WordWolf

There's a certain futility in answering you in according to your posts, Mike, and Rocky acknowledged that. He also pointed out that, once again, you hijacked a thread. Unlike you, the rest of us can learn from each other, and read and respond to each other's posts accordingly. With you, it's always "what can I pick and choose from what they said and use to push my agenda", so you tend to miss the content, and sometimes who posted it. (I never posted about John the Baptizer's diet nor his outfit, someone else did.) It's a lot like how John Lynn would "advertise" here and refuse to post in threads. He'd post the initial post and run off, or have someone else post something to us, and insist all communications with him be by phone. Whenever someone phoned him, they'd be subjected to a continuous ad of "take my classes and buy my book." In between, he'd criticize us anonymously and pretend he wasn't advertising to us, wink-wink- as if it wasn't plainly obvious to EVERYONE. Looking back, I honestly think he thought we didn't notice, so everybody but him got what was going on and why his advertising wasn't translating into increased sales. There's a lesson there, for those ready to receive it.

Since someone's posting who could benefit from the contents of this thread, I'm bumping it up in case they've missed it before.

Has the leopard changed his spots?

I also notice how Mike can see it that way- but when another thread has actual discussions that address how Charlene was correct and that the Bible does NOT interpret itself, that's when Mike "gets busy" again, and never DIRECTLY addresses anything that refutes his position. He responds with emotion and ad hominem attacks ("dim-witted"), but the actual discussion he ducks. This reminds me of an old saying. "If you have the law on your side, hammer the law. If you have the facts on your side, hammer the facts. If you have neither on your side, hammer the table." We're getting noise but a skipping of substance- and that tells us a great deal.

That's it.

Since I'm 100% sure of my answer, here's the next one. "We don't need no education."

"Unchained Melody", by The Righteous Brothers.

That's it. Too easy?

The further into twi you got, the more powerful "the adversary" became, and the less-powerful God Almighty's protection became. A single thought and "the adversary" could get you, but for God to protect you, you needed to tithe, and do increasingly-longer lists of things, and skipping any one of them would negate His protection. So, the more you gave to twi to get the same coverage against :"the adversary". Consider it "adversary insurance", or consider it "protection money" if you wish.

"Easy, Igor, you impetuous young boy."

I am? Oops. Hang on.

So, most of us, after the 1st session, were told to have "Christians Should Be Prosperous" read before the next session (the book was an argument for tithing to twi). twi also taught "abundant sharing." In twi, the tithe was/is MANDATORY, although the Christian's donations are to be freewill and not "of necessity" (in other words, NOT MANDATORY.) Supposedly, 10 percent is the minimum, less than that and "God won't even spit in your direction." (lcm primarily.) That's "the seed." Donations above 10 percent were called "abundant sharing." This got a bit confusing when the tithe (from the word "TENTH") was raised to 15 percent then 20 percent under lcm. Man, THAT didn't last long..... So, people were encouraged to donate directly to twi above 10 percent. Then there's "plurality giving." Ever heard that term outside of twi? In twi, that meant taking your income, subtracting all you need to live on, and donating the rest directly to twi- as in HQ, NEVER locally. So, you were not supposed to save money for emergencies or investments. You were to trust twi that God would cover you in case of emergencies. As for investments like a house, in practice it was expected that you count on inheritences to give you a house, since otherwise you won't be handing all that cash over to twi. Outside of twi - and possibly ex-twi groups- neither the term nor the concept- are taught. Then again, I haven't checked cults. No Christian denomination teaches it. twi, from the beginning, was organized to turn a profit. Pfal was set up to sell the materials at RETAIL prices, guaranteeing a profit. It was held in homes where the locals covered all expenses. It pushed tithing (see above.) Intermediate was even more egregious about retail prices, since you got almost no materials. ROAs were always priced with everything RETAIL. And so on. Everything either had additional costs that weren't covering an obvious need, or was on its own expense. Want to go WOW? There's a flat fee of $200 that twi keeps- and gives back nothing in exchange. The rest of the fee is for you to find housing where you're assigned. The group is chosen with an eye towards who has a car. twi does not transport the groups, nor pay for gas or housing. Any help with housing is out-of-pocket for LOCALS, who ALWAYS pay the check in twi. And the main goal in WOW is to run pfal classes- which run at a profit for twi and attempt to reel in more suckers to get 10 percent or more of their income.

TW- LIL pg-234. "Then Johnny Townsend, another young man who had the class in the army, came here that summer in 1969. He stayed here two years. Like so many of these young people, he'd rather read than work. He learned the Word, and he learned to work and study here. He'd spoil this, spoil that, and then he'd learn. Now he heads the state of Kansas, and he is the spiritual coordinator of the Western Region." I don't know what the army teaches people about working, but I get the impression that they work pretty hard there, even in peacetime. vpw seems to disagree-at least at this moment.

That's him. Victor Frankenstein is Italian-Swiss. I removed Sting from the list because his character was Dr Frankenstein but was not named "Victor Frankenstein."

That's the thing. It's an instance of someone needing to malign people in the Bible- all to claim they were all weak and venal- so that vpw could be said to fit in their company. Finding the need to libel people in the Bible just to try to give vpw a free pass is remarkable, and happened here, as you can all see. It's also wildly dishonest, but honesty is of lesser importance to cleaning up vpw's image.

If you're skimming when looking for him, and you come across a youth mentioning the Army, slow down and go back a page or so- that was JT.

vpw's entire premise of the Bible interpreting itself was based on a False Dilemma- that there were exactly 2 possibilities AND NO MORE- 1) the Bible had no interpretation 2) the Bible interpreted ITSELF Surely, EVEN IF HE HAD BEEN RIGHT, no "private' interpretation would have meant there was a "PUBLIC" interpretation. (That bugged me a long time ago.) All of that's academic- since vpw was wrong about what that meant. Since he used the archaic KJV's wording, he was able to twist things to sound like they meant what he wanted- even if the Greek was completely different or the Hebrew was. In this case, as GSC regulars know, the verses were talking about HOW WE GOT THE SCRIPTURES, their ORIGIN. They said NOTHING about how we are to approach them. The word "interpretation" was an awful translation- which is obvious when vpw claims that "private interpretation" is "one's own letting-loose like you let loose the dogs on a hunt." There was nothing about "interpreting" in vpw's colorful digression into dogs on a hunt.

It's fascinating how many Bibles Lamsa sold, all to pfal grads who wanted to show other people ONE VERSE in Lamsa's Bible....... a verse that was later shown to be WRONG by twi's own research department! A lot of people thought twi used Lamsa's instead of the KJV. No, but they sure made up most of the sales of that book....

Thank you for confirming that even you consider the instructions accompanying the class to have been vpw's instructions. We've previously brought up that we were told immediately to read "Christians Should Be Prosperous" once that book was added to the pfal curriculum, and we were told- different people in different parts of the country in different decades- to spend several months reading nothing but pfal books. Those instructions weren't part of the taped class because those books didn't EXIST when the tapes were taped. But vpw gave the orders, and that's how it was. As we all knew and now you've confirmed you know.

Mike, you characterized John the Baptizer as "a weirdo." When asked why, you responded with this- which does NOTHING to actually address the question. What's your criteria for classifying John the Baptizer as "a weirdo"? As for my sister, she could use interaction with someone as moral as John. He, if he were alive and working on his ministry now, would have no time for dating. So, why'd you call John the Baptizer "a weirdo", then duck the question when asked why, Mike?

JT was also around pretty early, from not long after vpw hijacked the hippies. Apparently, they recruited him. JT was quoted back in "The Way-Living in Love".

Lamsa wrote it that way. Lamsa was wrong. It's only considered like that among the "Aramaic primacy" fringe element out there. vpw's adoption of "Aramaic primacy" solely on the basis of being exotic and new and fringe was independent of the truth. After thousands of hours of work, the twi research team, sweating over Aramaic texts, ended up with different results than Lamsa. Under "Aramaic primacy", that's not supposed to happen. "Aramaic primacy" is error.

No. This character is definitely not British, no matter who is cast to play him. Julius Caesar's not British, either, but a lot of Brits have played him.

Leonard Whiting Udo Kier Robert Foxworth Colin Clive Jonny Lee Miller Samuel West Raul Julia Kenneth Branagh Aden Young Peter Cushing Alec Newman James McAvoy Cedric Hardwicke Ralph Bates Barrett Oliver Charlie Tahan Patrick Bergin Michael Bell Thomas Kretschmann David Anders Jeff B. Davis Harry Treadaway Benedict Cumberbatch

The last thing about the cloak was something from the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. "Now, shivering in some gloomy cell under the Palace, or it may be on the rocky floor of the Tullianum, with the wintry nights coming on, he bethinks him of the old cloke and asks Timothy to bring it with him.’ He quotes also the letter of Tyndale, the translator of the English Bible, from his prison in the damp cells of the Vilvoorde: ‘I entreat your Lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that, if I must remain here for the winter, you would beg the Commissary to be so kind as to send me, from the things of mine which he has, a warmer cap … I feel the cold painfully in my head.… Also a warmer cloke, for the one I have is very thin.… He has a woollen shirt of mine, if he will send it. But most of all … my Hebrew Bible, Grammar and Vocabulary, that I may spend my time in that pursuit. William Tyndale.’" In comparable situations, relatively modern men have requested a warm cloak/overcoat. If Paul was a man, a living, breathing, real man, surely he had use for a warm overcoat as well. With Tyndale, it's easy to see, but somehow, all the rules are off when it comes to people in the Bible- they aren't believed to react how a normal person would in the exact same circumstance. OVER-complicating, OVER-thinking, is a side-effect of always seeking some OCCULTED meaning, some SECRET meaning, when a normal read renders everything plain.