JW . . . What do you guys think was really in his head? I think he really believed he was the MOG and all. He would even tell people, go to the Word and see for yourself . . . I think he expected people who had his secret knowledge to find the same exact "truths" in the bible.
I am convinced he really was Elmer Gantry(Burt Lancaster movie).
Im pretty sure the scam was probably mixed with some delusion. At least once in awhile he had to "believe' it for it to be effective...
I tend to think this one is the most likely possibility.
Too many of his concerns seem too genuine for me to wrap my head around the possibility that some of them were only scams. I may be underestimating his core dishonesty but it seems that a healthy dose of delusion is possible.
I am not sure how much of the beginning of TWI was a scam that turned into delusion or how much of the supposed revelation that VPW received was delusion that turned into a scam as TWI functioned.
Certain for me is that many of the things that I believed about VPW were lies however, whether they were based on scam, delusion, or the likely possibility of a mixture.
Clearly VPW thrived on the view that his closest followers had of him. I'm not sure if he had these delusional views of his importance before people started thinking of him that way. In one case he was just puffed up by the pedastal that folks put him on, and in the other he deliberately scammed people into putting him on that pedastal.
But most normal folks would have had moments when they knew it was b.s. and others when they were deluded by their own press.
Though, admittedly, I was on cruise control my last 10 years or so .
So are you saying he literally flipped you off?
Im pretty sure the scam was probably mixed with some delusion. At least once in awhile he had to "believe' it for it to be effective...
I remember him making a statement something like "If we're all wrong, this has been a great trip." Ms. Wierwille was telling people in the nursing home to renew their minds . . . . I guess it makes more sense that he mostly believes what he preached.
In one case he was just puffed up by the pedastal that folks put him on, and in the other he deliberately scammed people into putting him on that pedastal.
But most normal folks would have had moments when they knew it was b.s. and others when they were deluded by their own press.
2 things...or as Richard Nixon would say..."just let me say this about that". I clearly remember listening to a SNS teaching from HQ and it would have been along about 1975 or so. VPW, on tape, really nailed the Corps about not having enough respect for him for how accurately he taught "The Word". He was teaching from II Peter 1 and he mentioned by name how neither Oral Roberts or Billy Graham had the the accuracy that he did. Then, to make his point very clear, he spoke into the mic and said that, E.W. Bullinger didn't have "it" either. I remember this because I was 18 years old and it really shook me up. He didn't come out and actually say that he was the "Man of God", but he definitely said he had the greatest teaching and revelation of "The Word" of anyone and in PFAL (or as some affectionately call PLAF) he all but said the teaching was the greatest since the Apostle Paul. I just sat there at the age of 17 and said, "UUHHHHH...YUP!! SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!!"
VP being the MOG was pushed very heavily in the Corps. LCM screamed it from the rafters. VPW let other people say it for him, but I have a hard time believing that he didn't propogate this himself and let others carry the fight for him. He certainly never said anything against it.
So, I said all of that to say this, I think VPW deluded himself into believing that he was the MOGFOT. Many of us, and I'll speak for myself, replaced Christ with him.
BTW, when you say "most normal folks would have moments when they knew it was b.s...." Not me. I swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. Than again, maybe I wasn't a normal folk. I was, after all, in a cult.
JW . . . What do you guys think was really in his head? I think he really believed he was the MOG and all. He would even tell people, go to the Word and see for yourself . . . I think he expected people who had his secret knowledge to find the same exact "truths" in the bible.
I think twenty minutes or so, before showing up on main stage, he for the most part convinced himself that he was god and all..
a half hour after the service was over, I think it was business as usual
Now a great trip.. would have been a trip across the country with Kesey. I was only thirteen at the time.. but if the bus rolled up, ma would have had me by the ear.. "where do you think YOU are going, young man?"
From what I read, it wasn't too bad a trip. People generally eventually sobered up after a while, and made something of their lives..
2 things...or as Richard Nixon would say..."just let me say this about that". I clearly remember listening to a SNS teaching from HQ and it would have been along about 1975 or so. VPW, on tape, really nailed the Corps about not having enough respect for him for how accurately he taught "The Word". He was teaching from II Peter 1 and he mentioned by name how neither Oral Roberts or Billy Graham had the the accuracy that he did. Then, to make his point very clear, he spoke into the mic and said that, E.W. Bullinger didn't have "it" either. I remember this because I was 18 years old and it really shook me up. He didn't come out and actually say that he was the "Man of God", but he definitely said he had the greatest teaching and revelation of "The Word" of anyone and in PFAL (or as some affectionately call PLAF) he all but said the teaching was the greatest since the Apostle Paul. I just sat there at the age of 17 and said, "UUHHHHH...YUP!! SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!!"
VP being the MOG was pushed very heavily in the Corps. LCM screamed it from the rafters. VPW let other people say it for him, but I have a hard time believing that he didn't propogate this himself and let others carry the fight for him. He certainly never said anything against it.
So, I said all of that to say this, I think VPW deluded himself into believing that he was the MOGFOT. Many of us, and I'll speak for myself, replaced Christ with him.
BTW, when you say "most normal folks would have moments when they knew it was b.s...." Not me. I swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. Than again, maybe I wasn't a normal folk. I was, after all, in a cult.
Dear Erkjohn,
When I said "most normal folks would have moments when they knew it was b.s., and others when they were deluded by their own press" all I was referring to was how a relatively normally thinking mind may consider these things,if it was in WIERWILLE'S position. Or put a little more clearly, I think unless Wierwille had even worse problems than are immediate obvious to me I think it is likely that at times he knew it was a scam and at others he believed his own press.
Now I might be willing to apply it to you if you have scammed thousands of people into believing you were the MOG, or if you believed the lies that were spoken about you in order to bring people into your organization.
So unless you are in any way like Wierwille was in this regard I definitely was not referring to you, or any of the rest of us who ignorantly promoted Wierwille when we didn't know any better.
They'd also say, "Yeah, well, would you rather go to a church?"
The company line, of course, was that there was something wrong with church that wasn't wrong with TWI.
For those of us who actually had encountered a problem or two with specific churches, this resonated and the reflexive answer was "No way! I wouldn't want to go to church!" But for those who grew up in and around TWI, the answer wasn't so obvious, the stagnation, the repetition, the blandness that many of us saw as the embodiment of "a church" was what they saw in TWI.
Here's the way I see it...When Vic told the story about the snow on the gas pumps, he KNEW he was lying...it never happened...it was pure bulls **t. Maybe when so many people believed, he became somewhat delusional...but he was a con man all the way. Being incredibly insecure, he absolutely reveled in the adoration he received...he was drunk before noon and had no qualms about grabbing a teenage girl for his evening's entertainment. What did he think?...He thought that he was brilliant for pulling it all off and providing himself with the ultimate hedonistic lifestyle.
Wierwille was a master at playing the crowd...PT Barnum would have made him a partner...he was the Ron Pompeil of Christianity...and he KNEW it! Not many people with that kind of charisma are sociopathic enough to do what Vic did...he was truly twisted.
Not many people with that kind of charisma are sociopathic enough to do what Vic did...he was truly twisted.
Naming him a sociopath would give him a modicum of excuse for his behavior under the guise of mental disorder. He was just a criminal - a con - and, as you said, a good one - a violent person who lived by bullying, threatening and lying. Blesssss your lil ole heart.
When I said "most normal folks would have moments when they knew it was b.s., and others when they were deluded by their own press" all I was referring to was how a relatively normally thinking mind may consider these things,if it was in WIERWILLE'S position. Or put a little more clearly, I think unless Wierwille had even worse problems than are immediate obvious to me I think it is likely that at times he knew it was a scam and at others he believed his own press.
Now I might be willing to apply it to you if you have scammed thousands of people into believing you were the MOG, or if you believed the lies that were spoken about you in order to bring people into your organization.
So unless you are in any way like Wierwille was in this regard I definitely was not referring to you, or any of the rest of us who ignorantly promoted Wierwille when we didn't know any better.
(a little added for clarity)
JeffSjo...I'm just now reading this. I didn't think you were referring to me with your comment so I wasn't responding to that, at least not defensively. So I apologize to you if I came off that way. In reading your original post I think you were pretty clear. I guess I was just lamenting that I never saw any of the "stuff" while I was in. But it's pretty clear upon re-reading your post that you weren't referring to that. I guess I read that into what you were saying. But I wasn't offended. I apologize for any misunderstanding.
Here's the way I see it...When Vic told the story about the snow on the gas pumps, he KNEW he was lying...it never happened...it was pure bulls **t. Maybe when so many people believed, he became somewhat delusional...but he was a con man all the way. Being incredibly insecure, he absolutely reveled in the adoration he received...he was drunk before noon and had no qualms about grabbing a teenage girl for his evening's entertainment. What did he think?...He thought that he was brilliant for pulling it all off and providing himself with the ultimate hedonistic lifestyle.
One interesting thing about chronic and sociopathic liars is that the lies they tell take on a life of itself and they really convince themselves in their own mind that their stories are true. Like Joseph Smith, a known crackpot and tall story teller who was visited by an angel and ordered to found the Mormon religion, sociopaths of this level believe in the power of their own stories, as throughout their lives they prove to be their means to success, power, money, fame. They spin control every story to convince themselves.
I would bet Wierwille made the gas pumps story up in his mind, and convinced himself it was true. Don't follow the Pied Piper.
Recommended Posts
Thomas Loy Bumgarner
I am convinced he really was Elmer Gantry(Burt Lancaster movie).
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waysider
I think he knew all along it was a big scam.
I have my own personal reasons for believing that.
My apprehension all started one day in 1972 when he "gave me the finger".
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bishop
You left the way in '72? wow.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waysider
Oh, no.
Silly me hung around until 1990.
Though, admittedly, I was on cruise control my last 10 years or so .
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bolshevik
I would think he did at some level at some point . . . But I wonder if he eventually forgot, and fell for his own lies.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Broken Arrow
Maybe he considered that a type of blessing.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
mstar1
Im pretty sure the scam was probably mixed with some delusion. At least once in awhile he had to "believe' it for it to be effective...
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JeffSjo
I tend to think this one is the most likely possibility.
Too many of his concerns seem too genuine for me to wrap my head around the possibility that some of them were only scams. I may be underestimating his core dishonesty but it seems that a healthy dose of delusion is possible.
I am not sure how much of the beginning of TWI was a scam that turned into delusion or how much of the supposed revelation that VPW received was delusion that turned into a scam as TWI functioned.
Certain for me is that many of the things that I believed about VPW were lies however, whether they were based on scam, delusion, or the likely possibility of a mixture.
Clearly VPW thrived on the view that his closest followers had of him. I'm not sure if he had these delusional views of his importance before people started thinking of him that way. In one case he was just puffed up by the pedastal that folks put him on, and in the other he deliberately scammed people into putting him on that pedastal.
But most normal folks would have had moments when they knew it was b.s. and others when they were deluded by their own press.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bishop
So are you saying he literally flipped you off?
I remember him making a statement something like "If we're all wrong, this has been a great trip." Ms. Wierwille was telling people in the nursing home to renew their minds . . . . I guess it makes more sense that he mostly believes what he preached.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Broken Arrow
2 things...or as Richard Nixon would say..."just let me say this about that". I clearly remember listening to a SNS teaching from HQ and it would have been along about 1975 or so. VPW, on tape, really nailed the Corps about not having enough respect for him for how accurately he taught "The Word". He was teaching from II Peter 1 and he mentioned by name how neither Oral Roberts or Billy Graham had the the accuracy that he did. Then, to make his point very clear, he spoke into the mic and said that, E.W. Bullinger didn't have "it" either. I remember this because I was 18 years old and it really shook me up. He didn't come out and actually say that he was the "Man of God", but he definitely said he had the greatest teaching and revelation of "The Word" of anyone and in PFAL (or as some affectionately call PLAF) he all but said the teaching was the greatest since the Apostle Paul. I just sat there at the age of 17 and said, "UUHHHHH...YUP!! SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!!"
VP being the MOG was pushed very heavily in the Corps. LCM screamed it from the rafters. VPW let other people say it for him, but I have a hard time believing that he didn't propogate this himself and let others carry the fight for him. He certainly never said anything against it.
So, I said all of that to say this, I think VPW deluded himself into believing that he was the MOGFOT. Many of us, and I'll speak for myself, replaced Christ with him.
BTW, when you say "most normal folks would have moments when they knew it was b.s...." Not me. I swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. Than again, maybe I wasn't a normal folk. I was, after all, in a cult.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ham
I think twenty minutes or so, before showing up on main stage, he for the most part convinced himself that he was god and all..
a half hour after the service was over, I think it was business as usual
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bolshevik
GACK!
I hated being told that. "No, I'm not enjoying any of this!"
They'd also say, "Yeah, well, would you rather go to a church?"
Uh, like I had a choice.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ham
Hmm. A great trip, for whom?
it was a great trip if you happened to be mog..
money for nuttin.. chicks for free..
Now a great trip.. would have been a trip across the country with Kesey. I was only thirteen at the time.. but if the bus rolled up, ma would have had me by the ear.. "where do you think YOU are going, young man?"
From what I read, it wasn't too bad a trip. People generally eventually sobered up after a while, and made something of their lives..
Edited by HamLink to comment
Share on other sites
Ham
hmm. Then some of them stayed stoned out of their gourd, and still made something of their lives..
then there were those who just stayed stoned out of their gourd..
kinda like lifers in da way in leadership or something.. no skills.. no real self-improvement or anything..
same kind of character, just a different drug of sorts..
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waysider
I have posted on this before.
It happened in what you could call a "vision" or something along those lines.
Happened about a week or so after I "got witnessed to".
Before I took PLAF (The Wonder Class).
It was very, very, very intense.
I never had anything like that happen to me before or after that time.
I discussed it with the twig leader and was told that it was just "unrenewed mind".
(As if I even knew what that was after being in the word for all of a week or so.)
It haunted me for a loooooooong time and I felt more and more guilty about it the longer I stayed in The Way.
How could I have let my unrenewed mind stoop so low as to think such things of such a great man? (cough)
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JeffSjo
Dear Erkjohn,
When I said "most normal folks would have moments when they knew it was b.s., and others when they were deluded by their own press" all I was referring to was how a relatively normally thinking mind may consider these things,if it was in WIERWILLE'S position. Or put a little more clearly, I think unless Wierwille had even worse problems than are immediate obvious to me I think it is likely that at times he knew it was a scam and at others he believed his own press.
Now I might be willing to apply it to you if you have scammed thousands of people into believing you were the MOG, or if you believed the lies that were spoken about you in order to bring people into your organization.
So unless you are in any way like Wierwille was in this regard I definitely was not referring to you, or any of the rest of us who ignorantly promoted Wierwille when we didn't know any better.
(a little added for clarity)
Edited by JeffSjoLink to comment
Share on other sites
Oakspear
For those of us who actually had encountered a problem or two with specific churches, this resonated and the reflexive answer was "No way! I wouldn't want to go to church!" But for those who grew up in and around TWI, the answer wasn't so obvious, the stagnation, the repetition, the blandness that many of us saw as the embodiment of "a church" was what they saw in TWI.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
GrouchoMarxJr
Here's the way I see it...When Vic told the story about the snow on the gas pumps, he KNEW he was lying...it never happened...it was pure bulls **t. Maybe when so many people believed, he became somewhat delusional...but he was a con man all the way. Being incredibly insecure, he absolutely reveled in the adoration he received...he was drunk before noon and had no qualms about grabbing a teenage girl for his evening's entertainment. What did he think?...He thought that he was brilliant for pulling it all off and providing himself with the ultimate hedonistic lifestyle.
Wierwille was a master at playing the crowd...PT Barnum would have made him a partner...he was the Ron Pompeil of Christianity...and he KNEW it! Not many people with that kind of charisma are sociopathic enough to do what Vic did...he was truly twisted.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
Was he "flicking" drambui, errrr, uhhhhh - - - "holy water" at you?? :unsure:
Link to comment
Share on other sites
RumRunner
Naming him a sociopath would give him a modicum of excuse for his behavior under the guise of mental disorder. He was just a criminal - a con - and, as you said, a good one - a violent person who lived by bullying, threatening and lying. Blesssss your lil ole heart.
Edited by RumRunnerLink to comment
Share on other sites
waysider
"He was a mean man."-----------Mrs. W.
Edited by waysiderLink to comment
Share on other sites
Thomas Loy Bumgarner
That is an understatement or as Homer Simpson would say "Doh".
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Broken Arrow
JeffSjo...I'm just now reading this. I didn't think you were referring to me with your comment so I wasn't responding to that, at least not defensively. So I apologize to you if I came off that way. In reading your original post I think you were pretty clear. I guess I was just lamenting that I never saw any of the "stuff" while I was in. But it's pretty clear upon re-reading your post that you weren't referring to that. I guess I read that into what you were saying. But I wasn't offended. I apologize for any misunderstanding.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
chockfull
One interesting thing about chronic and sociopathic liars is that the lies they tell take on a life of itself and they really convince themselves in their own mind that their stories are true. Like Joseph Smith, a known crackpot and tall story teller who was visited by an angel and ordered to found the Mormon religion, sociopaths of this level believe in the power of their own stories, as throughout their lives they prove to be their means to success, power, money, fame. They spin control every story to convince themselves.
I would bet Wierwille made the gas pumps story up in his mind, and convinced himself it was true. Don't follow the Pied Piper.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.