FullCircle

That's the point, Bliss, they are way behind in style and mannerisms, trying to portray a clean cut super ubar conservative image to fool the masses. I mean who would wanna have affairs with those sexless beings? Personally I thought the guy in the middle, I don't care who he is related to, was kinda scary looking and reminded me of John Travolta only possessed. But I digress. I do think they are pulling the 'timid librarian' act to whitewash the alleged sexual Twister game. Hells bells, when I was a WOW, I had an outfit called my 'school teacher' look. I encouraged my WOW sister to dress similiar when we went looking for Townehouses. Didn't the rental lady stand up straight and smile and commented on us being 'school teachers.' Ha, TWI is doing the same thing. The last time I tried to watch Christian TV, they were wearing dresses like that and did modified dance moves like that. TWI used to 'rock out' or at least, of course from my perspective cause I was in, bands like Take It and Pressed Down , ACTS 29 and Sammy Prym (We got the Power) among thers appeared to be more normal in that they 'were with the times,' while doing Christian Rock. Joyful Noise and The Victors and Stevie Kay were more of your gospel Christian music but even with their evening gowns, they had more class and more 'hip' to them then those three in that video could ever have even if you melted them altogether. Although I could have done without the cheerleading outfits when they performed about taking their bible to school, etc

I watched the whole clip and thought I was watching some goody two shoe Sunday morning Christian TV show for shut ins or something. The dance moves were out of style and they all looked like they were middle age because of the style of dress. Then I realized that TWI has resorted to and 'lowered' itself to a standard that they have never ever done before. They are assimiliating the costume and moves of the average looking goody two shoe church goer. (no offense to church goers but if you knew TWI 20-30 years ago, they abhorred and avoided anything that resembled average day Christianity). It works as well as a hippo in a tu-tu. Doesn't fit at all. As VeePee said it can look like church goers on the outside, but it doesn't mean that is what is on the inside. Okay, I think he said it with peaches but it still work. Or was it peas?

While we'll never know because it was not done, I would like to clarify one thing. A lockdown does NOT make people sitting ducks. It clears the hallways and streets of people. Less people, the less the police have to deal with in trying to apprehend the perpetrator. Less people to be take hostage, less people to get caught in any cross fire between police and the aggressor. Less people for the perp to shoot out because the lockdown removes them out of his sight and reach, hopefully. What that professor died doing was trying to lock down his classroom. To BAR the intruder from entering. In the event of a true crisis, the door way could be barred with furniture to make it harder to access the classroom and definitely slows him down from entering. Everyone moves to the safest point of a room. Behind furniture or file cabinets or whatever they can find. They remain silent. The blinds are pulled. You act like no one is there but us chickens and wait while the police do their job without innocent human interference. It can work if given a chance. This is a sore subject to me. I can't even begin to fathom the grief of those parents whose children lives were cut short, wiped out in their prime, before they even came into their own. My sympathies are to those who will never be able to hug their children again, see them graduate, marry or attain their career fullfillment. These are dangerous times when schools should be safe and they are anything but safe but for too many, schools have become deadly. I have no sympathies towards the college or their policies and I can barely call any up. *over and out*

This was my original thought behind my previous post. Colleges are well known to down play any crimes committed on their grounds. To this DAY, the college my child attends HAS not admitted to the fact that a serial killer that had police baffled in that particular city for over 20 years stalked and brutually killed a professor's wife right there on the campus this past fall. The college never notified parents, the media only published the 'name' of the street (so called ) where it happened. It was all hushed and smoothed over so that the unsuspecting didn't figure it out where it happened. This is not an isolated incident, what happened at my child's campus or what happened at Virginia Tech. Date line and 20/20 has covered this issue with colleges before; how much they down play their campuses safety and criminal activity to save their image so they can keep up the enrollment. A gunman on the loose deserves some kind of public notice, period, it doesn't matter if it was the same guy but the chances are slim that two Asians went off half cocked on the same day gunning down people. Not impossible but slim. I work in a school. There are measures. We practice lock downs. The argument that can be made is that we are much smaller than a college campus. True. But you try herding an severely autistic child into a room he don't want to go in and tell me how easy that is if we are in transit when the code phrase is uttered over the PA system; a PA system that has speakers on the outside of the school reaching into the parking lot and playgrounds. We have bomb threats as we house many children with other mental illnesses and my daughter's ELEMENTARY school has had three bomb threats within a year's time. They evacuated the school, dividing up the children to three different safe locations. It is not impossible. In this day and time it is becoming necessary. It is also the reason we got cell phones for each member of our family. Not to be cool but to be able to locate each other in time of crisis. What is sad is now, it took all these lives that were taken that day for institutions to wake up and realize they need to figure out HOW to alert their population that they are responsibile for. The image of colleges matters nothing compared to the cost of human lives. To NOT figure out a means of communication to avoid this is inexcusable. We have fire sirens in our town. It alerts the volunteer firemen and ambulance corps to gather. We had sirens when I was growing up to practice lockdowns in case of being atomically bombed. Anyone here old enough to remember that as well? Those sirens brought a whole town indoors, shades closed and hiding. My mom was a block mom and she had an arm badge and went and chased people off the streets and into homes. Bomb drills. We practiced them in school as well. Took a few minutes, but we knew what to do. It's not impossible. If it was my child shot to death, I'd be understanding nothing. I'd be livid. PS The serial killer killed the professor's wife sixteen years to the date he killed a co-ed of that college. We didn't know about that either at the time.

((My blood just boils reading this first hand account. I see so many prevalent themes that were peppered here and there in TWI, but here Eyes has it all, undiluted and first hand. It was the royalty status of clergy and their extended families as opposed to how the greater, the minister was to be servant for all. "K" is dealing with what I can tell is a gangrene toe; it can kill her that infection. She saved her own life while the uppity ups clamour for a shower from their servants. People's lives should not have been treated so reckless as they were. This should not have happened and yet perhaps we can forgive stupidity if "K" had someone to hold her, to help her while she had to amputate an infection from herself, while she had to save her own life. Princess PooPoo called for a shower while the believers on that LEAD trip suffered. Princess PooPoo slandered and mocked others who did not have the latest state of the art equipment. This rag of a woman mocked those who supported the ministry with their hard earned dollars and now with their very lives. It was mere triffling matter to her. She did not get this way on her own. It was taught her and encouraged or enabled by the very co dependent foot kickers who demanded an apology to Princess PooPoo. I don't know how many times area and branch leaders who were on payroll, who lived in homes that to this day both my hard working hubby and I could never afford, degraded believers for not 'believing' to get their money together for this class or that class or this program and chided us about our believing. FU, our believing and our money paid for YOUR health insurance, YOUR cars, Your salary. How many leader's wives ever bought Suave to wash their hair with? Leaders and their families? Come over and clean up after our holiday dinner, come and be a servant in our wedding reception,c ome clean my house and make my kid's beds because we are special and you are to serve. All that came out in bold brass colors on this LEAD expedition and I am so sorry you had to go through that, Eyes but I am soooooooooooo glad you survived.)) "foot kickers" in my post was supposed to be a$$ kissers. I don't know if there is a filter here on the board or if I made ONE hell of a Freudian typo. Either way it is very ironic and appropriate, in a strange way.

I am glad your nephew is safe. My prayers are continuing for family and friends in this time of grief and for the wounded. Horrible, it's so hard not to cry.

Oh dear!

((an aside, I heard that Carrie was like that and I am glad that you stood up to her. Dealing with family royalty in TWI was such a pain in the foot. My bro is the Rev. so and so and I can treat you like crap because of it. It certainly was a problem the whole ministry over)) I look forward to the rest of your story and I could hug your Dad for making sure your boots were outfitted correctly with the right stuff to keep them waterproofed.

Does it freaking matter if he was or wasn't through and through evil? What would it take for you to decide that? Instead of drugging and raping and sticking his [edited] 20 times over, does it HAVE to be 21 times? Are you so hard hearted that you can look over the first female he hurt and the second and the third and so on? Does it have to be some monstrous number before you wake up and take notice that the man actions were that of someone demented and evil? But you're right. We should not make fun of his eye. Instead we should cut straight to the 'head' of the problem and make fun of his little phillywacker. Hmm, I wonder what Confuscious say about a MOG with a teeny weinie?

The count of dead is now up to 32, including the gunmen, as many as 20 wounded. Right now they are reporting that it was an Asian male, he opened fire in a dorm and then two hours later in a classroom where the majority of people died. If that is true, and there was a two hour window with no lock down, no notifying the rest of the college... Horrible, simply horrible, beyond horrible

So then from what they think, praying and getting a desired result can be considered spell work? Is that what doing spells is about, making a change? I have met a Wiccan or two from time to time. They seemed okay, just an average person with a different religion. When I asked, they said not all Wiccans were witches and not all did spells. I guess it was an assumption on my part that all Wiccans were witches. So let me ask, if anyone, regardless of their religious brand prays for something bad or asks their God for something bad to happen to someone, is that considered black magic? Would that be the manipulative part you are talking about? What about if someone like LCM uses God to curse and condemn people because he doesn't agree with them. Besides bad Christianity, how does that rate on the scale of being manipulative and black (bad) spell work? Or maybe it doesn't relate? Just out of curiosity, it is early morning, and I haven't had enough coffee but this strange thought ran through my mind. What is the difference between a coven and a twig fellowship then? Are there any similarities?

No, I think it is good to mention that the psychiatric community does NOT consider homosexuality (at least the last time I looked) to be a psychiatric condition since there aren't any distinguishing mental handicaps resulting from an alternative lifestyle.

OMGJDL

Because LCM and VP would have been the ones to disappear into thin air if they tried chasing it away *joke* For all their talk of deliverance, it was merely that, talk.

Thank you for the links, Word Wolf, and you raise very good questions about what it is indicative of...I think it goes hand in hand with the body parts is parts in CF&S class--another desensitizing issue--and for the benefit of ________? I had forgotten about that thigh swearing/family jewels thing. I remember reading/hearing about it for the first time way back when, I don't remember if it was a Wag Mag article or a Sunday night teaching tape, I just know it creeped me out.

Geez the more I edit, the more I screw it up Last words my foot. His brain was probably so pickled and being reprobate, and dying he probably gurgled a lot. Come on, when VP died, all we heard was how wonderful he was. How the great MOG just got tired of the fight. You know he fought for us so much, he did so much for us, he believed so much for us and it just took it's toll don't we spoiled kids who got the word served to us on a silver platter, and it caused him to grow weary and give up the fight. We were yelled at. Sitting around the Fountain of Living Waters, I guess that is when we went for the weekend showing of Athletes of the Sprocket production and we were yelled at because this living icon, this great man who NEVER took an aspirin in his life, unlike, us fell asleep. He was such a great MOG and we were spoiled, never able to come close to VP's greatness. (he didnt' need an aspirin, he had enough drambuie inside him to dull any headaches) VP's death was lorded over us and used against us and now we're supposed to be respectful of some words that his damage control crew made up (thus solidifying their jobs as the head honcho moves on and trying to keep the ministry together and NOT fall apart after VP dies) Ummm no. It doesn't work that way. They exploited his death over us. And now it's a two edge sword that swings back.

It's amazing (maybe not really) of how many sexual connotations or spins TWI put on interpreting the Bible. That should be an interesting thread in itself. So not only would anyone just pinpoint how and when TWI took a stand, a vehement stand against homosexuality, but do an over head view of how many instances TWI saw sexual activity in scriptures as compared to organized religion. And then to be sooooooooo graphic about it as well. That is just beyond disgusting. It is lewd and perverted, eating one's own errrr 'love juice.' I mean between couples, that is their business but for any man, any man of the cloth so to speak to do that in front of a camera and call himself Christian...it is beyond being acceptable behavior. Can you imagine letting your teenage child sit through that and see it? I don't remember it, so if it was still in the class, I am glad my thresh hold of perception was so high, it sailed right over my head. I don't see this as just being a matter of not believing in homosexuality but rather an overall pathology of reading one's own pathology, sickness into the scriptures and that should be a point to make of an over all pattern of TWI; perverting the scriptures. I mean, it's NOT normal!! Eve and Adam masturbating Eve being a lesbian Ishamel and Issac Joseph taking his wife Mary unto him in his house--JL taught it meant he took her in sex Jesus being raped by the soliders Christian Family and Sex class--looking at pics of breasts and penises didn't train me to become a better Christian wife in the future Anything else?

What is interesting is that at the time of David and Saul and other times in the OT, God of the OT was worshipped at the new moon. *nods nods* And people would gather in the king's hall at the new moon. I will get that book, Sushi, it sounds good. *heads off to Amazon*

To my above post, I can't edit it, it should have said the year was 1989.

Oh gee, there was so much going on at the time my husband and I were leaving. The ministry was in shambles, it was after POP and it was still reeling, the Corps seemed to be being torn in two between CG and LCM, teachings were out from Scotland in how the heads of the Jerusalem church tried to set up the Apostle Paul and get him killed, there fore alluding to LCM being despicable in the way he was treating CG, LCM did some type of teaching claiming that POP wasn't godly because the reproof wasn't done in a godly way according to "the word." LCM and CG were blaming the Corps for not getting their act together and that was the reason the ministry was screwed up, it was all their fault, not the leaders and a Corps hook up from nearly a year before by CG and LCM (??) accused the big guns at HQ for killing VP with their unbelief. All this filtered down to us. Add to that, JL was touring the country, meeting with believers and tapes were being made by JL and RD and they were telling people what was really going on and how long it was going on and how LCM didn't seem he was going to repent. I am speaking of the alleged sexual escapades. People were whispering, trying to figure out what was going on without being found out otherwise you were in big doo doo with local leadership. This was right before the mass firings. Anyway, the one thing I had wanted since I was a born was a safe family. A safe family in a safe home. I got it. A wonderful hubby and a beautiful child. I was apprentice corps before, was an Advanced Class grad (so was hubby) both hubby and I were WOW vets a couple times over, twig coordinators, family coordinators out WOW, and other outreach programs were under our belts. We were happy. I started rocking the boat when I defied leadership and refused to rip my baby out of their crib from their nap and take them to meetings. I refused to get the house cleaned and dinner made for hubby, clean up, make bottles, change the baby's diaper and pj's and get ready, pack the diaper bag to sit in the back bedroom because my baby was a distraction. My husband backed me up. We quit tithing because we used our money for formula and diapers and baby food. Damn us, we were putting our child first. Then the problems started. Not in an area you would think either. A believer who lived with our branch/area leader like to pretend they were something great, and I would joke to my husband that we were dealing with a Simon the Sorceror, you know, like to give out that they were something great. They started interfering with my marriage. They would come and tell me all the things that people were saying about him so I could confront him and help him. At the same time they were going to him and telling him all the things that was being said about me so he could confront me and help me. They were going around to believers talking about the both of us, saying how screwed up we were and needed help. It got ugly and it grew. Our area/branch coordinator called me, and spoke with me and hubby and said he wanted a confrontation. He told my husband what others were now saying. My husband and I were like totally confused having no idea how this all started and we talked and realized how this ONE person said the same things to me that they said to him and were now going about the branch with it. My husband confronted the area/branch leader and told him off and told him he has one possessed sob living with him and giving him advice and if the area/branch leader wanted a show down with all of us there, we would go but it would be damn ugly because he was blankety blank fed up with people screwing with our lives. Wouldn't you know that the showdown meeting was called off? It didn't end there though. My hubby got in the car and drove to every one's house that this bastard involved and told them all off and told them to keep their fuking noses out of our marriage....he told that to the Corps and non Corps people involved, he had had it. He was a hero in my eyes and still is. Anyway, I called someone, they were married to talk with them. I knew they had trouble with the same person we did so I called although I knew that they were meeting with JL and I didn't know if they would talk with me but they did. I found out that the person that tried to mess with my marriage had tried the same thing with them, using the same methods. They went to the wife then to the husband, saying people were talking and this is what they were saying and then got people involved in the branch. They were unsuspecting because they thought highly of this person just to find out what sickness drove them. Not only that, we found out through them that this person had a rep of doing this as far back as Chicago, left a trail behind them of nearly broken and broken marriages of people. Then I wondered for the upteenth time, if the gift ministries were to be the eyes and ears of the church, ie as in ordained clergy, how come they miss it every time and accuse the people who are right on and trying their best? Something was wrong. My husband and I met with this couple and we got the tapes that JL and others made and listened. It was heart breaking to hear of all the misconduct, the crappy way women were abused and how the ministry was confronted and refused to change. This is back now in 1988. What year is it now? I cried. I was broken hearted. TWI was all I knew. I had wanted to be a good faithful Christian wife and have my home available for believers, for it to be an oasis in a desert for them, a port in the storm. I felt like someone had died, the grief was so great. I prayed to God. I asked him if it was true if he told VP that he would teach him the bible like it had never been known before. Then I went to the bible bookstore and found books by Clarence Larkin and Bullinger. I found out it had been know and taught long before VP. I realized then that VP was a fraud and a liar, a liar using God's name and that is something I cannot and will not tolerate from anyone. I will never take seriously anyone who is so hard hearted and calloused that they have NO fear about lying about God. It was a slow process. We moved out of that area. We were taught against in twigs, we were mocked before we left. Those who pledged to stand with us and help us raise our daughter with their wisdom, having older children turned on us. We attended fellowship sporadically over the next two years but then made the cut permanent. We studied hard, read much and went to church as well and asked a lot of questions. It was a very hard time as we unraveled one doctrine after another. It took time . So we left voluntarily but we had information presented to us that we never had before. Even if we did not have that information, we would have slipped into the woodwork to preserve our family unit from the sharks that populated TWI. So yes, we did evaulate everything.

My fish joke was a take off on the tongue in cheek, satirical fish jokes that were used as an analogy of TWI doctrine. It came in as a response to some one's statment referring to such. Read back a page or two, it's where it started, if that is what your question marks mean. My joke was just that, a joke, to lighten things up as my Pandora's box joke was on the Hermophites thread (however it's spelled). I do that from time to time. Joke. I am also known to break out into song and dance at odd times as well ;) How much time does one need to scrutinize? My point was, at this point, with all the testimony here, all the court cases and other Ex Way sites, the carnage is evident and clear and yet we still seem to find the same arguments in defense of VP. My point is what DID TWI teach us that have so many still, at this point in their lives unable to see all that and still defend VP. It is beyond the norm of rational thinking. I am not talking about those who are in the process of beginning their search and investigations, my question was aimed at those who have been out quite awhile and have been faced with all the ramifications and ripple effects of TWI--does that make sense? I just had a thought, even VP did not cut his opponents the same slack as some here would like to extend to him. In the PFAL class VP consistently put down the Protestants for their beliefs; soul sleep, souls being immortal part of man and all that. He did not openly thank God that Jesus was preached, regardless of other doctrines taught that he did not agree with. He did not suggest that others take the meat and spit out the bones. He mocked churches and their doctrines and spent one entire class night about how Mary Muggins, Johnny Jump Up had different opinions in Sunday school and there fore made three new denominations (and in a bad way he meant it) or how according to him, Protestants screwed up Eli Eli llama a mama because they wanted to sell more bibles and how he wouldn't go to church with so and so because they had so many burdens on their back in trying to help people--envision VP hunching over as he mockingly poked at the average Christian/Protestant taking on the burdens of others and then said with disdain, "I wouldn't go to church with you either." Now there are some who want us to cut him slack? How much slack or grace did he extend to the outside Christian world? None. Now he needs some? Ha, tough. With the same measure he judged, let him be judged back. VP himself made it clear that he would not go where there was what he considered error. He would not go where he considered inaccurate biblical research. Remember how he bragged how he and his family went to some church and one by one they got up and left cause they couldn't take it (how rude). Again, everything and anything to separate and mock those who differed from him and to effectively build up walls in our minds that there was no place to go outside of TWI or make it seem like that to us. How about when they were getting slain in the spirit and he went down the aisle and kicked them and they sat up? Too bad if that story wasn't true, they didn't arrest him for assault. How many stories and one liners from PFAL and other classes and teachings can we come up with that VP attacked with out mercy the Christian world, and how he egged on a division between them and us? It was on purpose. Now that he's been exposed, his teachings were bogus, copied and stolen, we're to give him credit? Let's go by his example that he left. He gets the same credit that he gave everyone else. Nada.

I know my above post is rather silly but then the underlying context of this thread is just as silly; even more so since it has been so many years that most of us were involved in TWI and yet, out of everything that happened, out of every human life that was touched either for the good or for the worse, of all the lives lost in accidents of one shape or another, jobs lost or quit, people marrying and having children, hauling our asses all over the country, family ties and old friends ties severed sometimes for ever, it seems that the most some care about above all things is NOT how people are surviving, if families reunited or if it was too late, like death happening, if people ever got re-established and could learn how to trust themselves again and maybe some days others who say they teach the gospel of Jesus Christ, no it's not that we are worried about but whether or not we still believe VP and if VP's rep as a MOG is still intact or if we are rejecting him. This is a joke, right? And some still don't see TWI as the destructive cult it is????????//

anchovie anchovie you're so delicious I love you more than all the other fishies Dawn in Buffy

I am sorry Dot. I have mine own beliefs of why predators seek out those who have already been abused. One is the abused person who may not have dealt with their situation has a low self esteem and a need to be loved and validated more than the next person. It makes the person more vunerable to lies and the charming approach or the false caring/love approach. Then there is the factor that the abused person has kept the secret for so long. They have learned not to speak up. The lies originally told to them becomes an ingrained part of their psyche, to tell any secret of dysfunction is likely to cause a major melt down for them emotionally and mentally. I know this was true for me and opening that closet door to the family skeletons was hard and it had emotional and mental fall out for me. It was not like, "whew glad to get that off my chest, big grin" it was earth shattering to start going public with what happened, not just to me but to come clean about the whole system of dysfunction. In TWI add to that that we were also programmed not to give any offense to the household of God. I was literally told that even if I was beat up by a bro in Christ, I would be defaming the household of God by going public or pressing charges. We were doubly programmed to keep silent and he, VP knew that the females who were abused were already in a system of denial and secrecy. All he had to do, imo, was continue to build on that. I hope that this thread helps to start shedding some light for anyone and that it helps someone somewhere.