Eagle

Exie, The last chapter is directly related to the first chapter. When debating the Da Vinci Code, my conclusion to the research into Genesis and the Fall and Redemption of Man tied in very nicely with my conclusion on the topic of the "Lamb of the First Year" which was one of many ways I disputed the Da Vinci Code. My take on the Lamb of the First Year is very different from TWI, offshoots or anyone else. I'll give you a hint: it is related to a dairy farm term that is as old as one can remember. Universities didn't know, but older farmers that took care of animals did. It bites the head off of the premise to the Da Vinci Code. Hope that helps. dmiller, that was a great saying you concluded with! Eagle

Thanks, polar bear. Yes, my picture is on the back cover, a cropped version of the one on my new website. Hi Exie. No, not a conservative talk show host, just a wanna-be conservative talk show host! Thanks, T-bone, for your order! And thank you, Washingtonweather, coolchef, Belle, markomalley, templelady, dmiller, and Invisible Dan! The book argues doctrine only and doesn't touch on VPWs or LCMs personal scandals and such. I even gave TWI somewhat of a break in the introduction, suggesting a little that perhaps they were lightening up, but not believing they really would to any full extent. I mentioned TWIs legalism issues. BUT, the main thing to me was researching and debating early PFAL doctrines, major ones. I also wrote on non-Way issues because I was defending the gospels and did take on the Da Vinci Code. It is available in hardcover, too, but the link was to the paperback because it was cheaper for everybody who wanted to purchase it. Since I can mention it here, the book has cost me virtually all my friends from TWI days, most in splinter groups now. I was upset about that but stuck to publishing it anyway. I don't mind if people choose to stick to the old beliefs, but it hurt my wife when they all just stopped inviting us to functions and all communication stopped. I wasn't out to get VPW, just state after years of research where I thought he was incorrect. It is the second book to come out about the Way from an ex-Wayfer, the first, Karl Kahler in The Cult That Snapped. He took on the behavior of TWI and I took on the doctrine. If new people read these two books, they will not join TWI. I've heard of others here at GS thinking about writing one. I hope they do. The information...is incredible. Noticed I had a typo on "Six Denials" in my post...sorry about that. But now I can't edit it. Not sure why. I hope this book helps those who read it. It is exhaustive at 557 pages, and there is plenty of the chapter and verses that my "opposition" demanded when debating a TWI doctrine. Again, all, many thanks! Eagle (Stephen J. Spencer)

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A while back there was a thread asking if anyone had written a book. I replied that I had and would let everyone know when the book is ready for ordering. Well, it is ready. The updated version is available on Amazon.com. The title of the book is The Genesis Pursuit: The Lost History of Jesus Christ. The author is Stephen J. Spencer (Eagle...) http://www.genesispursuit.com Chief among debated doctrines are TWIs Fall of Man and Original Sin, The Seed of the Serpent, The Unforgivable Sin, who "Lucifer" really was, The "Four" Crucified Theory, The "Six" Debnials by Peter Theory, explaining the discrepancy on the Woman Caught in Adultery, Christians being Possessed, The Lamb of the First Year, and the Da Vinci Code, a throw in because the rebuttal to it matches up with the Genesis research. If you are interested, it is on Amazon.com. The actual URL to Amazon for the book is: The Genesis Pursuit: The Lost History of Jesus Christ God's Best to you all. Eagle

I bow down to Ron G... I tried doing pushups. When I was younger and in the Army, I did 95 once. I did 20 about two months ago and was really proud of it...all the way to the doctors office who gave me a shot in my butt and one anti-inflammatory and one pain killer prescription. Being 54 had its disadvantages, I guess.

The HB HG and Da Vinci Code are based on entirely fictional data. The books both make it appear as if it is real. Very faulty. It doesn't surpise me what was found in Wikipedia, though I find that source questionable a lot. But not this time.

I thought it hilarious that those that told us to believe big enough to tithe, received the tithe. Those on staff were given salaries based on their expenses, then ten percent above that so that they could tithe. In the real world, the employer doesn't care about your tithe or giving. You get as little as possible. In order to tithe, and then later at 15%, I often went without food, shelter and drove junk cars. I obeyed this tithe. When I suffered financially like this, I was blamed for not giving to God or tithing. When I proved my tithe and beyond, then the blame went to my "faulty" believing. I completely agree with dmiller.

No problems with pot or drugs in my area, but pre-marital sex was rampant. Can you say "Dude?"

Rootin' for the Colts. Da Bears have their work cut out for them. I think they need Ditka.

Wow. Good question. We at home look at the news and try to figure out what rape is outside of the obvious description. Let's take one at a time. 1. Two underaged teens having sex is not rape when consensual. Just stupid and risky behavior. 2. The underaged girl there turns 16 or therabout when he turns 18. They have had sex before as underaged teens. Turning 18 makes him a legal adult ans she is still legally a child. The definition is that a child does not have the maturity to decide if she wants sex or not, therefore legally becomes 'rape'. However, looking at the circumstances, there is hardly a difference in years. I think the 18 year old should be busted as an adult for inappropriate behavior with a minor, but not rape, nor a sex crime. The girl should also be busted as a juvenile for inappropriate behavior. But no rape and no sex crime. They are only two years apart for crying out loud. 3. If a person gets the other person drunk with the intent to have sex, it depends on the person he/she is getting drunk. If a man asks a girl to have sex, she says no, then he buys her a bunch of drinks as "friends" let say, she gets drunk, loosens up, then he has sex with her when in her normal frame of mind she would not have done this, this to me is like the date rape drug. I say he could be charged with rape, though this is too hard to prove. The lady got drunk of her own free will and no one can really tell if she would have changed her mind otherwise. I say no, no rape, because the woman put herself in that position. However, if the woman is passed out drunk and can't even say no in her drunk state, that is rape. 4. Having sex with a mentally challenged person could be rape depending on the relationship with that person. If the other person really likes or loves that person, it is not rape. A one night stand may be rape. Most sexual assaults on the mentally challenged are in institutions. Those are all rape. 5. Standards are needed on sexual behavior in professions, like physicians, psychiatry (especially), or MINISTERS. If there is sex going on during the professional relationship, that is possible rape of a fragile person. If the professional relationship is over, the patient can see the professional in a personal relationship. That is not rape. If a physician, a psychiatrist, psychologist, or minister or priest have sex during the professional relationship, it is rape. Period. It should be punished by law. In My Humble Opinion Of Course. In these days we have too many "sex offenders" that are listed as such because they were 18 or 19 having sex with a 16 or 17 year old girl, though. These should not be sex crimes. The law should use more common sense. Hope this helps. I don't know anyone in these situations, however.

I'm used to below zero weather and consider temperatures in the 40s to be T-shirt weather. Then again, I was raised in Massachusetts, and it was not uncommon to see a lot of people speeding on ice on streets. Not kidding about this. I suppose if I went to Florida in the summer, the heat would kill me as native Floridians look and wonder what the big deal is.

Hey Dot: THAT tops the bully list...a serial killer. That pales mine. Johnny Lingo, the knockout was mentioned at the beginning of the thread, first post is mine, I started the topic. A kid kept kicking me in high school and wouldn't stop. I never had stuck up for myself much, then in my senior year at this time, I lost it, throwing him against lockers and hitting him in the face to knock him into a classroom and over a desk where he hit his head. He was knocked out that way and was out for a couple of minutes. I just couldn't hack it anymore. I even felt guilty about it later. Thinking back, I shouldn't have felt guilty.

Bye, Bye Mister TWI Walked a mountain to the Fountain but the Fountain was dry... And good ole boys looked around and then sighed... Saying this will be the day that we die... This will be the day that we die....... Did you write the Book of the Fog And did you bow down to the Man of God... Every collateral tells me so... (Someone else pick up...I'm losing it...)

Christian Heritage Online, the ex-Way site since June 2001 where I wrote articles about the Way, V.P. Wierwille, (including a popular one called "Drawing Swords") has closed. I am in the process of opening another website promoting books including my own and am considering the idea (just considering) of opening a publishing company. The website closed tonight after getting about 15,000 hits a year. I'll give notice when the new website is up. God Bless. Eagle

I wrote a couple of emails to one couple who are in offshoots. They responded twice, then would never respond again. I wrote letters to one asking if I could fellowship again with TWI in her fellowship (years ago) and got a blistering letter condemning me for turning my back on the Word and LCM. I wrote a letter back telling her I changed my mind about fellowshipping with TWI and her.

I should have hired you, Johnny Lingo, as my bodyguard in high school. I could have learned a thing or two about learning to stick up for myself until it got so bad I knocked a kid out. I would have rathered you knocked that kid out and I paid you. No kidding...really! I believe in that philosophy now. I teach my grandkids to stick up for themselves in school and if it is a teacher...to let ME know. Eagle

I had no idea we could be dropped from "Advanced Class Grad status." LOL! I was an Advanced Class grad of '86 at Emporia. I still have my diploma from the class...am I supposed to RETURN IT? Oh my God...I am also an Intermediate Class Grad! That's where I learned to use the manifestations! Oh my God! I can't manifest anymore! I've lost the power! Oh my God! I am a PFAL grad! I learned to speak in tongues there and I have a diploma! Do I have to give the diploma back? Oh my God! I just felt the POWER sucked right out of me! I can't speak in tongues now! So how do I get it all back?! Do I insult a new believer! Reprove someone on the street! Commit adultery? Will God recognize me then? Then there's the Christian Family and Sex class...well...they can take that back. Hey, isn't it appropriate, that if they take all this stuff "back", that we get our money BACK?! Wave the American flag!

Linda, exie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you sad. I hope I didn't bring back bad memories from your past. If I did, I apologize. As far as the bully story, I'm long over it, I guess. I talk about it from time to time. I have never seen those people since high school. I guess I should attend a reunion. I attended my wife's reunion. I think I should forgive them all by now. Well, God bless them. We were all young.

The Advanced Class Special 1992 was by far the worst...legalism rampant, Corps turning each other in for menial and made up offenses, being reproved over a cup of coffee, being chewed out because I worked 48 straight hours then took a break from a class to sleep two hours, LCM saying he would never change the PFAL class and then did...LCM talking about a couple who disagreed with him changing the Advanced Class. The weather turning windy and stormy...mean looks for no reason at all...it was a place turned into Helll. The second worst...Christain Family and Sex class...VPW discussing the size and shapes of penises and graphic description of sexual techniques...and a porn video after class to "loosen us up about sex." Maybe that was the worst...no...close...The Advanced Class Special 92 is the tops of the worst list to me.

It was asked of me if I ever bullied anyone in high school. The answer was no. I was bullied, however. From the first grade until the summer after my junior year I was especially small and underweight to include the girls. I was a target by bullies, jocks, and even a few cheerleaders. I am not kidding about this. The typical thing, books knocked out of my hand, attacked on the playground by more than one, all for just being small. I also did well in my grades. For some reason, that was not good, either. There was even one "bully" female teacher that thought I was cheating getting good grades and took me outside in the hallway and slammed me against a wall, then back-handed me across my face. I had a bruise on my left eye and a bloody nose. (When that happened all the rest of the kids in class were scared out of their wits, too.) She threatened me and told me that the bruise came from a fight (didn't it?). I agreed, but after school went home and told my parents the teacher did it, who then disbelieved me and grounded me for lying about being in a fight. Later I would deliberately get answers wrong on some tests to keep from getting accused of cheating and getting beaten. The school bullies picked up where she left off, until the summer of my junior year, I suddenly had this incredible growth spurt, so fast I was dizzy and tripped a lot and walked into walls by accident. I had three or four changes of sizes in three months. My parents, who used to take me to doctors for being small, suddenly were startled, seeing me hit puberty at 16 and grow like a tree. For three months I had drowziness and headaches, then it went away. I went from 5'2" by the end of my junior year to 5' 8" when school started and 2 1/2 more inches by Christmas of my senior year to finally arrive at 5'10 1/2. By the end of my senior year I was 6 feet tall. I was skinny, but then found myself taller than most, including more than half the jocks. The bullies of the school would go looking for me and would walk right by me not recognizing me at all. When they "found" me, I turned expecting to get into a fight (for the usual no reason at all) but the three guys (there were three) looked at me, then instead of pummeling me, turned and walked away. There was one last bully who refused to let up and kept kicking at my butt with his foot in the hallway coming out of class. I was just trying to get away from him, but the more I ignored it, the worse it got. The vice principal came around the corner and saw me three times asking him to "quit it" and when he did it again, I turned and grabbed his collar and threw him against a locker on one side of the hall and then grabbed him again and threw him against another locker on the other side. I found my fist hitting him square in the jaw sending him back into the classroom we left and he fell over a chair and hit his head. He was knocked out cold. The vice principal came and got the school nurse but he came to. I was ready for detention or even expulsion after that but the vice principal, apparently knowing in the many years I had been abused by these guys, and witnessing me trying to walk away, told me I was okay and to go on to class. The bully, whose name was Rick, was taken to the school nurse's office and then given three weeks of detention. He came back and in front of a bunch of guys in the hallway, again, challenged me to a fight out of school near a river. It seemed to me a lot of kids from school showed up (well, about fifteen of them, some of them rooting for him, I thought). I was there and we waited from four o'clock until 6:30, then went home. Rick never showed. I saw him in class the next day and he didn't speak to me again. After this, I was shocked that the treatment I had gotten all those years was reversed. Jocks saw me in the hall and nodded friendly in my direction. A few waived and a couple of cheerleaders (out of my league) smiled at me as I walked by them. We moved the middle of my senior year to the next town over, and the most popular girl in school developed a crush on me. At that moment, for some reason, I became one of the most popular guys in my senior class by virtue of association and kept getting phone calls from girls to talk to me, I suppose for me to ask them out. I asked several of them to basketball games which I liked attending. Rick gathered a couple of his loyal friends the year after he graduated and approached a new kid in town, about a senior, not really sure, just in from Mexico with his family. Apparently Rick didn't like hispanics or Mexicans or whatever and took three guys to go after him. Rick was about three inches taller and twenty pounds heavier than this kid. Rick and his two friends were beaten in that fight by this one smaller guy. One month later Rick moved out of town. We never saw him again. Anybody else know of a good "bully" story? Eagle

Good Lord, Edi! You mean to say that there was active teachings about it being okay to have not only pre-marital sex but have it in the Way home? This on top of the BOT sexual escapades? I never heard one of those but I'm glad you told me. I'm glad you told Craig where to get off! Eagle

Thanks, Rocky! Maybe I'm NOT normal! HA! I agree with Belle, spanking doesn't twist anyone, really. A beating might, but spanking, no. Once, I was trying to escape a spanking my my father, and I was near the second floor stairway, saw my mother at the bottom of the stairway, so I threw myself backward down the stairs. I lay at the bottom, a little bruised but unhurt, but pretending to be passed out. I thought my mother would yell at my Dad, and she did. "Eddie! Get down here and discipline your child! He threw himself down the stairs!" Both my parents got their turn spanking me that night. I was also grounded from watching "Lost in Space." Eagle

VPW, if he had to do it over may not have done that thing at Pike's Peak. Or maybe he would have. He had a Masters from Princeton Theological Seminary and should have gone straight from there to a regionally accredited institution. I've noticed some people I know finding places on the internet for degrees and later discovering the "accrediting agencies" are not listed with the Department of Education in Washington D.C. There are also a few people that say they have doctorates but won't name the school and sometimes the accrediting agencies. We have to watch for that. There are a few up for regional accreditation and I've studied those institutions but they have their act together, so these institutions, like Trinity Theological in Indiana, may have a lot of merit. That one is the exception. It is recognized in Great Britain as an older institution through Canterbury's church. But for the most part, when signing up for courses or a degree program, thoroughly check it out. Don't end up like VPW. Eagle

Spanking (not beating), does drive the point home on the little kiddies. I wouldn't spank anyone under 18 months, because even a spanking could hurt them, but from two to four are crucial years where spanking just might be the only way to get some children's attention. I did not get bitter with my parents growing up. It was usually forgotten quite quickly. Usually by the end of the day. My Dad used a strap. It stung but I was not hurt. After catching me smoking, he made me smoke more until I got sick. I never picked up another smoke until the Army and I hated it then, so quit. I never did drugs. When caught drinking and suffering a hangover the next day, my father took me out to the yard, sick or not, made me rake leaves, I would get sick out there, but he would make me continue until the yard was done. He gave me no aspirin for my headache, and I suffered the consequences almost 24 hours. I never raided his liquor again. I picked up drinking in college later, but dropped it. Today, I don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs. I live a normal life. The treatment by the hands of my Dad did not twist me. Not that I recommend his methods to others, just that was what happened to me. Eagle

I highly admired the early Corps having first fellowshipped with the grads of 6th and 7th Corps. Frankly, despite legalistic teachings coming down, all but one was very loving, helpful and a great source of learning the Word. I thoroughly enjoyed the Way Corps up until about the 12th Corps. After that they seemed to come out promoting regulation more than love and the Word. The difference may have been martindale taking over, not sure. I'm not giving kudos to Wierwille but it may be he ran the Corps a lot better. After POP the Corps really turned mean. There were exceptions, but for the most part mean. Even I was drilled on "correcting people" and finding fault rather than finding the good and working with that, this by the 23rd Corps I had entered. I quit after my Apprentice year, the constant mean looks, back-biting, turning one another in for infractions not normally infractions in the real world, and more. At least I didn't snitch on other people. I was lousy to my Twig members, and I felt horrible for that, but at least I didn't go behind someone's back and turn them in. I guess I drew a line on that. But I never saw any of the meaness from the early Corps. The one exception I noted wasn't mean, just always trying to cast out devil spirits for almost everything. She was a rare one and most of the early Corps I knew weren't thinking that way, like everything was a devil spirit. There's a lot of thanks to the early Corps, especially 6-12, where I had nothing but good to say about them. If I had a church, I would have ordained almost every one of them. They had such good common sense. I say kudos to Corps 6-12. And any other Corps grad that walked in love. Eagle