T-Bone

Aren’t you thankful we have the freedom to think whatever we want

Yup! wierwille became the lens through which I viewed Christ…and when I was in TWI, how that worked in practice was exploring what the Bible says about Christ…only it wasn’t really exploring what the Bible says about Christ. Rather it was reading, listening, and watching what wierwille said... about Christ? Nope! I was trained to read, listen, and watch what wierwille said about “The Word” because – wierwille said - “The Word takes the place of the absent Christ.” In effect wierwille’s words take the place of the Bible – any Bible – any version, translation, ancient existing manuscripts, even lone verses scribbled on a Denny's napkin - anything - you name it! Actually, wierwille’s words take the place of the absent Bible…shame on you wierwille-fans. Do you know what's one of fundamentalist's favorite tricks ? To challenge you by asking "chapter and verse" . why is that tricky? because it's a handy way to prooftext - you ignore context and dismiss thoughtfulness....but true confessions - it comes in handy as a countermeasure when wierwille-fans start spouting off these claims of what God or Christ can and cannot do. Chapter and verse please. ~ ~ ~ ~ Have you ever played the telephone game? In other cultures, it may be called Chinese whispers. Chinese whispers (some Commonwealth English) or telephone (American English and Canadian English) is an internationally popular children's game. It is also called transmission chain experiments in the context of cultural evolution research and is primarily used to identify the type of information that is more easily passed on from one person to another… …Players form a line or circle, and the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the second person in the line. The second player repeats the message to the third player, and so on. When the last player is reached, they announce the message they heard to the entire group. The first person then compares the original message with the final version. Although the objective is to pass around the message without it becoming garbled along the way, part of the enjoyment is that, regardless, this usually ends up happening. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from that of the first player, usually with amusing or humorous effect. Reasons for changes include anxiousness or impatience, erroneous corrections, and the difficult-to-understand mechanism of whispering. From: Wikipedia: Chinese whispers ~ ~ ~ ~ Thinking of how I got an erroneous retelling of the gospel of Jesus Christ – wierwille had my ear - and unbeknownst to me he was a glory-hound incompetent plagiarist – so, I believed he was getting all this stuff from God and passing it on to me. Pseudo-Christian cult-leaders play a mean game of telephone. And the darndest thing in this telephone game – the cult-leader always calls collect. Wah Wah…I’m here all week folks.

uh oh - here comes the magical thinking sales pitch

You know, wierwille had a real flair for the dramatic in his obsession with the devil. It was obvious in the way he’d oversell his demonology whenever he gave a “spiritually insightful” narrative of any event.

You mean that’s not him pranking us by wrapping himself back up in his grave clothes? Seriously…Transcendence AND immanence …check it out

my notes from cultural background study Bible

who said he's absent? transcendence AND immanence - look into it

The accounts of Jesus’ temptation are irrelevant to wierwille’s obsession with devil spirits! Please define “churchianity”. I think wierwille let the devil rule his life. His seared conscience blinded by a self-righteous dance with the devil…read John 16 and Romans 8 then tell me who has overcome the world? Was wierwille a double agent? One could easily make the case that he pretended to act as a defender of the faith while in fact his ideology and bad behavior seems to indicate he acted on behalf of the enemy of our faith. Why does God have to wait for believing to "invite" Him into the devil's turf? Chapter and verse please. Once again, I have to remind the folks at home enjoying this lovely program – that YOU - Mike did not comment on the idiom of permission thread (that you kept asking about elsewhere) – YOU did not comment on anything I shared from the cultural background study Bible concerning the “divine council” narrative in the book of Job…is it just my imagination or do you have a habit of talking about stuff you know nothing about?

No sir, I was using a secular suffix…here’s a brief explanation I found online: 33 CE AD is actually a combination of two different schools of thought in dating time since the birth of Jesus Christ. CE means Common Era AD means Anno Domini, which is opposite of all time before Christ, in BC, meaning "before Christ." 33 is the somewhat controversial year of Christ's death, having been put to death at age 33. This gets a bit murky since there are some of the belief that Christ was born 3 BC -which even sounds odder when you think, Christ was born before Christ? The difference between CE and AD sounds like a religious one, and you wind up unearthing a lot of controversy over how the westernized world should count time, by Christ's birth, and the midievel latin Anno Domini meaning "year of our lord," or by a more secular term like Common Era -CE. this gets even more whacky when the Chinese calendar which may be some three and a half millenia older than ours, the gregorian calendar, and the Jewish calendar which is some 3700 years older. From: answers com: what does 33 CE AD mean?

Could this be the invisible Christ seated at the right hand of God?

Oldiesman, great answer to my questions!

we are social creatures entwined by a messy thing called life

Ever notice how much wierwille was fascinated with devil spirits…perhaps an unhealthy fascination… …and wierwille always seemed to talk up how much power and influence the devil has - almost as if he has way more power and influence than God must be something wrong with his scale of values.

Oh yeah - that reminds me - I noticed on the official idiom of permission thread that YOU kept asking about - you never said much after I shared the significance of ancient ideas and concepts from the cultural background study Bible. It seems like you bring stuff up for your own amusement to see how much of a distraction you can cause

Eph. 1:3 God has ALREADY BLESSED us with ALL spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus who could ask for anything more? maybe a certain cult-leader would who liked to push his more than abundant life materialistic beeswax

But none of those authors expressed it the way YOU did you're lumping your interpretation in with their narrative…YOU weren’t there

Jesus also said the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And the Lord was working WITH his followers

But it doesn’t say that Paul said the light was shining on him and those with him but there’s Nothing to indicate the others dared to look into the blinding light like Paul did perhaps the others looked away or shielded their eyes

Man that is so 33 CE…you have been gone awhile

God & Jesus were not doing a good job of protecting - what about Stephen? What about all the Christians that were harmed and killed by Saul before he was converted? What about all the Christian martyrs from then up to and including present day?

Congrats Mike – you’ve got a new game to market: Where's Jesus? Look for it wherever these other "find" games are sold This one would go great with the Blue Book

Welcome to Grease Spot, fredgrant! Great articles – thanks for sharing the hyperlinks. That 2nd article - I really liked the parts about correcting misconceptions and connecting with others by finding common ground – great stuff to remember in discussions with people of various belief systems

You’re really asking me why I don’t see YOUR point of view. I don’t think that’s a fair question BECAUSE - - -what makes you think YOUR viewpoint is right or that it is the only viewpoint that matters? Consider Luke 13 1 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Did Jesus say the reason accidents, tragedies, cruel acts of punishment, killings, etc. happen is because it’s God’s judgement on especially bad people? What does your VERY GOOD biblical study software program say about those passages in Luke?

I like simple I’m not much of an athlete and not very competitive but I do enjoy playing a game when a game is laid back enough, so it really doubles as a good excuse to visit with friends. I have some friends who are real sportsman - - into hunting and fishing, and they love to take this city boy out and show me the ropes. I can tell they get a kick out of teaching – and laughing at my ineptness – but it’s all good-natured and we enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes sitting around in the late morning and the dove aren’t active or the fish aren’t biting – we get to visit and talk about…whatever. To me that’s more enjoyable than the sport itself.

cool picture Nathan! growing up in New York I would often see adults playing bocce at parks