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Maybe that reveal will happen to me one of these days--Im not closed to it but I havent experienced it so I have no desire to force my square peg into that round hole and attempt to make it happen or worse pretend its happening when its really not.... I have to admit my way experience (and a few subsequent ones) soured my experience with christianity. I was told once too often exactly what "truth" was, and no matter how I tried it just didnt jive completely with the reality that I was experiencing. Since I was obviously outside their accepted realm of truth it created all sorts of issues for me that were not all that easy to come to terms with... I finally chucked it more or less and worked on figuring out my own self and attempting to live some sort of productive and beneficial life in some sort of decent manner as I see it If that gets Jesus or some other deity upset--well Im willing to accept that--he/they/them can do with me as they will --- The ride at least was good . I tried, I really did but most of the time I just dont get it

Its an interesting subject..I think that just about everyone has some sort of desire to find out what is true and what is untrue, if not in a wide sense at least for themselves and their own life. TWI co opted that and became the sole arbiters of truth available for the one time low cost of your life blood and soul. Im sure some people still believe that the bible is the whole source for truth but to me it is narrow. It really wasnt until after I left, was not quite so gung ho as I had been and worked with some Buddhists that I realized that these people were not possessed but actually had some very interesting viewpoints and understandings of things that werent at all contrary to the better parts of what I had learned from TWI. To me that started opening up a broader way to see things than through the bible alone filter. Of course maybe "narrow is the way" and Im screwed or it could be that was added in as a control measure to keep the followers on the straight and narrow...in the same way that "no man comes unto the Father but by me" may be true or it may be a very big ego moment by an otherwise very cool guy who had some human control issues...and of course youd have to first believe in the Hebrew FatherGod concept for that to hold any weight anyway. Im not sure but Im willing to take my chances. Truth is in a lot of things. There is truth in relationships, truth in business, truth in science, truth in politics etc etc that is almost always difficult to ferret out and get to...in a religious or spiritual sense Jesus was a 'truth teller" but I dont think that he was the only one who formulated ideas with universal appeal and application (Love, Forgiveness, compassion etc etc...) The questions about life after death --Heaven, Hell, Reincarnation etc etc, to me are ALL conjectures even if recorded by spiritual thinkers as they cannot be known. IF people do choose to believe one of those concepts and take it on faith (The return of Christ, heaven,paradise, reincarnation..whatever) it may be very comforting to believe it is "the truth" but it is a choice and at best a hope that it is the truth on which they are willing to gamble. Best of luck to them in their hope. I dont mind people believing that, it does perturb me though when peoples opinions and personal decisions do become the only way for everyone else to conduct their life. and that is "truly" how I feel about that...I too have my own path of discovery that is hard enough to stay on without being wrenched off it time and again. So far its been difficult but good and true enough for me to most of the time stay at peace with myself. If im wrong, im wrong..but I am willing to live my path and if necessary go down with my ship and for me thats fine. I just got sick in TWI of spending my time "driving someone elses ship" and someone elses take on "the truth"

There are other places where you [well I should speak for myself first] find truth too, but I'm not so sure you want to extend the discussion that far. Natural laws are truths - and mathematics, all the various branches of it have their own truths.

Original question of this thread:...”but something was bothering me and it just came clear to me today and it is the idea that the only truth is in the bible. really? that's a pretty stupid way of thinking once i look at it in the light of day. and how'd i get to thinking like that? i think it started with the idea that "all things that pertain unto life and godliness are contained herein" or whatever the way international said about the bible. again, really?” Waysider reminds us: PFAL It wasn't just a class. It was indoctrination into fundamentalism. From what I've figured out, The Way’s promoting the idea that the only source for truth is the Bible comes from a conservative segment in Protestantism, like Waysider points out, called the Fundamentalist movement, and there are lots of groups especially, it seems, in the USA. The idea has a fancy Latin name, sola scriptura, and was the rallying cry of the Protestants when they broke away from the Catholic Church with Martin Luther leading the cause. Although I usually refrain from using Wikipedia as a source, it’s not a bad start here...See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura For me, being raised a Catholic in the 1950s and 1960s, I was immersed in a religious tradition that mixed church dogma AND the Bible as their sources for truth, so not until I got into Young Life in high school (a Bible-waving, born-again-proclaiming, Good News for Modern Man N.T. version reading segment of the Jesus movement alive in the 1970s and still going on today) did the emphasis in my fledgling kindergarden style theological training shift to scripture as the only place for truth to be found (which, of course ignores the long history of the way of thinking that claims there is only ONE truth, but that’s another topic for another rainy day – it’s raining here in Winter Park, Florida right now and they say it might turn to snow! Yippee...). Anyway, for me, sitting through the indoctrination class, PFAL, as Waysider reminds us, was not only an experience of getting Wierwille’s theology (plagiarized as it is) hammered into my mind, but was also an indoctrination into the broader category of thinking which is called Fundamentalism which has as one of its major cornerstones the idea you are addressing: that the Bible is the only source for truth. Along with inerrancy, millennialism, and evangelizing, it feels (to put it mildly) that the Bible should be mankind’s only rule of faith and practice. Fundamentalism is the extremely conservative segment of Protestantism that essentially fights against modernism (i.e. evolution and other scientific issues), textual criticism and other approaches to understanding what the Bible is that do not buy into “the accuracy of The Word,” for instance, or that it was dictated by God to the writers. It is mission-oriented and from what I’ve seen, rejects the validity of any other religions as avenues for “reaching God.” This movement started in earnest in America during the 1920s when the clash between conservative Protestants and Darwinism hit the country. For a book on the history of American Fundamentalism, check out, Fundamentalism and American Culture, by George M. Mardsen (Oxford Univ. Press 2006). It’s a long read and I haven’t read all the chapters, but from what I’ve read, I think it is a good source. See what you think. He is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and is a Christian historian. I think he does a good job presenting the material about all the different ingredients that went into the recipe for American Fundamentalism. If you visit Amazon online, for instance, you can find LOTS of books and resources that cover Christian Fundamentalism. Or wander around the public library, which I what I did in 1987 when I left TWI and started to try and understand what the heck happened. A few I’ve read on the topic include these, but I’d like to find a few others that are good, too, so if anyone here knows any, please tell me: James Barr’s book, Fundamentalism, which I quoted in the “Nostalia..” article posted on the front page here. Published in Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1978. Sandeen, Ernest R. The Roots of Fundamentalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1970. Clabaugh, Gary K. Thunder on the Right. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Company. 1974. Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God, A History of Fundamentalism. The Ballantine Publishing Group. 2000.

Im not one of those people that claims the bible is my only source for truth anymore. I happened across THIS ARTICLE that not only gives me something to think about but an abundance of pretty good quotes Among them.....

PFAL It wasn't just a class. It was an indoctrination to fundamentalism.