Steve Lortz

The particular prof I'm talking about is a wonderfully learned man in many respects, and I respect him deeply, but a number of years ago, there was great controversy in this denomination over the significance and applicability of "chariasmatic" practices, which in some respects remains unsettled to this day. He falls on the non-charismatic side of the divide. I rely on him to give me the professorial perspective of that view, just as I rely on geisha to give me "the view from the pew" so to speak. I am thankful for each and every one of you! If I eventually turn this thesis into a book, I'm going to have to include you all in the acknowledgments! Love, Steve

I, also, have been fascinated by Randi and his works. I envy that he is local to you. I don't believe the majority of people in the first century regarded the nature/supernature dichotomy the same way we do. "Nature" would be phusis, the closest thing to "supernatural" would be huperphues, which simply means "overgrown" or "larger than it ought to be". The Stoics would have regarded spiritual things to be part of nature, rather than supernatural, or better yet, they regarded nature to be a function of spirit. ...maybe "hyperphooie"! I think everybody in the twentieth-century who has regarded SIT as "supernatural" has gotten into difficulties. Love, Steve

I can only say "check it out for yourself" 'cuz I know I DON'T have all the answers, but to the best of my present understanding, I Corinthians 13:1 can be accurately translated as "If, and this is not likely the case, I were to babble with the tongues of men, or even of ANGELS, and I were not to have the love of God, I would become as a braying trumpet or a clashing cymbal, an instrument producing sensless noise." One of my profs thinks the qualification implied by the "if" indicates that Paul did NOT speak in tiongues. I think it means Paul did not speak in tongues without the love of God. The word laleo, which I translated "babble" here is also used of the sound birds and "singing" brooks make. At this point, I am inclined to agree with you that "tongues of angels" was hyperbole (or if you prefer, huperbole!). Love, Steve

Gosh! I just realized my position is a dyophysite rather than a miaphysite position! I am in agreement with the Council of Chalcedon in 451! Whodathunkit!?! Love, Steve

Just finished a wonderful Sunday brunch that LizzyBuzz fixed! So... what are my presuppositions for this thread (and my thesis)? ---------- 1. That the events of Acts 2 were the fulfillment of the promise originally given in Joel 2:28-32. This was a possibility Wierwille denied from the git-go: 2. That the promise given in Joel 2:28-32 follows from the promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, that in him would all the families of the earth be blessed: 3. That the Feast of Weeks entailed a freewill-offering of the first fruit of the wheat harvest, wherein people gave back to God of that which He had given them (Deuteronomy 16:10), and the Feast of Weeks was the foreshadowing of what actually occurred on the Day of Pentecost described in Acts 2: 4. That the Spirit itself first poured out in Acts 2 is to be regarded as the "gift of the Holy Spirit", that is to say, that the genitive case of ten dorean tou agiou pneumatos should be regarded as the genitive of apposition rather than as the genitive of source: 5. That the Spirit first poured out in Acts 2 was the "life/force" of God the Father "meshed/superimposed/heterodyned" with the human personality of Jesus Christ: 6. That the "gift of the Holy Spirit" is an earnest of the inheritance, that is to say, it is an earnest of the Spirit of resurrection life in the age to come: 7. That the earliest Christians regarded tongues as a sign the same way Abraham regarded circumcision as a sign: ---------- That's all the major points I can think of at the monent... Love, Steve

I don't have objections to anything anybody has posted on this thread yet! I almost said "I wouldn't object to anything anybody might post," then I remembered Mike. Yeh, I would object if he posted some of his old stuff. You certainly ain't Mike, Tom! And if anybody AIN'T Mike, it's YOU Raf! Thanks to everybody who is contributing! tempus fugit... more later... Love, Steve

I just read your entire post, geisha. You can salute me for reading all of it. I salute YOU for editing it at nearly four in the morning! The "if" in the verse where Paul says "If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity..." is ean, not ei. The Greek meaning of ean is "if (and this is not likely the case)", whereas ei means "if (and this is likely the case)" I would translate I Corinthians 1:13 as "If, and this is not the case, I were to speak in the languages of men, or even of ANGELS, and I were not to have the love of God, I would become a braying horn or a clashing cymbal, in instrument making senseless noise." All for now... got things to do today... (date night with LizzyBuzz!) Love, Steve

WOW!... Jeepers! I just realized that's exactly what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 13:1, "Though I speak with the tongues of men, or even of ANGELS, if I don't have the love of God, I have become a braying horn or a clashing cymbal, an instrument making senseless noise." (my translation) If there's one thing Wierwille neglected to teach us, it was how to do ANYTHING with the love of God! Love, Steve

...but not "free vocalization" as defined by me... allowing the mouth to speak uncensored out of the abundance of the heart... The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the holy Spirit He has given to us. If we have filled our hearts with things conducive to the love of God, things through which the love of God can flow, then His love can overflow through our mouths. We would be responsible, not for "moving your lips, your tongue, your throat" but for putting things into our hearts, on a habitual basis, things that God's love can work with and through. Love, Steve

One of the assumnptions I've been wrestling with for the past nine years (since the fight with you-know-who) is that there are two separate realities, one "sense-knowlege" and one "spiritual." Wierwille taught that the laws of the spiritual realm supercede the laws of the senses realm. I now believe that there is a single objective reality (just as the Stoics did), and there are our subjective experiences and interpretations of that unitary reality. Not that I see a specific point here, except to say that I no longer think the phrase "in the senses realm" accurately reflects the same reality that Luke and Paul and our selves inhabit. ...just a thought... Love, Steve

Well, I slept on it, and I still can't tell either. Gonna take some work. Love, Steve

As vocalizing without deliberately thinking about it... Allowing the mouth to speak uncensored out of the abundance of the heart... Interpretation and prophecy done Wierwille's way would definitely NOT be free vocalization. There have been times when I've realized I've been "speaking by the Spirit of God". There are a lot of people on campus here who do it without even realizing that's what they're doing. It's NOTHING AT ALL like what Wierwille taught us about prophecy. The followers of the Personal Prophecy movement wouldn't even recognize it. Like I say... this is not a developed idea. Just something of which I'm considering the possiblity... I might be all wet... Love, Steve

Here's a question that just occurred to me. I haven't thought it through yet: What IF tongue-talking as happened on the day of Pentecost and at Corinth WERE what we would today call "free vocalization"? Nine years ago, I was in a... er... ahem... discussion with Mikeol, and I challenged Wierwille's assertion that there is a "senses" realm and a separate "spiritual" realm. The dominant cosmology in the first century was Stoicism, which was unitary and materialist. What the Stoics (and Paul and his audience) would have understood as "spirit" was vastly different from the way the Platonic apologists of 2nd century Alexandria conceived "spirit". Their view was dualist and posited a dichotomy between what was "matter" and what was "ideal". I think it can be demonstrated that the early church regarded SIT the same way the Jews regarded circumcision. There was certainly nothing "supernatural" in a Platonic sense about circumcision. I'm gonna hafta chew on this... Love, Steve

One of the things that I find questionable is the ethnologists' definition of glossalalia as "ecstatic". The Greek word ekstasis (sorry, Nate, I ain't got a good Greek font yet, though I'm going to have to get one) means "out of place", and regarding the mind, implies an altered state of consciousness. Luke uses ekstasis in the pericope of Cornelius' household, but not with respect to SIT. The word "trance" in Acts 10:10 and 11:5 are translated from ekstasis. Luke never uses ekstasis in relation with SIT on the Day of Pentecost, and neither does Paul use it in his letter to the Corinthians. They had the word. They could have used it about SIT if it were pertinent. They used ekstasis about receiving visions. I've had some experiences with altered states of consciousness, NOT due to recreational drugs, but due to some extreme circumstances on the submarine, some of the methods of Momentus, and some very interesting side effects of having a blood sugar level of 1010. I was NOT in an altered state of consciousness when I first spoke in tongues (in private, actually, in a restroom stall) well before session 12 of PFAL. I was not in an altered state of consciousness during session 12. I think some people had difficulty with TWI-style SIT because they were trained by some Pentecostal and modern pagan practices and by the definitions of ethnologists to EXPECT an altered state of consciousness. All for now... more later... Love, Steve

This is a good thread for considering the reference you posted. Part of the reason I started this thread is because I know Raf doesn't want his thread to become too doctrinal. I scanned the article, though I will have to read it in detail later. I welcome your participation in this discussion. I need to understand YOUR point of view especially while I'm working on this paper! Love, Steve

Me, too! I AM going to have to compare what Paul has to say in Corinthians with what Luke said in Acts. The most interesting thing off the top of my head is that Luke never says anything in Acts about Paul OR the Corinthians speaking in tongues, and yet in Paul's letter he indicates that both he and ALL the Corinthians spoke in tongues outside the context of assembly meetings. More was going on than Luke reported in Acts. Much of the meaning of the practice was not explicitly written in the letter, but taken for granted by Paul and the Corinthians as implicitly understood from the instruction Paul gave when he was personally present at Corinth. By comparing both sources, we can get a binocular perspective on what SIT meant to the writers and readers of the New Testament material. Binocular understanding was not possible with Wierwille's hermeneutic of trying to harmonize EVERYTHING. There was only ONE point of view... HIS. One thing I AM certain of, the things we were taught about interpretation and prophecy were bogus. Love, Steve

I experienced isolation in a whole different context during the 4 years I spent aboard a submarine. But it was RADICALLY different! Nobody cared what you thought as long as you could do your job reliably enough to keep from killing us all. We entertained ourselves with extravaganzas of thought. It was vastly more free and fun than college was. One time I volunteered to winter over in Antarctica, but they wouldn't let me go, because they said I was too highly trained. I agree with every one of the criticisms posted on this thread of the form of isolation practiced on us by TWI, especially waysider's! Love, Steve

Well said, Raf, well said! I don't agree with you, but I think this is something we all should deeply consider. And I don't see how I could have sparked this much interest with my attitude. My paper is going to rile some people up, but I don't think it will disturb the thinking-rut of TWI survivors anywhere near as much as this thread does. I want to continue to challenge your position, but I'm not doing it so much to try to persuade you as to have you challenge my thinking back. My brother and I used to do this all the time. When he was dying, and he knew there would come a time during the process when he could no longer speak for himself, he told everybody that he wanted me to speak for him when that time came, because he believed we knew each other's mind. I considered that just about the highest complement I ever received. I consider you a genuine sparring-partner friend, Raf! Love, Steve

Here is one of the sources the author of the article from Amazing Discoveries cited: "Ecstatic language was a common form of worship in pagan temples.1" "1 - Vincent Bridges: "Paganism in Provence," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition (2004)" http://www.jwmt.org/v1n6/provence.html I'll be durned if I can find any references to thousands of pagans speaking in tongues before the day Of Pentecost! I can't even find any references to ecstatic language being a common form of worship in pagan temples. Just that there were a lot of pagan temples in Provence... Read it for yourself. Love, Steve

When it happened to me, about 9 years before I was exposed to TWI, I lost all sense of identity. I was in such shock that I wasn't able to eat or sleep for the first week. For the following two years, I was on a slippery slope to losing control of everything. I thought of it as "going crazy" at the time. And there were people around me, in the same situation I was in who WERE literally going crazy! There were three times during those two years when I stood on the edge of losing it. The first two times, I was able to change some aspect of my life to distract myself. The third time, at the end of the two years, I was by myself in the Engine Room Lower Level of the USS Pogy. I was sobbing uncontrollably. I started to hyperventilate. There was nothing about the sea I could change. There was nothing about the ship I could change. There was nothing about the people around me I could change. There was nothing about my schedule or way of living I could change... And I knew this was it... I was going to go crazy if something didn't change. If I had lost control of my breathing, what ELSE was I going to lose control of???????????????????????????????? I literally cried out, "God help me..." I wasn't particularly religious growing up. I wasn't expecting any result. I had just exhausted every other conceivable option. As I cried out, I remembered there was a verse where Jesus had said he would do whatever we asked, if we asked in his name. "...in the name of Jesus Christ..." I finished. Immediately my breathing returned to normal and I began to calm down. The Lord started teaching me how to change the things that were in my heart. I didn't go crazy. That was thirty-nine years ago. It was another seven years before I even heard of TWI. The Lord is STILL teaching me how to change the things that are in my heart, so that God's love, which is shed abroad in my heart by the holy Spirit He has given me can better overflow out of my mouth, out where it can be heard in my words, and seen in my actions. I've gone through other paradigm shifts since then. One of the biggest was finding out first about LCM's sexual predations, and then about Wierwille's. Another was realizing that I couldn't look to the leaders of ANY of the splinter groups for things I should be looking to the Lord for. All for now... Love, Steve

Stretched coffee would NEVER have hacked it in the engineroom of the Pogy! You didn't get relieved if a spoon wouldn't stand up in a cup of the coffee you brewed! Love, Steve

This thread has advanced two pages while I caught up reading the four pages I missed earlier in the day! Love, Steve

I was thinking about pi when I was asking how we can know what a perfect language should look like. Correct me if I'm wrong, O, Bushy-Tailed-One, but if pi were converted to binary code, wouldn't pi contain ALL knowledge in EVERY language? Love, Steve Can pi be converted to binary code?

I grok you, Ham! Love, Steve

I am learning to my chagrin, that in many cases linguists can't tell that two people are writing in the same language when they are both writing koine Greek! Love, Steve