penworks

oakspear.....yes, there was a "mass exodus" in 1961,1962.

When wierwille was pivoting on his decision to move away from Van Wert, there was a core of followers near Piqua, Ohio that wanted The Way, Inc. to headquarter their operation near them. From what I remember of this twi history, wierwille felt pressured by their demands, because of their loyalty. For wierwille to even deliberate over this.......there must have been a decent amount of support (25-30%..??).

With brother Harry's support to fix up the ole wierwille home, vpw made the decision to move his operation to the wierwille homestead in February 1962. Local support came from Mrs. W's sister, Dee F. and lots of others.......but the Piqua followers felt snubbed and faded away.

All things relative, this situation was fairly dramatic because wierwille retold this account to inresidence corps through the years.

I remember this account. VP told us about all this during our in-rez 1971-73. In our Corps there was one daughter of a Piqua couple who no longer stood with VP, but she had latched onto the ministry herself, having heard the PFAL tapes growing up. Somehow she got convinced she should go in the Corps after she finished college and she did... she's still in TWI today.

Perhaps it's time for a CRIME report review. Although this is an old thread, I believe it relates to this topic. It might help any innies sitting on the fence...

Lawsuit

Maybe they are too afraid to consider what kind of reality all that implies..

I think this plays a major role in denial of any sort. I know it did for me before I came to terms with the issues I faced leading up to my decision to quit the research team. Breaking denial requires change and sometimes that means EXTENSIVE changes in one's life. Plus I had to admit I'd been fooled, I'd kept my head in the sand, I had been duped due to my ignorance, etc. That's a bitter pill to swallow...

Unless and until a person faces an issue that affects them PERSONALLY so that they come to a cross roads and have to choose to do something to eleviate the pain they face, it may not be possible for them to break away.

For instance, I remember a conversation I had in 1986 with someone I worked with who now is one of the top VPs and teaches part of the new class at HQ. I thought he was a good guy and would be willing to call a spade a spade. So when I tried to explain why I was resigning from research, why I thought LCM had MAJOR problems, that VP's research had holes in it (he knew this already), etc., he looked at me as if I were possessed but at least was polite about it. He said, "I need some time to think about this." He ended up staying at HQ and now he's rewarded with his big job - apparently nothing happened that affected him very personally so all I can imagine is that he must have rationalized the abuses of VPW and LCM somehow. Humans have convenient ways of doing that. I wonder whether he ever thinks about that conversation...maybe he's reading this now...I hold him partly responsible for perpetuating the cult - he could have opted out, he was smart, he was kind-hearted. Now I think he's let himself be blinded and he has been used.

Sometimes some people are willing to put up with a lot of human failures, crimes, and abuses if they think what they're teaching - the doctrine - is THE TRUTH. In my view, there is no "Truth" worth that price.

In case anyone is wondering, here are two posts I believe Ken is referencing, although he didn't state which post it is - BTW I am not trying to represent him: Posts #238 and 240 on the following page.

http://www.greasespo...s/page__st__220

Penworks, that must have sucked, cleaning the great DM's car.

Yeah, but it was sort of funny. I had started going back to college anyhow, so the mindless tasks for part of the day were welcome...

Hi All,

I registered to be on this website because I wanted to respond to comments made about me here. I'm not angry, but the comments were dismissive, somewhat belittling, and certainly misleading. I was described as a 3'rd Corps grad who was a faithful wayfer and is apparently still following Wierwille ideology. Then there was an embarrassingly dorky sentence about being so blessed for the keys to how the Bible interprets itself quoted from my website (brownbible.com) with a link to it.

Fair enough in part; I don't think the writer was trying to be unkind. I graduated from the 3'rd Corps and was a faithful wayfer, but the above makes me sound like a mindless groupie and is hardly representative of where I have been coming from for at least the last 30 years. I did not write the quoted sentence. It was lifted from an article submitted by someone else. I wasn't aware that the article was on the site. I remember telling the administrator that we couldn't use it and have since deleted it.

While involved with TWI, long before "The Passing of the Patriarch," I was outspoken with a number of the top decision makers for malpractice and/or errant teaching, and became quite unpopular among them. I am not and have never been a mindless groupie.

My website has been up for a little less than a year. So far, I have written and posted 36 Bible related articles. Each is based on my own independent study of the Scriptures (and, yes, I still believe that the Bible as originally written is God's Word).

Some of these articles are in agreement with things we were taught in TWI, many are contrary to our previous teaching. I think the articles are well reasoned, though of course, I could be wrong here and there; but they are not a matter of following Wierwille ideology.

So there, I said it. Not many of you will care one way or the other about what I have written here. Most of you probably don't even know me. But I felt a bit insulted by what I read about me on this site and wanted to respond.

Hey, for those of you who remember Sue and me, we are still together and happy. Our son, Rex, is now 20 years old. He is a great young man who loves God. He is in the U.S. Air Force. His top secret security clearance was approved, and he is doing something that we are not likely to ever know about, but we are very proud of him.

God's best to all of you.

Hi Ken,

If you're referring to anything I may have said, I did not intend to be unkind. If my words came across that way, I apologize.

For those of you reading here, Ken and I worked together in the research room at HQ from 1984-86.

Charlene

Here's a bit on the topic of using arts for TWI outreach:

Way Mag July/Aug 81, Pg. 21

God's Word Moves Out Through the Arts by Elena Whiteside

"The goal of the Word in Fine Arts is to preserve and retain the knowledge of the Mystery by ingraining it in the arts – the arts having the greatest potential of outreach of all human activities-thus contributing to the move of God's Word over the world."

This thread isn't about the accuracy or inaccuracy of "the tithe".

It's about the sudden feeling of vulnerability one experiences when realizing their avenue of "tithing" has been closed.

Guess some of us left shedding the belief system which included this "protection of the household of faith," but I imagine it would be unnerving for some. It certainly was a habit ingrained due to the heavy indoctrination over so many years. I remember thinking, though, as I resigned from research (1986) that I would be my own "cause" from then on and invest my money in my education and family. If I could financially help anyone else I met, great. For a variety of reasons, I could not bring myself to give a nickel to anyone saying they taught anything about God.

I wonder whether they still have the car wash? After I resigned from research in 1986, I was put on the Multi-services team and washed cars for awhile. I remember one day Rosie and Donna returned from a shopping trip in Dayton (or somewhere nearby) and their car was brought in. It was spotless, I remember, but we had to clean it anyway... I vacuumed out the carpet in the back seat and thought how ironic all this was...cleaning a clean car...what a waste of time and effort...and a waste of the believers ABS.

The Way was already stifling creativity and individuality in 1972, when I first sat through PFAL. I was essentially told, by local leadership, that I had to make a choice between pursuing my artistic endeavors and going forward with my "spiritual" growth. I made that choice. And, although I can't blame anyone besides myself for making it, I realize now that my decision was, at least partially, based on erroneous or misrepresented information supplied by The Way. The whole movement was mushrooming so fast, it took time for VPW & Co. to get control of the direction it was headed. And, I think, too, that VPW allowed a certain amount of it (independent creativity) to continue as an enticement. There was kind of an idea that you could "redirect" your creativity to more Godly ventures if you fully dedicated yourself to the movement. Thus, there were still renegade artists sprinkled throughout the "ministry" for a good while in the early years. I think VPW had a pretty firm grip on it all by 1975 or 1976.

This reminds me of what happened during my in-rez years ('71-'73), when three women in my Corps during our second year were allowed to spend their 4-hour daily work assignment painting and drawing, using rooms in the Way Cultural Center in New Breman, which was an old church. There also was a recording studio there for the musicians around at that time.

The art produced by my Corps sisters was not Bible-oriented, as I recall, but portraits, still life paintings of fruit, etc. Although these weren't used in "moving the Word" I remember VP commenting how the spirit of Christ in these artists is what produced the art and because the art was produced by believers standing on The Word (his interpretation of the Bible, mostly plagarised etc.) it was a witness to the glory of God and the "greatness of His Word" (the vague phrase used as hype for VP's classes).

Looking back, I feel VP used people and their art to glorify his organization, taking credit for the quality of their art, as if these people weren't talented before they took PFAL!

For those interested, here is a link to Amazon's page on the book on Fundamentalism by James Barr, which I quoted in my article. I was using his list of hallmarks of fundamentalism.

If you go to this page, scroll down to see some reviews of his ideas, in particular his view on inerrancy which I happen to agree with, although I'm sure others won't...

Inerrancy per James Barr

me too. and i cant help but assume that any effective figuring out of such things cannot happen without at least touching and handling the even hotter and more troubling aspects of it all...

Do you want to tell us what you think "the even hotter and more troubling aspects of it" are?

Thank you everyone for addressing my question(s). I appreciate the time and efforts you put into your posts. All this discussion helps me rethink how to refine my thoughts on the issues...

Cheers!

Define inerrancy? All I have gotten so far is VP's wackiness. . . . if it is that the bible is without error in the truth of the message it conveys. . . . . then why do you think it is so important?

If it all hinges on the accuracy of how many legs a grasshopper has.. . . for it to be truth. . . . then, I don't think we have a legitimate working definition of inerrancy.

Okay, in my view, inerrancy of a document, which is made up of words, would mean it is without error or contradiction.

Perhaps what this discussion is getting at is that VPW's view of inerrancy is not what the general population of Evangelicals thinks. Is that what you're trying to say?

Here's what the Baptist's web site says about scripture at: http://www.sbc.net/a...asicbeliefs.asp

The Scriptures

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

Is this the view of most Evangelicals?

The Baptists I referred to in my previous post who did not sign the inerrancy "loyaly oath" that was shoved at them by the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s are still Christians. So there must be something about inerrancy that did not jive with them, but didn't prohibit them from still being Christians. I venture to say there are Christians in other denominations that don't buy into an error-free Bible, either.

I'm just trying to figure out why some Christians like those in TWI make such an issue out of it and defend it and others do not.

Can someone here please explain why the tenent of biblical inerrancy is so important to Evangelical Christians and not important to so many other Christians?

BTW, Workman, the Baptist Convention you mentioned at one time in the 1980s kicked out any minister who would not sign a document stating that inerrancy was "the truth" or something like that.

Seems like an awful power play to me. That split in that church caused misery, broken friendships, and pain to many...I see nothing helpful to the Christian message of "love thy neighbor" in doing that, do you?

Yet another interesting book is The First Messiah by Michael O. Wise (1999). Wise is a noted scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In The First Messiah, he builds a case that a wave of messianic enthusiasm swept over Judaea about a hundred years before the time of the gospels. That wave was partially a result of events found recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and partially an impetus to the formation and continued existance of the Qumran community.

If Wise is right, then the things he talks about in The First Messiah goes a long way to explain the popular messianic expectations at the time of Christ, and why those expectations took the forms they did.

Love,

Steve

Thanks for chiming in with these book titles. I think works like this one (there are others) show that Jesus certainly was a part of that messianic movement during that time, along with his cousin John the Baptist, which means he believed the kingdom of God (as he is shown to describe it by the gospel writers) was going to come before very long - even before he died or shortly afterwards. It didn't, so that poses a problem. VP handled that problem by saying gosh, Jesus just didn't know the mystery etc etc., which is a theological explanation based on what Paul wrote ...but that's another topic...

Anyway, Jesus's morality teachings, in my view, were his attempt to warn everyone to shape up or else they woulnd't get into the kingdom. Of course, he wasn't the first one to teach those values...the "golden rule" had been around in other religions for eons...

How does this relate to the topic under discussion? In my view, it is another example of his borrowed ways (from Bullinger, etc.) of "proving inerrancy."

If you have a Jesus who predicts the end of the world and it doesn't come, then "the whole Bible falls to pieces..." you have to do some bible gymnastics to explain or reinterpret what Jesus is recorded as saying or else claim that he just didn't have all the information going on behind the scenes, etc. (VPW's mystery teachings). I think it's worth questioning VP's methods...

P.S. Here are good definitions for research from Merriam Webster:

1 : careful or diligent search

2 : studious inquiry or examination; especially : investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws

3 : the collecting of information about a particular subject

Workman,

Thanks for the heads up.

Charlene

Yah, I was gonna say it was almost as if you cared about them a little bit...then the last line.

Bob

Yes, my interest is a literary curiosity. As a writer, I'd rather let each gospel writer's work stand on its own, rather than smush it into the other ones to make a fifth gospel, but I already said that, right? :-) My "faith" such as it is in an invisible creator, doesn't depend on these things...

Cheers

Yeh, but Charlene, everybody did the harmony thing. But for the most part those who tried to put together a harmony of the Gospels did it for what they thought was a good idea. H.e.l.l, Tatian (circa 165 CE) did his Diatessaron and it became THE gospel for the Syriac speaking church for over 2 hundred years! I suppose if one thinks that is a bad thing and that the four (4) records should never be harmonized I can see their point of view (somewhat),

Bob

I stand by my view that an harmonizing effort, no matter how well intentioned or how long ago it was attempted (which does not give it any more authority than one done yesterday IMO) ignores the different viewpoints of each gospel and crams them together to say, "Voila! it's one continuous story told in bits and pieces by different people and all the bits actually happened and fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and in the order this harmony says they did." I'd rather accept each one on its own terms and for fun, look into who wrote them, where, and possibly why (although motives are usually hard to determine.) But take what I say with a grain of salt...my interest in the topic is not due to matters of faith, only curiosity.

I frequently hear people say they are thankful they learned some good "stuff" in The Way. Like what, specifically? Reading things in context? Weren't we supposed to have learned that already in jr. high school English class? Even so, The Way may have told you to read things in context but then they set a lasting example of how to cherry pick scriptures to make their point.

So then what, specifically, are all these good things that people learned in The Way?

One good thing might be his reminder to us to, "Read what is written" - that is a good thing. However, he ignored that himself time and time again in his efforts to prove inerrancy.

Example: my post #340 on the previous page about the "fifth" gospel he created from trying to harmonize the existing four gospel accounts. In my view this is a serious error.

the fifth gospel

Hi Greasespotters:

Just a few more words about VPW and inerrancy. The examples he used to "prove inerrancy" are many and can be found in his publications. One way is in his approach to the gospels. For example, in an attempt to "show" that gospel contradictions are not really contradictions, he harmonized different accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection. Refer to the PFAL class and many threads here at GSC like:

VP and Bullinger harmonizing gospels

To "prove" inerrancy, he tried to splice the gospels together, ignoring their different views, as if he were editing scenes for a film.

In my view, the "film" he produced is actually a fifth gospel which not only does not reflect any of the original gospels writers' accounts as they were written, but makes VPW's account appear as if it is the "real" gospel. In my view, by doing that, VPW placed a false halo around the belief in "inerrancy."

By creating a "fifth" gospel, VPW reinterpreted each writer's "take" on events. In the process, he avoided having to deal with uncomfortable questions about why there are four different gospels to begin with and how we got them. I do not think that VPW's method respects the gospel texts (written about 35 to 65 years after Jesus died) as we have them today; it only makes VPW a 20^st century Bible thumper who tries to sound as if he knows what the "real" gospel should be.

BTW – Workman: I checked your GSC profile and saw you mentioned your web site http://www.biblicalr...rchjournal.org/ . Since it is clear you are a proponent of VPW's research and methods, I imagine my line of thinking won't matter much to you since it comes from a different tradition of valuing Biblical documents. So, I offer this post to those interested who happen to still be reading this thread.

Cheers!

Yeah, Charlene,

...VP made the mistake of not delegating work that he was unqualified for to others and having a little "faith" that they just might "get it" and go beyond.

RE

Do you think he would ever have listened, then, to anyone asking for TWI research to back off from the claim of the inerrancy of scripture as found in the canon of the KJV, which in my view, was his starting point?

VP was not smart enough to have the "original text" in his own mind,

Uh, I was making a joke..."the original" was a fiction in his own mind...

but the so-called "original text" is a means to an end. Justifying abberant behavior in the practical realm of living is much more gross in my opinion.

I could not agree more.

Another thought occurred to me last night. Think of the P-e-s-h-i-t-t-a as the English speaking world's King James Version. The 5th Century Syriac speaking church of the east (in and around Edessa (northern Mesopotamia, today's southeastern Turkey) utilized it as the western world did the Vulgate (the 5th Century Latin version translated from Greek by Jerome (da guy from Brooklyn…just makin' sure yer watchin')).

Anyway, if it was good enough for the apostle Paul…you know the rest.

RE

So from this we see a text gaining a reputation, and due to that reputation, gaining authority, and from that authority, having value but that value has become murky over the centuries to people like us who live far away and in a different time.

This version was, as Bob points out, a popular one valued by users so it survived. It is not the Aramaic original that VP often talked about. When VP said the "original" it did not refer to any text necessarily. The Way had its own "original" text - it was in VP's mind.

Whoa, did I just get caught up in an acid flashback. I didn’t even do acid…

Sorry I went a little ballistic there. I promise to not do it again.

Bob

Thanks for the background info, Bob. I knew you had it in you! And I imagine this is instructive for those here who are curious about why TWI focused on Syriac and just what the heck all the Aramaic talk was about...