Broken Arrow

on the other hand --if anyone ever ever wakes me up with Beautiful Ohio blaring at 6 am ever again you best leave the planet Beautiful Ohio!! Oh geez! I never saw the "greatness" of that even when I was at the peak of my brainwashedness. It embarrassed me, quite frankly.

How is it different? Rhetorical question.

wonder how they would view Hillsongs(Darlene Zchevchk and Ruben Morgan), Chris Tomlin, Don Moen, Toby Mac, Brian Donerksen, David Crowder, Brenton Brown, Lincoln Brewster, Rebecca St. James, Casting Crowns, delirious?, Sonic Flood, Paul and Rita Balooche, Newsboys, etc.). Any comments, pro/positive or con/negative? I know, we have had this discussion before. If they viewed them at all, they would have considered them idolatrous Trinitarians and ignored them. More likely, since we were encouraged to never listen to the media much less Christian radio, we probably would not have heard of them. That, by the way, would have probably been just fine with the above artists you mentioned.

The key word here is "middle-aged". Why do so many Vietnam War Vets want to travel to that country to visit old battlefields? Possibly because they feel they left a part of themselves over there when they returned to the USA. Maybe they think albeit subconciously they'll find a missing part of themselves at the location where they were traumatized. A lot of ex-Wayfers spent their entire youth at TWI. Maybe they think they'll recover a part of it if they return to the scene of the crime. Then again, maybe they're just looking for a restroom and they got lost and ended up on Wierwille Rd. It's not all that far from I-75 you know.

Perhaps you have a filter that won't let you see horrific images, or porn.

Ham, If you'll recall Lnnl fell out of grace with VPW. When he was Corp Coordinator he allowed a picnic to start prior to VP's arrival. VP compared it to when Saul began sacrifices prior to Samuel's arrival. He dismissed Lnn8l and said he would never rise to the point he once could have spiritually. What a crock!

Yes! Thank you!

This was shared at Advanced Class '79. A tenth Corps guy who was also a LEAD instructor. He claimed to have been former special forces, I believe the Army Rangers. He said he was involved in the clean-up after Jonestown. I dunno, the guy really did share this stuff I heard it with my own ears.

When I was at Emporia, my job for one block was to walk around in all the buildings and look for burned out light bulbs. That job was purposeful. Yessiree, I felt reeeealy useful! Good thing I had a college education or I might have accidentally put a 40-Watt where there should have been a 60-Watt. I mean, there were no directions or anything, one just had to instinctively know. I had to make sure I utilized CP #1 too. I mean, what if there were a burned out bulb in a hallway in Kenyon for more than a day? That could have been the one impediment that would rupture the entire fabric of the universe. Lord knows there weren't very many lights on at HQ. They never replaced me after I moved on to bigger things, like painting coffee cans red so they could be used for discarding cigarette butts (smoking was allowed back then). You know, it took a crew of 7 of us to paint those butt cans? So, Bolshevik, do you need any more proof of just how purposeful every, and I mean every, job was in The Way International?

I spent most of my time in Ohio, so I would be interested to know if this was pretty much the case with the FLO program regardless of the "MOG" during the years, say, 1974 through say 1978. There was one leader we all thought "walked on water" so to speak. I'm not sure which FLO class you were in.

Another way of responding when one suspected VPW of error was, "After you've given 40 years of your life to researching the Word, THEN MAYBE you have have a right to question the Man of God...MAYBE!" Research ministry? Please!

Now that I read a lot of this stuff on here I wonder was this something encouraged from HQ.. or was he really a total foot or picked up on the jerkiness of the head leaders and copied it... Don't get me wrong a bad person is going to be bad but it seems like leadership gave people a free ticket to be mean and disrespectful to people not to mention encouraged them to torture and abuse. When I was at Emporia Pat Lynn "reproved" the corpse. Apparentally so many of us were going into local restaurants and not leaving tips, only ordering drinks, and then leaving a mess for the waitress to clean up. So, no, it wasn't something that was "taught". It sounds like the those guys were jerks in their own right in or out of TWI. But I agree with Waysider when he says that TWI promoted a "better than you" attitude that opened the way to act out attitudes like this. Also, there was a poverty mentality in The Way where people would do cheap little things like I mentioned earlier.

Ugh! How sickening...but you're probably correct.

I would so love to hear you expand on this if you feel so inclined. The mind picture of it all just raises so many questions.

You might be a TWI tool if you save all year, quit your job to drive three days in the summer heat to spend two weeks in sweltering humidity in a tent with a few hundred other people in "scenic" Northern Ohio where the water tastes like.... All this so you can have the "blessing" of "volunteering" to do a menial job and to have the privilege to sit all day in another tent listening to men of God wannabees spouting their pseudo wisdom. You also might be a TWI tool if when you return home from said event, you talk about what a blessing it was to attend when your non-twi neighbor comes over to show you pictures of their trip to Disney World, or Cancun. You are definitely a tool of TWI if when you look at these pictures of folks having fun while swimming in crystal blue water by lovely waterfalls you think, "What a waste of time! I spent my vacation serving God!!"

You mean, like, say, for example, sending very young, naive girls hitch-hiking across the country, riding with God knows who and telling them that, "if they got raped it was their fault"? Yeah, put a bunch of kids in grave danger and call it "training". God knows we couldn't have had a bus take people to LEAD. Ya think this fed Wierwille's fantasy life?

So...did everything turn out ok? If it's okay to ask, that is?

I was in the Corps and I developed some symptoms that were of concern. I let it go for three years, even made jokes about it. One day I said something to my Branch Leader and asked him to pray for it. He was very emphatic that I should get it checked and when I did, it turned out that I was in stage 2 of a cancerous condition. At the time the common thinking was that cancer was a devil spirit. I sank very deeply into shame and self-condemnation. In all fairness I will say that the BOT helped me a little with some bills. Also, I am the one responsible for the actions I took. However, the fear of having to face the fact that I was "Corps" (as if that meant anything) and couldn't believe my way out of my situation led to my hesitation in seeking medical attention. Secondly, I hesitated seeking medical attention because I didn't have any health insurance and that definitely was because I was gallavanting around the country "moving the Word", washing windows, and working at McDonald's, even though I was a college graduate in my late 20's. I finally landed a job with health benefits and that's when I finally got enough courage to seek help. The doctor said if I had let things go another year my condition would have been irreversible. By the way, I am clean. So, the Law of Beleving as taught in the Way about killed me. At least as far as the "believing action" crap that came down. Again, in all fairness, TWI leadership was kind and encouraging once it was diagnosed I had the condition. Even still, it was the doctrine that in large part caused damage. It's been a blessing to read this thread and see some of the miracles God did for some of you guys.

That's great, Ham! Hats off to you!

You know, Wordwolf, this is a little "hokey", but there is at least one other person I can think of that employed the same strategy of eliciting adulation and that was Richard Nixon. He used to have his lieutenants talk about his intelligence and other traits he wished he actually had. He even gave them the words to say. This has been documented by Henry Kissinger. There must be a manual somewhere of how to elicit worship. Anyway, Wierwille picked it up too. I went to HQ in '74 and I heard Ted Ferrell sing, "Thanks to Calvary". When he got to the end of the song he would start adding different things to "Thanks to..." and he sang, "Thanks to the Man of God Who taught us all these things Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille!" and the audience would erupt into a loud cheer (including me, sadly). That was the first time I heard it. Also, in Advanced Class '79 Wierwille said that you could have the Word living in you so mightily that "you could tell someone to go get you a bucket of water and it would be the will of God." The implication being, of course, that the Word lived in him so mightily that whatever he said was the Will of God. In any event, Tzai, it was definitely not hyperbole.

Doesn't "prove all things" simply mean to test things? That's what it says in the NIV anyway. When I say "hold on to the good", I mean to not be bitter. We all know bitterness will suck the life right out of you. While it may feel like we're actually hurting the person who hurt us, the reality is we continue to be their victim as long as we remain in a state of bitterness. However, pointing out abuse and naming it for what it is is not being bitter, it's being honest. Reading posts here on GSC has helped me to put words and definition to my abuse and to bring it more into focus. When I'm able to do that, I'm better able to heal. When I hear, "just get over it", I hear "deny it, pretend it didn't hurt". That's like having a broken leg and trying to live the rest of one's life without getting the bone set.

Well Runner...I guess that falls under the copout, er, I mean category of "revelation changes as circumstances change". You know, circumstances changed for The Way when 2/3 of their contributors dropped off so God changed the revelation. Suddenly it became "off the Word" to do such sinful things as buy a nice home for your family to live in, or improve yourself by getting an education.

I'm thinkin' Caleb's been silenced by somebody in the corporation.

Never mind.

An insight that would make George Carlin proud, I must say. It's about time someone started thinking whole thoughts around here.