"Is Gary sensing a resistance in the fellowship and fearing he is losing control?"--changedagain

I'm feeling that....a rebellious resistance deep within the fellowship that perhaps only Tom Hanks can expose and subdue.





Larry--your fresh insights, while written to the members, have been speaking to me in a meaningful way. Can I drive to your town and have you lay hands on me? (disregard... bad habit from another life)

FCSLC Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> lily rose. I think I was robbed of the true
> message, at least diverted from it. Perhaps one
> of the biggest culprits was the “First
> Principles” where salvation, LOVE and acceptance
> are merely a footnote among the fifty lessons.
> Through massive diversion the important message is
> subverted and moved to the background in favor of
> a puffed up Biblical Knowledge whereby the people
> as a special chosen group take on an unprecedented
> ambition to rule and reign over all creation as a
> reward from God for their obvious “better than
> all others” dedication, devotion and sacrifice.

_____________________________________________________________

Very insightful post. I've been thinking about it a lot. If you recall, JRS used to say that the Gospel message was Billy Graham's job and the LW wasn't about that....it was the next step, the maturing of sons. Should have been a red flag to me but I was eating up the fluff...the con message of speaking a creative word and improving my life maybe even fixing it. How ridiculous and how sly these self proclaimed apostles/prophets are in incorporating a little bit of the gospel as a footnote to their grandiose lies in order to make themselves appear legitimate representatives of God. One of the blogs recently posted by kBoy was a message by a young woman from the Valley Church. I felt sorry for her. She was probably born into the fellowship and indoctrinated with the old latter rain fluff from 1948 that JRS taught about speaking a creative word and now she was passing it on to young members not realizing the origins of the creative word concept and how at the end of the day or realizing towards the end of one's life, practicing it does not produce fruit as hoped; rather, it produces disillusionment and disappointment.

LILY ROSE:

Insightful post yourself.

The young woman in question did indeed grow up in TLW, was groomed by APCO at an early age, and later married into the upper echelon of the 'inner circle'. Anyone who clears that many hurdles is almost guaranteed a shepherding position, as was Lorena Barton after marrying Rick Disney (Holbrook).

As long as you can pitch the party line (and, as a bonus, are able to pony up large amounts of $$$, as the Honolulu shepherds are able to do), it does not matter how spiritually mature you are. You have met all the requirements for the TLW 'seal of approval'.

I'm a sometime reader who wants to thank you all for the years of great posts. I binge read the FactNet site about ten years ago and now here I am again binge reading this site. Don't know what that means other than you can take people out of the Walk, but it sure is hard to get the Walk out of people.

I was a John follower for twelve years in the '70s and '80s. I was sad when John married Marilyn, was sickened when Gary dumped Donna and baby for Marilyn, and was finally ready to call it quits after watching people pledge their undying loyalty to Lamp Marilyn.

It sounds like I blame the Walk's woes on Marilyn, but I agree with some of the posters that the real problem (other than myself) was John from the get-go. He was just so much easier to like.

God speed to you faithful ones here. There are a lot of people reading your posts, and you're helping them. Thanks for your time, your memories, your insight, your vulnerability, and most of all, your humor (bwahahaha!).

HEADBANGER NEWS: Belly Laughing

"A Broken Heart Is Where God Dwells"
August 31, 2016

[www.churchofthelivingwordniteroi.org]

"These are days in which the Father is touching us deeply and leading us to the work of the cross." (When is it NEVER the work of the cross with you guys?)

"In the process, He is teaching us brokenness and how to not be bitter." (Bitterness is all that is left after decades of 'living word'?)

"A broken heart takes us to an intimate relationship with Him." (If anything is to be learned from the Prodigal Parable, it's that GOD is a Party Animal, not a Sad Sack.)

(Eat, drink and BE MERRY, for that foreshadows ETERNITY.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2016 10:57PM by kBOY.

Twoteetwo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm a sometime reader who wants to thank you all
> for the years of great posts. I binge read the
> FactNet site about ten years ago and now here I am
> again binge reading this site. Don't know what
> that means other than you can take people out of
> the Walk, but it sure is hard to get the Walk out
> of people.
>
> I was a John follower for twelve years in the '70s
> and '80s. I was sad when John married Marilyn, was
> sickened when Gary dumped Donna and baby for
> Marilyn, and was finally ready to call it quits
> after watching people pledge their undying loyalty
> to Lamp Marilyn.
>
> It sounds like I blame the Walk's woes on Marilyn,
> but I agree with some of the posters that the real
> problem (other than myself) was John from the
> get-go. He was just so much easier to like.
>
> God speed to you faithful ones here. There are a
> lot of people reading your posts, and you're
> helping them. Thanks for your time, your memories,
> your insight, your vulnerability, and most of all,
> your humor (bwahahaha!).
__________________________________________________________________

Welcome Twoteetoo and good to hear your insights. Feel free to express yourself anytime.

I appreciate your post, Twoteetwo.
Welcome!

p.s. So far, to the best of my knowledge, no one in this forum has sought to lead another into the work of the cross...and/or into an intimate relationship with the grumpy heavenly father. Nonetheless, I still participate.

Welcome Twoteetwo: The “But I’m Not the Only One” list increases again. Always a positive.

What is it about TLWF experience that would cause such interest on the Cult Education website? To date, TLWF has 239,186 views second to SGI with 575,308 and followed by Mohan Singh at 62,956. I realize there are other threads that would change the numbers, but you get the general idea. There are plenty of “mainstream cults” with far more members than TLWF ever had, and yet there seems to be a rash of activity on this thread.

Perhaps former members are still trying to work through things that deeply affected them decades ago and are still unresolved. I know I’ve had communication with many where the wounds are still fresh 30 years later – you would think they had left weeks ago instead of decades ago. I would also suspect many still involved with TLWF are also trying to sort out the discrepancies between promises of the leadership and what they now observe in their personal lives decades later – as well as what has happened to their leaders that didn’t line up with the teaching.

Watching Holy Hell, a CNN documentary on a particular cult, sure brought up parallels with TLWF. It’s true that it is much easier to see the abuses in a cult that is not your own. Mind control deserves a deeper second look in order to understand what has taken place in TLWF. The basic techniques include a single leader that has assumed special powers or position who answers to no one but themselves, special teaching, and with that the exclusion of all outside teaching, the idea of a special people with a special calling – as long as they follow the leader which leads to the “us versus them” mentality, the establishment of a plumb line for truth based on the teaching of the leader – no matter how contradictory it seems to outside information or common sense, the insistence on submission to the strange and bizarre to break down individuality as opposed to it actually being the truth that would be helpful to the person – it’s really only about control rather than the truth, the idea that all who leave are traitors – usually with some type of demonic label thrown in if they are a Bible cult, and the fear that if they do leave, they will be destroyed or their life will end up in shambles. When you eliminate the influence of a destructive cult, your life actually begins to flourish!

A surprise to many of us who have left is the conditional love. No matter how much you gave yourself, and for how long, what you thought were lifelong relationships suddenly evaporate the minute you chose to leave. Your value to the leadership was based on what you could give them, not them actually loving you. Not only is there the absence of love, but there is the spin on why you left that puts you in a bad light to those that are still in the group.

Despite decades of personally knowing you, what the leader says becomes the truth – whether it is or not. I know in my personal case it was said I left for a relationship with my administrative assistant at work – and there was much more to the story than that. Of course that placed my integrity in question and warranted any hatred directed towards me – that would obviously be a bad thing for me to do. Here’s where the mind control comes into play: what was obviously a bad thing for me to do did not even move the needle when John, Marilyn, Gary, or Rick did the same thing. You are programmed to ignore it and led to believe it was what God wanted – even if it contradicts the scriptures. Again, it is much easier to see what is wrong when you look at another group, or in my case, another person. It takes a lot of courage to finally connect the dots.

L.B.

TLW has always had a double-standard that it must maintain. What's OK for the leadership may not always apply to the laity.

"Do as we say--not as we do."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2016 12:53AM by kBOY.