"If it weren't for vp and piffle, I would never have learned/heard about...."
By
CoolWaters,
in About The Way
By
CoolWaters,
in About The Way
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oldiesman
I am a lazy person, I admit that. Especially in this heat.
"Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer..."
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CoolWaters
OM...I really was not singling you out as a lazy person. I was singling out what you said because it was such a perfect description.
Although...lazy in this heat...oh yeah! Nothing wrong with that, imo. It's even advised.
88 actual temp, 96 'feels like' temp here already this morning...and heading for 102 actual temp with a 'feels like' temp of 110.
That's hot! But not hot bible.
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Belle
"Those who are hungering and thirsting for truth shall be filled" - or something like that.
What do we do when we're hungry or thirsty? WE GO LOOK FOR IT!
I don't doubt that TWI showed up when some people needed it most - I believe the people who say they were at wits end and begging God for answers when WOWs knocked on their door. I DO doubt that it was because of TWI but rather believe that it was because of those WOWs with pure hearts to do their best for God being exploited by TWI.
Since leaving TWI I have more questions than I did when I got involved! LOL! I've also done more church hopping, book reading, question asking, researching, talking, discussing and looking into all kinds of beliefs. It's been a blast and extremely enlightening. I also think I'm more pleasant to be around because I'm genuinely interested in what people believe and why. I don't ask with an ulterior motive and, even if I don't agree with them, I am thankful for the time they take to share with me.
TWI mentality fosters laziness. That's why some people stay - it's like Shawshank Redemption - people are afraid to leave TWI because they will then have to make decisions for themselves. Nobody will be around to tell them what to believe - how to argue back when they are questioned or ridiculed for their beliefs. Nobody to tell them how to maintain their car - how to buy a car - how they should be cleaning their house. For those on staff - they will actually have to go - GASP! - grocery shopping!! and fix their own meals!! OMG! Can you imagine??
Yeppers! Many of us who left in the late 90's, early 00's went through that ourselves even if it was merely second guessing everything we did, decided and thought. It's because we weren't allowed to do those things on our own in TWI - it was all done for us and beware the person who tried to do otherwise.
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templelady
take your pick but 95% of life is one of those four. It takes effort on our parts to change it from -being acted on to deciding what is the right time and what is the right place and then acting on it on our own behalf
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CoolWaters
It has been pointed out to me that I am slapping people in the face with what I've said here.
That is not my intention at all.
It is my intention to show people that God would have brought to us deliverance, healing, the truth, etc., with or without twi...and that God would have preferred it if we didn't go through hell and get poisoned and poison others.
My heart in this thread is to maybe help people see that anything godly that came about in twi was NOT because of twi or vpw or piffle or anything else, but because of God.
God promises: seek and we shall find, knock and the door shall be opened, ask and it shall be given. (Matt. 7:7)
Yes, I agree 100% that there were many things good and godly that came into our lives when we were in twi. I, for one, stopped attempting suicide long enough to get into therapy and get some real help. Many others have shared here on these threads the miraculous deliverance seen in their lives once in twi.
My point is that if it weren't twi, it would have been some other avenue...because God never leaves us or forsakes us...so the credit goes NOT to twi, but to God.
My hope is that people will look back at their twi experiences and see the hand of God regardless of twi...not because of twi.
My deepest apologies to those I have offended.
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vickles
You must have hit a raw nerve, Coolwaters. No need to apologize, I think anyways. You were very pleasant about it.
And someone sounds rude if they have to point out to you that you are slapping people in their face. Oh wait I enjoy slapping people around....
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Tom Strange
I hear he likes that...!
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Suda
CoolWaters,
I think you and Oldiesman are saying some of the same things. You both agree that because of your exposure to twi, you learned things that benefitted your lives. You could have learned them elsewhere, but when you were seeking, you found twi.
Most twiggers day-to-day contact was with the wonderful, pure hearted believers on the field that strived to just love and bless people. But the central thing that brought them together was PFAL via VPW. And I do believe God’s hand was with all three sources. PFAL brought together a lot of good information, and disseminated it as one package, and, I, for one, am thankful for being able to get all that learning in one place. Not that it was perfect, absent of errors, but there was lots of good intermingled with the errors which still benefits people in their daily lives if they choose to heed it.
The source of the goodness is always God, but it takes people to do a lot of His work for Him. Those people are you, me, Oldiesman, and tons of others around the world, many of whom are here at GSC. And I do remember being taught by VPW and many others in twi, that the glory always belongs to God. (No need to re-hash here whether or not they were sincere in what they said, or said it to appear humble, etc., to bring glory to themselves. I don’t know their hearts and will not try to make judgments on that front).
And, so true, God’s hand is at work in many other organizations, also, that bring learning and enrichment to peoples lives. And I enjoy learning and growing from my exposure to them. Truly, God does not want us to go through he11 to learn about him, but any organization has people, and all involve some degree of “he11", because of the blunders, made innocently or purposefully, by those people.
Just like in most aspects of life, even when we differ, we have many similarities.
I was certainly not offended by your post. Sorry for those who may have been.
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WhiteDove
Cool you get one freeby and you used it up years ago.......
Slap me again and I'll peck the hell out of you! ......... ha!
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Oakspear
We, as ex-wayfers, sometimes refer to Wierwille's sources as obscure nobodies that wouldn't have been heard from apart from The Way. We sometimes forget how small a blip on the radar of Christianity TWI is. It takes on a larger image because of how much it affected us. Pick twenty people at random and see how many have ever heard of The Way, Wierwille, PFAL, or anything else that we think was so important.
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Belle
And, Oakspear, I would add to that, ask those same twenty people if they've ever heard of Bullinger and the other men vee pee stole from. ;)
CW, I wasn't offended in the slightest and really don't see where anything you wrote was offensive. *shrug* I reckon some people prefer to give TWI the glory for their lives being the way they are instead of God. Those people are probably offended.
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GrouchoMarxJr
There are two kinds of people in this world...Weasles and Weasle slappers...
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CoolWaters
Oh Strangest of Toms...is there something you're not talking about...?
WD...I thought you liked it when I slapped ya, man. Sigh. I've been wrong all these years?
Oh Groucho...what am I gonna do with you, huh?
I have been giving this a whole lot of thought.
On the one hand, we learn good things from people who do bad things all of the time.
I will never forget learning some small business techniques from a man who, less than 3 months later, was arrested for murdering one of his employees...and was later convicted of that murder! I did not think to myself, "Well that SOB didn't know a thing about small business techniques at all! I'll just delete what he taught me from my memory banks now." What I did think, however, was, "Let me re-evaluate what he taught me in light of where his mind may have been at when he taught me those things." When I did that, I saw that most of his techniques were smarmy and self-serving...the way he presented them to me...as he used them. I then deleted his information from my memory banks.
I also learned a whole lot about political science from a quite sleazy and totally immoral lawyer...and I knew before taking his classes that his character and morals were not only questionable, but downright bad. But who better to learn political science from? What he taught me ended up being what saved my bacon in many situations.
In both examples, I had to watch out for smarmy, underhanded information tainting what was being taught to me.
The poli-sci professor laced the good stuff with stuff that would get one arrested if done.
The businessman laced his techniques with stuff that would find one on the butt end of a law suit--or worse--if followed.
I had to use discernment when listening to their instruction.
I was free to use discernment when listening to their instruction. Neither one ever tried to pound their information into my head, use threats against me, my husband, my children, my extended family or my friends to intimidate me into believing their words, or in any other way, shape or form did either one do anything to belittle me, ridicule me, threaten me, coerce me, or make any type of overbearing and unending demand that I believe and follow what they told me to believe and follow.
On the other hand, everything I ever experienced in twi was all about coercion, threats, intimidation, ridicule, belittlement, and whatever it took to make me think and do what twi wanted me to do. TWI did not do this as an organization. No, not at all. That would have left twi totally accountable and totally culpable beyond the shadow of a doubt.
And I honestly thought I was dodging twi's bullets by not participating in twi activities beyond twig. I honestly believed that if I never took piffle again, if I never took any other class or any seminar, if I never attended ROA, if I never went corpse or LEAD or WOW or anything like that...I honestly believed that I would not fall into twi's traps.
But even with all of those 'safeguards' in place, I fell as hard--if not harder--into twit brain as anybody else.
How did that happen?
Well, when dealing with spiritual matters, there is something called a little leaven.
If just one person has a little leaven, the whole lump is spoiled...including the unleavened parts...eventually.
Everybody around me had a little leaven. I had a little leaven. Everybody involved in twi had a little leaven.
Sure, this would have been true regardless of what group or organization or church in which I may have become involved. In fact, a little leaven is the heart of the problem when spiritual groups, organizations, churches, whatever screw up. There's just no avoiding it...because we are human.
But the whole lump need not be leavened. If the leaven is found and cut out immediately, the rest of the lump may be saved. Notice, I said may. Most often what I see happening is that the whole lump takes a piece of the leavened part and runs off to start another lump...that is already leavened.
This is why the bible is always admonishing us to purify ourselves, to work out our own salvation, to save one another from the fire, to test the spirits, etc.
But twi never allowed for the purification of the saints, never allowed for the testing of their own spirits, never allowed anyone to pull one another from the fire, never allowed one to work out one's own salvation.
Instead, twi preached that the only protection was in twi, the only truth was in twi, that questioning was thinking evil, that working out one's own salvation was probably debbil spurt trickery.
How often were people in twi told, "You're out in left field, man!" or, "You'd better take a checkup from the neck up!" or "If you want to go back into the world, then know that you're walking out from under God's umbrella of protection." or "You gotta be a dog soldier, man!" or, "Do what you're told to do. If it is wrong, God will bless you anyway."
I could go on for hours and hours with twi-isms that were absolute fulfillments of Jude 1:4: "For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." And I'm not talking about twi followers who parroted the twi-isms...I'm talking about leadership who enforced the twi-isms.
What I am saying is that twi was a leavened lump from the get-go. Anyone who followed twi, believed a thing twi taught, immediately received unto themselves leaven...and passed it on.
Yes, yes, yes...that was going to happen no matter where one learned the information.
BUT, the leaven is not usually celebrated and expected as the norm.
AND, once shown the leaven, people usually do whatever needs to be done to get it out of themselves...not make excuses, defend and champion the leaven.
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WhiteDove
WD...I thought you liked it when I slapped ya, man. Sigh. I've been wrong all these years?
That's spanked geese how many times do I have to tell you. Spanked not slapped Get it right!......
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ChasUFarley
I'm probably going to get the snot slapped out of me for this statement, but here it goes....
I'm glad I took PFAL. My life was and is better for it. I still believe most, if not all, of what I was taught because I've never come across any proof that Jesus Christ is God, or that there is life after death, or that speaking in tongues isn't of God, or any of the other core beliefs that I learned in TWI. I see VPW as a man, not as a savior, and believe he just picked a good mix of theologians to quote (or copy, or whatever). I'm glad that he introduced me to Stiles, Bullinger, etc. - I can check (and have checked) them out for myself. I like their works and similar readings. As I see it, it's not the messenger but the message that I still hold as true. It was well delivered, lousey mid-west accent, polyester suits, and all.
I agree that God didn't want us to endure the poision we did from TWI, but isn't that where perhaps, at least in most cases, we should have found the door? I don't say this in a cold manner, but I bet many people, like myself, stayed because of a spouse that was in or because they thought things would get better or whatever. Hypothetically speaking, almost all of us could have left any time we wanted to - even by the most extreme means. (Again, please don't think I'm not being sensitive to people who were in abusive situations - I'm talking in broad strokes here.)
Peace.
(Now, I'm going to go put on my helmet and flack jacket.)
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skyrider
Chas......the duplicity of life, where black and white never meet. On one hand, a pfal grad is "glad to have taken the class" and on the other hand, finds disappointment and regret by the truckload.
Imo, it's all speculation.
Me? I was already born again....from teachings by a missionary group....and believe that God is able to fill all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. And, no.......I didn't need a cult side journey to add to my resume of experiences.
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