illegal acts. Some might put that in the realm of racketeering.

When I was in a writing partnership, in my pre-twi days, my primary role was mainly to contribute lyrics. I can't tell you how deflating it was to have my creativity denigrated and redefined. I wish I could tell you the spark came back, but it never really did, at least, not in the same manner. But, I found other outlets to express myself.

"Maybe", he said.

This is strictly my opinion, but I kinda feel like some of the really early groups came into the ministry with an already established, solid catalog. Then, they adapted it and reconfigured it make it align with the Way agenda. (I used to write a bit of music in my "old man" days. That's basically what I did. Instead of continuing to be creative, I revamped old material to make it "on the word".) When it was time to produce new material, the agenda superceded the music, which is why it sounds artificial. There might be a few of the originators still around to comment on that. I don't Know if any of them post here, other than Socks.

Jesus wept.

I'm really confused. The cars appear to be new but the music seems to be from 40 years ago. It would be more believable if they at least made an effort to smile a bit more.

Or the failure to coincide with an event . "If those believers hadn't witnessed to me at that bus stop I'd be dead because ____________."

After I had been out for a while, it occurred to me that nobody even noticed I was gone. So much for "We sure do love you.".

I took a weekend class she taught about 50 years ago called Keys To Biblical Research or something along those lines. Outside of that, I never knew her.

Eighteen bucks? Well, that settles it, I'm Pawnshop Bound.

Remember those Bibles with leather covers and gold edged pages that were so popular? We could gather up a bunch of them, burn the pages to extract the gold, fashion it into tokens and use the covers to make attractive little carrying cases. Of course, we would first need to perfect a method of removing all the dust from the covers.

There is quite a bit of gold scattered throughout some areas of Ohio. The individual concentrations in any particular area tend to be rather small, though.

I have seen first hand the damage left as the aftermath of mining (mainly coal) in southern Ohio, water and soil that will forever be unusable do to arsenic concentrations, in addition to copper, zinc and selenium contamination. At times, you would swear you had struck an aquafer of thick tomato soup.

Or you could invest in a good metal detector and become a detectorist.

Sorry to report. It's been flying off the shelves for quite some time now.

Plus, when this all settles down, you can open a bait shop and make a fortune selling sinkers.

Like taking out your hearing aids at the end of a particularly noisy day.

"Seems to me there's no end to this rabbit hole"........Elmer Fudd

Perhaps some might fancy THIS take on the matter. (Yeah, it has a brief commercial. Pass through it if you so choose.) Also, his series of videos on "Who Wrote The Bible?" is fascinating, to put it mildly. Lots of other non-Bible stuff there, too.

There are some who might take issue with the verb tense.

One of the hallmarks of a cult is laying claim to privileged information.

Yes, this one.

I don't believe that's how it's been exclusively presented. My take on it is that the OP (original poster) was saying he was granted access to privileged information that would have otherwise been inaccessible. A subset of that involved questioning whether said information (or access to it) represented reality.