So, we had our meeting with Gary & Mary, the Limb (state) Coordinators for The Way of Nebraska. Back in the seventies, pretty much anyone who was interested could show up unannounced to a Way meeting, and unless you were disruptive or overly argumentative you could keep coming back for as long as you liked, although you weren't really considered "in" until you took the PFAL class. Things were different in 1990.
Part XXX - From the Frying Pan outlined what was going on in The Way during our absence, the splintering of the organization that accompanied a rebellion among top leaders. Trust wasn't as easy to come by as it had been. While from our point of view the meeting was simply to touch base with the Way leaders and find out where fellowships were being held and when a PFAL class was going to run. That meeting looked a lot different from the other side. Gary and Mary were checking us out to make sure we weren't trying to infiltrate The Way from one of the splinter groups - to make sure that we, in short, would be good little cult members and not rock the boat.
The first thing that we were asked to do after we were invited to be part of The Way was to attend a weekend presentation of what was euphemistically called "The Leadership Tapes". As I referred to in Part XXX - From the Frying Pan, Way President Martindale at some point decided that he was going to assert his de jure authority and demand that Way Corps leaders at all levels decide whether they would stand with him, the one anointed by Founder Wierwille, or what he referred to as the rebellious ones in the ranks. This resulted in an exodus of roughly 80% of Way leaders and membership. In order to regain control of the narrative he taught a series of seminars, first to the remaining leaders and later to non-leaders, explaining his understanding of what had happened to The Way and to him during what he began to refer to as "The Fog Years". These seminars were taped and were initially called "The Galatians Tapes", after Galatians 3:1 - "Oh foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?", but later were renamed "The Leadership Tapes". A group of us gathered at the home of Gary and Mary outside Syracuse (a small town a half hour east of our home in Lincoln) and spent the whole weekend listening to Martindale's rationale for allowing the organization he was entrusted with to explode.
Martindale's long and rambling explanation was predicated on the belief that
- The Way was more than just an organization it was literally all that was left of God's "household"
- V.P. Wierwille was ordained by God to lead this "remnant"
- L. Craig Martindale was anointed by Wierwille to be his successor
This put anyone who opposed him in the position of opposing God.
While the belief in Wierwille and The Way being on a special mission to reestablish First Century truths was widely accepted and taken for granted, in the past it had been viewed as Wierwille accepting a divine commission to study and teach, rather than some pseudo-infallibility. Sure, there was an expectation that Wierwille's word was law and his interpretation of The Bible was not to be gainsaid, but it was more due to his skill at Biblical research rather than an intrinsic inability to be wrong. Now we were being encouraged to believe that there was some kind of magical-spiritual something that was conferred by God on Wierwille and passed on to Martindale that made any argument an argument against God.
Game changer.
The tapes broke down in minute detail, according to Martindale's point of view, the steps that his main antagonist, Wierwille's former bodyguard Chris Geer, took to undermine his authority and plunge The Way into chaos. Geer was portrayed not merely as power hungry, or a trouble maker, but almost wizardly in his abilities and demonic in his inspiration. Throughout the seminar, Martindale identified what he said were specific "devil spirits" (some Christians refer to these simply as "demons") operating within, not only Geer, but virtually every other person who opposed Martindale. This was not something being discussed as theoretical, or behind closed doors, or as a fringe idea; this was now the out-in-the-open, officially sanctioned policy and position of The Way. Martindale is "The Man of God for Our Time" (later jokingly turned into the acrostic MOGFOT) and anyone who opposes him, in any way, is possessed by devil spirits.
Why didn't we run away as fast as we could after this? Mainly because we still harbored the thinking that the teaching found in The Way was as close to truth and Biblical accuracy as you could get, and we had missed the years of internal conflict, therefore missing out on hearing the other side's version of the conflict. At any rate, we were in the thick of it now.
Start at the beginning:
Part XXXIII
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