johnj

The problem with KJV is that so many words are meaningless. You might just as well have blanks in many verses, because people are understanding things by context and essentially skipping the word in their minds. For instance, we know that Jon Baptiizer's head wasn't brought on an electrical cord you plug in the socket to charge your phone, so we assume that "charger" must be some kind of a plate. Worthless words. Worse yet are words that mislead. When people read "conversation" in KJV they usually assume it means talking with people. But in the 1600s conversation meant behavior. So KJV actually deceives people in places (though unintentionally). Translations like The Message are engaging and easy reading, which is nice for some people. But it's close to impossible to do a serious word study with. So what translation you use depends partly on who you are and what you do with it.

You can find an article that provides a good overview of CRF on www.abouttheway.org Click on "Splinter groups" on the home page, then click on the link to the Hendricks article Like VPW, CRF teaches the “law of giving and receiving.” This and other spiritual “laws,” work for anyone who practices them, regardless of their religion (or atheism), morality (or immorality). The law of giving asserts that anyone who gives will receive back. Immutable “laws” that work for any human being are rooted in the New Thought movement of a century ago, not the Bible. This is related to teachings on prosperity. This is all very convenient for both TWI and CRF because... they get the money... many people noticed over the years that both VP and JH really, really liked it. Every church I have ever been a part of produced financial reports monthly for all the officers (usually 6-10 people). They also published year to date reports which were given to everyone who attended voters meetings, which were held anywhere from 2 to 12 times a year. Everyone was invited to voters meetings, including people who weren't members of the church. Furthermore, offerings were counted and deposited by at least two, unrelated people. None of these were the treasurer, who wrote the checks. By separating the income and the outgo sides of finances, it helps prevent people skimming money for selfish purposes. TWI and CRF do not follow these honest practices. WHY NOT?

sowers uses Thessalonians from the University of Life program. What other University of Life classes were produced?

SOWERS gets some credit for a degree of honesty. Most splinters pretend they never had anything to do with, never heard of, and have nothing in common with TWI, PFAL, Corps, etc. They commonly hide the source of their doctrine and their training in TWI, while parroting the way line. At least SOWERS at times openly says they base their stuff on PFAL and Corps, as warped as it is.

I wonder if TWI is desperate enough for cash that they'd knowingly sell the old "research" books to SOWERS for their min-corps and WOWs. It's tough to have a significant "leadership training program" if the only place you can get the "books" is used on Amazon or borrowed from ex-way. Since TWI and SOWERS run the same program, the same way, same books, same teachings, and same work days on the farm/study nights schedule, etc, one could say they are direct competitors. Except that SOWERS would say that the other guy's Corps is identical to theirs, yet all bad. That's a line that's easier to swallow if prospective students don't think about it.

With cults, the son/grandson of the near-deified Founder seldom does as well as the bureaucracy that the Founder sets up. The descendents of Joe Smith who began Mormonism are still around, but are a paltry number compared to the Salt Lake City bureaucracy. Perhaps their organization hung on because they've kept the "Divine Revelation" going better than thee Salt Lake Mormons have. So what VW3 needs is snow on the gas pumps in Mississippi and a blizzard that kept him snowed in on a trip to New Orleans, at which he met an unnamed author he plagiarizes from. Those would be bigger tricks to create awe in people than VP's snow in Ohio and Tulsa... and just as easy to prove false.

who owns the Mississississississippi farm?

VPW had the luxury of being able to leach lots of young people from the Jesus movement in the 1970s, a luxury the Mississippi farm does not have. So don't expect large numbers of WOWs to descend on rural Mississippi. TWI does not run any WOWs anymore. But why aren't they jealousy guarding the name? SOWER goes out of its way to identify WOW as a TM (trademark).

W.O.W. Ambassadors returned to a warm welcome at the farm where they were pinned in recognition of their year of promoting the Word Over the World. Some of them were recruited to join a leadership program at which they would attend classes from men like Walter Cummins while working part time on the farm. They'll take time for a L.E.A.D. expedition during the year. Does this sound like The Way International? It does, but it is the S.O.W.E.R.S. program run by Victor Wierwille, grandson of TWI founder Victor Paul Wierwille. Find more details in S.O.W.E.R.S. and The Way Corps. Find the link in the "New" section of www.abouttheway.org

I did not look for a copy of Dilemma on line. I bought a hard copy, I think on Amazon. I can give page numbers for any quotes of Dilemma I included in my article if anyone wishes them. Like Dilemma, most of VP's "books" were transcribed sermons he gave, a method which captured his sloppy, extreme, offhanded, and inaccurate manner.

I think you're missing part of how Hindu Writers Forum is using VP. It's true that HWF is knocking a part of Dilemma- namely that VP believes in the supremacy of Christianity (I mention this in my article). However, they see him as attacking all Christian missionary movements in India, just as HWF does. The idea is largely to use VP as a "hostile" Christian source as part of HWF's attack on Christianity. HWF thinks it's great that a "Christian" like VPW can be used to attack Christian missionaries. If HWF only wanted to knock down VP, they would have just selectively quoted him. I did not say that HWF published Dilemma recently, but the fact that they did reprint vpw is probably news to most everyone at greasespotcafe.

Most likely williams opened doors for vpw so that he could use vp as his puppet. They could show off an American who was spouting the same anti-colonial line many Indians were using. VP was getting fed a line and used and didn't know it. I'm sure it stroked his ego to be the lone voice of "truth" over "tradition."

Here and there VP had some good thoughts. He was right that churches in places like India should become self-governing and self-propogating. He said the Bible was God's accurate Word. But VP had a knack for taking the germ of something good and twisting and perverting it into something destructive and self-serving. When Midas touched things, he turned them into gold. When VP touched things, he turned them into arsenic.

VP criticized missionaries for doing good works, like helping the poor (there were many in India) through agricultural and other projects. Regardless of what he may have said about love, VP was certainly short on works of compassion, especially for people who were not his followers. Besides being a shortage of Christian character, this is also due to his teaching on believing. If people have a bad life, it's because of their negative believing, and all they need to do to fix it is to start positive believing. It's a lot easier to just tell needy people to believe right than to help them. If VP had told Jesus' story of the good Samaritan, he would have added a fourth person passing by the injured man who would become the hero. He would tell the half-dead guy that his believing had got him into that mess and he'd better starting believing for healing and for money to get down the road and rent a room at the inn.

V.P. Wierwille wrote an article titled The Dilemma of Foreign Missions in India after a trip there in 1955. He considered it to be a unique and visionary assessment of mission work in India, and criticized those in his church body who objected to it. Today Wierwille’s article is used to attack not only Christian missionaries and church bodies, but also all of Christianity. The publisher, Hindu Writer’s Forum of New Delhi, bookends the article with quotes calling the Bible “barbarous” and Christianity “extremely wicked” and perverse. Why is Wierwille’s article considered an attack against Christianity? The new article “Wierwille’s Attack on Christian Missionaries” gives an overview of the extremist nature of VP’s article. It can be found at the "New" tab in www.abouttheway.org

Kinds of churches, from organic to traditional... church (and secular) government, from hierarchical to democratic... families, from patriarchal to matriarchal... and any kind of human endeavor... are only as good as the people who are in them. So they range from good to horrible. The people make the thing good or bad, not the type of structure itself. Because people sin and lack complete wisdom and love, we will always fall short and be frustrated. This is why we need grace in Jesus Christ.

Ten Reasons Why Most UnBelievers Don't Seriously Question Their Unbelief (or atheism) Why don't most unbelievers seriously question their unbelief? Does it take a special type of individual? Does it require some personality trait that unbelievers don't have? Does that make believers different people? Could it be intelligence? Could it be that believers have a higher self-esteem than others? Is it that we don't need social approval? I do think that the following ten reasons are necessary conditions: 1) The lack of critical thinking. I cannot tell you how often unbelievers respond to theistic arguments with informal fallacies in favor of their unbelief 2) There is an explanation for why believers reason so badly: They have been enculturated, or indoctrinated to not believe, a phenomenon that can best be described as being brainwashed. Why can't they see it in themselves? 3) A very large percentage of unbelievers do not seek out disconfirming evidence for their unbelief, which can be decisive. This can only make them more entrenched 4) Ignorance is another reason, sometimes willful ignorance. Any educated person will tell you this. 5) This ignorance is due to the fact that unbelievers fear to accept the existence of God and judgment. So in order not to admit they displease God, they do not seriously question their unbelief. Unbelievers also fear to believe because of the social pressure among their like-minded friends 6) The biggest reason unbelievers don't seriously question their unbeleif is because of where it could lead them, to accountability to God. They cannot bring themselves to travel down a road that might lead them to accepting that there is One they must answer to. 7) Unbelievers conversely have a hope they cannot bring themselves to do without, the feeling that if there is no life after death, they do not need to prepare for it in the present. This demand on their lives now is so intense they cannot entertain they might be wrong 8) The nature of unbelief itself. It cannot answer the most basic elements of life- the moral code that is built into all humans, the existence of human consciousness, the impossibility of appearance of life by chance that forces them to implausible and improvable theories like multiple universes, and the like. It can never accept the impossibility of its decrepit theories, and so slips into denial. 9) Then too, there is the concept of a nonexistent God which is used to solve all problems. I call this the Anthropocentric Escape Clause. Because unbelievers will not accept the possibility of God, believers must prove their faith is "scientific" by their definition before they will consider it to be probable. This is an utterly unreasonable standard of proof, making their unbelief pretty much unfalsifiable. 10) Morality seems to be another issue, that if unbelievers believed they would ipso facto need to accept a moral code which is universal and has objective standards, rather than socially constructed. But the overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the theory of social constructs leads to horrors like those carried out by Naziism, which established and followed its unique social code. I guess some people just cannot be helped, that's all.

I've known some fine people who were part of, or led, house churches. But there are also "hot dogs" who want to run their own house churches because they have an unhealthy desire to run their own show, to avoid being in submission to anyone else ("submission" being an important Christian attitude, because all are to be in submission to someone), are prideful, and/or they avoid the hard work of learning to serve in concert with others. House church is a whitewashed excuse to foster their own unhealthy attitudes.

I haven't read Viola's books. But the idea of house churches is always around (because there are always a few around, and the need for them sometimes arises, such as in countries which prohibit churches). "There is nothing new under the sun," as Ecclesiastes says. I've been to some house churches. The ones that grow suddenly find themselves becoming like churches, for several reasons. As they grow, they... - outgrow the house... and find they need to rent/buy a church building. - wants to meet more than once a week.... and find that the owner of the house can't be there all the time (and doesn't want a large group to essentially take over his home) - receive offerings from people who want to give them... and wonder how that looks to the IRS or how they can get donation deductions on taxes - find they have a bunch of children, and get the bright idea of having studies for them (Sunday School by any other name...) - find the leader can't handle all the demands... and wonder if the group should pay him as their minister - have a conflict arise and wish they had outside leadership to help them resolve it - want to start spin off groups, and wonder how to train leaders to do it well and wa-la- you have a "church"

Denominations are just associations of churches which band together to do what individual churches (much less home groups) cannot do. You see most of the basic functions of denominations being done by churches already in the NT. Paul and his assistans (Titus, Tim) clearly oversee local churches. They intentionally go back to congregations to correct problems and assert authority over them. Acts talks about this, but an obvious example is when Paul returns to Corinth to deal with sin and heresy, including that among leadership there. Various churches send offerings to Jerusalem for beleivers in famine after Agabus informs them. This is both regional leadership (Agabus) and churches banding together to help the poor in Judea, something individual churches or home groups are not large enough to do by themselves. the church in Antioch sent out missionaries (Paul and Barnabas). Church leaders met together in acts 15 to resolve a doctrinal conflict (whether Gentiles should be circumcised) and exert authority over false teachers. Budding young leaders served apprenticeships with Paul as he planted churches... this is leadership training like a (traveling) seminary. Denominations- associations of churches- serve very good purposes- oversight of churches and leaders, helping the poor, training leaders, sending missionaries, setting standards of doctrine and practice, etc. Without them the church at large does not get the job done. The fact is, if VPW had been part of an evangelical denomination, leadership would have promptly removed him and replaced him with godly leadership, nipping the TWI problem in the bud. Heretics, adulterers, women-abusers like VPW do not want to be part of an evangelical denomination, because they will be censured by them. Being outside a denomination was part of TWI's problem.

This bio of VPW is so full of praise and admiration... you'd think that VP must have written it about himself!

There are lots of churches and groups that have "calvary" as part of their name. Calvary Chapels normally go by the title "Calvary Chapel (of City Name)" I've known people in several different "Calvary Chapels" and all reported positive experiences, so I suspect the Calvary you went to was something else.

The Jesus movement of the late 1960s and 1970s was what church history calls a "revival." That word is mangled by many today, but in the narrow sense it is a very widespread movement in which very large numbers of people come to faith, confess their sins, profess commitment to the Lord, become discipled in faith, become leaders themselves and become heavily involved in evangelism, missions, aid to the poor and worship renewal. Revivals are not controlled by any human being or organization- God is at work. On a worldwide scope, the charismatic/Pentecostal movement from the 1960s through the present has been phenomenal, multiplying into the hundreds of millions, esp in South America, Africa and China. Lots of people in the Jesus movement stayed within their church bodies. For example, many pastors in my church body had their faith enlivened in the Jesus movement (which means those pastors are now in their 50s and early 60s). Other Jesus people started new church bodies. For example, although Calvary Chapel claims to be nondenominational, it is a denomination in itself, composed in the first 15 years of mostly Jesus people. Calvary Chapel music (Maranatha) was a worship renewal movement, typical of true revivals. Note the contrast between Calvary Chapel and TWI-- TWI flamed out in 15 years, because VPW was a false teacher who sucked life out of people, while Calvary Chapel continues to go strong.

TWI and VPW deceived themselves into thinking that they drove the growth of TWI. Actually, they stole people from the Jesus movement (as did other cults like the Chilsren of God). But VP/TWI sapped life from people rather than giving and sustaining it, so it self-destructed. Without being able to leech from something like the Jesus movement, splinters will never find the vitality and numbers that TWI fell upon, and squandered.

I don't believe there are many of the Wierwille clan still in TWI... and that there are more in splinter groups than in TWI. This isn't unusual, for example, nearly Joseph Smith's whole family ended up in Mormon splinter groups after Brigham Young took over. Cult leaders like total control. At least we're not in the days in which the new "king" murders the whole family of the deposed king. TWLIL also quotes VPW saying, "Women never tell the truth" If the man o' god says it, well, it must be true?