Steve Lortz

Here's Tzaia's entire original post, along with the title of this thread: "One of the biggest Lies from Hell TWI and (some?) Offshoots Perpetrated is IMO the notion that the Bible doesn't contradict itself. Really?" Why would anybody SAY such a thing? I think it is difficult for anybody who has not personally tried to talk sense to the former leaders of some of the offshoots (not limited to CES, there are a couple of others I could name), I say, I doubt that ANYBODY who hasn't personally tried to talk sense to those leaders can fully feature why Tzaia might hold such an extreme opinion. I don't know what specific incident or reflection spurred Tzaia to post this thread when she did, but I do have a general notion of the tenor of her relations with some of the offshoot leaders. We were in the same room at the same time for at least one GOOD one! And it was a matter for discussion both before and after. I know Jerry Barrax tried to make his voice heard. I don't know excathedra, except from these boards, but from her post on this thread (#71) I would assume that she knows what Tzaia is talking about. The truth is, when the offshoot leaders in consideration were confronted with the real damage that their leadership was wreaking on their followers, they seemed to be Hell-bent on rationalizing away ALL the evidence. They minimized the suffering... "it was only 5% of my 800 closest friends who had their lives ripped out from under them by Momentus" (that would have been about 40 people). It was actually closer to 20% of the people I took Momentus with. That would have been about 160 of his closest friends. And when the leader was confronted with these truths, he responded, "Well, it was really more like 1%." That's still eight members of the body of Christ who were put through the wringer. Some of you probably remember this exchange, because THAT happened at Greasespot Cafe. When those leaders were confronted with the truth that Jesus said the pastor should watch out for 100% of his flock in Luke 15:4, out came the old chestnut, "that's in the gospels, and doesn't apply in our wonderful administration of grace!" They seemed to be WILLFULLY blind to the evidence of their senses and to the Word of God. Where did this blindness come from? The first step down the slippery slope was in PFAL when Wierwille told us that the Bible doesn't contradict itself. So there we sat in PFAL with our Biles on our laps, the contradictions in our faces, and Wierwille tells us, "Those aren't REAL contradictions; they're only APPARENT contradictions. Who are you gonna believe?.. ME or your lying eyes?" So we were trained to ignore the evidence of our senses if it disagreed with Wierwille's private interpretation. And in a section of PFAL where Wierwille was stressing the importance of getting "to whom it is addressed" correct, he used Romans 9-11 as an example and LIED about "to whom it is addressed", all in the name of resolving the "apparent" contradiction between Romans 8:37-39 and Romans 11:20&21. (There is no contradiction between Romans 8 and Romans 11. There was a contradiction between what Romans 11 says and Wierwille's desire to be highminded.) So we were trained to ignore critical thinking if it led to a conlusion other than the one Wierwille wanted to promote. We were trained to ignore the evidence of our senses, and to ignore critical thought, all because we bought Wierwille's lie that the Bible doesn't contradict itself. And we literally "bought" it. That training took hold in a person's life to roughly the same extent that they invested their life in promoting PFAL. Most of the people who went through TWI were not ultimately driven to abandon reality, but the people who identified their LIVES with PFAL, the people who sold out to Wierwille, have made a break with reality that is seemingly irreparable short of divine intervention. A person who makes a habit of rationalizing away the things that God has said cannot avoid coming to believe in his heart that he knows MORE than God knows. A person who habitually defines God in terms of what He usually will not do comes to believe in his heart the he can actually tell God what He can and CANNOT do. I'm sorry if that offends anybody, but it's exactly what Psalm 36:1-4 means. It's exactly what Job 42:1-7 means. If the Bible doesn't contradict itself, then what are we to make of these verses? Do we REALLY want to try rationalizing them away? The emperor has no clothes. The Bible DOES contradict itself. Saying it does not is a scam that can deprive us of our senses and our reason. So, what are the options? Either God can somehow communicate truth through contradictions, or the Bible is not God-breathed. As I shocked the freshman and sophomores by saying in the History and Literature of the Old Testament class that I took this last spring, I DO NOT believe that Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so! I trust the Bible because the Lord who loves me led me to it. Hebrews 1:1&2 doesn't tell us that God speaks to us in these last days through dead ink, on dead paper, in dead languages. It says He speaks to us through His Son! Wierwille taught us that the written Word takes the place of the absent Christ. Christ is ALIVE and the things He teaches have integrity. But He HAS used contradictions, like Zen kaons, to lead me into deeper truths. It's not secret knowledge. He'll do it for anybody who's willing to consider "Garsh, that's a cool way to look at it! Why didn't I think of that!?!" There's more to consider, but that's all for tonight. God bless you all! I love you. Steve

When I asked you to expand your argument, I wasn't using it in the sense of a fight. I was using it in the sense of classical discourse. It was a probative question, not an invitation to rhetorical combat. Thank you for telling me more about what you meant! Love, Steve

This fall I'm starting to work on a master's degree in theological studies. I'm going to focus all my electives on the Greek language. That will me give accreditation to teach in a classical or interdenominational school, and a subject that's in demand. You can never find enough good Greek teachers! The Anderson University School of Theology has a track for a master's of divinity, designed as an interdenominational program for training people who want to become pastors. When the recruiter asked me if I might be interested in that program, I told him, "No thanks. Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt. Gave it to Goodwill!" He was very understanding, and laughed. I took that as a good sign. Love, Steve

On page 109 of The Word's Way Wierwille wrote, "In studying the books of I and II Samuel, I and II Kings and I and II Chronicles, one occasionally finds what seem to be contradictory accounts of the same man or incident. Careful research of these comparable records soon discloses a shift in viewpoint from one account to its counterpart in another Old Testament book. The books of Samuel and Kings are written from a human viewpoint, man's point of view. The books of Chronicles, on the other hand, are written from God's point of view, from the vantage point of spiritual power. Man's point of view will simplify life to apparent, overt actions, but God, understanding the spiritual forces at work in the world, goes beneath the surface and points out the spiritual aspects which bring about man's destiny." Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. In this case, Wierwille ALMOST... almost but not quite... finds an acorn. Wierwille HAS to write "what seems to be contradictory accounts" because even a cursory reading reveals that the accounts ACTUALLY DO contradict each other. Weirwille wrote "Careful research... soon discloses..." What careful research? What specific evidence does the research use? How does the research use that evidence to present an argument for its hypothesis? Did Wierwille really do any research, or did he just write this to leave the impression "I've got the answers!" Wierwille wrote, "...a shift in viewpoint from one account to its counterpart in another Old Testament book." But the truth is, there are contradictory accounts within the SAME book. For instance, I Samuel 16:14-23 presents one account of how David first came to Saul's attention, while I Samuel 17:1-55 gives a different, contradictory account of how David became known to Saul. How did the contradictory accounts come to be in the same book? We have first to remember that nearly everything in the Bible was originally composed and transmitted orally, sometimes possibly for generations, before it was put into written form, and the principles that define consistency for oral material are different from the principles that define consistency for written material. And oral material is not like a book, that sharply defines what is and what is not in it. There were many different stories circulating about various things. When the redactors started putting that oral information into written form, they had to decide which stories (sometimes called "pericopes") they were going to include and which ones they were going to leave out. They found contradictory stories about the same event, like how Saul first met David. The redactors could have resolved the "apparent" contradictions by leaving one of the stories out. But they didn't flatter themselves that they knew as much as God. They regarded each of the contradictory stories as equally inspired by God. They did not try to tell God what He could and could not do. They respected the truth that God can speak from different perspectives, perspectives which are contradictory, to communicate an extra-dimensional truth. And by golly, the extra-dimensional truth communicated by the contradictions between the stories of how Saul met David is something that the Holy Spirit has not yet integrated for me! It might be one of those things that only Jesus needed to know. Love, Steve

Sometimes your intransigence baffles me, Geisha. When I disagree with your interpretation of the Bible, you tell me to pray before I read it. When I suggest that people pray before they read the Bible, somehow it turns into an appeal for secret knowledge. What am I supposed to pray? "Please, Oh Holy Spirit, make me understand this exactly the same way Geisha understands it?" :unsure: What are we to make of Ephesians 3:14,17b-18? "14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... "17b ... that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, "18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth and height:" Four dimensions, Geisha, FOUR! When I suggested that the gospels could give us five dimensions, I was only speculating based on the analogy of depth perception, but since then, I remembered these verses. Paul gives us only FOUR, but that is still extra-dimensional! How does the Holy Spirit do that? I dunno. But it isn't secret knowledge. Paul wants us to comprehend these four dimensions along with ALL the saints! Isn't "Jesus [a limited man, like as we are, yet without sin] is Lord [a function of unlimited divinity]" a contradictory statement, or "contrasting" if you prefer. I Corinthians 8:6 integrates this contradiction perfectly, in my opinion, but only because I stumbled on the Stoic definition of "tension," which was common knowledge to Paul and his readers, but has not been widely recognized since the 200s AD. The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was developed to resolve this very contradiction. If I were to accept the conventional understanding of the Trinity, then wouldn't it imply that God automatically has three different points of view? Would God be "contradicting" Himself if The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost each presented things from His own point of view? If God speaks from only one point of view, then whose is it?.. the Father's, the Son's or the Holy Ghost's? You write "All ocular biology aside..." Why should we set all ocular biology aside? Psalm 139:14 says "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are they works, and that my soul knoweth right well." God is as much the author of ocular biology as He is of the Bible. Perhaps MORE so. God designed the mechanisms of depth perception. You wrote "...isn't how we perceive God and approach scripture really a matter of the heart? An eye can see everything but itself." Jeremiah 17:9 says "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Why is the heart deceitful above all? Because the heart can see everything but itself. That's why Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the living Word of God, not the ink on the paper, but the extra-dimensional understanding the Holy Spirit gives, is the critic of the thoughts and intents of our hearts! That's why Jeremiah 17:10 goes on to say, "I the LORD search the heart..." That's why David says "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" in Psalm 139:23,24. That's why Proverbs 4:23 tells us to be very careful about what we put into our hearts, because everything that comes out of it is going to appear to be equally good, and equally clean, no matter how vile and disgusting it is in actuality. No thanks, I'll exercise judgment and take the leading of the Holy Spirit any day over the desperate wickedness of my own heart! Love, Steve

Good stuff, waysider! In the archery class I took forty-some-odd years ago to fulfill a phys-ed requirement, I learned that, even though I am left-handed, my right eye is dominant. So I had to shoot my bow right-handed in order to aim properly. I spent four years on a submarine. Things were so boring there, that I taught myself to make my thumb appear to move back and forth without shutting either eye. I taught my brain to change which eyeball it was looking out of! I can't do it so well, now, because I haven't practiced in decades. Who knows, socks? You say God is teaching us all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. That was after I called on God to help me in the name of Jesus Christ, and He started teaching me how to change the things that were in my heart. Maybe God was teaching me while I killed time playing with which eye I was looking out of! Love, Steve

Socks - I appreciate your thoughtfulness! You wrote, "I'd agree with Pat that what the two eyes see isn't contradictory by definition - they don't lead to logically opposite conclusions." I suggest you repeat the experiment of looking at you extended thumb, first through one eye, and then through the other. How can you draw the logical conclusion from these two images alone that your thumb is not actually in two different places? The SECOND definition of "contradiction" in The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) is in part "a proposition, statement or phrase that asserts or implies both the truth and falsity of something." The THIRD definition is in part, "a logical inconguity." The FIRST definition is "act or an instance of contradicting." If we search farther, we find that "contradict" is a compound of "diction," meaning "to speak," and "contra," which means "1: against: contrary: contrasting" and "2: pitched below normal bass." So... "contradiction" does not automatically mean by definition "leading to opposite logical conclusions." Can it be true to say that our eyes send contrasting signals to our brains? If so, then our eyes can be said to send contradictory signals to our brains. Can God, at various places, write from differing points of view, therefor offering contrasting, or contradictory information that the Holy Spirit can integrate to form an extra-dimensional understanding? Do you see how "God cannot contradict Himself" restricts God to a single point of view?.. a restriction more stringent than we require of ourselves! Love, Steve

If your hypothesis is sound, Pat, can it be used to explain the magic eye illusion? If so, how? I don't know what you mean, cman. Could you please expand your argument. Love, Steve

Our eyeballs send signals to our brains about the locations of objects on a 2-dimensional plane. The signals contradict each other. They say that the same object is at different places on a 2-dimensional plane. Our brains do NOT resolve these apparent contradictions. They integrate the contradictory information to produce extra-dimensional images. I say the images are "extra-dimensional" because the brain takes two sets of contradictory information about spatial locations in two dimensions, and achieves perception of a third dimension. Is a contradiction automatically a lie? No it is not! To "contradict" simply means to "speak against". Is either eyeball lying when their signals speak against each other? They are each telling the truth from a different viewpoint. Their contradictory signals are integrated into a higher-dimensional understanding. Now we can very easily test the contradictions our eyeballs are sending to our brains. Extend you hand out to arm's length, with the thumb pointing upward. Close one eye and mark the location of your thumb against some object in the reasonable distance. Now, without moving your thumb or your head, close the eye you were looking through, and open the other. Notice how it seems that your thumb moves, even though you have not moved it. OMG! Where is my thumb REALLY at!?! I decide that I cannot live with this contradiction, so I take to dressing like a pirate and wear a patch over one of my eyes. I have resolved the apparent contradiction, but in the process, I have also lost my depth perception, and become a very unreliable driver (except by using my memory to reconstruct the missing contradiction from other visual information, such as planar perspective or relative size perspective, or even aerial perspective in the case of objects so distant that the intervening air changes the perceived colors of the objects). No detached observer can honestly deny that the four gospels contradict each other. I know my mind had been pickled so long in "the Bible contains no contradictions" that I didn't even notice how the gospels contradict each other. I didn't compare them. I just automatically assumed that everything in them could be harmonized if we put enough effort into the project. But when I DID start comparing them, without automatically assuming that they could be harmonized, I began to see contradictions that CANNOT be resolved. When we prayerfully consider what we read in the gospels, as Geisha suggests, then the Holy Spirit can integrate their contradictory information to produce an extra-dimensional understanding of who Jesus was, and what He did, and by extension, who WE are, and what WE are to do. How many dimensions? If we accept written information as being linear, then each of the gospels accounts would present a 1-dimensional image. Since there are four gospels, then an extra dimensional understanding would be at least 5-dimensional. Now that's just speculation, but what might we call such an extra-dimensional understanding? Perhaps "spiritual enlightenment"? Perhaps "the living Word of God"? The signals from our eyeballs contradict each other. They "speak against" each other, yet neither one is lying. Each signal is "true" from the viewpoint of the particular eyeball. Our brains integrate the contradictory information to transcend what our eyeballs are telling us. Just so, the gospels contradict each other, not because the writers were lying, but because the information each gospel presents about who Jesus is and what He did is "true" from the theological viewpoint of its particular writer. The understanding achieved when the Holy Spirit integrates the contradictions transcends the understanding we receive from any one of the gospels by itself. BUT... if we "resolve the apparent contradictions" the way Wierwille taught in PFAL, it's like putting a pirate patch over one eye, only instead of losing our physical depth perception, we lose our comprehension of the integrity of the living Word of God! And Wierwille was right about that. The integrity of the Word IS always at stake! People and organizations can sell the resolution of apparent contradictions for money. NOBODY can sell the integration of contradictions to produce transcendence. Only the Holy Spirit can do THAT! So... those things being understood... I would judge the statement "There are no contradictions in the living Word of God" to be a true statement. I would judge the statement "There are no contradictions in the Bible" to be a false statement. I would judge the statement "God does not lie" to be a true statement. I would judge the statement "God cannot contradict Himself" to be a false statement. The book of Job is about why bad things happen to good people. The LORD never gives an answer to that question in the book. I hazard to guess that proof-texts can be found at other places in the Old Testament for every one of the ideas Job's miserable comforters brought up, yet in Job 42:7 the LORD told Eliphaz the Temanite, "My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath." What did Job speak of the LORD? "I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee" (Job 42:2) How did the miserable comforters kindle God's wrath? They were telling Job what God could and could not do based on their resolutions of the apparent contradictions in the Bible. Job's insight into the truth was that God can do whatever He wants to do, even if that entails suffering for the innocent. And suffering for the innocent was exactly what God's will entailed for Jesus Christ! Here's an example of how there are contradictions in the gospels. This is one that the Holy Spirit has not yet integrated in my understanding. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, we become children of God at our resurrections, when we receive our inheritances as promised in Ezekiel 37. Yet in the gospel of John, and in Paul, we became children of God when we received the gift of the Holy Spirit that was promised in Joel 2:28-32, the earnest of our inheritances. I know what John wrote regarding this contradiction in his first letter, chapter 3, "1 Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. "2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. "3 And every man that hat this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Has the Holy Spirit yet integrated these things in my understanding. No He has not. Am I going to resolve this apparent contradiction by taking one position and trying to rationalize away the other? No I am not. If I did do that, I would short circuit the Holy Spirit's permission to integrate them in my understanding. I would be flattering myself that I know as much as God. I would be flattering myself in my own eyes so much that I wouldn't recognize my own errors, or even care. "The Bible contains no contradictions" IS one of the biggest lies perpetrated by TWI and some of its offshoots, and it IS one of the root lies that enabled all of the other depradations that those organizations have committed. Love, Steve

What reason do people have for saying the Bible doesn't contradict itself? Is it because we've been taught that the Bible is God-breathed, and God cannot contradict Himself? To judge that God cannot contradict Himself is to reduce God to the level of man. It is to put God in a box. God can do ANYTHING He dang well pleases! That's why HE is God and I am not. To recognize that God can do anything He dang well pleases, and I cannot, IS the fear of the Lord! God CAN contradict Himself! And He does so every time we draw breath. God said "...in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die." If God had not contradicted Himself, we would all have been kaput long ago. God contradicts Himself EVERY TIME He extends mercy! Do you wonder where mercy went to in TWI? ...the Bible doesn't contradict itself! Do you wonder how the leaders of CES tied themselves up in such senseless knots? ...the Bible doesn't contradict itself! I can make God be what I want Him to be, and do what I want Him to do, if I can make the Bible say what I want it to say by rationalizing its contradictions. That is NOT the fear of the Lord! Psalm 36 (NIV) "1 An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. There is no fear of God before his eyes. "2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin. "3 The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful: he has ceased to be wise and to do good. "Even on his bed he plots evil, he commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong." No, we're not supposed to FEAR God! Heavens, no! Otherwise, the Bible would contradict itself. It would all fall apart. We're just supposed to RESPECT Him, just as we would an old uncle that we no longer have to obey! Love, Steve

If we look at the title of this thread, it is "One of the biggest Lies from Hell TWI and (some) Offshoots Perpetrated" I can't speak for all of the offshoots, but I was very familiar with CES, as was Tzaia. CES NEVER propogated the doctrine that sex outside of marriage would heal a young unprotected and vulnerable woman, nor did they teach that all the women belong to the king. If anything, CES erred on the side of legalistic restriction when it came to ANY physical expression of affection. And TWI NEVER got into the debacle of personal prophecy, so there were no dreams of spiders coming out of peoples' noses there. Notice the word "and" in Tzaia's title. It is a logical connector. It includes both TWI and (some?) Offshoots. If a lie was not being perpetrated by BOTH TWI and (some?) Offshoot, then that lie falls outside the category of lies Tzaia is addressing. The way "the Bible contains no contradictions" was taught by both TWI AND CES was a lie from hell used to persuade people to switch off their critical thinking as they listened to Wierwille's teachings (and the "baby" CES did not "throw out with the bath water") and as they read the Bible in light of those teachings. All of the other lies we bought into, the lies that wreaked so much havoc in our lives, we bought into because we bought into this one first. Love, Steve

WHAT! You mean you have to exercise judgment to figure out a simple statement like that!?! Oh, how happy for us that the Bible interprets itself because there are no contradictions in it! Otherwise, we might have to exercise our own judgment in interpreting it too!?! Love, Steve

I know CES had serious problems with theodicy as well. They took Wierwille's idiom of permission to the rediculous extreme of teaching that God cannot have foreknowledge. They said that God could make amazing predictions, such as, that the soldiers who crucified Jesus would play dice for his clothes 1,000 years ahead of the time when they actually did it, because there are certain deterministic factors of which God is aware, but we are not. If there are factors THAT determinative, then there is no such thing as free will! Isaiah 45:7 says, "I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." CES blew that verse off as a figure of speech, without telling which figure it was, or what it was supposed to mean. In trying to absolve God of all responsibility for evil, they created a very irresponsible God! The statement, "the Bible doesn't contradict itself" begs the question: What do you mean by "the Bible"? There have been a number of major canons for what we call the Bible: the Jewish canon at the time the Septuagint was translated, the later Jewish canon that excluded the Maccabees among other things, the Orthodox canon, the Roman Catholic canon and the Protestant canon. There have been innumerable minor variations as to which books are included, and there are also different versions of the same book in some different canons. There are some books that are considered apocryphal, deuterocanonical or non-canoniacal, depending upon the tradition you are looking at. Several writers of cononical New Testament books quote Enoch as if they considered it God-breathed, yet Enoch did not make it into the canon. I think Geisha is right about praying for the Lord to reveal to you what He wants YOU to learn before you read, but I think it's a big mistake to think the Lord will teach identical understandings to different people, because the Lord has different jobs for each of us to do! That's why James contradicts Paul. The Lord had different jobs for James and Paul to do! According to James Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, the single unifying factor in the whole New Testament is the statement, "Jesus is Lord." Yet this statement in itself contains a contradiction: Jesus, a limited man, is Lord, a function of unlimited divinity. The doctrine of the trinity was developed in an attempt to resolve this tension. Whether or not it does so successfully is a matter of opinion. Love, Steve

To say that the Bible is either ALL true or ALL a lie is a false dichotomy. And it's not just a problem for ex-Wayfers. When college freshmen and sophomores are exposed to what the Bible actually says, instead of the pabulum they were taught in Sunday school, it's a REAL shock to their systems, and too many of them turn to athiesm and agnosticism as a result. In my opinion. Love, Steve

@Geisha - Tzaia wrote "ONE of the biggest", not just "THE biggest." And it was! If we hadn't bought the lie that TWI could give us the answers, why should we have fallen for any of their other perpetrations? It well may be your opinion that they did many other things that were more terrible. Does that mean we all have to hold that opinion? Are we too supposed to speak the same things, like in TWI? If somebody says something that's different from your opinion, then you might do well to consider WHY their opinion may be different, instead of just off-handedly rejecting it. Love, Steve

There are tensions in the Bible that God deliberately wrote into it. The only way for an individual to resolve those tensions is to DECIDE what he or she is going to believe. When TWI said there are no contradictions in the Bible, they said they were going to resolve those tensions for us. We wouldn't have to be responsible for our own believing. If we just believed what Wierwille said, everything would fit like a hand in a glove, we wouldn't have to DECIDE anything, and the tensions would be gone. Yes, the idea that Wierwille's interpretation was inerrant was one of the biggest lies perpetrated. Notice that Tzaia didn't say it was THE biggest. She said it was ONE of the biggest. It pays to read what's written! The claim that there are no contradictions in the Bible, and the offer of an inerrant interpretation, were the intellectual equivalent of love-bombing. Waysider - My brother taught music. He loved the Rite of Spring, and always took great pleasure in recounting to his students the details of the riot that took place when it was first performed. Some of the musicians had to escape through the windows of the music hall! Love, Steve

I hold the same view, Galen, but probably not for the same reason you do. The Old Testament was written for the specific benefit of ONE, and ONLY ONE human being. There was ONE, and ONLY ONE human being who NEEDED to fully understand the Old Testament, and that ONE person was young Jesus of Nazareth! Jesus of Nazareth had to learn just like every other human being, but He couldn't afford to learn by trial and error. The Old Testament describes what being drunk and engaging in prostitution and adultery are like so that Jesus wouldn't have to learn those things the hard way. Every book of the Old Testament teaches something about the Messiah, because that was the only way Jesus could learn those things before He received the Holy Spirit at His baptism. Even so, I don't think the information began to come together for young Jesus until after He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. And the Old Testament is NOT a happy book with a happy ending. It is a book about a God who makes all kinds of promises to the nation of Israel, and those promises fail to come to pass. This view of the OT is known to current scholarship as the Doomed History of the Deuteronomist. It is the story of a DOOMED humanity, and a DOOMED nation, and up until the Sunday morning when they found the empty tomb, a DOOMED Messiah! And apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we all still face DOOM with all our senses. It wasn't until after Peter recognized Jesus as the Messiah that Jesus began teaching about His own personal doom, and I don't think He fully came to grips with the truth that God the Father wanted Him to die until Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemene. I think the book of Job was very much on Jesus mind in that garden. This is the point I think Jesus learned about the Messiah from the book of Job: despite all the theologizing claptrap about God and suffering, the fear of the Lord comes down to this, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him..." (Job 13:15). Jesus trusted that God would raise Him from the dead, and that resurrection would be instrumental in God's fulfillment of all the other promises. So far, the only promises we've seen come to pass are the giving of the New Testament promised in Jeremiah 31, and the outpouring of Spirit promised in Joel 2:28-32. But Paul had this to say: "8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; "9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; "10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. "For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. "So then death worketh in us, but life in you. "13 We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; "14 Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. "15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God." (II Corinthians 4:8-15) We are STILL doomed in every respect, apart from our trust in the resurrection of the man Christ Jesus! Love, Steve

You picked the right word, waysider... INSANE! (which, btw, means "unclean") Love, Steve

I believe that the writing and the editing and the canonization of the Bible were inspired by God, but for His purposes, not for ours. I don't believe the Bible can be fruitfully understood without the leading of the Holy Spirit, that is to say, I don't think there's anything to be gained by trying to use human logic to make it mean things that WE want it to say, if God means something different. Among other things, the Bible is about life in this present evil age, and there are many things about life in this present evil age that are contradictory. Otherwise, what are we to make of the book of Ecclesiates? Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe!" Yet Ecclesiates 9:11 says, ...the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." If God had made the Bible fool proof, He would have defeated His own purposes, because He addressed it to a bunch of fools! Love, Steve

Here's some info about Momentus: http://ex-ces.faithweb.com/lortzmom.htm As for fear, it is NOT believing in reverse, it is NOT sand in the machinery of life, it DOES NOT always encase, enslave and bind. Fear is an emotional response God designed into our hormonal systems. Emotions are chemical signals that move us to do things. Different emotions move us to do different things. Joy moves us to offer praise. Compassion moves us to offer favor. Fear moves us to get into right relation with the object of the fear. The right relation with a rattlesnake is outside of striking distance. The right relation with the IRS is top have our filings accurate and on time, and our taxes paid up. The right relation with God is to humbly recognize that He is God and I am not. What He says is right is right, whether the thoughts and intents of my heart agree or not. The opposite of the fear of the Lord is arrogance. That's what Romans 11:20b means when it says, "Be not highminded but fear." Wierwille dedicated a great portion of PFAL to proving that Romans 11:20b could not possibly be directed to us, because Wierwille revelled in his arrogance, and he taight us to be arrogant also. John Lynn still does not realize how arrogant he is. Love, Steve

I retook an Old Testament class last semester, that I originally took about 42 years ago. There were a lot of freshmen and sophomores in the class who were straight out of Sunday school. Some of them came from literal inerrancy backgrounds. They had a lot of trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that the book of Job is a piece of fiction. One of them asked in class, "Is there anything we can actually read in the book of Job that tells us it's fiction?" So I googled "literary forms in the book of Job." One of the things I found is that the book of Job is very heavy on irony, a feature that doesn't show up in English as well as it does in Hebrew. Now one of the definitions of irony is to use words in such a way as to convey a meaning that is the opposite of their literal meaning. To say that there are no contradictions in the Bible denies God the use of irony in communcating His intended meaning. The point of the book of Job is not to tell us how to go from being victim to victor (though a certain party used it to teach how to become a victim OF Victor), but to show us that there is NO easy answer to the problem of human suffering. The idea that God made a bet with the adversary is PURELY a literary device to explain how the suffering came on Job without giving away the punchline of the book, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." We live in a state of tension between receiving the earnest of our inheritance and receiving the inheritance itself. For us, the Bible is FULL of contradictions, and to deny that is to succumb to the lust for certainty. Love, Steve

I love John. I attended his post-TWI home fellowship in Indianapolis for years. He allowed me to teach his fellowship when he was on the road. I was on the editorial staff of Dialogue. John performed our wedding. I no longer trust John. He teaches demonstrable error, regarding what is actually written in the Word, and refuses to respond to valid criticism. That's what "irresponsible" means. His leadership during the Momentus debacle destroyed marriages, sent people to hospital psych wards and resulted in suicides. He still blames those things on the weakness of the people who suffered, and not on his own foolishness ("foolishness" as in Galatians 3:1, "thoughtlessness"). Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things, because everything that comes out of a person's own heart seems right and clean to that person, whether it really is or not. Hebrews 4:12 says that the Word of God is the critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The thing that moves a person to submit the thoughts and intents of his or her heart to the criticism of the Word of God is the fear of the Lord. Wierwille was not afraid of being wrong before God. He just didn't care whether or not he was actually wrong. Wierwille taught us, including John Lynn, that we should not fear the Lord. Wierwille trained us that we do not accept the criticism of the Word. That is the major TWI error that John has not yet addressed. John Lynn has allowed himself to be deceived by his own heart. I love him as my brother in Christ, but I cannot trust his leadership, or the Biblical accuracy of the things he teaches. Love, Steve

What an intriguing passage of scripture! Nobody has ever gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven. What are we to make of that? And why, in this particular place, does He call Himself the Son of Man? At any rate, the phrase "from heaven" in the version you chose, geisha, is translated from ek tou ouranou, the very same phrase used in Acts 2:2 regarding the sound of a rushing, mighty wind. I wouldn't think the phase should be taken to mean that Jesus came out of the mouths of the apostles! Love, Steve

Bingo! Love, Steve

John W. Mauck has written a very instructive book entitled Paul On Trial. Mauck is a lawyer by profession, and he analyzes what can be known about Luke/Acts from the viewpoint of the Roman legal system. He makes a very persuasive argument that Luke/Acts was the brief written to present to the Roman magistrate during Paul's trial at Rome. I am inclined to accept his analysis. Love, Steve