Darrell Bailey

Hi Garth, I do not remember Seth. But my memory had faded much since then. Happy Trails, Darrell Bailey

You are very welcome , themex. I enjoyed looking at all those people I used to know. (I started 6th corps but decided to leave after six months into my second year.) So i was surprised when i saw some familiar faces and remembered some of their names. DB

Shellon, Thanks so much for posting the link to the book. I read it on-line over several days and just finished this morning. I encourage any greasespotters to check it out, regardless of your desires to go to church. It doesn't take a lot of time to read the whole thing. I found many places where the experiences I had in TWI (as well as many personal twi-lifestyle viewpoints expressed by others on this forum) were essentially similar to the storylines in the book. Seeing that in the story other people went through journeys like those shared by people in these forums, I felt very validated about my life and struggle. ( There was a point about 2/3 of the way through, where I wept for a moment, as I remembered the sincere heartfelt experience of just holding hands with other people and innocently and truly praying for one another ) I was also greatly comforted that my journey since leaving twi (almost exactly thirty years ago) has included learning and challenges I see reflected and represented in the book. Unlike other "resources" (such as the materials, meetings, and websites of organized offshoots populated by former-twi-ers) the hosts for this book are not demanding money, or membership, or likemindedness. I was free to read, and I did not have to "commit" to anything. With that in mind, and having finished the book, I would gladly pay to get a copy to re-read and or to share. Unlike other times (like the offshoot "ministries") when and where there is so much "noise" and very little "signal", I felt free to come and go to the site, and did not have to sort through a lot of creeds, expectations, and just plain old hot air emanating from an "insider, elite I know more than you" verbosity with hints of manipulation in order to fully participate in the life that is being described. It was a good way to start off the new Year. DB :)

I am pretty sure John is in the fifth row from the back, 3rd from the end on the right side of the picture. You have to zoom in. To his left is a very tan blonde young lady, and to his right is a young lady with dark hair. Right behind him is J***y Ca**ol in a plaid jacket. John is wearing a suit and tie and just a mustache. In front of John are a young lady and young man, he is wearing a white suit. Darrell B.

Welcome to the jungle, er I mean the greasespot. I hope you find some friends and fellowship here. Is the Bill M-rt-n you speak of the piano player from the Indy branch meetings in the 70's? God Bless us every one :) DB

I don't have my copy of the septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew old Test) handy, or my concordance of it, but I do think doulos may be used in the septuagint for the branded slave. But the usage in the New Testament world to Jews and Gentiles would not have carried the same terms of the service. Doulos, diakonos, leiturgos, therapou, all these are diferent words for service in greek. But in the ancient greek cultures slavery most of the time is doulos and it is not a voluntary after 7 years legislation. Gentile people reading the gospels or the epistles in 100 ad would not necessarily have the Hebrew background (Deut 15:17) to draw from in thinking doulos. The Hebrews had these safeguards about slavery (7 years or year of jubilee) because they were respecting the Lord who had delivered them from bondage (Passover and all that Cecil B. Demille spectacular stuff). So I think there are some differences between the branded slave of early Israel and the service we are in to our Lord Jesus. (The groaning of the children of Israel closely typifies the bondage of the human race, as well as all creation (see Romans "8") and our Deliverance by Christ who is our passover) BUT, it is thrilling to think that maybe the 7 years (7 = sabbath, perfection, Lord of the Sabbath, etc) is symbolic of the service we fulfill in this life, and after our Lord returns, being totally freed, we now serve him out of pure love, carrying his mark and brand! God Bless us every one :) DB

Hi Watered Garden, and all others who are part of this thread whether posters or viewers. I do not want to give the impression that I am promoting bondage or legalism when I speak of being a slave to our Lord Jesus. When I speak of everything I have belonging to my Lord not me, I say it with Love and Joy. My family, my work, are no less dear to me when I actively consider myself as a servant of the Lord. In fact, this re-visioning of "ministry" to my family and work and friends allows me to fulfill the desire that guided me the seven years I spent in twi, serving God. I now believe that as I learn more about serving and taking care of those in my immediate world, I am learning to serve God and the Lord Jesus, and "doing his will". I think that many times in twi we were sidetracked into abstract areas of service, often in the form of "obeying" every whim of the "leadership". -- I know that there are sections of New Testament scripture that use sonship imagery that seems to contradict servant/lord thinking. In my experience, I felt more bondage while in the way, even as we talked about Sonship Rights. I believe that twi (as well as many other organizations) fell into phariseeism & or legalism. I felt constant pressure to do everything right. And instead of learning better ways of serving, I just got handed more and more detail in what was supposed to happen. (Maybe it was my failure to get "it", but I did not get much insight into how to serve better) I think that the branded slave teaching (that was the name of the tape vpw taught in the 70's) got informally or in practice placed into the realm of "spiritual" believers (such as the Way Corps was alleged to produce). Super-believers who loved the Lord Jesus (as we were supposed to be n the process of becoming, partly by emulating elders in the word) could call themselves "doulos". It practically came with your name tag. But I think that twi was wrong. In new testament times, doulos and kurios refer to slaves and lords, and not necessarily doulos who serve by love. The new thing I discovered a few years ago was that Jesus purchased all those who had been in bondage. He is Lord over all the believers, regardless of how much they have learned about loving him. And the very fact of his Lordship helps to reverse the results of the previous lordship of sin. Jesus did not purchase "free" people. He redeemed his people (peculiar people= purchased people) who had been enslaved already. As my new Lord and Master, Jesus is retraining me in how to treat all those that I meet. Teaching me how to bless those who curse me, how love those who don't love me. So in this balance between the reference to me as a son, and as a slave, God my Father is using my apprenticeship to the Master Jesus to grow me up. The teaching I heard in the way identified my old man nature as the source for sin (living through my unrenewed mind), even after I was born again. My new understanding is that I only have one nature, my new one, but the training I received as a slave to sin in the past can sometimes guide my life. Habits, skills, addictions of the old man were conformed to the old Lord. Replacing the old habits with new actions inspired by my New Master will result in the retraining I need. TWI doctrine as I understood it, stated that we as believers had two natures and struggle between two natures was inevitable. I believe that a fresh, comprehensive apprehension of the Lordship of Jesus would allow all of us to learn how to live for God, right where we are, with Jesus himself teaching us, (we don't have to atttain to be super-believers as the result of some man-made artificial apprenticeship) As Lord, Jesus wants to take us from carnal to spiritual. Flesh does fight against spirit, but no greek words in the NT support the dual-NATURE theology. ----- God Bless us every one :) DB

Bramble: In TWI our meekness to God was shown by our submission and obedience to his leaders--if we couldn't listen to and obey them, we certainly couldn't follow God... You said it there. Right on target. I distinctly remember sitting in the Emporia 6th corps meeting where special guest B* Re**ard voiced for the 1st time (at least 1st time I heard it): Blind Obedience Blind Obedience. I was rather shocked. The only avenue we seemed to have to apply this Blind Obedience was to fulfill every jot and tittle of whatever leader was over us. So this way corpse environment was an artificial system of measuring our faith and obedience was just a new version of phariseeism. All the abstract things all day long that someone in the corps would use to measure our "renewed mind". Artificial environmental application with a view to pleasing men (and women) who were thinking they represented God. That meeting was the beginning of the end of my desire to stay in the "corps". I had survived the all day activites, late night teachings, and then struggling to get everything done, and still sleep a few hours, and still feeling unrighteous. I had endured the occasional extra early morning exercise/breaking-down-punishment because somebody plssed off Craig. But hearing blind obedience somehow cut through the brainwashing. Shortly after, I borrowed three bucks for gas (goes pretty far in a VW beetle) from Father Forehead and was out of there. Since then I have changed almost every major doctrinal belief I held while in the way. ------- Today I believe that there are different semantic ways that God has documented in various metaphors that we are familiar with, the nature of our past, present and future. Obedience is part of the new paradigm as I now perceive it. But the Obedience is not to any other member in the body, but to the Head, Christ. My apprenticeship as a child of a loving Father is with his son, my master, the Lord Jesus. My area of service is everything in my life, family, friend, work, etc. Everything in my life, family, friend, work doesn't really belong to me, since I belong to the Lord Jesus. (A slave owned nothing since he was owned, it all belonged to the Lord.) AS a slave of Jesus my possessions are really his, therefore, as I take care of those things, I am taking care of God's stuff and Jesus's stuff. A slave was considered an extension of the Master's Will. So I extend the Lord's will to everything I touch as I attempt to represent my Master. My obedience doesn't have to be manifested by kissing the a** of some would be leader, but as I lovingly do what Jesus would do to all those around me. There are times in the New Test. docs where the viewpoint is looking at the old master vs the new master. There are times when a "father and his children" expresses the particular relationship, such as the chastening spoken of in the book of Hebrews There are other analogies that hilite other aspects of our new lives. For what it's worth, DB

Dallas Willard has lots to say about this surrender/obedience/service aspect of people's lives. One of his most recent books is "The Great Omission". The title is of course a play on words between the "slogan" 'The Great Commission' and people using the concept of sins of commission vs sins of omission. The difference between believing in Jesus and actually being apprenticed to him is a central point that he works on. "Go ye and make disciple of all nations" vs go ye and make "believers". The necessity of actually "following" Jesus and learning from him is sometimes "omitted" from Western versions of churchianity. I heartily recomend doing some internet searches on his stuff, although at times he gets so deep in comparisons to modern and postmodern thinking that it starts to get confusing and boring. God Bless us every one, DB

Along with all the others, Happy Anniversary to you Both. What an accomplishment, for a Sock to still have it's mate, after three and a half decades, I will always remember you as that young couple at the Rock, gracefully looking for sponsors for the corps. -- God Bless You and your sweet wife, DB

howdy folks here at the new home for the Spot-O-Grease. The topic of suffering was not one we talked about alot in TWI. In the years since I stopped attending their stuff I have spent a lot of time studying suffering and living through suffering. One of the biggest impediments to getting a better grip on it (from my perspective NOW) were the methods used by TWI in their study of the scriptures. IMHO, TWI got off on error-prone tangents when they "analyzed" the "tree" while remaining unlearned, ignorant or in flat-out denial of the surrounding "forest". Studying the context of a set of verses in light of the SUBJECT is hard to do when there are preconcieved notions from out-of-context word studies. The "context of suffering" has to be grasped as well as all the little word studies. ----- Early on in the history of this thread Rachel made some points that I think need reconsidering. The book of Hebrews, as well as other NT literature, does talk a lot about suffering and enduring in the context of learning and instruction. Jesus learned obedience by the things which he endured. Jesus obviously had no personal sins or guilt to "justify" his sufferings. Jesus is an example of a son learning from his Father. Jesis is an example of a slave obeying his master. "Not my will, but your will" he said. A slave was considered an extension of his Lord's WILL. Jesus humbled himself and took upon himself the form of a servant. Obedient through his whole life including the suffering before and during the Cross. Now that Jesus has been made Lord, and we accept and confess him as Lord, We are now the slaves being instructed to be instruments of our Lord's WILL. A slave was usually instructed in specific tasks and vocations. As the Body of Christ fulfills the purpose of representing Christ, who represents God, the unity of Christ is being expressed throughout the VARIETY in the members of the one body of Christ. Every great design will express unity as well as variety. God's great design for the ages includes each one of us (VARIETY) possessing the life of Jesus (UNITY) but expressing it in our own lives as we are taught by our new Master Jesus. Our new Master will teach us. The learning process of a child may include elements of reproof and punishment. Chastisement and instruction are tied together. The perfecting of the saints is one of the goals. Saintliness is a qualification for more instruction not less. No one "saint" will be totally Christlike before we see him as he is, so we are all in need of instruction up until the very last moment. However I do not think that God or Jesus send the oppression or the source of the suffering. But God and Jesus do send the solutions, the skill to survive and respond. Jeus had to perfect this before God could present it to us. The instruction is learned as we take an actrive spiritual part in the way we respond to any adversity. We are responsible for our actions taken in response, (response is part of the word response-ability [sic]) to all adverse situations. Some adversity comes to one member of the body through another member of the body. Some adversity comes from "non-believers". Some adversity comes from life and nature and hurricanes and gravity, etc. I don't believe God "sends" the adverse situation. I do believe that he wants to instruct us in every single adverse (or pleasant) situation through his Son. God Bless us every one, Darrell

Regarding the Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody": A few months ago I was listening to National Public Radio. The particular show was "The World" I think. They did a story about the surprising popularity of Queen's music in the Middle East. I think that it was most probably Iran (slightly possibly Iraq, I sound like Alan jackson in another song). NPR and The World usually do their stories with reporters and real people "on location". Freddie Mercury was originally from Iran (Iraq?) and that is the big reason Queen's music is popular. Local boy did good kind of thing, despite the gay issue with Freddie. Anyway on that show they talked about the song, and kind of took it apart and translated the words. I don't remember the specifics, but the interpretation seemed very much along the lines of what someone else posted about the tragic situation the protagonist in the song was enduring. I do remember feeling surpried and relieved that it was not as "dark" as some have suggested. Someone could probably do a google search on NPR's website to see if there is a transcript. God Bless you all as, well as Wayne and Garth, (heads rocking, hair flying) Darrell

Wow. Cool, Thanks to all who posted. It will be interesting to see how this stuff develops. I am fascinated by the details of ancient Greek drama, including stagecraft as well as the choragic competition. Darrell Bailey, a humble mathetes / doulos of didaskolos / kurious Jesou Christou.

. . . and if I "copy" the original sin by sinning in my life, thereby passing it off as my own sin ... . . . am I guilty of plagiarism ? :)-->, :)-->