Charity

Thanks for your whole post OldSkool. It was nice of you to let me know it was coming after you got home from work. Concerning the above portion of it, I have questions around the renewing your mind which I'd like to bring up at another time. I do want to be closer to Jesus and GSC is helping big time with this. About the offshoots, sorry, but I've already been there and done that with 3 of them (Living Hope, The Living Truth and Spirit and Truth). One of them now teaches we are no longer saved if we make the decision to deny our faith in Christ and walk away from God. Their statement of belief says, "Faith implies obedience (James 2:14-26). If Jesus is our Lord, then we must obey. We are required to maintain faith unto the end (Hebrews 3; 6; 10) in order to enter the Kingdom." In other words, we are required to maintain obedience unto the end..." One shared some "political" views in an interview about his ministry which I thought was wrong for a minister to do (imo). About another one, I find their REV bible useful at times so I refer to it along with other versions. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Great verse. It would be so helpful to know, understand and believe this verse before getting swept up and pulled under by twi's early love bombing and indoctrination into pfal.

Morning T-Bone, Thank you very much for all you wrote (and the others as well). I'll take you up on the above advice. My heart still feels heavy, so it looks like it's going to take some time to work through all this. I will still reply on other issues of topic as I still enjoy reading the posts.

You guys are more fun than a barrel of monkeys!

Yeah, I could never get very far with that. Amazing though how low some people could go.

I hope he did it "in private" and without speaking lies or pushing fear when he told others in the corps about why so many were no longer in the program.

Obsession with having power, pride (the need to have an adoring following) or a desire to have grads fellowship together so they could become rooted and grounded (or indoctrinated) in what he taught in pfal, could have been other reasons for wanting loyalty. I don't know if vp gave himself the title of "the man of God for all times" (not sure if the "for all times" are the exact words), but he certainly didn't stop people from saying and believing it. I can see how your decision on how to help people would bring you peace. It makes me peaceful when reading about it.

Cute post T-Bone. Normally I your sense of humor. I wrote a little while back about how your post on page 18 cracked me up. I was just a little slow on the uptake on the poster girl joke - actually, I think a snail would have been faster at getting it. love and peace back to you Charity A merry heart is good medicine

Quick comment. Limbo sounds better than purgatory. I've heard that the need for baby baptism because of "the original sin" was to keep people in the Roman Catholic church.

Thank you T-Bone for your godly love and for connecting with me. I'll post you some thoughts tomorrow as the Sandman has arrived. Sleep tight everyone.

Love your first line Chockfull (applies to me as well). I did get turned on to reading the Bible during those years, and I often did feel close to God. It gave me the opportunity to teach children's fellowship which inspired my later choice to get a university degree and go to teacher's college. It's just that their way of entrapping people and keeping us dependent on them was through their lie of being the only "true" church (ecclesia), so while I was enjoying some benefits, I was also thinking evil of other Christians and not as close to my family as I could have been. It just feels all wrong to me now. I'll have to have a heart-to-heart talk with big Daddy God and cool brother Jesus about it. Prov 16:18,19 speaks of my prideful self-righteousness for being in twi. 18Pride goes before disaster, and a puffed up spirit before stumbling. 19Better to be humble in spirit with the poor than to share the plunder with the proud.

I've started to read Paul's greetings and prayers in the first few verses of his epistles. This one is from 2 Corinthians: 1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the holy ones who are in the whole province of Achaia: 2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we are able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Thanks WW for sharing your truth about going in and later coming out of twi. My honeymoon stage with the ministry before going WOW was not that long – maybe 8 months. During that time, good things did happen like: (some of which were probably common to the honeymoon period of other people) - my first fellowship blew me away in comparison to any church experience I had known before (RC, Baptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic RC) - the first time I heard about our righteous standing in Christ before God after years of sin-consciousness - taking the class with loving wow’s there each night and speaking in tongues at the end (I wrote about this previously) - being only 18 and having so much fun together (going dancing at a bar, playing silly games at fellowship like “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar,” having potlucks…) - taught for my first time at fellowship about what carrying the cross by Jesus meant for us spiritually (for someone who since being a child felt most comfortable going unnoticed by others, I actually felt radiant the whole time because it was about God and Jesus) - dating a wow ambassador who played the guitar and sang songs to me like “Please Come to Boston” and “Sunshine on my Shoulders,” was very funny, a great teacher and most of all, treating me with respect - going to my first Rock of Ages I know I’ll still remember those times now and again but not with rose colored glasses on any more. That time was built upon this huge sand dune. Once I went wow, the reality of what twi was all about began to show and over the years, the wind blew all the particles of sand away and great was the fall. That’s why, for me personally, I prefer to see all those years as lost, fallen into some black hole in the galaxy.

I know I've let go of a lot of stuff over the years but this is letting go of everything, even of the honeymoon stage from my first fellowship to going on the field. The hardest part is letting go of my belief that God led me to that first fellowship because I so needed deliverance and had thought I'd found it. Now I realize God would not have led me to a group where top leadership was doing the one thing that I wanted to be rescued from when I joined that group. I wonder what God's real plan was back then for me to find Him, his son and true freedom. The good news is now Jesus can show me which way to go with me knowing not to expect the trappings of a "perfect doctrine and perfect people."

Hoping you can connect with me. I woke up at 3:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I began to work on a jigsaw puzzle online and then it all became overwhelming to me. It’s like the opposite of seeing the light because there’s nothing joyful about it. It’s more like seeing the darkness and it hurts. I’ve just been letting the tears flow. Between reading over for the past couple of weeks all your horrendous experiences in the Corp and within the ministry overall, as well as recalling what went on in my own life during that time and then on top of this, I began reading “Undertow” yesterday, the rose colored glasses I’ve obviously still been wearing about certain aspects of twi are coming off and it feels so, so sad. Even the doctrine I’ve been holding onto as being accurate has gone up in smoke. I think I'm heading into the last stage of grieving - acceptance. Over the past couple of hours, I‘ve been chucking out every memory that came to me - just wanting to obliterate the whole existence of twi from my mind. There are feelings of anger and disgust about what a total waste of my life it was. My children are the only saving grace in all of it. My youngest was born while I was in the ministry and when I left 1986, they were 3, 6 and 9. The joy they gave me just by being kids, I’ll never forget. Starting to calm down now as I edit my words so they make some sense. I’m feeling exhausted, both physically and mentally. You all seem to have survived this stage so I know there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks for your reply chockfull.

Hi T-Bone, I was editing my last post to you when you sent your last two posts to me. I do get it now, not the noob thing, but what you said earlier and it's sweet of you to want me to feel more comfortable and welcomed.

No, except your attempt at being funny was about me, hence my question asking if there was something I should know. I'm picky and often too serious about the "details" in almost everything I do (housework, writing report cards, learning about things) - it's a blessing and a curse. I could ask for more details about your comment "just playing off your post of not being sure what was meant," but I won't for 2 reasons: I've already spent enough time today going over the details in Chockfull and my posts in order to get things right between us; and I need to be more lighthearted about things. I appreciate all of you

Hi T-Bone, is this something I should know about?

I think I found my mistake. When I had asked what “scribe mode” meant, your answer was “grammatical experts” and added that these were the ones who wandered around correcting Jesus on various things like healing a man on the Sabbath. So then going back to your statement to me, “How about focusing on the other question rather than back into scribe mode on this,” I thought you were saying that I had been in a scribe mode which meant I was being like those correcting-grammatical experts. When I asked if this was what you were saying, I included John 5:15,16 because it had to do with your example of Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath. This is where I let my emotions take me over the top. Looking back, it would have been better to have simply asked if you were implying that I was in the grammatical-expert mode and if so, why. After going through everyone’s postings for the past 3 pages in search of the ones that were between the two of us, I saw how I probably did go into the scribe mode when I quoted Rom 10:8-13 in response to your questions. I also realize that I had detoured from what you wanted to discuss: whether confessing Rom 10:9,10 entailed a rote formulaic approach to the new birth as well as how you thought that PFAL’s version of the new birth was to go through a Rom 10:9,10 checklist thereby forgetting about or replacing Jesus. My apologies on both matters. I do feel that this is an important topic, so I will begin to respond to it in my next posting to you.

Chockfull, I don't know how we've come to this point? I feel bad about it. I'm going through all of our posts to each other from the last two pages to understand why you would ask me, "Is the only thing you are gaining from this conversation a series of hyper personalized perceived “accusations” or slights?" to which my immediate reply is no.

I think if you've read what I've written since I started posting on page 37 in this thread, you would know my answer to these questions.

I was very much like you Chockfull in my "need" to have the scriptures fit together (like a hand in a glove) as we were taught was of utmost importance in the cult TWI. As was often STRESSED, I very much wanted to study to show myself approved unto God, a workman that wouldn't have to be ashamed. I'm learning to loosen up on all this since being on GSC. I agree there is great value in scripture study and that this needs to be done along with prayer and discussion of scripture topics. The religious groups I've found on the internet almost always have a section detailing their "beliefs" which I think are the topics from which they won't on. However, from my experience with The Vineyard church (which is the only church I've spent time with after TWI), I found that most would openly discuss scripture topics without coming down on you and saying things like "you are very prideful because you don't believe in what our church teaches" as do those in extreme fundamentalism. I would agree they have "little minds" since I used to be one.

So when you said earlier, "How about focusing on the other question rather than back into scribe mode on this?" are you saying I was acting like a "grammatical expert?" who you then said were the Jews wandering around correcting Jesus on various things? John 5:15,16 talks about these specific Jews (who were also probably among the Jews who later on were screaming for Jesus be crucified). John 5:15 The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who made him whole. 16 And for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Just asking.

Chockfull, what does "back into scribe mode on this" mean? Also, to help me with answering your question from your previous post, I need to ask you about "The new birth is a personal matter." sentence above. How do you personally know if you have the new birth? What did you personally do to get it?