Keith

When I left TWI I spent a great deal of time studying this verse because I wanted to understand what I thought I was supposed to do. I could give you what I call my "expanded literal" but there really isn't a need to. It boils down to "Word of truth" = the heart behind the truth of the word written or spoken. We spent a lot of time counting the number crosses and time spent on the cross and forgot the heart of the matter, Jesus went to the cross and died for sins. I'm not saying it is good or bad to to know these things. But if we study these and forget, or never the learn the reason behind them we have not "rightly divided" the word of truth.

Plain and simple when God gave dominon to Adam and Eve He never gave them donminon over each other. So, if (note the word "if") believing is a law it would break this principle. Believing is a really bad way of putting anthing in terms of receiving something you haven't got. I like the word faith, because in includes the idea of faithfullness and trust. I might believe someone, but not trust and have confidence in them. I really like the definition I heard from Copland and others "Hope is the ernest expectation of a promised good." I think of it as being like waiting for a promised check in the mail. I'm hoping to receive it every day, but I don't have it, so I'm hoping for it.

I would totally agree with the second paragraph. I agree with the first paragraph too, I just don't see the evidence that Hagin and Copeland and Roberts have done that. Ideas yes, copied word for word no. As I mentioned though. I agree, there is a real danger in teaching "the law of believing." as TWI taught it. I don't care how much you believe that the gas pedal is the break pedal, if you are driving towards a brick wall, a depress the gas pedal instead of the break pedal you are going to be in trouble. I think that Juedes' artical is a great example of what is wrong with teaching "the law of believing" without God being in the picture.

I'm not sure Plagiarized is the right word, since they used their own words and when they thy quoted him they gave him credit. But if you want to say they got their ideas from him, - yes, also Smith Wigglesworth, and many others from the 1900's.

One point of slight disagreement I would like to make is Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and the others do not teach a "no God needed" doctrine like VPW did. In fact, if you really listen to them, they teach that this law only applies to what has been promised by God. They are also much more inteligent about how to reach that point and what to do if you are not there. Copeland and Hagin have both gone to doctors and told people they have done so. They also encourage people to go to the doctor. Their main focus is to operate at the level you are at. If you feel you need to go to a doctor - go, but trust God to work through that doctor. They do teach the power of words and that negative words can tear down your personal trust in God and positive words will help you build up your trust. (Sometimes the Copelands go a little overboard here.) But what they teach is really much different than the law of believing as taught by VPW. I will admit however that often people go off with half-cocked notions about what these people are teaching. They hear part of the message, (the part they want to hear) and don't hear the rest. There is also a danger teaching believing (temporary) over faith (long term trust). The focus of our trust is God, not healing or deliverance. but God. When we teach via examples in our own lives, we sometimes lose that focus.

Recently read a book called "Misquoting Jesus". It points out that there are more variations in the different Greek texts than there are Greek words in the New Testament. So like VPW said , but not because he said it, I do believe that the word as given was without error. In regards to six denials, it does make sense to me, but from Bullinger's notes, not VPW teachings. However the thought that comes to me is this, if a group or person spends their time working these types of things out in the from the word, it is a sign that they have lost sight of the important things and are dwelling to much on the things that don't matter.

"Wierwille was of the Reformed tradtion, not Lutheran. sorry to correct you Keith." You may be right, for some reason I have it stuck in my mind that he was Lutheran. On top of that it was Nathan, not Samual that corrected David.

What I'm writing below is not to defend these quotes, but to put them in context. TWI is not the only group that defines religion this way. Many Christian groups define religion as what man made, and Christianity as what God did and does. Using the dictionary definition Christianity is a religion, but if you want to try play with words to make a distinction between Religious (traditions) Christianity and what God does you might define it this way. But it is not a dictionary definition. In regards to the traditions spoken of, you don't see as many of them in most of today's churches, but they are still very prevelent in the Catholic and Luthern churchs which was VPW's background. In the 50's and 60's they were even more prevelent than today. "All women belong to the king" - while used to justify some really bad actions by many in the TWI, unfortunatly, as far as history is concerned, accurate in a great many nations in the dark ages. But I'm not sure that it could be applied to King David. After all God and Samual seem pretty upset about David's fling. Also in the law set down by Moses, one of them was "the king shall not multiply wives to himself." Regarding the last quote. There are many Madison Avenue execs who would agree with that statment and be proud of using negitive motivation to sell products. In fact I had good friend who left the advertising business because he said everything they did was based on building fear in people. Unfortunatly, TWI became almost everything they originally taught against.

The orginal meaning was the idea that it didn't matter what my friends through, when it comes to the Word of God, I go with God, not my friends. In other words I'm not going to give up what the word says just because of what my friends think. Unfortunatly it morphed into "I will have no friends who don't believe the same way I do."

BUT -- Since I've left I've done a lot of work on the word "but". It's been fun. "de" often translated and or but - indicates a contrast with what comes before, but does not negate it. It may just introuduce a new idea. "alla" - almost always translated but - indicates a complete contrast and negation of what was stated before. I got those definitions from Thayer's Greek dictionary if I remember right.. I like to work these. It is insteresting and not surprising that when you do a study, you often find yourself at odds with what we were taught in TWI. When it comes to words like this though, I think of the book "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart D. Ehrman. It gives a very good idea of what scholars are really up against when working texts. The number of variations in manuscripts of the New Testament is actually larger than the number of words used in the New Testament. While most of them are differences that make no real difference in understanding. Some are real whoppers! If I were taching a class on studying the Bible, I would likely make this book part of the reading.

I can't speak for most groups. Only my own, though I don't like to think of us as an "off shoot." We have used the offerings for the following, not in any particular order, just as I thought of them. We have given to other ministries very view of them are off shoots. We provide assistance to one person who is no longer able to work and cannot live on her disability check. We have paid rent and morgage payments for some, who have fallen on hard times and needed help to get back on their feet. We have provided money to several of the various homeless shelters and community kitchens in the area, as well as to the Red Cross and other orginazations of this kind. For those who desire it, we have provided free cassettes of our teachings. Currently, after the death of our duplicator we are looking in to CDs. We will provide those for free as well. We have sent these teachings all over the country and to several to several forgein countries as well. We provide a "book store" of materials that we have found helpful in our walks and we hope will help others as well. These are free for the taking. Currently we are still meeting in the home, so we have no overhead beyond copying and postage costs. We are currently looking in to renting a small building and changing from a home fellowship to a more traditional type of church. If we do this, some of the money received will go to this.

I think lifting up in prayer was basicly saying "Father I am praying for this person." or "I turn this over to you." I can't say it using that term "lifting up" is used in the bible, but it was used by a lot of different groups, not just the way. I have a minister friend who uses that phrase all of the time and he had never even heard of TWI.

I left in the mid 70's so I really can't speak to how it is now or was at the "end." I do remember VPW saying three things that obviously got lost. They were good things, regardless of what you think of him. These I'm sure a praphrased a bit." 1. "I would rather see the ministry fail because of too much grace and not because of law. Law just binds and hurts people. It destoys people lives." 2. "Someone should be able to go to fellowship on a regular basis and learn everything from the foundation through the advance class and more." 3. "Don't believe anything anyone says about the Word of God without checking it out for yourself....not even me." I think these address issues mentioned in the above posts about classes and other area. Early in this thread, someone talked about early classes where someone would play guitar and everyone whould take turns singing in tongues and interpreting , or prophesying. While we didn't do that excactly we did something like it. I remember that by the end the interpratations and prophesies were really dynomite the long we went on.

Agreed as you appear to be defining "produce". But I think you know what I meant.

No problem with the last part of this statment - I said "sometimes I think..." so it's just my opinion as well. By the accuracy being dependent on us, we either are producing the "real deal" or we are making it up, if we are making it up or choosing to repeat the same things over and over...it's not accurate. I'm sorry if the first part is true in your life. I can't say that for mine, though I have seen people fake it and I'm sure that I have been guilty of letting myself fall into simply repeating the same things over and over again at times. I hope that someday you will see what you would consider the "real deal."

WateredGarden - Never condemn yourself for illness. I know it's hard not to sometimes. But first of all God loves you no matter what your physical condition. Second - It doesn't stop you from loving God. I have heard of people who throw away their insulin "as a sign of their believing." Not good, unless God told you (not your leader) specificly to throw it away, keep using it. God would rather you were alive and taking insulin than, dead. I think part of the problem is TWI didn't really teach trusting God, which is how I would define believing. They taught believing in your believing which is much different. I do believe that Believing equals receiving. But I would qualify it this way Believing (trusting in, and having confidence in God and that He will do what He says) equals Receiving (that which God has specificly promised you) A lot of people try to believing from things that are not promised. As I look at it, I believe that whether a person receives their healing is just as much a function of the spiritual level of the church as the individual. Which might explain why we saw more healings in the TWI in the early 70's than at the end. Condemning a person for being sick is a sign of spiritually poor church. It causes people to doubt their ability to trust God, and others who look up to these people may say to themselves "If they can't receive their healing, I don't know how I could expect to receive mine." God teaches compassion, not condemnation. Condemnation, in most cases, causes strife, division, and doubt. As Christians we should be helping the sick. Help them keep their homes up, bless them, love them. A church that is doing otherwise, is not living the gospel.

To respond to two comments to my post how do you see SIT is real? Come-one guys - Figure of speech for understand. As far as the number of repeats in content being inspiring. Furthur on in my post I said that some started filling in by habit or made it up "something from the bible was usally safe". Maybe I should have made that clearer. And sometimes I think God keeps repeating the same thing in hopes that sometime, someone will "get it." and act on it. I honestly believe, and I admit I could be wrong, that the content and accuracy of the manifistations is often dependant on us. IF we do what we are supposed to do they change. If make them up, they may change but do us no real good. At least no more than we would get quoting the word to each other.

I have mixed feelings about this thread. Because I know that God heals and that is His will. I do believe our believing or trust in God does result in healing and God doesn't miss - so it's me O Lord. But I also know that attacking a person's believing or trust in God never, never, ever causes a person to trust God more. It most often causes them to give up on themselves, or stop trusting God. To condemn a person, even behind their back, removes your spiritual support for them. Paul in his epistles menitioned people who were sick. He did not condemn them. In the early days of TWI I heard a teaching about healing where it was said, "when a person is sick is not the time to teach healing, but God's love. Some people may never get to the point that they receive healing. Does that make them any less of child of God? These same people may do more to teach about God's love and care and show it, than twenty able bodies believers. Jesus did not condemn the man at the pool for being sick for 15 or more years, He healed him. Same with the woman with the issue of blood. And if they don't get healed when we pray, - don't be stuipid, go to a doctor and thank God for what the doctor does. On a side note, I was once healed instantly of a compound leg fracture, (yes, that means the bone was sticking through the skin.) But I have psoriasis on the other leg, a nice big patch, it's been there for over 20 years, it was even there when I broke my leg. Why was one healed and not the other? I don't know, but I'm not going to condemn myself for it or accept condemnation from anyone else. "Where's my believing?" - right where it is supposed be....looking at God. If I don't receive healing for psoriasis before I die, I know that my new body won't have it.

First - From what I can see - SIT is real and should be done. I think most (not all) of what TWI taught regarding its use in church accurate. I don't say this because of Waybrain (at least I hope not) but from re-working the area myself. I think some people did fake the interpratations and prophcies, often because they really hadn't tied into God and were under pressure. It was always safe, to say something that came from the Bible. I think some people where trapped into habits, and said the same things over and over again as well. But something else that I think happened a lot which led to a lot of repeating is that we didn't do what God asked us to do in the manifesitations. Stand on the Word and Believe my word ...OK. However many of us confused standing on the Word with standing on the Ministry. When I have been in an area where people were really acting on what they believed from the Bible (not the a ministry) the content of the manifestations changed drasticly. I can always tell when we are begining to lose focus in our group. When the manifestations start coming out on a regular basis "Stand on my word, speak my word, know that I love you and I desire to help you. I am always with you, and Look unto me." I know that we have stagnated and taken our eyes off of God. Come to think of it, - that's what happening now - Thanks for the wake up.

In terms of language development - Phobia - is a new enough term, that I think it is likely that VPW was thinking in these terms when talking about fear, or at least a consuming fear, which is not as disabilitating as what I discribed, but I would still lable as always bad. If I think about the example used in PFAL - about the boy and his mother, I think of the mother as having a consuming fear - Bad. Did that fear kill the boy - I doubt it, but I'm sure it tore the mother apart and made it even harder to deal with the death of the child after it happened. By the way - Thanks for the idea about overcoming this fear of heights, it is something that I'm working on, and I'm much better than I was 15 years ago when the incident I wrote about took place. I'm now at the point that I think I could make it across the Natural Bridge, but I would still be very nervous about it and most of this has not been from "shock treatment." but by prayer and focus on God in overcoming it. Maybe it's time to take a trip south and try again. To quote..."every day, I'm getting better and better."

To me the answer depends on how you define fear. If you speak of fear, such as fear in terms of survival. No, fear is not really a bad thing. If you speak of fear as something that takes hold of you, and eats at you emotionally to the point that it might even make you physically sick. Yes - all fear is bad. That is not how we are to be. Here is the best example that I can give to show the difference. Most people have a general fear of heights. But they can climb a ladder, go over a bridge, etc. It may be difficult for them but it can be controled. I on the other hand have an unreasonable fear, of certain types of heights and I literally freeze up and can't move, I panic, get dizzy. It is dibilitating. As an example there is a place in the Kentucky called Natural Bridge, it is a lage natural stone bridge between two small Kentucky mountians, at it narrowest spot it is the equivalant of a little over half a city block. You can hike up to it, along a hard narrow trail, then you are supposed to walk across it and use the cable car to go back down. I went about a quarter of the way across and froze. I was in the middle the width of the span, I really couldn't even see the edges at that point, but I had to stop. I couldn't take another step. Kids were playing all around me. But my wife had to come back and help me to get back to the starting point so that I could work my way down among the onslaught of people coming back up the other way. I was convinced, even though I was a good 30 yards from either edge at that point that I was going to fall off. To show how really stuipid this fear is, I can climb up a set of metal mesh steps on something like a fire tower with no problem, I can look out over the edge at the landscape as I go up, but once I get in the fire tower, I will cling to the middle, unable to approach the windows to look out.

Everytime I read accounts like this, (and yes I did it myself on occasion) I think about the temptations of Jesus and his response to being told to jump from a high place and that God would protect him. "It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord your God." We did that often, and called it believing. And were told to do it often and were told we were not believing if we didn't.

Any church that has filed with the IRS for tax exempt status will have a church board and president of that board. In most small church this board may be made of the elders and the defacto president of the board may be the minister or it may be the "head elder." They may call it something other than a board, but for legal purposes it is a board. My guess is that any large church that has parrishes or whatever they call them in more than one city, state or nation has some sort of advisory cabnet for its president or head. Even the Pope has a council of advisors. While I may feel that TWI's advisory board has done a really bad job of it, I'm not at all surprised that they have one.

I would hope that none of us currently believe that slavery is right, or that our government should not only have the right, but be expected to stop slavery anywhere in the United States, and condemn and oppose slavery anywhere in the world. However your question above forgets the time period and the attitudes of the time. Slavery, at the time was a legal institution and, sad to say, the majority of the people at the time did not see a problem with it. Many even thought of their slaves not as humans, but as animals. These people would have argued with the idea that their slaves were human. The result of these attitudes is that those who owned slaves and the states that allowed slavery would have considered this part of their states rights package. Thankfully we have outgrown this attitude. But it would have been very prevalent then, even among the people of the North. The attitude that slavery was evil and wrong was only beginning to really grow among the people of the time and had not yet reached the point of majority opinion, even in the North. Thankfully it was the opinion of those in power. So the basic answer to your question is two fold. Yes, many of the southern states at the time would have said that the Government did not have a right to come in and stop slavery. No, today, we would not even give it a second thought that the government has right to stop slavery today and it should be placed above states rights.

I guess I should clarify my earlier statment. where I said "It could have just as easily been another issue." The ending of Slavery was a big issue - but it had there not been slavery, it would have been a different one. The real issue was the state control over national control. Slavery was the biggest of the issues that the national government was trying to control, but there were many smaller issues that the national government was trying to control as well. The issue of Slavery linked many of the Southern States. It was common to all of them, while many of the other issues were not. All of them them affected their power and bottom line. However the war was not about Slavery, but about states rights, slavery being the prime example and often the unifying one. One Comment that hasn't been adress from the first post is the French and English involment in the Civil War and CM's comment about them trying to undermine the US. I have not ever read any information to support this idea. But then again we may never know what the leadership of those countries really thinking, but I doubt this destabilization of the US was the reason for their help. I would be willing to bet though that they did have financial reasons for being involved.