Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille
L. Craig Martindale
Praise God for Google and Internet “keywords”, that’s all I’ve got to say.
Otherwise, all of my “former brothers and sisters in Christ”, who are now frequently trolling the site, GreaseSpotCafe.com probably NEVER would’ve given me the recognition I so richly deserve. The blog, GreaseSpot Café, is basically devoted for former members of the Way International (a.k.a. The Way, The Way Ministry, the Way Biblical Teaching and Research Ministry, the “Kissing Ministry”, etc.), which still is headquartered in New Knoxville, Ohio.
Specifically, here’s the Thread they were weighing-in on one of my blog posts:
http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/23545-misinformation-about-passing-of-a-patriarch/
See, whining and bitching about an event that happened over a quarter century ago in ’86 (the reading of, “The Passing of the Patriarch”), I guess, somehow and someway is “therapeutic” towards “healing all their broken hearts”.
Can you say, “Pity Party”?
Incidentally, the reason the Way International is often referred to as, “the kissing ministry” by a number of cult deprogrammers is because they misinterpret this verse of scripture:
Greet one another with an holy kiss. — 2 Corinthians 13:12
And as you might’ve already guessed, kissing other peoples’ spouses and “significant others” usually snowballs into: groping, fornication, adultery, divorce, mixed signals, hurt feelings, etc. Heck, come to think of it, you don’t really have to be “committed” to another individual to be subjected to the aforementioned sins. And as we’re about to see in a little bit, it’s a perfect example on how something like this can get totally out of control.
First of all, here’s the specific excerpt that got a few of these ex-Wayfers just a wee bit fired up:
https://onebaddecisionawayfromhomelessness.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/since-initiating-the-holy-bible-has-god-flip-flopped-on-fornication
[…Around the same time frame (mid-80s), Victor Paul Wierwille of the Way International (a.k.a. The Way Ministry, The Way, The Way Biblical Research and Teaching Ministry), had passed away, but not before he entrusted the startling revelation that he, as well as a vast number of his leadership (including then-Way International president L. Craig Martindale) had engaged in rampant fornication and adultery with that Ministry’s membership (a.k.a. The Passing of a Patriarch). Needless to say, The Way experienced a mass exodus from its Ministry and its current membership is a mere fraction to what it was back then.
One indication of just how actually BLEEPED up the Way Ministry was, it perhaps had the only religious organization that were pro-Abortion. The Way would rationalize its beliefs in Abortion on the Biblical verse:
“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” – Genesis 2:7
As the story goes, soon after Wierwille passed away in ‘85, several women who claimed they got pregnant by him came forward and said Wierwille “strongly exhorted” them to get an abortion based on that scripture. That’s funny, I’m not quite sure how “first breath” of an individual conclusively defines “life” but the last time I saw a video of a fetus it sure looked like an “alive” being to me…]
Incidentally, the link that these ex-Wayfers are referring to was from a posting on this blog OVER A YEAR AGO (8-15-12), which if you were to read it in its FULL VERBATIM CONTEXT, was about the well-publicized extra-marital affair of Daystar ministry president and founder Marcus Lamb and, more specifically, just how Fornication has changed regarding Christian ministers over the past quarter century.
When I brought up this point to one of the GreaseSpot Cafe “regulars” earlier this week, they just totally ignored it and insinuated that this posting was ALL ABOUT this document, “The Passing of a Patriarch” and the Way Ministry??!!! I can only assume that the logic discernment regarding these particular folks is so clouded on “HATING” their former Way Ministry leaders that they just can’t see, “the forest for the trees” so to speak. God perhaps put it best in the Biblical book of 1 Corinthians:
If any man (or woman) be ignorant, let him (or her) be ignorant.
This Biblical verse is sort of like the absolute epitome of what most of the “regulars” on GreaseSpot Cafe are truly all about.
The O.P. (Original Poster, or blogger who initiated this particular Thread on GreaseSpot Cafe) was somebody calling themself, “penworks”, who, in turn, encouraged his/her fellow bloggers to weigh-in here on One Bad Decision… to correct all the errors made in reference to, “The Passing of the Patriarch”. Had penworks, or any of the other cowardly bloggers on GreaseSpot Cafe, actually followed through and done that, I would’ve immediately advised them to enroll in a course on Reading Comprehension 101 because that posting may have made a slight reference to “The Passing of the Patriarch”, it was actually about how Christianity has evolved on the subject of Fornication — specifically involving church leadership — in the past quarter century.
On the subject of possibly elaborating any further on, “The Passing of the Patriarch” in this particular posting, I then posed the question to all the bloggers on GreaseSpot Cafe:
How would carefully studying exactly who the Way Ministry hierarchy was “humping and pumping” on the side — outside of their own marriages, 27-40 years ago — help enhance my Eternal Salvation in Heaven?
The silence, or non-responses, to that question on GreaseSpot Cafe was absolutely deafening. You probably could’ve heard crickets chirping at that point.
Personally, I think the two major differences between myself and most of the patrons who blog on, GreaseSpot Cafe are:
1) I chose to just forgive the Way Ministry leadership for their moral improprieties and then move on with my life. NOT to be confused with “FORGETTING”, I still refuse to attend any Way Ministry events, donate any money to that organization, or recommend any people join that church group. See forgiving and restoration are two completely different things — if The Way is not willing to improve its moral climate, I’ll just take my worship elsewhere.
2) My relationship with God is NOT contingent on whether or not my minister engages in some type of moral impropriety. I fully understand ministers are only human and sometimes make mistakes. In a scenario like that, I would just choose to shake of the proverbial dust and move on to another church.
Quite honestly, I think it’s absolutely insane — not to mention unhealthy — for an individual to hold animosity or a grudge against another person/entity for nearly 30 years. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for the former Way believers trolling around the, GreaseSpot Cafe site towards their former Way leadership any time soon. Oh well, life sucks and then you die, I suppose.
As Christians, we’re supposed to follow the example of Jesus Christ to the best of our ability. No where in Biblical scripture does it ever mention that Jesus “boasted and gloated” to His Apostles about a previous experience they recently encountered. For example, saying something like, “gee, that Pharisee who confronted us the other day was a real ‘douche-bag’, don’t ya think?” Jesus could’ve easily have stooped down to that level, but instead chose the ‘high road’ and was a lot more forgiving. The “regulars” on the GSC site aren’t even trying to make an effort to put their past behind them.One of the more ignorant (and popular) bloggers on the attack against me was an individual calling themself, “chockfull”. After spewing out about a half dozen vulgarities against me such as:
…and are acting ignorant.
…you are also acting like a jack@$$.
…You are a moron.
…You sound just like your brothers there in that Westboro Baptist interview. Ignorant, arrogant, and thinking they are spreading the gospel while they are just making slanderous idiotic posters on national TV.
…acting like this you probably deserve to get your @$$ beat.
Wow, would you ever have guessed that, chockfull, also considers themself, “a Christian”? Probably not with that kind of language. Then after posting all those vulgarities on the supposedly Christian site, GreaseSpot Cafe, chockfull then boldly proclaims:
“I stand by those comments”.
Wow, can you say, “hypocrite”?
I then posted that any little jerk can “talk tough on the Internet” and then hide like a coward behind a stupid pseudonym like, “chockfull” and publicly challenged this imbecile to try saying that to my face, assuming they honestly stood behind those vulgar comments. I further added that the two main subjects of most of their bitching, Victor Paul Wierwille and L. Craig Martindale, despite the obvious moral shortcomings of both these guys, they’d be more likely to go right up to your face and look you in the eyes if they wanted to call you something vulgar — as opposed to the more cowardly, going on the Internet and hiding behind a stupid pseudonym.
Another chicken-BLEEP tactic used on, GreaseSpot Cafe is scrambling (or disguising) the name of the subject so that there’s no way you could possibly trace it back to them via a Google keyword search. For example, if they were referring to former Way president L. Craig Martindale, they’d purposely write something like “lcm” or “Cr@ig M@rtind@le”, so if Martindale were to do a Google keyword search on himself, they’d be zero trace about him on GreaseSpot Cafe. But if normal people — especially supposed Christians — had some serious problems with Martindale, then WHY wouldn’t you want him to know what’s bothering you about him??? Especially, now that it’s more than a quarter century after the fact.
To pour even more gas on the proverbial fire, how would YOU like to contribute some of your hard-earned money to the GreaseSpot Cafe website? What a fantastic bargain that is, eh? They honestly solicit financial contributions to maintain and enhance that ungodly website via credit card or debit card donations. Personally, I think I’d get a lot better satisfaction taking a handful of my own dollar bills and then proceeding to flush them down the toilet. For the GSC site “regulars” who financially contribute to this stupid thing in lieu of Tithing to a church are obviously on the border of being Devil Possessed themselves. To quote the famous line from, Forrest Gump, “stupid is as stupid does.”
One of the more detailed postings on the, GreaseSpot Café thread in question, at least in my opinion, was by somebody going by the pseudonym, WordWolf. To help better understand some of the Way Ministry jargon this individual is talking about: I already talked about Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille and L. Craig Martindale; Chris Geer and Ralph Dubofsky were Way Ministry leaders whom Dr. Wierwille entrusted with the document, “The Passing of a Patriarch”, which outlined and warned against the rampant fornication and adultery problem of The Way back in the 70s and 80s. Take it away, WordWolf dawg:
WordWolf
28 September 2013
let’s see how many errors are in that one paragraph.
1) vpw never “ENTRUSTED” the fornication and adultery he did.
2) “Passing of the Patriarch” had absolutely NOTHING to do with vpw and his rampant sex crimes.
3) The exodi from twi had little to do with vpw’s sex crimes and little to do with POP.
vpw, to the last, maintained 2 faces-one for the cadre/inner circle, and one for the public/rank-and-file.
In public, he said nothing to encourage fornication nor adultery
In private, he passed along a variety of rationalizations to his top people and select victims. He also had a network of people in place to cover his tracks and silence any woman who MIGHT speak up.
In fact, in his final hours, he claimed to someone that he was trying to figure out what he possibly could have done to displease God- and was unable to think of anything.
As his final weeks approached, vpw found himself irrelevant and IGNORED at twi- as opposed to before, when everyone worshiped him.
So he went to Chris Geer and complained about some incredibly outlandish things- saying that twi was turning away from God and made various prophecies that all failed to happen. CG -if he told the truth and didn’t simply make up the whole thing- then wrote up “Passing of the Patriarch.” It’s available to read here on this website. It’s a long essay about how CGeer felt he was the only person left in twi who was doing the right thing, and how that’s why vpw went to visit him and entrust him with the specifics about how twi had turned away from God Almighty. The paper said NOTHING about vpw’s rampant sex practices.
CGeer was already aware of those- he had served as vpw’s driver and bodyguard at different times, and was reported to have been COMPLICIT in at least 1 incident where vpw drugged a woman and violated her.
(We suspect more incidents were not reported here, based on how freaking EFFICIENT it was, almost as if experience polished up vpw’s whole act.) vpw’s rampant sexual practices were exposed somewhat later. First came vpw’s death, then came CGeer’s reading of POP.
Then came the first reports of women coming forth and not getting silenced- which led to top people leaving twi and some forming 1 or more new groups. Rather than actually address any of that, when those people wrote something, they made it all also vague about how twi needed to turn to God, and it sounded, again, as if vpw was a good guy and others came along later and messed everything up.
The first actual discussions, IIRC, of vpw’s rampant evil sexual practices and toxic doctrines was when J0hn Sch0enh1e+ wrote HIS paper about all the doctrinal problems about permissive sex in the inner circle. The inner circle silenced him and tried to scare everyone out of ever THAT paper is ALSO available for reading on this site. What about the exodi?
There was a tiny one when some top people left, and a few people left with them. It was noteworthy enough to get a mention in “Christianity Today.” (“Infighting trims branches at The Way International.”)
The biggest one came in 1988-1989.
lcm walked around after POP was read, in a fog. Then he lashed out at everyone and demanded oaths of loyalty from everyone-oaths of loyalty to him PERSONALLY. All those who refused for ANY reason were shunned- all employees at every level who refused were fired immediately.
This resulted in about 80% of the people who were there the previous year all LEAVING-lcm was some distant figure to them, and the people they had interacted with PERSONALLY seemed perfectly sensible and sane-while lcm was raving and saying they were horrible people, and insisting on the loyalty of everyone WHILE saying that.
So, they looked sensible, and he looked crazy. When leadership left en masse – those they lead left also. By firing them all and making sure entire groups of staff across the country left together, lcm made it easier for them to work together and set up a new organization that now had more members than his group.
A decade later, when lcm was caught being a sex criminal, and pleading “not guilty” to a lesser charge and admitting wrongdoing in a court of law, there was another exodus (smaller because there were so few people remaining TO leave in great number.)
My advice and exhortation to all trolls and assorted regulars on GreaseSpot Café would be: Get Over It!!! Get A Life!!! Shake Off the proverbial Dust and Move On!!! It’s been over a quarter century now since Dr. Wierwille died, and the reading of, “The Passing of the Patriarch” took place. How is constantly bitching and whining about all that going to help cope with the rest of YOUR LIVES??? If God states in His Word, that vengeance is His, then why not allow God to just do His job and appropriately deal with all those who screwed over His people?
One Bad Decision Away From Homelessness 