chockfull

Was that the "One of a Kind" video by Bud Morgan?

In other words, homiletics. And yes, that was his thesis area.

Good thoughts, erkjohn. I'm certainly not the Catholic history buff. But yes, they've always functioned holding "traditions of the church" as paramount. On the claims of the scriptures, there is 2 Peter 1:3 (NIV) His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Thanks for posting OldSkool. Good insight and details from the inside. All these things remind me of a couple of scriptures, actually. I'm glad I don't need a worthless rubberstamp appoval anymore for thinking and sharing scripture. Matt 12:25 ...Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. and I Tim. 1:19 Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. Those idiots in their delusional paranoid positions are killing their own organization off from the inside with their devilish judgements, slander and ostracization of good Christian people. Rosalie even marked and avoided her own child from reports. So her pattern is to slander and destroy from the inside. And they would say that of us regarding I Tim. 1:19, but we were never the ones steering the d@mn boat, so it's not us that is wrecking it on the shoals. Their treatment of the saints and of good people who have given their lives in service to God and their organization is what will testify against them eventually. Their decisions are making the family faith shipwreck. Anyone whose conscience is not governed by good Christian concepts but requires being restrained by legal consequences has a conscience seared with a hot iron and is the lowest form of society, down by the criminals who only behave out of fear of consequence. And you're d@mn right some of us aren't going to creep off silently into the night. As long as I have a pulse, a brain, and a Bible I will be telling the truth about these false prophets and apostles.

Rosalie is a liar. She talks out of one side of her mouth about how she HATES people working part time jobs, and then out of the other side of her mouth when discussing benefits and compensation for staff that actually meet their need as opposed to scaling down the # of staff positions and paying them better. What she really wants by the fruit evident in her life is people to be in bondage to a controlling system that she is in charge of. Why people who live in a free country allow themselves to be placed under that kind of false authority is beyond me. People only have authority over you if you accept it.

I don't know his current status with TWI. I heard rumors that staff people were taking on side jobs to compensate for their lack of compensation and retirement. He was over security which includes shift work, so could moonlight on a day job. But yeah, he's been a major tool for decades.

It is interesting to note how most modern Christians unquestionably accept the canonization of scripture which was done by a Roman pope well after the death of the apostles. That very well may be a flawed major premise in VPW's whole approach. The OT seems to be relatively well packaged with the "jots and tittles". The NT, not so much - harmony of the gospels has seen plenty of struggles, even if the 4 viewpoints approach is valid. The different letters, extrapolating to THE answer to EVERYTHING FOR ALL time may be a leap - they were personal to an individual or a church. Dispensationalism, or administrations - TWI's teachings on the tithe and debt have so many logical disparities that all the distinctions taught there may not be as distinct as you would think - people like things fitting into nice little buckets. Can I still believe "holy men of God wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost"? Yes. I think so. Inspiration is the basis for all good writing. What about contradictions? Well, people in and of themselves are inherent contradictions, so that's no surprise.

I don't miss wondering why for an organization supposedly centered around truth there are so many liars in it.

I seriously doubt he's "moved on". More likely this is the case with many old time staffers - they are reaching the age where they are approaching retirement, and TWI has done absolutely nothing to help them, doesn't pay them enough to send their kids to college except for "Bowling Green" by their income being welfare level and qualifying them for Pell grants, and will not support them in old age. So a lot of them have started "moonlighting" around doing jobs when they are not working. It's really a bit pathetic - those that have abused so many others, they've built nothing up for themselves.

What's really funny are his listings. $600,000 for a house in New Bremen, OH. Bwaaahaaahaaahaaahaaahaaa!

yep that's the L man.

Windows 7 rocks. Even the betas were pretty clean. My only issues have been the device vendors weren't writing compatible drivers for 64 bit very fast at all - so printer drivers, etc. have been only basic as opposed to the all-in-one scan/fax/etc. ones.

Dude, you have a life. The best revenge is to live well.

You know some people, especially if they are still involved in TWI, may read this thread and think "wow, they have it all wrong. I never had anybody tell me what I could or could not read". And you know, while that may be true, if you think about it, what books do people read while in TWI? How many times have you heard "Encouraging the Heart" quoted as if it's scripture? IMO it's a combination of things. If you keep people's lives filled up enough where they have very little time to think for themselves, read for themselves, do for themselves, then that IS a control of sorts. People only have time to read a few books, and those will be from the "recommended reading list".

The more people think for themselves, the more trouble they are going to be in with TWI.

They would fight it. Either you would voluntarily request to go on the field, or you would be fired for performance reasons. Either way they don't have to pay.

You know, you ask yourself "how did I get here?" w/r to the extreme BS we put up with in TWI. And the answer is just as you describe. It's no one large choice, but a series of short hops. It's not compromising from "normal" to "brainwashed", it's from normal to one step outside, then from one step to two steps off norm, and so on. That is the HOW of control that we succumbed to.

Can we have another category that says: "I'm alive no thanks to TWI" ???

Yeah, really. In a time where people are lining up around the block for minimum wage jobs, TWI can't get applicants? Does that tell you anything?

Oh, they can always do what VP did and put their pictures up in the Founders room of the auditorium, talk about them in a historical sense as their "inspiration", plagiarize their work, and do whatever they d@mn well please. They've always been good at spin doctoring the bad out of anything. And the Stepford mansion will have a whole new round of robot recruits.

Thanks!! You know I have absolutely no problem with people questioning how I derived these in the first place, saying they aer invalid, demanding proof. I fully out front state that as axioms they are things I accept at face value as true. I've come to that conclusion through my life's experiences. I can't prove a single one of them to another soul, and furthermore I wouldn't try. I would encourage all of those questioning to prove them true or false for themselves and to do the same with other axioms they hold dear to themselves. I'm sure that people can question the validity of scripture and criticize me for that being a portion of my unquestioned belief system. Furthermore I don't believe that where I choose to obtain my inspiration makes me any better or worse than anyone else on this planet. In TWI I used to have such an elitist attitude. I was healed of that once being out and seeing what richness I had all around me in other people. I'm sure people also could try and get me into a debate about "absolute truth". Do I believe in "absolute truth"? Is truth relative or absolute? I would have to answer I don't know. What I do know is that my Lord Jesus Christ is a personal savior and that is on the individual level. He came for each person, not to bring the absolute truth of the law to judge. The law was already there. He came to fulfill it with a higher law, the law of love. And you know, that is absolutely freeing. I can converse with a Buddhist, a Muslim, an atheist, and appreciate them for their own personality and beliefs and experiences, and learn something from each of them. I don't have to have ulterior motives of dragging them to a meeting or worse yet a phone hookup. I can share my beliefs with them, and honestly have had plenty more opportunities to do so with this attitude than I ever did have in TWI, being under forced labor there to try and produce blood from a stone, and a free movement from a morose religion. But anyway, I do ramble...

Hey, great writeup on the logical fallacies of Wierwille's "Biblical research". I would think that to derive a belief system with accurate logic you'd have to start with truths that are axiomatic. For example, Euclidean geometry is completely derived from point, line, and plane as axioms. Do these always hold up? Not necessarily. The work Einstein did on theory of relativity seems to indicate that as mass approaches the speed of light, these simple axioms start bending. Your observations of logic flaws in Wierwille's teaching is very astute. From my perspective, VP kind of mixes in and up what he wants the reader / video viewer to consider as axioms and logical syllogisms as he doesn't really understand how either of those works. And absolutely he uses these flawed syllogisms to build up a logical case for him being THE person God chose to help the world understand the Bible. And believing his logic has opened up so many for exploitation. So what is really true regarding God and the Bible? What truths can we hold as axiomatic? I think people have to develop their own conclusions and build their belief systems from there. For me, IMO the simple truths about God I can read in the Bible are axiomatic: 1) God is love 2) God is light 3) God is my Father (in a spiritual sense) 4) God inspired scripture so that I can know Him and His plan of redemption for mankind through His Son Those are kind of what I consider for my life to be axioms. They absolutely require believing, "faith", trust in a higher power, or however you want to term it that communicates. I cannot prove them. In a sense they are "Christian" axioms if you want to label them. If they are my axioms, then I can start to derive logically my belief system. And just because I have a certain belief system doesn't mean I'm better than anyone else, and it also doesn't mean I can always live up to it. But if I have to be totally honest here about my belief system, it would be constructed of a part logically derived system of truths, and a part from the heart - "feel", or "conscience". They work together so I have to feel good about it and it has to make sense. So I think when we're talking about belief systems, one of the most important things to define (at least for ourselves) is "What are the axioms we are working from?" They may not be the same, but when we're talking together I think we can get a feel for each other's logic, and their character - the "makes sense" and "feels" part of our interaction. Another thing, on my #4 axiom that doesn't mean I'm going to follow all VP's leaps of logic regarding order of the words, every word, etc. There have been too many hands in the soup pot for me to accept that.

Over-protesting that one a little bit, Ham. Sure there's nothing you need to tell us?

Radar !!! What up? Good to see you. Now in all fairness I don't know why you'd single out Groucho's post as one of the most stupid in history. I'm sure there's a whole lot of us whose posts are high up there in the running, and we're just feeling a little left out here now.

Somehow I just envision Shirley Temple singing "On the Good ship Lollipop....." And people covering over horse sh!t with cake frosting.