Rocky

On 8/31/2023 at 8:30 PM, Ham said:

Do we really have free will..

20 years ago, I had absolutely no idea that I would be doing what I am doing today.

 

Free will?  I floated into this particular phase of existence..

 

I think.. or do I.  The free will part was a very small agreement, Along The Way.  No pun intended.

 

I showed up as a shipwreck on the shores of a community college about 12 years ago, and they were not exactly amused..  heh.

The four year college offered me shelter this year..

 

 

 

 

Oh. Okay. I'm glad a four year college offered you shelter this year. 

This link captures how I think of art and artistic expression by humans.

https://proactivecreative.com/different-types-of-art/

3 hours ago, Charity said:

Rocky, are you referring to this? 

No, that's not it.

I was referring to the dance routine by African (American) believers. That was SOOOOOO not what one would reasonably expect from Black people.

It was what the white wayfer dancers did. e.g. this lame nonsense. 

12 hours ago, Mike said:

I simply heard it casually in conversation, and from too many sources to remember, and for many years.

Hearing it in casual conversation (especially with twi followers) is not only no guarantee for truth or facts, but a particularly dangerous method for determining one's understanding of law. Dare I posit especially laws of countries with which we have no experience or other understanding. Just sayin'

3 hours ago, chockfull said:

“Uncle” Howards line was “we have no strangers at the Way”.

He also wore shiny red boots that he would declare the purpose of was to catch a glimpse of ladies undergarments.

This still doesn’t make Uncle Festus any less creepy.  

Well, somebody, at some point, made the statement that the only members of the Way International were the board of trustees/directors. 

8 hours ago, chockfull said:

But they say that they have no “members”.  That’s the public line anyway.

Still? Wasn't that Howard Allen's line 50+ years ago? 

5 hours ago, Stayed Too Long said:

Belize does respect the copyright laws of other countries.

https://www.belipo.bz/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Copyright-Orders.pdf

Perhaps in theory but not necessarily in practice?

Which makes Mike's possible misunderstanding potentially true also.

On 9/15/2023 at 6:56 AM, Mike said:

It is my understanding that the country of Belize has no copyright treaty with the USA. 

How did you come to that understanding?

5 hours ago, Stayed Too Long said:

Belize does respect the copyright laws of other countries.

https://www.belipo.bz/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Copyright-Orders.pdf

Intriguing.

2 hours ago, penworks said:

On this topic ... TWI is using the same phrase, The Jesus Christ Revolution.

81st Anniversary Celebration Updates - The Way International News and Events

I never thought I'd see the day when TWI was still grinding out the same old VPW teachings and pulling in the cash. Will this never END?

That's the most inauthentic piece of "art!" I may have ever seen. 

Very sad indeed. I'm confident, however, what got to Daryl wasn't the same as what Steve and Cindy suffered.

14 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Good one. I wish it was longer.

I’ve previously referred to the increasingly prevalent idea among neuroscientists and physicists that consciousness is fundamental.

Panpsychism Theory; Rupert Sheldrake’s (a Christian) Morphic Resonance Theory; Donald Hoffman’s Conscious Realism Theory… see also, philosophers Phillip Goff and Bernardo Kastrop… and others…

This idea is more ancient than NT. Some modern scholars argue that a psychedelic experience (non-normal consciousness) was foundational to the Ancient Greek Eleusinian mystery cult. Plato pointed to a fundamental consciousness. And even the 13th century Christian Dominican theologian, Meister Elkhart, talked about God as the very “ground of being” - the ground of consciousness.

No. The “word of knowledge” is not a precious, special “gift” given only to fundamentalist American evangelicals who merely name it and claim it. Paul didn’t have a monopoly on it, either, even if he believed he did.

I don’t begin with conclusions like victor and Loy. I don’t begin with belief. I only know that I know that I don’t know, and there is great liberty and “power with impact” in the not knowing.

 

 

I thought I had posted a comment responding to yours, but it's not here. Maybe I just closed my browser tab without posting it.

Anyway, I very much appreciate the perspective you conveyed in your comment.

3 hours ago, chockfull said:

Each fellowship has a spreadsheet with a numbers count, names, phone numbers, email, addresses.  As does each branch, limb, region and the trunk.  Each level is required to request changes from the next level above.  The trunk has to approve removing a name from the region roster and down the line.  That is how they plan classes and assignments.

Seriously? Sounds like too much make work and ZERO spirituality.

Apparently somewhere along the line they lost the concept of The Way fellowshipping freely. That sounds like abject drudgery. 

1 hour ago, cman said:

If spiritual things can be explained, that was pretty good. 

Glad you liked it. My thought is the "word of knowledge" isn't necessarily limited to believers.

IF this is true (and it's entirely plausible), what does it mean for The Church (as defined in the NT), and gifts or manifestations of the spirit?

30 minutes ago, Charity said:

No wonder vp/twi wanted to demote Jesus' importance in our lives with God and promote the "written word" as his replacement which, as you [annio] said, was really the written word according to vp.  

1 hour ago, chockfull said:

Then Rosalie basically disbanded the research department because there is nothing new to discover in scripture seeing as we already have the truth given to us like it hasn’t been known since the first century 

And the current brain trust is doubling down on PFAL except having "modern relevant teachers" teach it.  

That, of course, is a brazen dismissiveness of and to intellectual honesty. Gaslighting?

Modern, relevant teachers? Really? Isn't that just packaging their rationalization with a different label?

2 hours ago, rrobs said:

It's awfully hard to make a radical change in a people's established worldview.

Isn't that what cultural hegemony is all about? 

4 hours ago, annio said:

Well put!!! Rocky too!!. Am having anOTHER round of processing... I got involved in twi b/c of what was going on for me personally (some mental breakdown), and in the surrounding world/culture in the early 70's. E.g. All of my "spiritually-minded" siblings and cousins in New England turned to Eastern mysticism; we were SEARCHING. I had  become a Jesus follower, but saw emptiness and hypocrisy in fundamental  churches, and my hippie-ness was not welcomed. Been reading about Auroville in India- a Hindu (sort of) utopian community started in the 60s that drew ppl from around the globe, but turned out to promote similar types of magical thinking, leader-worship, conflict, extremism, etc. I was/many of us really thought we could CHANGE THE WORLD, eh? That idealistic youthful energy and belief. vpw took advantage of that... I very well could have joined an Eastern religous c ommunity instead of twi like my relatives, had it not been for God answering y prayers and leading me to saving faith in Jesus at age 16...    Best to ALL here!

There's quite a bit of commonality in how, as young people we were drawn to Victor's mess of a ministry.

I'm glad YOU (too, like me and so many others) are a survivor, Annio! 

7 hours ago, penworks said:

My own myth, The Way’s dogma, became unworkable for me.  It needed a blind faith to stay involved with it. I had blind faith no more.  I no longer trusted vp’s integrity, which was shot for me after all those long Literals meetings. 

You could, apparently, no longer take Victor's word for it what it all, or any of it, meant.

That expression take his word for it jumped out and SCREAMED at me when I read your comment.

Isn't that why Victor NEEDED young people to join his movement, rather than older, more seasoned researchers with whom he would have been challenged on his numerous claims of what God actually meant?

I was 19 when I first learned of Victor's ministry and his take on "truth." I THOUGHT (at the time) what I responded to was an intellectually honest take on God, scripture and such. But really, reflecting back on my developmental place and emotional/social needs at that moment, I responded to something altogether different, a friendship at a US military base overseas where and when I had few people I felt I had much in common with.

But I digress, for Victor to effectively communicate with and proselytize more intellectually and emotionally mature people would have required him to be willing to listen and relate to people differently than those who eventually came to follow his ministry. But didn't he try reaching people with that kind of maturity for years with  minimal success? Wouldn't his success have required different communication skills? More open minded listening perhaps? More of an open mind to what other people, closer to being peers with him, had to say? People who would listen to him but pose difficult questions. Didn't he actually HAVE people like that come into his orbit... but for reasons unknown he didn't engender the kind of emotional connection he was able to get with the "young people?"

Did Victor have a temperament conducive to actual dialogue that could produce an understanding in two or more individuals which could reasonably be expected to include portions of each person's position. 

Could that be [part of] the reason he built a cult, instead of a community without demands on its followers?

7 hours ago, penworks said:

In Kenya, there's an effort by churches etc. to hold religious leaders to a code of conduct (a good code!). Interesting attempt.

Cult News 101 - CultNEWS101 Library: Church Leaders Roll Out Code of Conduct to Put Rogue Preachers in Check

I'll be curious to know how it works out.

Intriguing insight from observing cult behaviors SIMILAR to OUR experience. We bit, hook, line, and sinker. Were we conditioned during childhood for a Christian-flavored cult? It seems that way to me. 

Steven Hassan (cult expert and former Moonie himself] tweeted this link and

I am very happy to see Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon's wife, who took over the Moon cult after he died in 2012, featured in this article on Korean cults. She paid Trump $2 million for endorsing her cult- a few weeks after the Jan 6th attack on the Capitol.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/grace-road-churchs-dream-life-in-fiji-threatens-to-fall-apart

SEOUL—Authorities in Fiji have smashed a South Korean cult that threatened to take over the South Pacific nation’s economy, arresting four of its leaders and sending two of them back to Korea.

The crackdown on the Grace Road Church shocked its 400 Korean and foreign adherents, who had moved to Fiji after being warned of an apocalypse about to annihilate South Korea. They submitted to regular thrashings, some of them caught on camera, in what their founder, a middle-aged woman named Shin Ok-su, claimed were needed to knock the devil out of them.

Shin was expelled back to Korea, arrested for child abuse, assault and false imprisonment, and sentenced to six years in prison in 2019, but the church survived until Fijian authorities this week rounded up church members in a drive to stamp out the influence of a cult that’s been madly buying up Fijian companies and property. The church, founded in South Korea in 2002, decided in 2014 that Fiji, an archipelago with a population of slightly less than 1 million people, was “the center of the world.”

Fijian authorities turned a blind eye as the church took over construction companies, beauty salons, restaurants and much else, establishing a mini-conglomerate called GR Group, modeled after the chaebol or conglomerates that dominate Korea. [...]

The leaders of the church allegedly controlled their adherents by confiscating passports, forcing some to live in virtual imprisonment, ordering them to work on church-owned projects and beating them periodically into submission.

It was not until a new government took over early this year that authorities recognized the seriousness of the inroads the cult had made into Fijian life and decided to clean house. Fiji’s previous prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, six years ago gave Grace Road an award for business excellence, recognizing it had “invested heavily in Fiji.”

Now the seven top leaders of the church are listed as “prohibited immigrants” while authorities search for two of them, including Daniel Kim, son of founder Shin Ok-su. In charge of the church’s sprawling business interests, he remains on the lam while the GR Group, “very enraged by all the lies,” claims to have been “working proudly as owners.”

All the stories of “passport confiscation, forced labor, incarceration and violence,” said GR Group, were “unspeakable lies” created by “those who wish to slander us.” [a likely story... one we've heard way too many times before] [...]

“The reason for so many new religions among Koreans is that a) there is real freedom of religion in Korea even compared to Christian countries,” said Breen, a long-time businessman in Seoul. “That’s one reason they thrive. People come up with all sorts of interpretations and shifts in theology and practice.”

Like Moon’s Unification Church, smaller cult-like groupings feel the urge to expand overseas in the same spirit as Korean big business and K-pop. Blind adherence to the dictates of a single leader is characteristic of Korean life.

The Rev. Tim Peters, a Protestant pastor in Seoul with a long background working with North Korean defectors, placed the rise of Grace Road in the context of “the 5,000-year history of Korea.”

“A strong leader with a stirring message resonates deeply in the Korean psyche,” Peters told The Daily Beast.

Charisma helps. “A congregation’s appetite for an emotionally stirring sermon often eclipses a congregant’s individual spiritual growth,” Peters said. “Joining a new religious movement that has radical doctrines sometimes fulfills a need for young adults to break free from their parents’ or grandparents’ suffocating spiritual traditions.”

Chang Sung-eun explained the appeal of Grace Road Church more simply. “Koreans are passionate and energetic,” she said. “They have a strong yearning for salvation. They believe somehow, ‘God will save me.’ That’s the baseline. They tend to fall victim to pastors and ministers who have strong disciplinary policies.” [more]

17 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

More like a cigarette boat, and not merely aboard, but piloting with great athleticism, power and speed. There’s more than enough room on a cigarette boat for his handful of followers.