Galen

Plotinus: "George, No one asked how I do it - but this also explains how I can quiet a bar, of course" "It's the collar, man, the collar" I did not ask, as I knew. "- try it sometime I've even seen it work in a convenience mart." I have done just that, it is fun. Good to 'see' you again. :-)

Now I wonder, I have always heard the term "butt-load". Now if this 'lady' was able to pour 2/3 gallon into her hubby's colony, does that mean that a colon holds 2/3 gallon? And if so, is one butt-load = 2/3 gallon? Inquiring minds want to know.

Jim: "Hah. I have a friend whose job involved running some sort of resonance test on submarines. He'd never tell me anything about it except that they would cover everything up when he came out to do the test." They do a lot of exotic tests on the hulls. Strapping big magnets and iron filings to photogragh the magnetic flux patterns, and x-raying [the amount of radiation required just to x-ray that thick of a sheet of metal, is a lot]. "When I was about 12, my dad took me to Bremerton to see the battleship Missouri. I think he wanted to see it as badly as I did. I got to walk on the deck and see the plaque where the Japanese surrendered. Lots of history there." They are impressive. Four big aircraft carriers next to each other, and the bows sticking out almost over the fence. Driving by on the highway, your in the shadow of those carriers, looking up a them. Man they are big. It is hard to imagine that something so big can be taken out with just one modern torpedoe. Technology is really something.

Wayfer Not!: "I'm sure your wife doesn't look like an Amish woman. I sure didn't mean this as an insult. It's just not a common thing to see in our culture." LOL We use a Mennonite curriculum for Homeschooling our children. All pictures of ladies in those books show them 'looking' like what is being described in this thread. We have on occassion moved among circles of 'Reformed' Mormons as well as Mennonites, and yes Bonnie does look like that. On recent trips to Maine, shopping for land, one of the first things to 'hit' me was that a lot of the ladies up in Maine also 'look' like that [long hair, long dresses or work clothes, no make-up, boots as often as sandals, little or no jewelry]. Plain and yet as attractive as their creator made them.

Eagle: "... she says she doesn't want to marry anyone that does not have over $250,000 a year salary." I have heard very similiar things coming from the mouths of other young people today. I seppose that someone might had said the same in the 1970's, but it would have been said in humour. :-)

Abigail: "I hate to burst your bubble, Galen, but statistically speaking most pedophiles are heterosexual men." I understand, what I meant when I said: "The sex-offenders from a few decades ago, are a protected class today [ie, homo-sexuals, trans-sexuals, bi-sexuals]." Was merely that it was not that long ago that those 'variations' were considered illegal not long ago. Whereas today they have become a protected class of our society.

mj412: " ... What I do not get is the landlords who rent to them." As a land-lord, there is a growing list of things that I can not legally use to determine who I can and who I can not rent to. Race, Religion, sex, marital status, homo-sexual / hetero-sexual, national origin, citizenship, ... If you are in an area where there is not a housing shortage, then likely the landlords will rent to anyone who is willing to sign a lease. Here in Ct, we are having a housing shortage, so one empty apartment gets a dozen applicants without listing the apartment. It is 'easier' to be picky. But no matter what a landlord says, he is going to upset someone, so a landlord really needs to generate a 'reason' why he does not want to rent to a particular person, and tell them "blah" is the reason I dont want to rent to you. Otherwise, legal fees will pile up as those you turn-down each complain to the city. And then you have to find some 'legal' reasoning for saying 'no'. I could understand if a lady has a steady job and no children of her own, then what harm could there be in renting to her. Obviously assuming that your blind to all the things that legally we are supposed to be blind to. If we dis-allow sex-offenders from renting, where do they live? The sex-offenders from a few decades ago, are a protected class today [ie, homo-sexuals, trans-sexuals, bi-sexuals]. "they are not suppose to be within a certain distance of children I thought but in a town this small I do not understand how they can avoid being around a child if they even walk to the corner store." That would be difficult to manage in many citys.

I just asked Bonnie, she does not know if they do a 'CA 125' on her. Each year they do a 'liver-function' test on me and I always ask the a PSA as well. They never think to order the PSA on men, unless the man asks for it either. Getting a PSA each year, wards off having to get the colonoscopy and/or the digital prostate exam. So I keep asking for the PSA each time they suck blood, their 4 vials of blood. Bonnie goes in next month, for another round of tests, I will remind her then about 'CA 125'. Ladies please remind the men around you to get their PSA tests done too. :-)

Depending on how long investigators want to take pictures and radiography film of the stress patterns in the hull. Normally they might delay the work for as much as two days before they cutting-torch off the bad and 500 men will work around the clock, flying in from everywhere. It might be done in a month. Or like the Florida if the hull was not flexed right when it took the shock, or if the hull didnt resonant the right way there could be hundreds of stress micro-fractures running along the hull lengthwise. 1. Some boats can be fixed right away and they seem good as new. [we destroyed a screw and it's shaft once. The shaft was bent, cracked and it's filling material leaked. The screw's blades were shredded. We wobbled in the water, it was bad. But they sank the dry-dock while we were yet steaming into port, lifted us ... and by the following night the dry dock was sank again to allow us get out into the game. We had a new screw and a new shaft. I never thought that much about it, until years later I had to do some work near the screw while we were in a dry dock. A screw laid out flat on the ground is still taller than I am, solid brass and as big around as a small house.] 2. Others have 'limited-depth' restrictinos placed on them. They go back into the fleet, but they are limited in what capacity they can play with the big boys. 3. Other boats cause an issue, if their class is not scheduled for decomm this decade, then the more 'permanent' problem boats will kind of sit around pierside waiting. If repairs become too extensive it is cheaper to build a new one [which congress will never agree to]. We do have boats that sit for a long time, waiting for those in control to decide, all because they are too damaged. But looking at the outside it is hard to tell how much damage was done to the hull through-out it's length. I'll guess 4 months. We also have boats that have been decommed, but due to their extra special abilities, nobody wants to cut them up. At Bremerton Shipyard, last time I was there, between two long piers they had 8 boats crammed in there and in 'moth-ball' status. I spotted the Triton. Metzger who was me spotted one of those skip-jack class the twin-screw counter-rotating things [think of one screw mounted on the end of a second screw both turning in opposite directions]. Regulus' were there. By now they should have the Kamahamaha and Polk tucked in there. Some real oddities, but with cool twists. We dont normally moth-ball boats. Only surface targets get mothballed, usually. :-)

Want a tour?

Krys- Yes an okay flick, book was better. Das Boot was best followed by K-19:widowmaker Sorry. How can you beat a seaman diving the torpedo room bilge to repair a leak knowing it will kill him. And the blue-glowing water kracks me up. "Oh no glowing blue water is not bad for you" LOL

I guess this is a 'better' way of going then a long agonizing disease. I like the story of wanting to go on my 100th birthday, caught by a husband while in the arms of his ravaged teenaged bride. :-)

ckeer: "One report he links to says the sub was making 23 knots (about 25mph)when it hit." It is hammered into us to never reveal more about what subs can do, than the un-classified documentation admits to. Few bubbleheads would ever say how fast or how deep their boat goes. On occasion Congress has 'leaked' information about the 'Silent Service', and in cases like "Hunt for Red October" where Clancy revealed so many secrets. The bubblehead who talked [LCdr Ralph Chatham] was careful to ensure that each individual secret had already been leaked seperately by Congress by way of the congressional records. So in this way he was not procescuted, though obviously it ended his career. I would rather just say that they were doing 15+knots and leave it at that. Deep? Yeah we go deep, all the way. At one time the Nautilus' entire conning tower was flayed open, bashed down and twisted aft. It looks better today.

Oak stick- Since your quoting "The Word's Way - Chapter 11" I thought I would cut and paste it for you, in the odd case that some can na find their copy. :-)

THE WORD’S WAY Volume III, Studies in Abundant Living Victor Paul Wierwille Part III The Credentials of Jesus Christ Chapter 11 The Lord’s Brethren Before beginning a study of the Word of God regarding the Lord’s brethren, let us first look at the historical background which made an issue of who was the Lord’s family. This question is far from new; in fact, it had become a flaming issue by 300 A.D. when Christianity west of the Euphrates River divided into two camps over the issue. The one camp was in Antioch in the country now called Turkey where Aramaic was the language spoken. The other school had its home base in Alexandria, Egypt, where Greek was the scholar’s language. The leader in the Greek school was Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. Born into a non-Christian family, he became a Christian later in his life. In his early non-Christian days, he believed in Isis, Osiris, Horus and other such Egyptian gods. Undoubtedly this early learning influenced his thinking when he became a Christian. As Bishop of Alexandria, he proposed a new doctrine, namely, that Mary was the mother of God. This idea appealed to the newly-converted Christians because their former gods had mothers, fathers, sisters and some of them had wives and even concubines. Thus the doctrine of Mary’s being the mother of God fit in comfortably with their previously-held beliefs. Heading the Antioch camp was Nestorius, a graduate of the school at Antioch and chaplain to the emperor in Constantinople. Nestorius, along with Christendom east of the River Euphrates, believed that Mary was the mother of Jesus our Lord but definitely not the mother of God. Nestorius considered Cyril’s doctrine of Mary’s being the mother of God a dangerous heresy. Thus the divergent doctrines on Mary not only stirred religious controversy in the Roman Empire, but also caused a struggle over power to determine which city – Constantinople or Alexandria – was the most prominent and influential in matters of church doctrine. The Alexandrian Bishop pointed out that none of the original twelve apostles had ever gone to Constantinople or to Alexandria. But since Philip had come to Alexandria, Alexandria should be considered the more enlightened in matters dealing with doctrinal interpretation. Because of this controversy a general council of all bishops was called to meet in Ephesus in 431 A.D. The Western bishops came by ships from Greece, Rome, Spain and Alexandria. The Eastern bishops, however, had to come by time-consuming land routes and so they arrived late f or the meeting. Thus, before the Nestorian group of bishops arrived, the other bishops of the West had met and condemned the position of Nestorius. Important to note in studying the history of Christianity is that this controversy affected only Western Christianity – the Roman Empire. Eastern Christianity – the Persian Empire – was unaffected by this doctrinal schism. The Christians in Persia and in Asia Minor, including Antioch and Jerusalem, continued to believe with Nestorius that Mary was the mother of the Lord Jesus but not the mother of God. The eastern part of the Roman Empire held to the same belief as Nestorius. Then Justinian the emperor issued an ultimatum stating that any Christian who did not accept Mary as the mother of God should be killed. The result of this decree was that thousands of Christians were killed. Other thousands escaped to Iran where the Persian government gave them sanctuary. Even to this day, this Nestorian-Cyrian controversy has not been settled. The position of Cyril, the Alexandrian bishop, has been carried into the Western world by the Roman Catholic Church. Among the pagan gods and the non-Christian experience that infused Rome, the doctrinal teaching of Mary’s being the mother of God found fertile ground. Who were the Lord’s brethren would never have been questioned in the Occident had it not been for the corruption which crept into Christian churches when Mary was elevated from the Biblical position of “handmaid of the Lord” as spoken of in Luke 1:38, to the exalted, non-biblical station of theotokos, “mother of God.” Many of the traditions of the Roman Church have their roots in Egyptian and Babylonian mythology. The Egyptian pagan deity Isis had a divine son known as Horus. The carry-over in the Roman Church from this story is that since Isis was still a virgin after Horus was born, so Mary was also a virgin after Jesus was born. Furthermore, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that Mary had no children other than Jesus our Lord and that His brothers and sisters were the children of Joseph by a former wife or that they were the Lord’s cousins – children of Mary the wife of Cleophas. The idea that Joseph was an old man or married previously before he was married to Mary has not one iota of substantiation in the Scriptures. Had Joseph had older sons by a former marriage, then the Lord Jesus’ legal rights to the throne of David would have been invalidated. A study of the word “brother” as found in the Bible shows it is used in the following ways only; 1. As children of the same parent or parents. 2. As descendants of the same common stock. (Abraham as forefather: Acts 7:23,25.) 3. As fellow men. (Matthew 7:3-5; 18:15.) 4. As spiritual children. (Acts 9:17; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:11.) In the Biblical passages where “the Lord’s brethren” is found, only the usage as children of the same parent or parents can be applied. Matthew 12:46: While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Verse 47: Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. Matthew 13:55: Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? Mark 3:31: There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. Luke 8:19: Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press. John 7:3: His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. Verse 5: For neither did his brethren believe in him. Verse 10: But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. Acts 1:14: These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Galatians 1:19: But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. Had the brothers and sisters in these verses been cousins only, as the Roman Catholic Prelate Jerome theorized, the Greek word used would have been sungen.s, which is translated “kinsman” or “kinsfolk” or “kin” with the exception of Luke 1:36 and 58. In these two verses sungen.s is translated “cousin,” which cases. relate not to Jesus but to Elisabeth. Mark 6:4: But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. Luke 1:36: And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. Luke 1:58: And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her, Luke 2:44: But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. Luke 14:12: Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. Luke 21:16: And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. John 18:26: One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? Acts 10:24: And the morrow after they entered into Caesarea. And Cornelius waited for them, and had called together his kinsmen and near friends, Romans 9:3: For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Romans 16:7: Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. Verse 11: Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. Verse 21: Timotheus my workfellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you. According to Matthew 13:55 our Lord Jesus Christ had four brothers or half-brothers as we would call them. James, Joses, Simon and Judas had the same mother but a different father. (Jesus Christ was the Son of God, by way of Mary, but conceived by the Holy Spirit.) Furthermore, Jesus had at least three sisters, according to Matthew 13:56: “His sisters, are they not all with us?” Had there been just two sisters the word both would have been used instead of all. The Lord Jesus was Mary’s firstborn,* not her only born.† The word “firstborn” automatically implies “second born” or “later born” children. Jesus was, as the Scriptures clearly state, the “firstborn” of Mary but the “only begotten of the Father.” When all the Biblical data is in hand, we are left with a plain answer regarding the Lord’s brethren. We know that He had four brothers – James, Joses, Simon and Judas – and that He had at least three sisters, whose names are not given. Beyond this, nothing is known except for idle speculation or theorizing — which is not good enough when dealing with Biblical matters. *The meaning of the word “firstborn,” which in the Greek is pr?otokos, can be easily ascertained from looking at its only usages in Matthew 1:25; Luke 2:7; Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15,18; Hebrews 1:6; 11:28; 12:23 and Revelation 1:5. †Had Jesus Christ been Mary’s only son, the Greek word would be monogen.s which is used in Luke 7:12; 8:42; 9:38; John 1:14,18; 3:16,18; Hebrews 11:17; I John 4:9.

vickles: "I don't think the parents have a clue on what they are doing to their children..they think they are 'helping' them out of 'love'." I read "The Millioniare Nextdoor" and am often quoting it to others [a study of first-generation American Millioniares, who are mostly working-class middle-income families]. Many of these very smart, very thrifty, frugal households; are also terrible when it comes to enabling bad habits in their children. Common is the idea of supporting daughters; first through college majors that will never provide a job, then through a continuous stream of 'loans' whenever their daughters over-spend and can't cover bills. I think that it is a kind of cultural thing that parents should 'fix' all the problems of their adult children. I want to 'help' and advize my eldest son [turned 20 yesterday], but not bail him out, he needs to learn about the world on his own now. My turn to teach him and prepare him for the world was between 0-18yr. :-)

Mark- Very nice photos. Which dry-dock is this one? I have spent time in the Los Alamos a few times [to repair Ooops’] though to me dry docks all look about the same. Is the Dixon and land still there? Zshot- “why is there a tarp over part of the damaged area?” duh :-) When anything ‘inside’ is exposed we routinely cover it from satellite [over-head] photography. On the Delta-piers at Bangor they have railroad tracks running on both sides of the dry-wall, and on those tracks is a huge steel warehouse on rollers. So while in the dry-dock, a warehouse can roll over you, it also has broad-spectrum frequency transmitter antennas on their roofs to lessen the quality of multi-spectrum espionage. Tom- “that thing is huge! what is it three stories high? (see the people?) a lot bigger than the little WW2 subs I saw when I was a kid...” yeah. The Polaris class and the posiden class boats that I lived on were both greater than 3-stories inside. The Trident class that I was on was greater than 4-stories inside. Picture a four-story parking garage just a hair under 2 football fields long. Why do you think we have problems since we can not fit them into many rivers. When they converted the USS Kamahamaha and the USS James K. Polk both into brown-water troop-Transport boats, so they could safely suck mud and sift for their cooling, it gives you the capability of going into shallower rivers, before deploying troops. Imagine 16 vertical elevators of 8 feet in diameter each, all deploying troops. Wow what a capability. “do they ever give tours of these things?” Yeah. I used to give tours of those that I was on. Ckeer- “Zshot- the tarp is probably covering the sonar array (what is left of it) The Navy probably considers it classified- and doesn't want pictures of it distributed publicly.” That front part is an un-manned sonar dome [underneath the round smooth free-flood hull]. It is made to be easily crunched and yet not truly hurt the boat’s survivability. In case of Oops’ “They were very lucky in my opinion- If they had struck the object more directly or much faster they would have probably never been able to surface, and might have ruptured the pressure hull (where the crew is).” Looking at this, I would not be surprised if they hit a rock ledge at over 15 knots. I have seen really cool damage from surfacing underneath air-craft carriers. Taking off most of the conning tower and twisting it aft-ish. The idea of a crunch zone, like in your car, to take the force while inside your roll-cage you are still ‘safe’, has become a universal theory in America. Also keep in mind that our hulls are like a spring. They can squeeze and twist and poing back to their original shape and size. At great depths, the hulls compress a lot. So everything inside must be mounted on hinges and shock-absorbers, starting with the decks. To allow the hull to shrink down round us, or to expand again. Look at a big bridge with those stupid steal expansion joints in the pavement, so each section is allowed to shift around freely. The Russian engineers were scared sh!tless of the idea of a hull shrinking down around you, so they designed their boats to all be ‘hardened’ and resist compression. Which is why they use Titanium. Which is why they caused a world-wide shortage of Titanium. Which is why they had terrible problems getting enough to furnish their fleet. All because their engineers formed like a consortium around the idea that boat hulls should be non-compressable, but that made them brittle. Hit them hard and they crack. Our hulls crack mostly from stress fractures which come from age and ‘usage’ [meaning we count how many times each hull has been fully compressed, because full-compression shortens its life and leads to stress-fractures.] The people-tank is relatively safe, more so than earlier boat designs. We have had lots of boats crack their hulls, over the years, so long as our pumps can move more water at depth than how much comes in, then we are cool. When the water coming in exceeds what our pumps can put out, than we need to consider going up to a lesser depth. I distinctly recall making a patrol in the Arctic circle and standing watch on our ESM stack [Electronic Surveillance System]. It was rough water and while going up to periscope depth we were rolling a lot. But while trying to operate my gear I was being dripped on. Icy salt water was dripped right onto my seat, and due to the rolling my gear kept tripping it’s internal breakers, so I had these electronic drawers open so I could reach in and reset the breakers, I used my knee to hold the drawer shut while operating the equipment. But that icy salt water kept dripping down my head and neck. Looking back I was lucky not to have be zapped by reaching into live equipment while dripping wet. You said: “… they would have probably never been able to surface, and might have ruptured the pressure hull … “ Keep in mind that each compartment can be pressurized to greater than sea-pressure, which kind of forces the water back out again, down to the level of the biggest cracks at least. And the Main Ballast tanks start a bit aft of the sonar-dome, so they are not really in much damage, so they can still be blown full of air to re-surface. So long as the crew did not waste that air on anything stupid. We learned from both the USS Ben Franklin and the USS Lafayette that we want to keep most of the bigger cracks down low so that when we do pressurize the people-tank it blows the water out better. Ooops, I did run on there sorry. I hope I do not bore anyone too much. ”That hump between the two men on the deck was not there before the accident and it looks like there is a big chunk of what they hit behind the tarp.” That ‘hump’ looks like when a car wrecks in a head-on collision and some of the force is transferred back along the frame to the doors, so the door alignment is whacked. I do find it interesting how much junk fell off. Usually it is crunched in like that but the hull’s ‘skin’ is still covering it mostly. :-)

excathedra: "i'm blessed that you're blessed that i'm blessed that they're blessed" I am blessed. Bless you. It blesses me to see that you are blessed.

I have a book in our library: “Guests of the sheik: an ethnography of an Iraqi village. By Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, a Doubleday Anchor book In it the author describes moving into an arab village and living among the locals, as her husband [an anthropologist] gathers data from governmental officials and the sheiks themselves. They lived in their own camel-dung sun-baked brick home, where she was able to communicate with other women and learn about them. She was allowed to visit and go into the homes of harems and gather information from them about their lives, their lifestyles, and their views on life. It is also very good for gaining an understanding of that polygamous society.

I run McAfee virus-scan on my computers, each computer then wakes-up at various times of the night and scans the network. Each computer boot-ups running Ad-Aware. Each computer has Tasks scheduled. They each Re-Boot daily. They each: De-Frag, Reg-Clean, and Re-Sort once a week. Each task is done on a different night each week. The only thing they each do, every night is: Re-boot, Ad-Aware scan and McAfee virus scan. Ad-Aware and McAfee each check for updates at will, and they update themselves. My eldest was running a Host-server for a while. He is a self-taught linux guru. So we saw how often a site gets hacked. It was amazing to look at his log-files at the hundreds of attacks each day. Fortunately most attacks were attempting to run DOS commands on the system, since he ran linux nothing happens, but a few attempted Unix commands which could possibly be bad, so it kept him on his toes learning about security. All webmasters doing this become very good hackers themselves.

My wife bought a catering business once. She really liked it and had a lot of fun. She made Philipino lumpia [loom-pia]. They were like a small eggroll, like the diameter and length of your first finger. She hired some other ladies to come over during the mid-mornings and they rooled these things, filling our chest freezer. Then when someone called wanting us to supply their work-party, the lumpia was already made, just deep-fry and deliver. At another place, she started doing laundry. Sailors would drop off their seabags filled with nasty laundry, they dropped it off at our back-door. Then they could come by and pick it up again on their way back to their boats, after their evening of pub-crawling. Bonnie had neighboring wives all in shift-work running our machines over-night each night that boats were in. It was helpful that our house was immediately off the pier and along the path walking in to town to the pubs.

Thanks :-)

hmm. The first time I was 'booted' was in 1980. I already had orders in hand shipping me out to another duty-station [Va]; so I was really one foot out the door anyway. We moved, got back 'in', moved again, moved again, moved again, then in 1990 got 'booted' again. This time as it happened I already had orders in hand shipping out to my next duty-station. When we got to our next duty-station, we got back into things and after a few more years, got 'booted' again, this last time, I dont think I actually had the orders in hand yet, but we had been negotiating for them and it was pretty close to us shipping over-seas. So, no each time we were 'booted' we never did stay there. We immediately went somewhere else to move The Word, start Twigs and run PFAL classes. :-)

Why would Joseph having sons from various marriages, take anything ‘away’ from any particular son’s blood-line? We are not talking about inheritance, the bulk of which goes to the eldest son. I was not aware that the blood-line to keep the Levites intact required that only the eldest sons have the appropriate lineage. I like Bullinger, as do many others. However it is easily noted that there are many differences of opinion between ‘The Way International’s doctrine and those taught by E.W. Bullinger. To say that VPW failed in his understanding of Bullinger because he did not copy ‘all’ of Bullinger, dis-counts the fact that other things of Bullinger’s were not accepted by VPW either. :-)

I dont mean to be understood as saying that a router firewall takes care of everything that your computer should be doing. :-) Rather that this one job, is best done by the router. To give the computer better opportunity to focus soley on everything else.