Frustrated with his fruitless quest to receive the fulness of Holy Spirit and to speak in tongues, V.P. Wierwille went to a Pentecostal rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The first night of the convention, he faked speaking in tongues. Disappointed, he wanted to leave town on December 12, 1951, but claimed that a blizzard in Tulsa prevented him from leaving. Wierwille said:
However, the Tulsa tribune (shown here) notes that the temperature that day was 60 degrees, and the overnight low never even got down to freezing. December 1951 records in Climatological Data for Oklahoma show only 5/10 inch of snow on Dec. 8 and 6/10 inch on Dec. 20. Neither date concurs with Wierwille's visit, and neither records anything near a blizzard which could stop all buses and trains.
Ways Corps graduate Barrie Hill later confirmed that the rally was the Divine Healing Convention, December 11-13, 1951, sponsored by The Voice of Healing magazine, and that Wierwille stayed at the Hotel Tulsa (which was razed in 1973). Hill notes that the weather bureau, newspapers and airport do not record a snowstorm at that time. When she mentioned this to Wierwille, he dismissed these facts by suggesting that the blizzard was "a phenomenon" or that he "spoke with angels" when he called the airport, train station and bus station (Wierwille conveniently blames holy angels for lying to him about the weather rather than admit his fabrication!). It seems amazing that Hill had concrete evidence that VP lied, but still fawned over him in the Oct-Nov 1982 Heart magazine article she wrote about the incident.
Wierwille's wife Dorothea recalled that week in a 1996 book of her memories of the Wierwilles' early years called Born Again to Serve. She also was in Tulsa that week and contradicts V.P. Wierwille. She never even implies that the planes, trains and buses were snowbound by a blizzard. The closest thing is when she suggests that there was snow in Chicago (700 miles from Tulsa and hundreds from New Knoxville!) and "sleet forecast in Tulsa by Thursday." (Born Again to Serve, p. 79) This means that there was never any snow on the ground or in the air when the Wierwilles were in Tulsa. Perhaps she couldn't bring herself to make a bald-faced lie as V.P. did. By this, she perhaps implies that V. P. Was lying about the alleged blizzard.
Mrs. Wierwille's scenario perhaps is enough like V.P.'s to perhaps satisfy his followers who are all too ready to avoid seeing any faults in their "father in the Word." While Mrs. Wierwille's memory (or a ghost-writer's imagination) is a little closer to the truth than V. P.'s, it is still in error.
V. P. Wierwille liked to mention "integrity" now and again. But blatant lies like this Tulsa snow
fabrication show that he placed inflation of his own image above respect for truth and fact.
[Note: The portion of Whiteside's book that quotes Wierwille's comments on Tulsa also reveals his very low view of women. When a woman told Wierwille that she could introduce him to a man (J.E. Stiles) who could help, Wierwille said, "I thought, 'Women never tell the truth.'" Wierwille added that when Stiles arrived later with two women, "I just remember thinking to myself, 'There aren't going to be any women around when I get the holy spirit.'" When Mrs Stiles asked a question, Stiles answered her tersely, saying, "That's none of your business." Wierwille said, "...my opinion of him as a man went up 99 percent....just from the way he handled her." (Whiteside, pp. 199-200).]
Documentation for facts in this article can be found in From "Vesper Chimes" to "The Way International," pp. 11, 12, 67.
Dr. John Juedes, 1999, empirenet.com/~messiah7
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