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Through the Looking Glass

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Everything posted by Through the Looking Glass

  1. Why would they publish something like that? Doesn't sound like very good PR... What was the motive?
  2. I'm a little surprised way folks aren't afraid of inviting unclean spirits into their house, by purchasing items off ebay from possessed cop-outs...
  3. You might be in a cult if.... You have to write a MANDATORY letter of praise, stroking the leader's ego, after taking his new bible class. And if said letter must first be proof-read and edited accordingly by your local leader. Because we want to bless the man of God and wouldn't want him distracted by any spelling or punctuation errors.
  4. If you try to get away with framing a postcard so you don't have to hang a tacky poster above your mantle... If you you break all the wings off your angel "HoHo" ornaments...
  5. If you mark out the words "wishing" and "hope" on greeting cards and replace them with "believing"... you are most likely in a cult
  6. bliss, do you have his contact information? I really need to get in touch with him.
  7. I believe they are in Memphis, TN. They were running the Branch there, probably still are.
  8. I know this thread was started awhile ago but thought I'd let you know Boone is on myspace http://www.myspace.com/parkerspidy
  9. You can say "Merry Christmas!" and not feel guilty. You can celebrate holidays without giving them less devilish titles. Household Holidays, Happy Hearts Day, Happy Egg Hunting Day are no long part of your vocabulary. Your house may be messy and your closets unorganized, but you aren't afraid it's an open door for the adversary. Your house can be messy and you don't have a panic attack at the thought of another believer stopping by. You don't feel compelled to give every single person at church a hug or stand up to greet them. You don't spend 30 minutes prepping your toddler on how to make sure and greet Rev. SoandSo by making eye contact, smiling, shaking his hand, etc.
  10. Is it possible Don had ulterior motives? Didn't I read that there was a lot of tension in the BOT at this time? I can only imagine there might be a little jealousy on Don's part. From everything I've read and heard it seems Don is smart and calculating. There must have been more to the reason BG was invited if they went through the trouble of footing the bill. Just a thought. Waysider, I get what you are saying now but I'm not sure I can buy it. He had a massive ego and it probably wasn't to hard for him to buy into all the yarn he was spinning himself. People can get so wrapped up in a lie that it becomes truth to them. But that's just my take at this point, it could change.
  11. I was taught in TWI that music was originally made to appease the devil spirits.... Did anyone else hear this?
  12. Late 90's does sound about right. I think I remember getting some before the Y2K fiasco.
  13. Wow! This is all very interesting stuff. Sunesis, I wonder if LCM's reaction sent warning bells off in anyone's head? Is it possible he thought he would lose his following to BG?
  14. Yeah, I don't think PFAL is available anymore. I remember awhile back (around year 2000) my LC was giving away PFAL books for free. HQ had sent boxes of them to give away to anyone who wanted. Why else would the Way give away something for free? My hubby worked bookstore just a few years back so I'll try to confirm.
  15. Thanks for the info you all have. I would really like to hear more about this. I wrote this reply to Waysider last night, but we had some bad weather and the internet went out before I could post. Nothing will ever justify the atrocities VPW committed in the name of God. However, if B.G. and VP did have an amicable relationship, maybe even a trust or respect for each other, that does make it a little harder for me to see B.G. as a victim who was swindled out of his life's work. I'm saying that if he didn't view himself as a victim then why should I? Did he ever specify exactly what information he got directly from God? It's obvious that he had a tendency to embellish, if not just make up whatever stroked his ego best. Specifically what information did he claim to have that was unknown to anyone but himself? (I already heard about turning snow into fire or something nuts like that). Maybe Fred Brito was benevolent to some people in some cases. I don't really see people as all good or all bad. People make a series of choices throughout their lives, some good and some bad. Now someone may tend to make more bad choices than good, but that doesn't mean he can't make some occasional good choices. Are you using this story to say that B.G. was conned by VP, unaware of the deception, even to the point that he attended his funeral? Please clarify the point you are trying to make. That would be why I am asking these questions. Why would BG attend the funeral of someone he felt wronged by? Did he even feel wronged in the first place? Did he go with hopes of setting the record straight? Maybe there is another issue at hand here. Are we indignant on the plagiarism of B.G. Leonard's work because of moral and ethical standards? Or are we so worked up because we were had? I am unoffended, as I hope you are. Just trying to fit some of the pieces to this rather large matrix together.
  16. So I got into a discussion with my parents (who are still in the Way) the other night. I was bringing up some points about the plagiarism and B.G. Leonard's class. My dad made the statement that B.G. Leonard thought enough about VPW to attend his funeral. Is this correct? How close were he and VPW? Did he not mind VP stealing his material?
  17. You won't get kicked out for getting a house mortgage but it is still frowned upon. You will be told the spiritual ramifications of having debt and be unable to attend the specials. However, if your fellowship or area has an AC grad night you may attend. They apparently don't have a problem with holding these in a mortgaged home....
  18. The endless smile plastered on the face just always gets me. I can remember when they were really pushing the whole smiling while you sing in fellowship thing. Of course there was plenty of reproof for anyone not smiling enough or acting excited enough to be there. Didn't Way Productions really start going downhill when LCM made a new standard that you had to be Corp to be in Way Productions? It seemed like they lost a lot of talent after that. When I was a kid my dad played the guitar in fellowship. That actually made it enjoyable. Then in the heavy legalism years leadership got really into the whole song leading aspect (remember being given the little practice sheets with counts and hand motions on them?), which made singing in fellowship suck pretty bad... wasn't exactly much of a draw for new people either.
  19. Thanks for the encouragement. Family vacations were always to the ROA. I never saw the ocean until I was in my mid twenties because vacation always equaled the corn fields of Ohio! heheh. Well we actually did go to Family Camp in Gunnison once. The ROA was a really exciting time as a kid. The road trip there was an adventure in itself and by the time we finally arrived I was so excited. We always camped in the West Woods and got to see family and friends. Even though I had always wanted to go to Disney World I really can't complain about the ROA. My parents were very supportive in any activity I wanted to get involved in. I took ballet, tap, and jazz. I also had swimming and voice lessons. I don't think TWI ever discouraged any of this. Maybe others have different experiences? My '90/'91 school year (7th grade) I attended a small private Christian school. I had been home schooled in 6th grade and started 7th grade at the public middle school but it was to overwhelming. To make the transition easier my parents enrolled me in a small private school. This caused a HUGE ruckus in fellowship. For some reason a power struggle in the fellowship seemed to be developing. People were bad-mouthing my parents because they were letting their daughter attend school at a Baptist church that had three crosses on it's sign!!! They wanted to know why couldn't I just go to public school like their kids did? Now by no means were my parents well-off. My dad had a window cleaning business and traded out part of my tuition. That's the only way they could afford it. It wasn't like we had more money than the rest of the fellowship and were trying to show off or anything like that. Now looking back I am beginning to see that it was the folks in fellowship who were diligently getting the SNS tapes who seemed to be instigating a lot of this... Anyway, the climate in our lovey-dovey little fellowship was beginning to change. As the twig coordinators' kid I began to feel the pressure of constant scrutiny. Maybe this is how preacher's kids feel and why they rebel. I just remember it getting harder and harder to go because of the growing legalistic scrutiny. I felt like they were just watching me and waiting for me to screw-up. Now my teen years and experiences in TWI was anything but a pretty picture. It's going to be a hard story to share but I feel like I need to get it out. I'm just not quite ready.
  20. I'll have to do this in parts or I might go into emotional overload. I'll start from the beginning. I was born in into the Way. My parents were twig leaders (I use this term because at the time I was a kid this was TWI terminology) in an oulying area. This area was their assignment on their 3rd WOW year together. They were looking to settle down and start some roots, so they just bought a house (this was before there was a no debt policy). The rest of their WOW family left after the year but they stayed to move the word and start a family. Looking back, I really think being in an outlying area was my saving grace. The nearest Corp was a couple hours away and so we didn't deal with them on a weekly basis or anything. When I was little I couldn't watch "Smurfs" because there was a wizard and the little blue mushroom peeps were like devil spirits, doncha know? My mom did eventually crack on the Smurf issue because I can remember watching it Saturday mornings when I got a bigger. My dad did not want us to watch "Mr. Rogers" because he seemed to homo. But at some point my dad heard a story about how Mr. Rogers gave a Way hitchiker a ride and he was a really decent guy. This changed his whole tune on Mr. Rogers. (Has anyone else heard about the hitchiking believer and Mr. Rogers?) I could not watch Scooby-Doo for the longest time. I finally explained to my mom that the ghosties were not real spirits but people dressed up pretending to be. I remember a boy in my fellowship burning all his He-Man toys at burn the chaff. I remember being aware of my parents deep love and respect for VPW. I was three when Reagan was running for office. I heard my parents talking about the election for Presidency and piped up, "Are you going to vote for Dr. Weirwille again?". They laughed and explained that Dr. Weirwille was the President of the ministry, but that the country probably would be a lot better off if he were President even though he would never want to be in that position because of his distaste for politics. It was something to that extent. I was only three at the time and can't remember word for word. We lived in the deep South but my mom was determined we eat healthy. We would make our own granola and applesauce. It was great. She always involved me in her projects and was a very hands on mom. I remember her felt-boards and all the bible characters she would cut out and how she'd illustrate the stories for me. When I was three I spoke in tongues for the first time. She was doing laundry and I was playing with my dolls. I had them all in a circle and started speaking in tongues. She seemed very surprised and urgently asked me what I was doing. I wasn't sure if I was in trouble or what. I told her that I was playing fellowship with my dolls. She was very excited and called her friends to share the news. I think she was so happy because she knew I was born again. Fellowship was awesome for me when I was little. We were always having parties and eating together. Everyone hung out together and it really was like a big family. There really was genuine excitement and involvement at that point. When I was four my cat had a litter of kittens and my uncle accidently stepped on one of them with boots on. The kitten could not move his back legs and had to drag himself around with the front legs. We took him to the vet who confirmed that his back was broken and he would have to be put down because his bowels were backing up and it would kill him. They brought it home and told me the bad news. My parents and I were leaving the next morning to visit my grandmother. My uncle was supposed to have it put down after we left. I begged my mom let it live, that God could heal it. After much persistence she said, "Fine, if it goes to the bathroom in the next fifteen minutes we'll let it live. If not, we can't commit it to a slow and painful death." I began praising God the best I knew how, asking him to heal my kitten. I was praising Him for creating the heavens and the earth and saying if He did all that I knew healing a little kitten would be no problem. I praised Him for raising Jesus Christ from the dead and that I knew he could heal my little kitten. The clock was ticking down but I just kept praying and praising. Let me tell you that that little kitty did a little kitty poo before my fifteen minutes were up. My parents were pretty amazed but lived up to their end of the bargain and assured me they wouldn't have it put down. When we returned from our trip (less than a week later) that kitten was running around with the rest of them like nothing had ever happened. I know some of you will doubt this story but that doesn't really matter. This is about me giving an account of what my experiences were growing up. That's enough for one post. I'll have to pick it back up later.
  21. Sorry. I was just agreeing that in retrospect all the "revelation" was just so bogus. Oakspear got the point across better with
  22. Breakfast aside.... there are equally important matters like big waterballoons over deserts and covered bridges to promised lands.... "Look, either God works in me or he doesn't!"
  23. I find it ironic how young people still being supported by their parents are able to attend the ACS, while the parents can't go because of debt. Yeah...I'm sure the kids are sooo much more spiritually mature because they are debt-free. TWI exercises so much logic and wisdom in the category of their debt policy. Ohhhh, wait a minute.... my bad. It appears there is no policy regarding debt. <_<
  24. I recently left TWI and one thing I'm dealing with is shame or guilt by association. I don't feel like I can admit to anyone outside of the experience that I was involved in a cult. Maybe it is, to some extent, the same reasons rape and/or abuse victims often don't come forward? I might feel judged or critisized by telling co-workers or church members that I've just left a cult. I find comfort reading the posts here. I know none here will be casting stones, because we all were in that glass house called TWI.
  25. I haven't read the entire thread but I will point out a few of TWI teaching on the subject that may or may not have been mentioned. It was taught that abortion was a decision that was between a woman, God, and her minister. Note how they had to add her minister into the mix. I guess this was to have someone who could communicate God's will in the situation. I think it was at a ROA that this was taught, maybe '94? It was also taught that even if a baby was born but could not breathe on it's own (had to be hooked up to breathing machines), the child did not have soul life until it took it's first breath on it's own. I have some personal experience in TWI and this topic that I will share later.
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