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"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."........Thomas Paine.

Here's an idea: we each drop out of this topic and go read a book.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. -- Albert Einstein

Howdy Penworks! DWB, thanks and much the same to you, appreciate your insight, as the years pass.

Love you, Socks and DWBH!

The first rule of writing anything is: Know your audience. I don't go on an atheist website and try to witness to them. Nor do I go onto a Young Republicans website to discuss the joys of socialism. Nor would I go to communist website to chat up the benefits of capitalism. Why? Because I know I'll create a flame war that will make World War III look like a bad case of flatulance. So maybe he should consider the audience here.

And how do I know God really speaks to people. As your argument with fruits of false prophets, that's not something I would hear so...

Quite clear your name's MIKE not NIKE ("just do it!")

So why don't you just get on and write what you want to say? Stop "dealing with the audience" by dribs and drabs, and get on with the "main course." "Practice write-up"? Huh? If you took on board what people said, and refined your - whatever you're pretending to write - then it could be a practice write-up. But this drib and drab style, drip-feeding your morsels to an unappreciative audience, isn't practice - it's procrastination. Put up or shut up, Mike.

You've never heard of Occum's Razor? A topic is only as complex as you make it. When I ask you for the formula to find the area of a circle, I don't need the history of pi, the history of geometry, Archimedes biography, and a dissertation on the use of circles. The only thing I need to know is pi R-square. If I'm asking for the time, I don't need someone to tell me how to build a clock. As a matter of fact, my experience tells me the longer and more meandering an answer, the more likely someone's trying to con me. (Like the man said, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.) So, in the spirit of that clarification you want to do: So then what's the test, in 25 words or less, that's, according to Saint Vic, supposed to tell us what's God-breathe and what's not?

Dearest Socks! I love you and Mrs. Socks, and verify EVERYTHING you posted. WE were there. Before we were in the 4th together! YOU KNOW what you're talking about and I KNOW and can verify everything you say regarding events we shared together. "You can lead a horse to water son, but you cannot make him drink." Read and learn Greasespotters.! The Socks know whereof they speak!

If I had a buck for every person I've counseled who got bad advice and counseling from Moynihan I could buy us both a couple of dinners at the Wooden Shoe Inn, DWB. None of us were perfect, every one of us in the earliest years you're referring to had challenges, made mistakes. Every one of us got our butts kicked more than once, and deservedly so, in order to get our attention and get us moving in the right direction when we weren't. We were young and learning. The problem with guys like him is they never got the foundation set right. He and Dottie came into the Corps with previous seniority from NC pending evaluation. After the first few months they and several others were bumped into the 3rd Corps and graduated with a year of "Corps training". They were nice but they were skidding - I'll never forget the BS he gave my wife and I after we discussed his a situation I'd observed, and questioned his handling of it. All I wanted was to see it set right, and I was more than willing to talk about it to help, if I could. Instead he blamed ME for not being "spiritually" minded enough to see how he was right....a tactic that became all too common for him as the years progressed. It seemed minor, we moved on - until it blew up in the people's face later that year, as his "counseling" to them failed. He completely disconnected from any involvement or responsibility. He did the same kind of thing for many years after that. He was also famous for never getting his facts straight and making excuses it didn't matter, later. Another thing I learned early on about most of the self declared heavies from the early Corps was that most of them were not successful at witnessing, signing people up for PFAL and under shepherding them over time which was the basic thing being promoted at that time - sign 'em up, get 'em in.. They crowed about everyone else being able to do it and castigated failures but many of the assignments they got they didn't have the kind of godly revival that was seen in the early years in the West and East Coast fellowships, Kansas, and other places, they TALKED a lot about it, "taught", telling others what they should do but were not successful at doing it when it came to actual outreach. 1000's of people heard the Word of God and the "signs, miracles and wonders" abounded, confirming the preaching of Jesus Christ. Frankly I was so youthfully dumb at the time I just assumed "they" knew something I didn't when it was the reverse. Charlene talks about this in her book - if you read in and remember what it was like, it becomes painfully obvious. Picture Donnie Fugit, who just "did it", versus other guys who were more interested in "teaching" ad infinitum what was already in PFAL, while there were assuming positions in the ministry. Did I love Bob - do I today? Absolutely. But everything I've seen and read they've stated they finally saw was "wrong" was wrong for many years prior. I was not happy to see all those people who turned a cold shoulder to God and His people and stayed on there for so many years. Taking all those years to see what they were doing was wrong, they're in need of very very serious rehab. Give them ample space and time to do that. I remember a guy years ago - he'd been a long standing supporter of the Way for years after many of us had left. His wife had dropped out of active participation, he still had half a leg in and it was either on GS or WayDale where he finally posted a copy of a letter he had just sent to Rosalie. It had the tone of - "you know me, I'm a Corps grad, long time supporter and you know how I love the ministry and support it financially and now here I am, I have some recommendations that I think would help you be a better ministry". He offered to come there, meet with her and discuss these things. He expected a positive response - after all, it was HIM, right? They would listen to him, right? He got a turn down and was ignored beyond that, as he reported it - and he was SHOCKED! Why? Because he had the feeling many others had had before him - hey, it's ME, I'm with you on this, I just want to help....! When I saw how this most recent group had bailed out, domino style, what they wrote about it reminded me of the same thing, adding of course that they'd been poking needles in anything that acted legitimate for years themselves. The only good news is they disconnected, for whatever reasons. Time will tell where that leads them.