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Was VPW a "victim"?


waysider
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Bol, you seem determined to be mad at us for being stupid or duped or a party to the evil. I am sorry that your life sucked in twi....I am trying to tell you though, that as teenagers with no direction or guidance in life....the idea of being a Godly person, living a Godly lifestyle, being an active member in the spiritual battle...trying to be a force for good...strike a blow against the adversary....a family...love...being a part of something important ....it was all very attractive.

The people I met for the most part were the most giving, altruistic, selfless souls that I have ever met....it would be in error to lump them in with those who deliberately chose to do evil. The good folks far far outweighed the sh1tty people. By in large...we were simply a bunch of good hearted people that got led astray.

Villianize the whole group for being stupid or foolish, or ignorant, if you want to see us that way....but it would be a mistake to believe that we all saw the evil and embraced it. Go ahead and be an arm chair quarterback 30 years after the fact and criticize us for what we shouldda, couldda, mightta known better how to do. Most of us simply struggled to make the best decisions and choices at the time.

I

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sure, one can make choices.

but you were unaware you were duped? many promoted vpw's ideas apparently as victims themselves

what are you not aware of now?

I don't think we knew we were being duped.

Even after all these years, there are still people who can't face that reality.

We all do things and say things that, in retrospect, can be seen as hurtful, even damaging.

Wierwille made a deliberate and conscious effort to do and say things he knew would victimize his followers.

The pattern is very clear in hindsight.

His intentions were laced with selfishness, greed and malice.

I believe this "element of intent" is one that partly characterizes the vast difference between what VPW did and what we did.

Our intent was to help others by promoting these ideas, such as the "law" of believing, misguided as they were.

His intention was to help himself.

He had to have been cognizant of the damage he was causing.

He saw people suffer and die and gave no indication he regretted his culpability.

He displayed no apparent remorse when one of his victims took her own life.

He made no apparent attempt to repent or change his behavior in spite of it.

He just didn't care.

If he was, indeed, a victim of abuse, he willingly and consciously succumbed to its effects rather than work to overcome it.

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VP Cornfield Wierwille was a victim in the same way that Charlie Manson was a victim...in other words, he wasn't.

Wierwille was a predator. I don't care if his brother Rueben gave him wedgies every day when he was a kid...Vic had no excuse for his behavior...it was cold, calculated, and premeditated. He destroyed the lives of people for his own gratification. He was a worm.

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I have posted this before. Most came from 2nd or 3rd hand information from people in New Knoxville area and surrounding communities when I visited up there about 4 years ago around the time of Dorethea Kipp Wierwille's funeral(before and afterwards). Claim is Ernest Wierwille, VP's, etc. father was an alcoholic himself, physically brutalized wife Emma Rein Wierwille, raped daughters Lydia and Sevilla, beat the crap out of Victor, Harry, Ruben, and Otto, himself terrorized the community and had drinking buddies on the Sherrif's patrol. Hence, Vic ran away to the woods to escape his father's beatings for not doing chores or sassing him. Ernest even threatened the local school board if they did not fire the principal/algebra teacher for saying he would flunk VP(though it seems in reality he tried to help and mentor Victor). Supposedly, Victor Paul Wierwille could not go beyond what he was taught. Now, some might say why didn't VP, or Emma, or one of the other kids not kill Papa Ernest and claim self-defense. VP arrogance was bred into him. Sorry if this hurts Sarah, Mary, John Paul, Robert Edward, or the grandkids. If the information I got is wrong and libelous/defamatory, please forgive me. But someone please get the "Real" story on the ancestors. I don't care if it is CBS, PBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, or FOX News but let us settle this once and for all(without exception or distinction).

Edited by Thomas Loy Bumgarner
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The Way--Living in Love

Page 78

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 his recollection. "He'd go out in the woods for hours. Dad thought he was just loafing, but I knew what was going on. He was preaching to the trees."

(The preaching to the trees aspect, by the way, was "borrowed" from an experience that Billy Graham had previously spoken of.)

***********************************************************

"I would paddle a canoe across the Hillsborough to a little island where I could address all creatures great and small, from alligators to birds.If they would not stop to listen, there was always a congregation of cypress stumps that could neither slither nor fly away. The loudness of my preaching was in direct proportion to their unresponsiveness, so the trees got my voice at full blast."

From: Just As I Am----Billy Graham

(This is Billy Graham remembering his early days in the ministry in approximately 1937.)

Edited by waysider
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I don't think we knew we were being duped.

Even after all these years, there are still people who can't face that reality.

We all do things and say things that, in retrospect, can be seen as hurtful, even damaging.

Wierwille made a deliberate and conscious effort to do and say things he knew would victimize his followers.

The pattern is very clear in hindsight.

His intentions were laced with selfishness, greed and malice.

I believe this "element of intent" is one that partly characterizes the vast difference between what VPW did and what we did.

Our intent was to help others by promoting these ideas, such as the "law" of believing, misguided as they were.

His intention was to help himself.

He had to have been cognizant of the damage he was causing.

He saw people suffer and die and gave no indication he regretted his culpability.

He displayed no apparent remorse when one of his victims took her own life.

He made no apparent attempt to repent or change his behavior in spite of it.

He just didn't care.

If he was, indeed, a victim of abuse, he willingly and consciously succumbed to its effects rather than work to overcome it.

Do you think he, when he was young was looking for god, then realized one day it's a wild goose chase. He had an opportunity to build a following, and took it, because, well, everyone else is doing it.

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OK, so he was the victim of horrific abuse. It hurts to hear of it :(

However, like RR`s mom....he had a choice.

A great read is an auto biograghy by a man named Monty Roberts..*The man who listened(s?) to horses*

As a boy, he was regularly hospitalized by beatings from his father a horse breaker....He watched his father as a police officer get away with beating a man to death in his custody....He grew up to be a man of compassion and kindness...One of the most memorable lines in the whole book was when Monty said that once, he felt his fists tightening in anger as a young man...he stopped himself, vowing that he did not want to be that kind of man. He became so calm, so able to be in tune with animals, that he learned to communicate in their subtle ways. He can even interact with the wild deer on his property.

I always thought something was broken inside for vpw to do what he did....but I think that if he had truly found God, was ever genuinely a man who desired to do good, that he could have overcome.

Edited by rascal
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imho, vic was most likely a victim, as a young child, of some kind of parental, physical abuse. however, as a grown man, fully capable of, and responsible for his own decisions and actions, he became a narcissistic, mean-spirited alcoholic, sociopathic, serial sexual predator, who used his personalized fantasies of a war-mongering, punishing old testament "god", transformed into an all-loving, all-forgiving christ-like figure, to further his personal perversions into a "god-breathed" religion of self-serving idolatry along with self-aggrandizing accumulation of material "abundance" at the expense of vulnerable, "spiritual searchers", whom he freely and wrecklessly used without genuine regard for THEIR psychosocial needs and backgrounds.

he may have been victimized as a child, but he chose the path of "victimizer-in-chief" of the religion he "created" to serve himself and his own personal demons of twisted, moral and sexual perversion. fortunately for him, he died before he got "busted".......but the facts and truths of his micro-kingdom live on for those who seek to uncover the facts of his miserable con-game and life of lies, as well as for those who seek to build their lives upon the intellectual/philosophical/"spiritual" house of cards he provided for those whose personal prejudices and moral indifferences are validated by the garbage vic espoused.........just my opinions.................peace.

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I don't see what vpw's childhood abuse has to do with anything. He was victim of religion. Just as the corps were, and their followers were, and the followers of those followers were.

How can he be a victim of religion?

He's the one who chose it as the vehicle for his scam.

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. . .

He's the one who chose it as the vehicle for his scam.

Did he plan a scam before he became a minister? When was this choice made? Was it a single big choice or are a series of barely noticeable choices over time?

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http://www.anandainfo.com/cult_leaders.html

Harder to evaluate, of course, is whether these leaders' belief in their magical powers, omnipotence, and connection to God (or whatever higher power or belief system they are espousing) is delusional or simply part of the con. Megalomania--the belief that one is able or entitled to rule the world--is equally hard to evaluate without psychological testing of the in- dividual, although numerous cult leaders state quite readily that their goal is to rule the world. In any case, beneath the surface gloss of intelligence, charm, and professed humility seethes an inner world of rage, depression, and fear.

There was that movie about that guy who pretended to know Howard Hughes and write a book about him. He got so caught up in the lies his mind went into some kind of dream world. He'd lost touch with reality.

I wonder if some desperate situation instigated or accelerated a process like this for vpw. WWII? He wanted to avoid that didn't he?

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cult leaders like vpw are "charismatic psychopathic narcissists" or something. not sure if this is a disorder, but it is untreatable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

In practice, mental health professionals rarely treat psychopathic personality disorders as they are considered untreatable and no interventions have proved to be effective.[18] In England and Wales the diagnosis of dissocial personality disorder is grounds for detention in secure psychiatric hospitals under the Mental Health Act if they have committed serious crimes, but since such individuals are disruptive for other patients and not responsive to treatment this alternative to prison is not often used.[19]

Maybe they'll have a pill for this someday. Maybe it's genetic, and can be bred out.

Edited by Bolshevik
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Bol, you seem determined to be mad at us for being stupid or duped or a party to the evil. I am sorry that your life sucked in twi....I am trying to tell you though, that as teenagers with no direction or guidance in life....the idea of being a Godly person, living a Godly lifestyle, being an active member in the spiritual battle...trying to be a force for good...strike a blow against the adversary....a family...love...being a part of something important ....it was all very attractive.

The people I met for the most part were the most giving, altruistic, selfless souls that I have ever met....it would be in error to lump them in with those who deliberately chose to do evil. The good folks far far outweighed the sh1tty people. By in large...we were simply a bunch of good hearted people that got led astray.

Villianize the whole group for being stupid or foolish, or ignorant, if you want to see us that way....but it would be a mistake to believe that we all saw the evil and embraced it. Go ahead and be an arm chair quarterback 30 years after the fact and criticize us for what we shouldda, couldda, mightta known better how to do. Most of us simply struggled to make the best decisions and choices at the time.

I

there is no such thing as good or evil

It seems like you're going somewhere with this- that you're looking for a SPECIFIC answer.

How about letting the rest of us know what's on your mind?

twi is really annoying?

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I have moved this here from the "The Way Corps" thread.

QUOTE (Watered Garden @ Mar 12 2009, 10:25 AM) *

I think most WC were as much victims as anything, of the hype and false promises and lies that lured them into what they thought would be service for God.

WG

. . .

Do we know that vpw was not also following hype and false promises? He met with numbers of different "spiritual" people. He got much of his ideas from them. He carried a number of concepts in his mind from the word-faith movement, prosperity gospel, liberty lobby, etc. Perhaps his own behaviors and attitudes were genuine mimics of other men, much like way corps and non-way corps mimicked those they admired?

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Do we know that vpw was not also following hype and false promises? He met with numbers of different "spiritual" people. He got much of his ideas from them. He carried a number of concepts in his mind from the word-faith movement, prosperity gospel, liberty lobby, etc. Perhaps his own behaviors and attitudes were genuine mimics of other men, much like way corps and non-way corps mimicked those they admired?

His deliberate falsehoods and deceptions would seem to indicate otherwise.

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His deliberate falsehoods and deceptions would seem to indicate otherwise.

Anyone who was part of twi was a deceiver.

"I can speak an unknown language!" "I've seen the power of God in action in my life!" "I know "the Word" works!"

Can we prove his deceptions were so "deliberate" and not some quirk of human behavior?

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