Tzaia

And while the Aramaic project was (probably) the closest thing to real research ever done (my opinion), the "research" that got the most attention was the blockbuster discovery that adultery and fornication were actually sexual sins and not referring to spiritual matters. When this was brought into the open, several of the women who had formerly thought they were being sexually healed and performing great works for the "man of God" or whomever else they were servicing, discovered they were not receiving spiritual blessings, but were being used. TWI managed to keep much of this unknown to the really faithful who continued to submit to the sexual predators until someone wised up and sued.

What came out of all this was that there were two distinct set of theologies - what was written, and what was unwritten but spoken to a select group and practiced. What little research that was ever done was done away with to eliminate the possibility of further discoveries.

As fallen-away out-of-fellowship people who are obviously born of the wrong seed, we don't matter. And I'm fine with that.

A similar phenomenon in the field of psychology is called the Hawthorne Effect (see http://en.wikipedia....thorne_effect). That is, simply knowing that you're being observed can modify your behavior.

Which would make one wonder if all life is "aware" in the sense that we are aware.

Question: do you think "spirit" is the same as "soul"? (I'm somewhat familiar with TWI's teaching on this but I'm interested in what you think.

No. But I do think that "spirit" and "soul" are far more intertwined than I once believed.

I believe soul is what gives me life, while spirit is what gives my life meaning.

Continuing on my rant...

What a leap of logic it takes to attempt to equate what happens to sub atomic particles if they are forced through one or two slits with what happens in the spiritual realm.

But that is what everyone has done while in TWI to some degree - taken a leap of logic.

As if there was anything remotely logical about harnessing the spiritual realm, yet over and over someone attempts to explain it in some sort of scientific terms.

We use the word in our vernacular....I don't really think it is much different than how we would use it in description today....the essence of something not tangible, but nevertheless....real.... :)

I gave it a shot anyway.

The point is that we don't know. We don't know how "spirit" operates or whether it is subject to any "laws" as we know them. All we know is that periodically someone believes they have received or was born with some sort of special knowledge of the spiritual and provides us with some way of living that "guarantees" a certain outcome in the "eternal" realm. Then a religion is born.

VPW wanted to stand out in a unique way. JW's already had a lock on the absent Christ, so he borrowed heavily from the law of attraction group, putting his little spin on it, and called it the "Law of Believing". That was his claim to fame.

And a whole bunch of us bought it - literally. Some of us paid upwards to $200 to receive this "revelation". Who in their right mind wouldn't want to be masters of the spiritual realm?

As intricate as it all may seem, the basics will boil down to this, spirit is spirit, matter & energy is matter & energy. Energy, no matter how energetic, is not spirit.

As if anyone has been able to adequately define "spirit". We all think we know what it is, and many here were bamboozled by TWI's take on spirit and what was spiritual, but honestly, does anyone really know?

So clearly, Jesus doesn't want everyone to hate their families.

Not if you are a literalist - and that's my point. TWI was clear that Jesus had drawn the line in the sand. If choosing TWI (as it considered itself the stand in for the absent Christ) meant "hating" your family, then so be it.

Maybe, just maybe, if you can do it without seeming and sounding arrogant, condescending, and unloving, following all that law stuff to the letter is a good thing. I've just found very few people who think they have the answers who can carry it off without sounding and acting that way - including me. So (for the most part), I stopped trying to have the answers. In this realm I find I have no answers anymore, and I'm considerably less miserable and combative.

So tell me, how can I love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind - and my neighbor as myself (Luke 10:27) while hating my mother, father, wife, children, and myself (Luke 14:26)?

Yeah, "replacementism".

That was what Wierwille promoted.

Only he never came across as being hateful about it.

It was almost like he professed to have some sort of "pity" for the Jews.

He did, incidentally, claim that modern days Jews are not the descendants of the Biblical Jews, a claim that modern DNA technology has shown to be incorrect.

That's what I remember.

TWI's stance was similar to the JW's. TWI didn't come right out and claim to be part of the 144000 like the JW's, but I perceived WC as a sort of 144000.

45 Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land, until the ninth hour.

46 And at the ninth hour, Yeshua cried with a loud voice, and said: My El, My El, why

have you forsaken Me?

47 And some of the men that stood by, when they heard, and said, He calls for Eliyahu.

48 And one of them ran right away, and took the sponge and filled it with vinegar, and

put it on a reed and gave Him to drink.

49 But the others said, Let be, and let us see if Eliyahu will come to deliver Him.

50 Then Yeshua cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.

51 And behold! The veil of the Temple was torn in two, from the top to the bottom, and

the earth did quake, and the rocks were torn,

(Matt. 27:45-51 HRV)

44 Now about six hours had gone, and darkness was upon all the earth until the ninth

hour.

45 And the sun was dark, and the veil of the Temple was rent from its middle.

46 And Yeshua cried out with a great voice and said: My Father, into your hands I

commend My spirit! He said this and died.

(Luke 23:44-46)

It is my understanding that both accounts are describing a number of things that all happened at once.

Personally - I think you understand incorrectly. The Matthew/Mark versions of the story say that the veil tore after he died. Luke clearly states that it happened before. I won't even get into the notion that someone didn't get it right - that kind of flies in the face of the whole "God inspired" thing. The point is that the placement of when that event happened has significant theological implications - and 2 very different things are being said by way of where that tearing of the holy of holies takes place.

Gen-2 Just an FYI - there was no WWW to speak of until 1992. I was an alpha tester of Mosaic and one of the first non-commercial internet customers in my area - a major metropolitan area. We had a computer in 1982, but it just wasn't feasible to do anything online. Modems were incredibly expensive and so was online time. There was the occasional BBS and various discussions on them. I used to get UUCP feeds of various USENET groups, but my main connection was through FIDONET until the WWW was actually usable, which was sometime in mid '94. Before that there was Compuserve (very expensive), Prodigy, and early AOL. These closed systems weren't really for research, but the boards provided some insight into the workings of various religious organizations - mainly through their rabid followers and equally rabid detractors.

The big breakthrough book in the 80s was Walter Martin's Kingdom of the Cults. I found his requirements to be somewhat self-serving in that all non-trinitarian groups were automatically lumped in as cults. And I thought he was very mean-spirited. Had he not been that way, I might have paid more attention to what he was saying, but I personally couldn't get past the attitude.

At the twig and branch level, prior to the demand that branch leaders be WC, there wasn't a cult feel at that level. Definitely by the time someone decided to go WoW or WC, people started acting more that way. There were a LOT of us who treated TWI like church by only going once or twice a week, and kept out of all the inner workings. The few times I ever did participate at that level, I was so appalled by what I saw that I retreated from participating. My husband, who had done the college wow thing, twig coordinator, and AC, was not interested in participating at that level and as a natural born cynic, neither did I.

Also, back then (mid 60s-80s), churches did a lousy job of reaching out to young people. We were ripe for the picking.

I liked TWI because I didn't notice any sort of tracking mechanism (it wasn't out there for me to notice), I wasn't aware of a dress code, I didn't like church, and I was already charismatic from being involved in a pentecostal church. TWI was never in my face that much.

Ironically, I became MORE involved in a splinter.

But I do know the significance of the act is recorded in both. And it represents the same thing in both.

I don't think it represents the same thing in both. I think when the holy of holies was ripped represents whether the act was viewed by the writer as an act of atonement (Matthew and Mark) because it happened after his death, or whether it is viewed by the writer as an act of judgment (Luke) because it was torn before he died.

I haven't read the (supposed) translation from the Aramaic to do any comparison, but I sincerely doubt if it's going to do any better job of "fixing" the fact that the Matthew/Mark versions of the passion are very different from the Luke account.

That to me speaks louder than anything as to the veil being ripped in half to the holy of holies.

Was it ripped after he died on the cross according to Matthew 27:51, or was it before he died according to Luke 23:45?

Just asking.

Well, after all, a suggestion from a leader is paramount to a command! But I'm not trying to tell you what to do...

I see the first edition was penned in 1918.

Exactly - and hear here some of us thought he was a frickin' genius.

http://books.google.com/books?id=p3OOU3wL9YIC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=all+without+exception+all+without+distinction&source=bl&ots=l5WcoZZzA8&sig=GGOgD3oueRwKos8f86bkAmAdSl4&hl=en&ei=EsL6S_WkLIfANavbhYQI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=all%20without%20exception%20all%20without%20distinction&f=false

I didn't get the whole needs and wants parallel as a balance thing. I perceived it more as 2 lines in the same plane. While he didn't explain it that way (or particularly well), my take was that we were to elevate our wants to needs as God wants to provide all our needs. In this scenario, it pays to be high maintenance. When I found out HQ staff was paid on a "needs" basis and that barely covered the basics, it seemed to me that TWI wasn't following its own teaching about that, because VPW made it clear in PFAL that people needed to elevate needs above the basics.

So while PFAL was focused on being a prosperity gospel, TWI went on to redefine what that prosperity was supposed to look like after one took the class - unless one was VPW or one of his chosen. So to many it seemed perfectly logical to chip in money to buy VPW that chopper he so desperately "needed" while clothing and shoeing one's family with hand-me-downs.

I couldn't tell you the day VPW died without a thread like this. I can't remember when I found out that he died of cancer, but the irony wasn't lost on me as I had just had surgery for cancer. Of course people steered clear of me - devil spirits and all. Gee it could happen to the "best" of us.

I think we can be thankful that a bunch of people didn't claim he was raised from the dead by God and seated at his right hand - taking the place of Jesus. I know when he was alive a lot of people (at the time) thought he was Jesus Jr.

No, no, no. Sugar Shack.

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TWI became the very thing it disdained.

I guess it's not rocket science that they ARE hoarding money. Maybe the rocket science would come into play figuring out WHY they are hoarding their money.

Needs.

Are they hoarding food?

So some of you Way folks used to drink and party and stuff? I know it went on but somehow I can't picture it. Partying, to me, was always the polar opposite of leading a "good Christian life".

I remember being surprised when my ex-Way friend drank and smoked with me many years ago. She said that being born again didn't mean you couldn't indulge in substances. I thought that was pretty cool -- I had always thought of born again Christians as "clean-living", so to speak.

That's what separated us from those other "Christian" organizations. Imagine running into an old boyfriend at a bar and him asking me who I'm with and I tell him my new Christian buddies. It was *my* kind of Christianity. I didn't have to change a thing.

that LCM didn't tithe, much less "abundantly share"? I (vaguely) remember the "won't spit your way" thing and wondered how could God stand back and let someone fall so hard - unless his believing was under-par and his sharing wasn't at least 15% of his gross.

Is he an example of what happens to a person who doesn't?

When the whole POP and 37 page letter hit the fan, I was given a box of information the size of a ream of paper filled with information. It didn't take very long to figure out what TWI was all about and our branch in southern Indiana left. We had come from central Indiana (we lived about a mile from the Limb) and that area was fractured in terms of people leaving. Of course we were M & A by all the people who chose not to leave. No one from our former twig who was still "standing" would even talk to me. One family in our former twig actually ended up going on staff at NK HQ, but they also left TWI after that experience. Another family who stayed in finally left after someone informed the wife that she would be asked to hand over her teenage daughters. This was while LCM was still in charge.

I was happy that the family finally left. I celebrate anytime someone leaves. However, I really have had a hard time believing that people were literally being asked to relinquish their daughters in order to service leadership and that anyone actually complied. Were people asked to do that and did anyone actually do it?

The overriding theme from one of the other threads is that apparently TWI does not welcome "seekers" to its SNS. You have to be a standing established follower.

I just don't get the feeling that too many people actively sought out TWI as their choice in church, more that TWI targeted people. Is that feeling correct? Were there things people were taught to look for, or was it just a blanket thing where everyone was asked?

Benevolence - it went a bit further than that. I sat in a "teaching" delivered to our ladies fellowship by our limb leader. He told us that guys needed "release" every 72 hours and that it was our duty as wives to make sure that happened. I remember sitting there thinking "chapter and verse, buddy."

So then I cornered him after the "teaching" and asked him how his time frame fit in with Judaic law and the period of unclean. I asked him why God didn't take that 72 hour thing into consideration when creating all those laws. I think I made him uncomfortable.

I think it is rather convenient that the way has a woman as it's president. What a nice little political move. Any topic related to this can all be covered with a "...but the way's president is a woman. " Rosie likes it on top. :)

For all we know they may have all been doing the same woman.