WordWolf

If I were to go out on a limb, here... I'd say his fixation with pumping up his own image and making himself look like he never misses, is tied into the same reasons the program was not redesigned and retooled after having been unsufficiently prepared, and simply rerun as if it hadn't failed during its trial run. vpw refused to accept that setting up such a program required skills he didn't have. vpw refused to accept that a failure of a program meant a problem with the program. vpw refused to look at the structure and say "there have to be better ways to do this." All of that was because vpw was supposedly an expert on everything, and refused to admit his gaping deficiencies in setting up and running such a program. So he blamed the people he "set up".

"Acts 29" and "Ready for Anything" were soft rock."It's Hot" and "God First" were hard rock. "Breakthrough" was soft rock. "A Thought Away" was medium rock. We discussed that a while back when someone asked for the lyrics to his spoof of "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys". Seems he doesn't perform songs off that album anymore. This makes sense, as my guess was that he wanted to distance himself from his own personal list of "stupid things I did in twi". (I know I do.) I do wonder if he performs stuff off "A Fistful of Scriptures", however.

pg-235. "If someone comes into the ministry, we don't drop them, we stick with them. We never kick anyone out. They kick themselves out, if they want to go. But they're always welcome back." Those of you PERSONALLY kicked out by vpw himself, this is a perfect time to remind us..... Ooo, pot, meet kettle.... "Sometimes people leave. And you wonder why you ever teach anybody-people you've poured your whole soul into." " [ It's not supposed to be about you and what you wonder. You just TEACH. But to answer the question, it's about the people you teach, period. Some stay, and some leave. Either way, what is of God stays with them. ] "They hear something, then they want to go it alone." [ Yeah, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, I hear that sometimes their ministers do that, too. ] "It's still just mainly an ego trip for them because it's how they look to other men that counts to them. They are not standing back in utter amazement of God's Word come hell or high water." [ See my last point.] "When that happens it just tears my heart out. But I have that Word so deep in my soul that if nobody else believes it, I would still stand." [ It is not about you. ] Regular Mother Teresa of Calcutta he was. Except, you know, for the "helping people" part. Then he decided to set up a leadership program. "We started the first Way Corps then, the fall of 1969, especially for that purpose, to prepare leaders. There were nine of them-some married, some single, younger and older. They stayed until the spring, and then I gave them the privilege of leaving. You see, they never got it together among themselves. They didn't have that commitment, that discipline." pg-236. "They just kept fighting among themselves. But you know what? They're all standing today, all but one, and she'll be back. She'll get tired of messing around after a while. And she'll be back because there's nowhere else to go after you have seen the greatness of the Word." He also says the new improved program is a 2-year program. ===== Ok, so he wants to set up a leadership training program. Please note that, until now, we've neither seen any experience WITH a leadership training program nor facility with training of any kind. So vpw doesn't know how to set up a leadership training program, how to set realistic goals for the program and for the participants, and so on. How much of a difference does it make? When I was still in college, I had such experience, and could have written up a program that HAD realistic expectations and goals, and would have had a higher success rate. What difference DID it make? According to vpw, perhaps 6 months into the first program, EVERYBODY had a problem. That means the problem is with THE PROGRAM. You take it apart, examine it, retool it, and carefully try it in a redesicned form. Not vpw, though. He took the SAME program and ran MORE people thru it. The one thing he's still good at is pumping air into himself. He's repeated that "only ministry with the truth" thing again.

pg-235. "If someone comes into the ministry, we don't drop them, we stick with them. We never kick anyone out. They kick themselves out, if they want to go. But they're always welcome back." Those of you PERSONALLY kicked out by vpw himself, this is a perfect time to remind us..... Ooo, pot, meet kettle.... "Sometimes people leave. And you wonder why you ever teach anybody-people you've poured your whole soul into. They hear something, then they want to go it alone. It's still just mainly an ego trip for them because it's how they look to other men that counts to them. They are not standing back in utter amazement of God's Word come hell or high water. When that happens it just tears my heart out. But I have that Word so deep in my soul that if nobody else believes it, I would still stand." Regular Mother Teresa of Calcutta he was. Except, you know, for the "helping people" part. Then he decided to set up a leadership program. "We started the first Way Corps then, the fall of 1969, especially for that purpose, to prepare leaders. There were nine of them-some married, some single, younger and older. They stayed until the spring, and then I gave them the privilege of leaving. You see, they never got it together among themselves. They didn't have that commitment, that discipline." pg-236. "They just kept fighting among themselves. But you know what? They're all standing today, all but one, and she'll be back. She'll get tired of messing around after a while. And she'll be back because there's nowhere else to go after you have seen the greatness of the Word." He also says the new improved program is a 2-year program.

I picked "lcm". Out of the list, he was closest to the one reason. I left in 1989 as the direct result of lcm drawing his line in the sand and demanding an oath of loyalty, and painting himself as "Spiritual Leader" and "Spiritual Head". I would have left by myself at that time, but the state of NY, as a whole, pretty much left together. (lcm fired all the leadership together, which meant he had guaranteed there would be a functioning alternative to what he was doing in the entire STATE. Since VF was capable of replacing him, and lcm put him in the de facto position OF replacing him, that's what happened locally.) I think that eventually I would have left once I rose high enough to see all the problems, but they stole the issue by bringing problems down to me locally so they were impossible to ignore. So, leaving was inevitable.

Sudo? LG posted a story that DID appear in the "Dallas Morning News" and did NOT appear on Snopes. (I checked Snopes, and did a news search and got the Dallas Morning News link.) Was there a relevance to attaching an urban legend to LG's real news story?

No, but as usual, he took something extant and pretended it was his. However, we're doing SONGS here, so... :) ===== "Well, now, take a look at that- I made a castle in the sand, Saying 'This is where it's at', you, Couldn't understand how, If I realized that my chances were slim, How come I'm so surprised when the tide rolled in" === "The heart that you break, that's the one that you rely on. The bed that YOU make, that's the one you gotta lie on. When you point your finger 'cause your plan fell thru You got three more fingers pointing back at you"

Welcome to the Cafe. As you can see, not everything was as it appears. As you can see, there is life after twi.

I think Belle was saying we were sick, but not THAT sick. ===== Me, I left when someone demanded my loyalty in the ABSTRACT. Kill myself for God? I wouldn't have done it, and I would have been rather...rude with the "spokesman" who "suggested" it.

Thanks, but anyone who wants to can seize my turn.

Ooo, nice shot, then. I recognized the cadence of the lines. ===== Ok, here's one of my favourite quotes from any song. "The heart that you break, that's the one that you rely on. The bed that YOU make, that's the one you gotta lie on. When you point your finger 'cause your plan fell thru You got three more fingers pointing back at you"

*snicker*

pg-234, we see Donnie Fugit arrive in summer 1969, speak to someone in Wichita who was from Rye, NY-which led to the beachhead in Rye. In 1968 (yes, he jumped back a year...) "Then Johnny Townsend, another young man who had the class in the army, came here that summer in 1969. He stayed here two years. Like so many of these young people, he'd rather read than work. He learned the Word, and he learned to work and study here. He'd spoil this, spoil that, and then he'd learn. Now he heads the state of Kansas, and he is the spiritual coordinator of the Western Region." I don't know what the army teaches people about working, but I get the impression that they work pretty hard there, even in peacetime. vpw seems to disagree-at least at this moment. ========================================= Once again, I'd love to contrast vpw's comments about one youngster with his "performance appraisal" by his own father. "Uncle" Harry gave some interesting biographical details that help fill in some of the blanks, especially about the youngest son in the family, vp. page 77. " We all had chores to do: milking, feeding the cows, horses, hogs and sheep." "When VP was in high school, Dad wanted him to take over the farm later. You see, that was the tradition-that the youngest son take over the farm, just as he had done. But VP emphatically said no. He'd always liked to study and said he wanted to study for the ministry. Our Dad said 'You haven't even learned to work well on the farm. You'll never make a good preacher.' " =====================

"A Pocket Lips Snow!" Where you either SURF or you FIGHT!

"It's A Hard Rain Gonna Fall". -Edie Brickell covered it, I think it was originally Bob Dylan's song. Is that it?

pg-233, vpw tells the Board of Trustees about the group, and they offer to bring them onsite for a Summer School. "We said we'd pay, and they'd be on a work scholarship. They all copped out except Steve and Sandi and their son, Stevie. I liked them all. I thought they were wonderful-free and honest. But I saw their congestion, their lack of knowledge, lack of grounding in the Word; and I knew that their communal living could not survive." I especially LOVE LOVE LOVE to compare this next quote with a young person called vpw... "He was like lots of the young people today. He didn't know how to work. But I knew you had to have discipline, self-discipline, to really work that Word and learn. If you can't work in a field or dig a ditch for a day, what kind of discipline would you have working the Word of God?" ======= Uncle Harry W: "Our Dad said 'You haven't even learned to work well on the farm. You'll never make a good preacher.' But VP used to practice by preaching to the trees." Uncle Harry chuckles at the recollection. "He'd go out to the woods for hours. Dad thought he was loafing, but I knew what was going on. He was preaching to the trees." Really, Harry? You admitted you didn't SEE him most of the time. Why wasn't he doing his chores in sight and preaching to the animals on the farm, or, you know, the other kids, people who might actually hear something of use? Maybe Dad was on to something. David was a good shepherd FIRST, then a good man of God.... ============ Judging from what he's saying, the adult vpw said the teen vpw was disqualified for the ministry...

================ Ok, so someone might wonder, aren't we taking this too far? Granted, vpw claimed orgies were FINE with God. And of course, this was after he'd been DRINKING and not careful who he confided in. ("In vino, veritas.") That, in and of itself, does not indicate that vpw would actually PARTAKE of orgies or sex, or that he would actually drug women or anything. It indicates a pattern of thinking that would ALLOW such a thing, however. From there, however, you can follow the trail of broken lives. vpw told a few people in his inner circle that it was fine, and publicly said it was wrong while privately acting as if it was right. One poster discussed how this was "practiced"... "You know what else is sick? Some of the parties these girls, not yet at the drinking age of 21, went to...Well, there was Howard and other old guys and they had booze. The got these kids drinking and then these old guys started kissing on them with an overall orgy flavor to the event. Now suppose one of your kids said, 'Mom and Dad, I went to this lecture of Jesus. It was great! But then I was asked to a party and the old minister and other old male church people gave us drinks and were pulling us on top of them touching us! Mom and Dad, I was so drunk one of the old men placed his hand under my panties!' We would all be outraged and go do some @$$kicking. Yet here some of us sit and discuss if maybe VPW was a little horny or the 70's were a free sex period...I grew up in the 70's and I was not into free sex and the idiot Weirwille tried to get me...." ==== I think we all are familiar enough with the first-hand accounts of women who vpw himself tried to force himself on, claiming it wasn't a sin, claiming God APPROVED it..... I think we all are familiar enough with the first-hand accounts of women who were victims of the people led into this sort of felony by their criminal ringleader. Seeing the early stages of this being set, seeing slips of the tongue, this is disturbing, but, I believe, necessary to see.

Well, not always. A lot of the time, a plain meaning was retained. The times when it was discarded are when vpw wanted it to say something else. As a result, a convoluted explanation developed where what it MEANT wasn't what it SAID, but rather what vpw WANTED it to mean. I imagine there was also some alternate rendering of "fornication" as in "flee fornication" and "to avoid fornication" and so on, which would allow him to not flee or avoid it.

"I know that vpw was kept secluded his final years.....When LCM became president...he and the bot told the older folks and leadership....to stay away from vpw because they (the bot) needed all of his time and energy to teach them how to run the ministry. Apparently vp was unaware of what the bot was doing ....because friends that had been kept at arms length for a few years finally made contact and found out that he was completely bewildered as to why everyone had seemingly abandoned him. As I understand it he was lonely and felt betrayed...swept aside." ========= Of course, being El Jefe Grande, he couldn't be bothered to pick up a phone, or put pen to paper and find a stamp, and contact someone seeming distant.

'a la prochaine': "And I liked especially the tenderness among them. You see, they themselves had previously been on sex and dope, so they didn't find fault with everything all the time. They'd hug and kiss each other and that I liked. They were always affectionate. I saw a lot that I liked there." Egads. You see, <BR>they themselves had previously been on sex and dope, so they didn't<BR>find fault with everything all the time What does this mean exactly? What is VP insinuating here? Was he possibly saying that he believed these young people to be 'liberal' with their ideas of sex and perhaps extra-marital sex was acceptable to them???? ================ Well, rather than my opinion, let's have some quotes from an eyewitness. Jim Doop said the following, which you all may wish to memorize: [About an incident with vpw] "As we relaxed and had a second drink, he asked Judy and me to describe what it was like to attend an orgy. We were taken back by the question and embarassed by it, because even though it was part of our testimony in our deliverance from sin to God's righteousness, no one had ever asked us to describe what it was like to go to an orgy. We found his curiousity shocking. But we gave him a brief description which is really all we could give him since our encounter with an orgy had been so brief. We had attended one orgy sponsored by the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League, but we were so overwhelmed by the spectacle that we had left after twenty minutes. 'You know that's all available," V.P. said. 'God put it in I Corinthians 7:1 which He said "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." If it wasn't available to have sex outside the marriage God would have said "best" instead of "good". I could not believe what I was hearing. I responded with 'I just thank God that He pulled our souls out of that pit of debauchery.' When Judy and I went to bed, I said to her, 'I don't believe what he said tonight, and I'm going to forget it. I must have misunderstood him.' " ============== Let me repeat that, because it sounds VAGUELY IMPORTANT. [About an incident with vpw] "As we relaxed and had a second drink, he asked Judy and me to describe what it was like to attend an orgy. We were taken back by the question and embarassed by it, because even though it was part of our testimony in our deliverance from sin to God's righteousness, no one had ever asked us to describe what it was like to go to an orgy. We found his curiousity shocking. But we gave him a brief description which is really all we could give him since our encounter with an orgy had been so brief. We had attended one orgy sponsored by the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League, but we were so overwhelmed by the spectacle that we had left after twenty minutes. 'You know that's all available," V.P. said. 'God put it in I Corinthians 7:1 which He said "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." If it wasn't available to have sex outside the marriage God would have said "best" instead of "good". I could not believe what I was hearing. I responded with 'I just thank God that He pulled our souls out of that pit of debauchery.' When Judy and I went to bed, I said to her, 'I don't believe what he said tonight, and I'm going to forget it. I must have misunderstood him.' " ============= In plain English, vpw asked for details about an orgy. He then said "that" was "all available"- that is, that God did not disallow it. "All that" was an orgy. vpw said God permitted ORGIES. Not just premarital sex- which IS wrong, and you don't need to read Schoenheit's paper to know this- but ORGIES.

"As you know, Wierwille had recently taken Leonard's class. He returned to O-hiya to teach Leonard's class with Leonard's blessing. The accompanying article was about this Rev. Wierwille teaching CTC's Gifts of the Spirit course to members of his congregation in O-hiya. Turns out wierwille lied to the man, co-opted the man's work as his own. FAMILIAR PATTERN!" Here's what that means in plainer English. vpw takes Leonard's class. vpw REtakes Leonard's class. vpw then goes off for a few months by himself. vpw tells Leonard "I'd like to run your CTC's Gifts of the Spirit course to my local congregation." Leonard concludes that this would bless that single congregation, and approves this, giving his blessing for this one Gifts of the Spirit class. vpw then prepares to run "his" class-using Leonard's material but slapping his name on it, and calling it "Power For Abundant Living" rather than "Gifts of the Spirit". While vpw tells the new students it is HIS class, he tells Leonard he is running LEONARD's class, and even provides Leonard with a copy of the class photos for Leonard's scrapbook. Leonard, trusting other Christians as he does, believes vpw and does not realize vpw is lying through his teeth until later, after vpw has run several of "his" classes. ================ templelady:" Okay,, ***DEEP BREATH HERE*** Are you telling me that VPW ran Leonards class "Receiving the Holy Spirit" under Leonard's Direction FIRST???? And then turned around and re named it PFAL and ran it under his own name????" =========== Not quite. vpw ran Leonard's class, period. He got Leonard's approval to teach LEONARD's class, and told him he would be teaching LEONARD's class on a one-time basis. He then taught LEONARD's class, and told Leonard that was what he was doing.... but he told all the STUDENTS "This is MY class on Power For Abundant Living." He then completed his deception to Leonard by sending Leonard a copy of the class photos, saying "Here's some photos of the students in your class." Meanwhile, the students never HEARD of Leonard NOR his class. They are told this is vpw's class. Leonard then believes there are no further runs of HIS class. Meanwhile, vpw runs more, and never tells Leonard....

Funny how that question didn't hit me until now, and I posted the thing twice already. It only hit me on this re-read now myself. (Seconds before I read Oakspear's post, but hours after he posted it.) If vpw was telling the truth, the Christian Life subscription was wasted, and was poor stewardship. I once had a gift of a subscription to Christianity Today, and I read that thing cover-to-cover, and sometimes quoted things from it. (Rarely, I even made photocopies.) Then again, it's possible they had some sort of free program for preachers, and he just lined up for the free buffet. Even so, it's STILL poor stewardship of the things of God.

Those are informal get-togethers of GSC posters/readers and other interested parties. An attendee could give you more info than that, but that's the essence of it.

Maybe it's some subtle psychological thing. You know- he wants to conceal how important something is to him, so he labels it "trash" and claims he threw it in the trash. So, to himself he denies it had value..... ..unless it's about how he "rescued it from the trash", so he's entitled to call it his. You know, like if someone was discarding a dining-room-chair, and you took it home and cleaned it up, it's yours. So, he picked up Leonard's stuff, and the hippies, and so they're his, now.

The film was made fall of 1967. He was making plans to visit the fellowship in San Jose, when he makes another ashcan discovery... "The day before I left to go out there, I saw an article in Christian Life magazine. The truth is I never read Christian Life. I used to get it, look over the titles and pictures and throw it into the wastebasket. But that particular time, I was led to look through that magazine, and I saw in it an article about a group of young hippie Christians doing missionary work in Haight-Ashbury. I read it, and Father said, 'Put it in your briefcase.'" pg-231, he arrives in San Jose, and tells them he wants to go to Haight-Ashbury. From there he goes to "the Living Room", a Christian house in Haight-Ashbury. There he meets Ted Wise, who invites him to Novato to the House of Acts... pg-231. At the House of Acts with Ted... "I went with him. We got there. The women were in the kitchen: Sandi Heefner, Judy Doop and Ted's wife. It was interesting because they were mixing up stuff-a big green salad in a bowl, bread, doing a whole trip. I don't know how many we had around the table- maybe 16 -and then the men came home, Steve Heefner and Jimmy Doop. They had just spent the day witnessing in Haight-Ashbury. We all had supper together. The women cleaned the table and all the men yakked. And finally we got around to the Word. The discussion centered around the Holy Spirit. " "They'd been reading the book of Acts, and I asked them if they wanted me to teach them the Holy Spirit. They were hungry, but skeptical. It was 2am by the time I finished teaching from the book of Acts. Then they all got into a circle, and I started to lead them into speaking in tongues. None of them had spoken in tongues. The most interesting thing was how they all fought over the Word-Steve and Ted and Jim. They'd argue. I'd let them, then I'd give then the Word. Then they'd argue some more, then I'd go on to another verse." He said he liked how they were candid and upfront- if they didn't like you, they told you, if they did like you, they told you that. However, this is an amazing quote... "And I liked especially the tenderness among them. You see, they themselves had previously been on sex and dope, so they didn't find fault with everything all the time. They'd hug and kiss each other and that I liked. They were always affectionate. I saw a lot that I liked there." ================== ====================