Conference yukon::christian_v7

 Ray, first I'm saddened by the "accept Jesus or die" tracts..


 Second, I don't know a great deal about "The Way", other than they are
 considered by many to be "cultic".  I've known of a few folks who have
 got wrapped up in the organization and found it quite difficult to get 
 out.



 I'm sure there are folks in here who would know more about them, but from
 what I've heard, I'd be quite wary of them.



 Jim

    I agree with Jim. I have a book about the way at home. I will look for
    it and do alittle research and see what I can find out and let you
    know.  They are a definite occult group according to bob larson. I will
    do some research and see what I can find out for you.

	The major problem I have with "The Way International" is that they
insistently deny the Deity of Jesus Christ.

    <The major problem I have with "The Way International" is that they
    <insistently deny the Deity of Jesus Christ.
    
    That's enough for me to call them a cult
    
    
    Love
    Ben

Hi Ray,

You remember Bo Kaufmann?  Left DEC a year or two back.  He came out of
'The Way International' somemyears ago, and has put an entry in 83.1 about
them.  It looks very comprehensive to me!  He also mentions them in
ATLANA::CHRISTIAN_V3 (SELECT to add to your notebook...).

								Andrew

    Hi,

    the following three replies are extracted from a Dictionary of Cults
    that I have. I will place the full citation of the book on Monday, as
    the book is at work.

    All typos and errors are mine ;'}

    Harry

The Way International

History.

By the middle of the 1970s thousands of families and college students had 
taken the "Power for Abundant Living" course.  To the outsider, the phrase 
sounds like one of the numerous typical self-help titles in books or 
cassettes sold in any bookstore.

Not so, however! The course is a series of teachings of a cult known as 
The Way International. The founder and leading authority figure of the 
movement was VICTOR PAUL WIERWILLE (1916-85).

Wierwille was born in 1916 in New Knoxville, Ohio.  He was raised in the 
Evangelical and Reformed Church (the Evangelical and Reformed Church was 
absorbed into the United Church of Christ in 1963).  Wierwille recalled 
having been desirous of entering the ministry when he was only eight years 
old. Upon graduation from high school, he attended Mission House College 
and Seminary in Plymouth, Wisconsin, and received a bachelor of divinity 
degree in 1940.  From there he entered the University of Chicago where he 
took courses during the summer 1938-40.  In 1941 he attended  and graduated 
from Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1948 he  reportedly received a 
doctor of theology degree (Th.D.) from Pike's Peak Bible Seminary in 
Manitou Springs, Colorado.  However, an article titled "A Degree from 
Pike's Peak," appearing in Christianity Today, Wierwille's educational 
credentials are challenged.

In a letter from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, a state 
official says that Pike's Peak seminary had no resident instruction, no 
published list of faculty, and no accreditation, and no agency of 
government supervised it. It offered its degree programs by "extramural" 
methods, involving the sending of book reviews and papers by mail. The 
degrees, the official says, have no status except with the institution 
that conferred them.(1)

Additional education that Wierwille claimed to have acquired included 
"everything I could take at the Moody Bible Institute, too, through their 
correspondence courses." Suspicion is raised, however, because there are 
no records extant at Moody to confirm this claim.

Wierwille was ordained in 1941 in the Evangelical and Reformed Church.  
His first assignment was to a church in Payne, Ohio.  During this time he 
began to wrestle with what he believed and started to doubt the theology 
of orthodox Christianity. Like so many cult leaders, Wierwille claimed 
that God spoke to him directly: '... he spoke to me audibly, just like I 
am talking to you now.  He said he would teach me the Word as it had not 
been known since the first century, if I would teach it to others."(2)

In order to assert the uniqueness of their privileged understanding of new 
found doctrines, most cult leaders not only claim to have heard divine and 
audible voices, but also insist that their particular insights are unique 
and that all others are apostatized. Wierwille is no exception to this 
general rule: He claimed that all other denominations, both Catholic and 
Protestant, were wrong.  He alone had been gifted to bring God's truth to 
the world.  Wierwille had accumulated up to this time a sizable personal 
library.  Deciding that its pages were filled with waste and error, he 
threw away over three thousand volumes.

In 1953 Wierwille began teaching the first series of studies in Power for 
Abundant Living.  In these teachings, and in his early writings, it was 
apparent that Wierwille had broken away from his orthodox roots. The 
course was an early version of what would evolve into a powerful and 
effective evangelism program in the 1970s.

During the course of his ministry, Wierwille took an unendorsed trip to 
India in 1955.  He travelled as a missionary. The event caused considerable 
concern and embarrassment for the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Letters 
were received from missionaries testifying to the harm he was causing on 
the field. The church called for his resignation in 1957, and Wierwille 
submitted it willingly.

Operating independently, Wierwille began to develop his ideas and in 1958 
formed the movement known as The Way International. The name is taken from 
the book of Acts in the BIBLE, where the Christians are referred to as 
followers of "the way"(Acts 9:2).  A biblical research center was 
constructed on the site of the headquarters and farm in New Knoxville, 
Ohio.

Success and growth in numbers occurred in the wake of the countercultural 
Jesus movement of the late sixties.  Wierwille's Power for Abundant Living 
course became a full-fledged film series in 1967 and was used to bring 
thousands into the fold in the ensuing decade.

Two schools were purchased by The Way: The Way College of Emporia, located 
in Emporia, Kansas; add The Way College of Biblical Research, in Rome City, 
Indiana.  The publishing arm of the movement is called the American 
Christian Press located in New Knoxville, Ohio.

Members are enlisted for the course Power for Abundant Living and are asked 
for a "donation." It is not really aaonation at all, however, because only 
those who "donate" are allowed to take the course.  Originally the fee was 
twenty dollars.  It was subsequently raised to eighty-five, one hundred, 
and then two hundred-dollars.  Advanced courses are also offered on 
graduating from the foundational course.

What members are not told in any of the courses or are not aware of from 
the outset is that The is a mind-control cult.  According to Steven Hassan, 
The Way is one of many "destructive cults that combine the characteristics 
of small fundamentalist Bible sects with the sophisticated training 
techniques of groups such as the forum and the radical politics of purely 
political cults." (3) Hassan records the testimony of Wendy Ford, a 
defector from The Way, who related the daily regimen of the group and 
its "thought-stopping" techniques: "In my group we were taught how to 
speak in tongues, which was supposed to be a manifestation of the Holy 
Spirit. We were to do it whenever we started to think for ourselves or 
to question anything."(4) Ford goes on to disclose that members are told 
that disagreement or critical thinking was a sign of the devil possessing 
or tempting one toward unbelief. Thus, fear became a very useful tool in 
order for Wierwille to keep his disciples subdued.  Ronald Enroth's Youth, 
Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults (Zondervan, 1977) devotes an 
important chapter to the control techniques employed in the organization.

The Way is organized around the symbol of a tree.  Each part of a tree 
represents the structural components of the organization.  The breakdown 
is as follows: the "Root"-Victor Paul Wierwille; the "Trunk"-various 
national organizations; the "Branches"-various statewide units; the 
"Limbs"-city units.  Each limb is divided into twigs, which are the 
individual home Bible study groups. (5)

Currently there are reported to be over one hundred thousand members 
in sixty countries worldwide.  The group's bimonthly magazine is called 
The Way Magazine.  A record company called W.0.W. (Word Over the World) 
is also numbered among The Ways assets.  An annual convention, titled 
Rock of Ages, is held, and thousands gather each year to participate in 
the business, worship, and teachings of Victor Paul Wierwille.

The various books written by Wierwille include such titles as Power for 
Abundant Living; Receiving the Holy Spirit Today; The Bible Tells Me So; 
The New Dynamic Church; The Word's Way; God's Magnified Word; Jesus Christ 
Is Not God; and Are the Dead Alive Now? Many pamphlets, tracts and tapes 
are available as well. Wierwille died of cancer in 1985.  The organization 
is under the direction of a board of directors, which includes President L. 
Craig Martindale and Vice President Donald Wierwille.

Teachings.  

The basic doctrines of The Way International are outlined as follows.

God

God is not a triune being.  Jesus is not God the Son, and the Holy Spirit 
is certainly not God.  God is therefore One.  In a discussion of God's 
attributes, Wierwille contends that 'God's ability always equals God's 
willingness.' Along with this comes the assessment: "What God is able to 
do, He is willing to do, and what He is willing to do, He is able to do." 
(7)

Wierwille's basic contention is that there has never been a theological 
conception of God as being a Trinity in the context of the Old or New 
Testaments.  Rather, he attributes the triuneness of God to be a concept 
that is pagan in origin.  Like Islam, Judaism, the Unitarian-Universalist 
Association, and many modern religious sects, Wierwille accuses 
Christianity of teaching a plurality of gods.

Against this polemic, traditional Christianity responds by reaffirming 
the belief in one God. The Athanasian Creed summarizes the whole of 
Christian doctrine in this matter: 'And the catholic faith is this, 
that we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, 
neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance'(8). This 
formula is not the product of pagan thought.  Athanasius and the orthodox 
church fathers reached this conclusion against Arianism on the basis of 
the Bible in such passages as Matthew 28:19; Luke 3:21-22; 2 Corinthians 
13:14; et al.  The heart of Wierwille's opposition to the Trinity lies 
in his opposition to the deity of Christ (see below).  This is, of 
course, the same point on which Athanasius opposed Arius in the fourth 
century, and this scenario would repeat itself on several occasions in 
the ensuing centuries.

Jesus Christ

Wierwille contends that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but not God 
the Son.  And we may know this based on the sheer weight of the witness 
of Scripture.  Wierwille writes:

We note that Jesus Christ is directly referred to as the "Son of God" 
in more than 50 verses in the New Testament; he is called "God" in four. 
(Never is he called "God the Son.") By sheer weight of this evidence alone, 
50 to 4, the truth should be evident.(9)

Jesus was born of Mary and Joseph but was not God.  He was sinless 
because God created a sperm that was endowed with sinless soul-life.  
Therefore Jesus was born sinless.  The essential relationship then 
between God and Jesus is Father to Son, because God provided Joseph with 
the sperm necessary to impregnate Mary with a sinless child.  Jesus 
therefore was certainly not coeternal with the Father.  The Son was only 
in existence when he was born of the virgin.  Before this, Jesus existed 
in God's foreknowledge only.

Concerning Christ's crucifixion, Jesus could not have been God and at the 
same time have been able to atone for the sins of the world.  Jesus, 
rather, had to be a man.  Only men die, not God.

The Way's understanding of Christ is more heterodox than ancient Arianism 
in that the latter, while denying Jesus' coeternality with the Father, 
did not deny that Jesus existed prior to his human birth.  Second, Arius 
did not deny the virgin birth of Christ as does Wierwille.

By asserting that Jesus could not have been God because God cannot die, 
Wierwille ignores or fails to comprehend the Chalcedonian Christiology, 
which held to the personal union between the human and divine natures of 
Christ (Rom. 1:3-4).  Jesus' humanity and deity are united in such a way 
that they are "inseparable", "unconfined," "unchanged," and "indivisible." 
In the Christian tradition, therefore, when the Bible speaks of the human 
qualities of Jesus as being salvific-"the blood of Jesus, his Son, 
purifies us from all sin" (I John 1:7)-it is understood that human blood 
saves insofar as it is Jesus' human blood.  The human qualities of Christ 
are inseparably linked to the divine.  Therefore, when the church contends 
that God indeed died on the cross, it is by virtue of the personal union 
between the humanity and deity of Christ that it is able to speak of God 
dying.

Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is not a third person of the Christian Trinity. He is 
rather an "impersonal force," which is a direct attribute of Father, 
deduced from the argument that since God is Spirit and God is holy, be 
therefore must be the Holy Spirit.

There is a second reference to the Holy Spirit.  When reading Wierwille, 
one must distinguish between the capitalised "Holy Spirit" and the 
lower-case "holy spirit." In the first instance, as we have seen, the 
reference is to the Father.  In the second use, "holy spirit" is used 
to speak of a unique gift of grace that God has bestowed on humanity a 
power or gift placed within the believer.  God does not dwell within the 
believer, but this "inherent power," or holy spirit, does.  Wierwille's 
'Receiving the Holy Spirit Today' describes also how one may receive the 
holy spirit.  He argues that the sound of the "rushing mighty wind" of 
Acts 2 was in reality the sound of the breathing of the apostles in the 
Upper Room.  The seeker of the holy spirit is taught to breathe in a 
prescribed manner as one means of receiving the gift.

Against these ideas, orthodox Christianity firmly upholds the doctrine of 
the Holy Spirit as being the third person of the Trinity.  Nowhere in 
Christian tradition, is the Holy Spirit portrayed as consisting of two 
separate entities. The Holy Spirit is clearly distinguished from the 
Father in many passages of Scripture (Matt. 28:19; Luke 3:21-22 ; 
John 7:39; 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13; Acts 2:17; 2 Cor. 13:14; et al.). 
For this reason, the ecumenical creeds reserve the third article 
(Nicene and Apostles creeds) for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 
recognizing that the Holy Spirit is the third person of Trinity and is 
the Sanctifier, Teacher, and Comforter of believers.  Second, one 
searches in vain in Scripture for the existence of a lower case holy 
spirit who replaces the fallen spirit of humankind.  For example, 
Romans 8:16 clearly distinguishes between the Holy Spirit and the 
human spirit (sometimes called the soul).  The Holy Spirit comes to 
and dwells in and with the believer.  Never has the human spirit been 
eradicated and replaced by a nonhuman holy spirit.

Humanity

Prior to the Fall, human beings possessed body, soul, and spirit.  As 
a result of the fall into sin, Wierwille teaches that the spirit, or 
that aspect of human nature that was able to know God, was forfeited.  
A human being is, like the animals, a physical body endowed with soul, 
or "breath." As observed above (see Holy Spirit), the human race was 
deprived of spirit until such time as God poured it out, and this took 
place on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 when the believers were gathered 
together in the Upper Room.  At this time the spirit-less were given the 
holy spirit once again.  This, of course, spells out important 
implications about The Way's understanding of salvation (see below).

Sin

Wierwille draws up a dichotomy between the "spirit" and the flesh/soul.  
He defines sin as the breaking of God's laws and concludes that believers 
continue to sin throughout their lives in their body/soul; but in their 
"spirit" they cannot sin.

This dichotomy is, once again, opposed to the Bible and Christian 
tradition.  While different Christian traditions have argued that a 
person is either a trichotomy (body, soul, and spirit), or a dichotomy 
(body, soul/spirit), it has never been the case at the "body" and human 
"soul" remain sinful while the "spirit" is sinless.  The Hebraistic and 
biblical view of the human being is that all of life is a composite whole.  
The separation between "soul and body," or "flesh and spirit," arose out 
of Greek dualism, which, as some believe, Paul contended against as he 
brought Christianity into the Greek world.  Sin is what separates the 
human race from God (Rom. 3:23).  Sin is not part of the substance of 
humankind, but is rather a foreign entity introduced at the Fall 
(Rom. 7:17).

Salvation

The quest of salvation is to regain the lost aspect of human nature, the 
"spirit." Salvation must be accompanied by an oral confession of faith.  
Evidence to indicate that one has been saved is that the "speaking in 
other tongues" or languages must be present.  At death, the believer 
remains in the grave until the final "Resurrection from the dead".

There is no convergence Soteriologically between The Way and Christianity.  
Nowhere does the Bible require an oral confession as being absolutely 
necessary to evidence salvation.  Nor is there biblical warrant for the 
necessity of the presence of tongues to prove one's salvation. Many 
conversions in the New Testament take place with no mention of tongues 
(Acts 16:15; 30-32; 18:24-28; 28:24; et al.).

Salvation is the direct result of being "justified by faith" (Rom. 3:28), 
with no human works included in the process (Eph. 2:8-9).  Moreover, 
the early church evidenced a clear understanding of salvation as being 
the direct result of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as 
articulated in the second articles of the Nicene and Apostles' creeds 
and in many passages from the Bible.

Church

The one true church is The Way International.  God has spoken to and 
called Victor Paul Wierwille as his one instrument for establishing his 
true church on earth.  If members of The Way are serious in upholding 
this position, they must realize that a multitude of other religious 
leaders have made claims similar to those of Wierwille.(10)

Christianity teaches that the one true church is the holy catholic 
(universal) church comprised of the "communion of saints" (Apostles' 
Creed).  It is the church as the bride of Christ that has existed since 
the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and has triumphantly marched through 
history, surviving persecutions and false teachings in every generation.  
The Way represents a very late form of such false teaching that conflicts 
with historic Christianity.

Conclusion.  

Some other aspects of Wierwille's teachings include the startling claim, 
contrary to the consensus of scholarship, that the New Testament was 
originally written in Aramaic; that Christ was raised from the dead on 
the Jewish Sabbath, or Saturday, instead of Sunday, and that water 
baptism is to be replaced by a baptism in the holy spirit.

The oft repeated slogan of Way members is "The Word means what it says, 
and says what it means." Many of The Way's teachings, however, betray 
this slogan.

The Way's success ties in the fervent evangelism it employs, chiefly 
through the Power for Abundant Living course. It must not go unstated, 
however, that many of its members were, and still are, gained because 
of disenchantment with religious experiences or lack thereof in the 
mainline churches of Christianity.  It is this disenchantment that has 
often helped produce followers of charismatic cult leaders. Victor Paul 
Wierwille was no exception to this phenomenon, and with his death in 
1985 the intense appeal that the group had in the 1970s has waned, I 
certainly has not itself died.

The address of the organization is The Way International, P.O. Box 328, 
New Knoxville, 01445871(11)

Notes

1 Herbert Diamond, "A Degree From Pike's Peak," Christianity Today 
(November-21, 1975). 

2 Elena S. Whiteside, The Way-Living in Love, 2d ed. (New Knoxville, 
Ohio: American Christian Press, 1972),178.

3 Steven Hassan, Combating Cult Mind Control (Rochester, Vt.: Park 
Street Press, 1990), 91.

4 Ibid., 91-92.

5 Walter Martin, The New Cults (Ventura, Calif: Regal, 1980), 43.

7 Victor Paul Wierwille, Power For Abundant Living (New Knoxville, Ohio: 
American Christian Press, 1971), 21-22. 

9 Victor Paul Wierwille, Jesus Christ Is Not God (1975), as quoted by 
Martin, The New Cults, 55.

1O See JOSEPH SMITH, MOSES DAVID, HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG, CHARLES TAZE 
RUSSELL, JOHN ROBERT STEVENS, BUBBA FREE JOHN, to name just a few.

"Some of the growth statistics have been supplied by the Institute for 
World Religions, P.O. Box CC, Irvine, CA 92716-6003.

    Thanks Harry - I think that totally confirms our fears that they are a
    cult.
    
    Love
    Ben
    
    p.s. Spelling wasn't too bad either :-)

    as promised...

    "Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult" - George A
    Mather and Larry A Nichols, Zondervan Publishing House, 1993

    Quite a good book. Although covering a lot of topics, and none of them
    in _great_ depth, it does manage to provide a good 'first stop' to many
    of the non- and anti-Christian philosophies around. It also provides an
    extensive bibliography for further study, if so desired.

    Dr. Walter Martin's book of cults is excellent as well.  Even has a
    good-sized section on UU's.