chockfull

Yes, the Way's concept of "The Household of God" is elitist, arrogant, and obnoxious. Yes it damages people. Yes most of us have found out who our real friends are by now, and "The Household" doesn't number among them. Yes it promoted a counterfeit family. But in our discussion we are moving beyond "The Way", and delving into truths about God and the Holy Spirit field that encompasses all of Christianity. If the damage from the Way is too great to be able handle that without the grief from the Way and anger at the Way, then the honest thing to do is to simply recuse yourself from the discussion, or since this board involves a lot of people in that boat, just drop the discussion, as you honestly recognize emotional bias in handling it. That is intellectual and spiritual honesty, not labeling all of charismatic Christianity as "communaly self deluding". When you can accept criticisms of your behavior as different from an overall assessment of you as a person without this kind of emotional reaction, then you're probably able to discuss it rationally.

And if VP's teachings on the topic were erroneous, yet God just honored the trust in these 3 believer's hearts in Him by providing a genuine message? Then your finger pointing at them just has three pointing back at yourself.

So in other words you have no supporting evidence whatsoever that this was a college paper besides your speculation. Good to know. You can't even accurately reflect something that was written one post ago. I did not call YOU a tool, I asked WHY YOUR BEHAVIOR, consisting of repeating the phrase "communal self-delusion" about 50 times in this thread, is anything more than you acting like a tool. It's offensive. It's obnoxious. It's not in alignment to anything I read in I Cor. 13. Here, get the criticism right, for once. WHY IS YOUR BEHAVIOR ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN YOU ACTING LIKE A TOOL? The way you are responding, it probably belongs in Soap Opera. Emotional. Not listening. Being inflammatory. You can't even get it straight what I was communicating as to my reluctance to discuss this regarding tempting God. However, in an ironic moment, the first source you posted actually frames my position on that pretty accurately. Did you need me to post it again? Ex, no offense, but please don't accept Raf's Cliff Notes on what these sources are saying. He's all over the place and is not providing accurate synopsis of what they are saying. He picks out a couple paragraphs then repeats the phrase "communal self deception", when none of the authors have said that. Then please do all of us a favor and explain exactly why it was that you chose Vern as the first scholarly reference to prove your position? You hadn't really read him thoroughly?

I wouldn't describe you as funny by any means. Inflammatory? Check. All over the place? Check. Emotional? Check. Accusative of your brethren in Christ? Check. Funny? Not so much. Let's take a quick tally of where we are at in sources we are examining, OK? Samarin? Landry? Vern? All support the possibility of tongues being real in private prayer life. Note I didn't say "proven", or "don't bring up valid issues that could support the other side of the position", or anything like that. More middle of the road, accepting of the possibility of God working in people in a different way than they have personally experienced or scientifically analyze. From my perspective, I haven't heard any source yet that emphatically says what you do about communal self-delusion. Which is telling so far. You are all excited to get into disproving tongues from a language perspective, and have yet to produce one supporting scientific study that even comes close to what you are trying to shove down all of our throats, that we are communaly self-deluding ourselves. I am engaging in this debate because I was goaded into it by you. You said "bring it". But how I really feel about this debate is I'm pretty much traveling down the same road in arguing the topic that I would just recording a stupid YouTube event of my private prayer life. In other words, it's an immature Christian endeavor that I'm not seeing a whole lot of profit in.

OK I reread it. The only article we were discussing in the context of that message from what I read was Landry, not Vern. At the very least, your message was blending two topics without clearly referring to what you meant as laughably biased. Which, actually, sounds a lot like your assessment of almost every single source we are discussing. They are "laughably biased" if they allow for the possibility of tongues in a private prayer life. Or, other discrediting statements about college research papers. So since you want to denigrate our sources, let me put this out to you. Landry may be a college paper (I don't know where you get that), but it's better written and more well documented than anything you've produced on the topic. If you think it's so bad, then let's see something you produce that's better. You know, some of this debate would go a lot better and be a lot more profitable if you would drop the ridiculous and inflammatory terms like "bearing false witness", "Satan", etc. They may sound cool and make you feel better, but overall it just distracts from the discussion, in addition to being incorrect, inflammatory, and serve to escalate emotion. Communal self-delusion. Explain to me why exactly it is you repeating these words hundreds of times isn't just you being a tool?

I was simply contrasting what I read in Poythress, which to me exhibited a more complete coverage of logical possibilities, with other theologians I have read on the topic. Other theologians either exhibit a viewpoint that comes to the conclusion it died with the apostles, or come to the conclusion that it is similar to like we experienced in TWI, that it is alive and well and make claims as to it being necessary for proof of the new birth. I've read 4 or 5 commentaries now, and Carlson will make another. Maybe stating they are emotionally invested is an overstatement, but if it isn't then why do you think it is they go completely one way or the other on the topic? As I stated, Christianity is pretty divided over this, so I'm not making any revolutionary new observations. Raf seems to be identifying people's backgrounds for sources on this thread and either poking fun at them, or talking about how their positions in the theological world affect their bias. In some ways this is valid - you can't just consider a source without knowing something about them. Do you really have that hard of a time finding the exact post where you claimed Landry was, and I quote "laughably biased"???? Yes you said that. No, me pointing that out and questioning it is not bearing false witness against thy neighbor. Now who is it that you are saying is in the 12th grade in debate tactics? Let the readers decide.

Reading through some more of Samarin's work. You know, the one Raf is crying hard about me seemingly misrepresenting? Here's and abstract from another of his works: So Samarin calls glossolalia a 'language' - direct quote. Maybe Raf needs to actually read the writings of his sources as opposed to crying so hard about it?

A lot of the discussion under About the Way on the whole topic of tongues and interpretation with prophecy is going on there. This is a placeholder to discuss the scriptural side of that argument. What does I Cor. 12 - 14 say about SIT? Where are TWI's teachings right? Where are they wrong? What are optional ways to look at the gifts and manifestations. Facilitating some doctrinal discussion here.

Wow. A paper that is pretty much down the center line of the two sides of this argument, and you find it "laughably biased"??!? And by proxy it seems you are saying that he completely misrepresented Samarin, as that is where I was quoting from? That's quite a distorted view. I haven't read all of Samarin's work, so I didn't reference his ultimate conclusions. Yet he was quoted accurately in that paper, and the scientific portion of his findings support exactly what I said they did. Yet you find this "alarming and dishonest"? From my perspective you have quite an emotional attachment to your viewpoint on this topic. That isn't healthy. You might want to look at that. I wasn't commenting on how complete a spiritual reference I found it - just that from a complete logic perspective it covers all the basis, where the more emotionally charged scholars are blind to possibilities of the other side. I'll check out DA Carson - I haven't read his commentary yet. Thanks for the reference.

Full disclosure on Raf's first quoted source - Vern Polythress. Here's his bio - http://www.frame-poythress.org/about/vern-poythress-full-bio/ He has a PhD in Math and multiple Doctorates in Theology. He is a teaching professor at Westminster Theological Seminary and a recognized leader in the Presbyterian Church. The guy is probably smarter and more educated than anyone posting on this thread. Here's another one of his articles: http://www.frame-poythress.org/the-nature-of-corinthian-glossolalia-possible-options/ Now that one, IMO is probably the best thing I've ever read in rationally and scientifically examining the possibilities associated with this.

He looks to be a geographer. Who wrote a paper from documented research, and documented his sources. He's miles ahead of Wierwille in scholarship there. The context probably would determine the spiritual significance. One thing I think we have proven on this thread, both from people's experience and the scientific research, is that people can produce a counterfeit that has nothing to do with anything spiritual.

No, the studies are only examining the results, not "clearly the speaker makes a deliberate attempt". Where evidence is found of the speaker having a previous exposure to the language identified (OH YOU MEAN THEY IDENTIFIED LANGUAGES IN SIT? NOOOOOOOOOO) they discredit it as a byproduct of the subconscious. You mean like what most of your posts on the topic have in common? Big fat claims, purported to be supported by scientists and linguists, but are not? And you say people who SIT are making things up? You've certainly got a head start on all of them. I'm working my way through references as well.

We could discuss that on Lortz' thread in doctrinal. That is if I can make it through all the intricacies of what happens at his house after work.

Next up, Raf's source he posted: http://www.frame-poythress.org/linguistic-and-sociological-analyses-of-modern-tongues-speaking-their-contributions-and-limitations/ The general consensus here, like most of the sources that use any means of unbiased scientific method based study, is that you cannot conclusively prove or disprove tongues. There are known instances of faking, conscious and / or subconscious. Interestingly enough, this scientific study brings up exactly the point I've been making about the power of God and scientific analysis: T-speech here refers to SIT as a practice. Wow. These scientists must be deluding themselves. I mean, to think that the Holy Spirit would be unlikely to work a miracle in controlled conditions for the convenience of linguists. Apparently, the scientists are well able to obviate the limitations in their study. But Raf, not so much. In fact, Raf gets so offended at the idea that he comes up with cute little bracketed statements about censoring statements to prevent Satan. Really, really adept political type maneuvering there. But honest scientific research? Not so much.

Next, what does Landry conclude? What is the non SuperPac translation? LINGUISTS CONCLUDE THAT THE PATTERNS IN GLOSSALALIA SUPPORT THE POSSIBILITY THAT IT IS A LANGUAGE. The supportable evidence? Like a language, there are sentences, words, sound units. IT SOUNDS LIKE A LANGUAGE WITH GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX. How did they arrive at this? They observed comparisons of consonants and vowels, and speeches on different occasions. So Raf makes claims that linguists all have examined recorded evidence and dismissed all of them as not a language. Yet the very first supporting study posted to this thread makes exactly the opposite claim. Although they are not familiar with the language, linguists examining 40 recordings of glossolalia conclude that THE PATTERNS SUPPORT THE POSSIBILITY OF IT BEING A LANGUAGE. So Raf, science seems to be failing you here, bro. But hey, on the positive side for you, you could always snip a few quotes from the paper out of context, and say 100% the opposite of what your source is saying. Because, you know, most of the people reading the thread won't read your entire source anyway. Back to you... [the remainder of this sentence has been censored by the committee to defend the faith against the scientific method and common sense]!

All right, here we go. Here's what the source says at http://www.matthewclandry.com/Glossolalia.pdf Raf says this is stating the determination was that the forty recordings were not a language. WRONG!!!!! The determination was that they did not profess to hear a language that they could identify. Raf is reading in what he wants to into scientific studies. Next point. Sherrill, who provided 40 recordings of glossolalia, slipped in two recordings that were not professed to be glossolalia, but were indeed gibberish. The linguists easily picked out the "made up gibberish" as distinctly different than the glossolalia recording. Raf's conclusion? THE LINGUISTS DETERMINED THE GLOSSALALIA TAPES WERE GIBBERISH. Raf, you are wasting your talents here in scientific analysis. Where you really need to be is ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL, working for a SuperPac. You have the prerequisites necessary. Take facts, twist them, ignore them, say what you want to say, and say it a lot. You're a born politician.

I think that's a misinterpretation. The statement was that it was not a known language to the linguists, not that it was not a language at all. Raf, you're mixing up a lot of the facts in the paper with your own viewpoint here. The paper is not saying what you are at all. The quotes you are snipping aren't complete, and many times in the exact vicinity of the quote there is another quote that leans in the opposite direction totally.

Interesting read. Here is the quote part: "Sherrill (1964) played over forty recordings of glossolalia to six linguists from graduate institutions in New York City. No one of them professed to hear a language that could be identified. Interestingly enough, however, they easily spotted two recordings of “made up gibberish” that Sherrill had slipped into the presentation and one linguist reported that a given recording had the structure of a poem, a structure that he understood, even though the actual meaning of the words eluded him" So the linguists did not say "none of these recordings represent real languages". They did say that they did not hear a known language to them. Further on in the study, he notes another study: "Glossolalics do not speak in a mixed up mishmash fashion. They organize their verbiage into productions that include macrosegments (comparable to sentences), microsegments (comparable to words), and phonemes (sound units). Thus tongue speakers are speaking what sounds like a language with grammar and syntax. (Samarin, 1968) (Malony and Lovekin 33)" The entire conclusion of his paper definitely does NOT say that glossolalia is faked or made up. In fact, I love his concluding sentence more than anything else: "One tongue speaker expressed his opinion on the entire study as such, “I regret the unfortunate and exaggerated claims of those who are either for or against glossolalia and have consequently cut loose from their objectivity” he continues, “… and who seem to lack love for their brothers who differ with them.”

IMO that which you are describing is the BS part of what TWI teaches. Wierwille should have taken his own advice and practiced more made up words than "lo shanta". I guess his minions that taught the classes added all that for him. Just to be clear one more time I don't believe that you walking away from this stuff and the practice of tongues is something God will care one iota about. I don't think it will negatively impact your prayer life. Especially as it concerns TWI and fulfills "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees". I don't believe God hears me more than you because I do it. I don't believe I'm better than you in any way, or more Christian, or whatever. To me that's ridiculous thinking, and I know that doesn't line up with the love described in I Cor 13 or any of the one body stuff in 12 and 14 either. Why do I do it? It's just part of my developed relationship with God. My spouse and I say things to each other people listening in would never understand (not tongues). Is that wrong? To me it's the same with me and God. Because of the purity of what I experienced as a young person that I shared about it is one aspect that never got tainted by all the BS in TWI for me. And sometimes if people call me a liar or delusional I want to stand up for myself. Unlike just eating it like I did while in TWI.

Mainly because every time I heard him, whether on tape or actually doing it, to me it seemed like he was repeating almost verbatim the exact same syllables I heard him speak before. He said more "lo shanta"s than anyone in the history of speaking anything. But I didn't say that I can prove Wierwille faked it. I said IMO. And because he faked so much else. Can you document this claim for me? I'd like to see the actual evidence before coming to a conclusion on how widespread fakery in this area is. And this does seem to be a statement that would have some factual evidence to support.

That's not just a Wierwille doctrine. Much of Christianity is divided over this topic. Just search on "praying in the spirit". You'll find all kinds of stuff. Raf can even find his video "evidence" to analyze. Although that could be counterfeit, what's recorded. IMO he could spot it easily looking in the mirror.

Well from a practical point of view, if I would have, then I would have avoided the whole TWI thing. So maybe you have a point. But from another point of view, how is it you're going to get rid of all that "tick, tock" noise following you around everywhere?

Your position is by no means unique. In the denomination where I had my first experience of that, I talked to two pastors in two different cities about the topic - same denomination. One told me he thought that it died out with the apostles, so anyone doing it today had to be faking it. The other used it regularly in his Tuesday night men's prayer meetings, but would not expose it to the Sunday services because it was too controversial for the general congregation. Any other real world knowledge that you need to impart to me here, Captain Hook?

1) Oedipus Rex: The TWI MOG Version 2) How to Brainwash Friends and Manipulate People : An Adventure in the Misuse of Dale Carnegie 3) How to Cheat Your Way Through Education and Make a Lot of Money - the Story of VPW 4) Pharisees : A Case Study into How to Make a Threefold Child of Hell Don't get me on a roll :biglaugh:

You mean like the scintillating "present truth" that is emanating from the Word Over the World teaching auditorium? You know, the power that attracts all around and fills everything up, at least up to the first 3 rows in the auditorium? I think if you watch Dana Carvey's routine on "Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies" on YouTube, you should be adequately prepared for your meeting.