Rocky

I'm not sure that's an effective or honorable way to label those we'd like to help find their way out of the cult.

I attribute it to the fact that we are what we've learned and experienced. Ten years on (35 years after leaving the cult), reflecting on and re-evaluating my experience and sharing insights on GSC are still important to me. In that ten year span, Charlene wrote a tremendous memoir to benefit her readers with her insight so they (hopefully many) will be able to avoid cultic groups/organizations. She asked me to write a blurb for Undertow. Here's what I shared: “Undertow is a gift to young people and their families who want to understand the inner workings of fundamentalist cults. Charlene Edge’s experience parallels much of my own twelve years as a follower of Victor Paul Wierwille’s ministry. Undertow sheds light on the decisions, questions, and longings that she encountered, and ultimately worked her way through. In the words of Canadian author Matshona Dhliwayo, ‘Books are kinder teachers than experience.’ May Undertow be a kinder teacher to you than Charlene’s seventeen years in The Way International were to her.” —Steve Muratore, publisher of award-winning political blog the Arizona Eagletarian Edge, Charlene L. Undertow . New Wings Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.

I can agree with that.

My impression of this is you take it far too personally when people disagree with you. Why do you even care what anyone believes about you? The main question you perhaps should be concerned about is to what extent do YOU believe you might be "a liar, an idiot or whatever." IOW, you've put your insecurity on display. Good luck in your life Mr French, I wish you well. But validation here on GSC isn't necessarily something that's going to help you become more confident in your beliefs.

Hey T-Bone(r) LOL... I realize this quote of yours may be a figure of speech. I doubt you believed from the first post he made that his judgment had much merit.

Are you sure you are able to step inside his mind? Btw, it's obvious that you like to do other than just "to praise God for all the great things He has done and tell people about it." Either that or you do things contrary to that declaration anyway.

Let me restate it for you... "I believe T-bone hasn't been consistent and I don't appreciate it." Also, who cares who you like and who you don't like or whether you feel you have justification for your opinions.

All caps? Seems to say a good deal about your perspective that you may have wanted to get people to actually read your message in order to grasp your meaning in a way that might get them to give serious consideration. "T-BONER?" Oh please...

I can't imagine you expected him to (be able to) answer it.

Btw, that's one reason I used an "I" statement. I do appreciate that you ended your sentence with a question mark. You apparently were asking me for clarification. To clarify (whether you were asking or not), your testimonial is YOUR testimonial. I have no right to say your testimonial is untrue. That's why I wasn't doing so.

I used an "I" statement. I believe. I don't believe. That is in stark contrast to declaring it's not available at all. It would be tedious for me and for readers for me to spell out what I believe about what IS available. Briefly (hopefully), rain falls on the just and the unjust. I'm not sure that everything humans receive by what we learned from TWI constitutes revelation necessarily is limited to what God plants in our brains/minds/consciousness because we are in the household of God, or even that we are born-again Christians. Things happen. In order for us to know it is revelation from God as we were taught (from the Bible), does that mean anyone who gets anything intuitively who is not a believer must have gotten that revelation from the devil? I no longer subscribe to that version of what constitutes good vs evil. A lot of what occurred in TWIs history was evil. Thanks for bringing it up again.

No. I said: "I don't believe..." that's an "I" statement. It stands in stark contrast to the fact that I did not declare that such things are not possible. I also believe I'm neither qualified to evaluate your claims about your experience nor am I qualified to make any such declaration about what God has made or would make available.

I'm a believer in paradox, which is what I understand you're referring to in general. But I also believe that there's far more to these issues than humans have been able to grasp. Btw, it was still TL;DR, but I did skim through and picked up some of what you were getting at. More power to you in trying to reconcile paradoxical issues in the Bible.

That recitation of historical points/event doesn't seem to address the issue of Victor Wierwille's state of mind as it relates to being a con artist, at all.

My understanding of the premise, as you stated it in the title and first post, for this thread is that Victor Wierwille was "loaded with demons." You then proceeded to tell the story of some incidents. You did your best to communicate your point, using the framework of your understanding and associated language. My response was intended to reframe your points using different words/language. It is not my intent to argue theology with you about what is or isn't available two thousand years ago, or 40 years ago or now.

So it seems apparent.

Perhaps you're making a distinction where there isn't necessarily one. Perhaps you've more narrowly defined, in your mind, what a con artist is. Believe what you want to believe. In the framework you seem to have, I can't argue your distinction. But is it really relevant? Is the point of this discussion to see who's right about Victor Wierwille? Or is it to elucidate an understanding of our experience for readers, some of whom had similar experiences and may decide to re-evaluate said experiences? It's not for me to say you're wrong or right. I just understand the issue differently than you, apparently. The definition of a swindler: swindle - Swindler and swindle are from German Schwindler, "promoter of wild schemes; cheat." My understanding is that Wierwille didn't explicitly reveal (articulate) his motives for CONvincing us to join his subculture, but after years of experience and reflection on his conduct and ours, we have been able to discern that he had such undisclosed motives. I wonder, dear friend, have you read Maria Konnikova's book?

Again, WTH are you talking about? He was clever. Whether he had a genius IQ or not doesn't seem relevant. What is a con ARTIST (the subject of this thread). Someone who manipulates people and convinces them to do/believe what he/she wants the mark to do/believe. How did he not have that motive and ability? "Smart enough?" doesn't seem at all relevant.

What exactly does that mean? How smart does one have to be in order to be considered a con man? (Both are rhetorical questions) There are different types of intelligence. He had some kind ability to be able to exploit said opportunities.

Has ANYone on GSC over the decades really had ANY experience with "discerning of spirits" or other "manifestations" as taught by Victor Wierwille? I suspect that the answer is NO, NONE. Even if any have claimed to have such experience or insights, I just don't believe it. Wierwille told stories. Some true, some not true. At their root, these stories were nothing more and nothing less that ways to describe and frame and understand things (including biblical stories) that may have been read and/or observed. But sincerity (or believing said stories and telling/re-telling them with an authoritative voice) doesn't make them true, factual or in any sense "reality." They are just ways to communicate a common way to understand things. I don't believe Wierwille was "possessed." He may have been influenced by selfish and likely evil... influences. That's as far as I can go on it.

This is a tangent, but it's not necessarily off topic. Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a nearly two-hundred-year-old delusion—the idea that we all live on a flat plane, under a solid dome, ringed by an impossible wall of ice. It is the ultimate in conspiracy theories, a wholesale rejection of everything we know to be true about the world in which we live. Where did this idea come from? Weill draws a straight line from today’s conspiratorial moment back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s, showing the human impulses behind divergences in belief. Faced with a complicated world out of our individual control, we naturally seek patterns to explain the inexplicable. The only difference between then and now? Social media.

1) dilemma for whom? After more than three decades out of that mud pit, I'm convinced that most all of what Victor Wierwille taught us was bull$hit. 2) Many of us were primed as children to accept the framing in which he presented his bull$hit. 3) There are several reasons "we couldn't even recognize it..." 4) Wierwille told us what amounts to an origin story of his flavor of Christianity. Stories are endemic to humanity and provide a framework around which we build our understanding of life and its many aspects. Here's a brief story of my own. Early in my life as a follower of Victor Wierwille, I watched The Exorcist. It freaked me out in several ways. Perhaps most importantly in that my worldview at the time accepted that STORY as a reflection of reality. In the roughly four decades since my first viewing of that movie, I've learned about how important stories (true or not) are to humans. Recently, I decided to view that movie again, online. I now look at it through a different lens. It's a freakin' story. It's not a depiction of reality. It, therefore, didn't freak me out. But it did put my adult life, and plenty of things I picked up in Victor Wierwille's subculture (cult) in a different perspective. That it took me as long (multiple decades) to UNLEARN wierwillism causes me sadness. But knowing that the obstacle is (actually) the way, I'm thankful for the journey. Because now I can write with legitimate insight about how cults can trap young people.

IOW, Victor Wierwille was a con artist through and through from the beginning?