WordWolf

You have some interesting stuff there. When you have a chance, I'd recommend checking your site. Looks like you moved some things around, and there's dead links pointing to where they WERE rather than where they ARE.

"Quite peaceful and highly rational." "It was bring him aboard or let him die." "Then why didn't you let him die?" "If you are father and daughter, you may have shared the same dream." "That is not reasonable." "No one's believed that for countless generations. Just as we no longer believe the stars control our fates, or that the spirits of the dead haunt the living." "According to the legends. But if Palmer is a servant of the Overseer, what was he doing in the cave?" "The Overseer was said to be all-powerful. He could provide gentle winters, plentiful hunting, fertile crops... anything." "Weren't there stories of the Overseer destroying those who offended him?" "Stories. Nothing more." "Perhaps we should punish her -- to let the Overseer know that she and Riker acted alone." "Your own reports describe how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned all belief in the supernatural. And now you're asking me to sabotage that achievement... send them back into the Dark Ages of fear and superstition." "It's not the season for lightning. It must be a warning..." "We've had storms at this time of year before." "Not like this one..." "It must mean something!" "It is beyond my power." "Nothing is beyond your power! You are the Overseer -- I'll prove it!"

"Quite peaceful and highly rational." "It was bring him aboard or let him die." "Then why didn't you let him die?" "If you are father and daughter, you may have shared the same dream." "That is not reasonable."

Eh, was I right?

This is going to take some explaining, and I'll add links when I have time. Back when vpw hijacked the hippies. he sold them a complete package. The package was "twi doctrine and practice" and offered a structure more liberal than any church. (How many respectable churches are cool with people smoking pot and making out at meetings?) That was obviously meant to lure in the hippies. For the serious Christians, there was a GOAL, one made into a nice slogan every twi'er heard regularly- "Word Over the World." The idea was to take God's Word (as taught by twi) to every person on the Earth so they could make an informed decision as to whether to choose to serve God or to refuse to do so. There were a few rumors that accompanied that, of course. I can think of two. One, that Jesus Christ would return shortly after every single person had heard. Two, that it would happen during vpw's lifetime. (A lot of people I knew were surprised it didn't happen before he died.) So, there were programs (Word Over the World Ambassadors, aka WOW Ambassadors), there were slogans, songs, and even hand signals. (The hand signal didn't last, but it's seen in a photo in twi's own book, The Way:Living in Love.) So, "we've got to take The Word over the world", and "it's up to us because no other Christians can possibly manage it since they're all screw-ups." This was a cause and a goal for expansive growth locally, among others- more people spoken to meant more Christians, which is a victory to begin with, but also more people to speak to those who haven't heard, and thus we're a tiny bit closer to the goal with each new Christian who joined the group. If they were not born again before, then there's a new Christian, and if they were, now they're an "effective" Christian since now they've learned to do things "correctly." After vpw died, a few years followed with lots of controversy. Women came forward about vpw molesting them or other twi leaders molesting them (vpw said they could...) This led to "the fog years" where lcm wandered around, wondering what happened because he was following vpw doctrine rather than The Spirit, and it wasn't working but he thought he was doing God's will. At the end (1988-1989), lcm demanded an oath of loyalty from all the twi'ers, starting with the top leaders and down to the local ones. Any one who didn't swear one to lcm HIMSELF (for example, those who quoted the Bible and didn't want to choose among men) was KICKED OUT. In about a year (not counting exits in the Fog Years), twi lost about 80% of its membership and leadership. Since lcm kicked them out en masse, many were able to continue to work together locally and statewide, and this really worked against twi. So, lcm now had a small group left. Now he began teaching about "the remnant" and things about how numbers don't count", and had blind loyalists as the rank-and-file. Within a few years, he got REALLY weird- he had decided that every fool thought that went through his head was approved by God and probably was sent directly BY God. A guy who liked to condemn doctrines of Papal Infallibility began to, in effect, claim just that for himself....and worse, since Papal Infallibility only affects formal declarations and not "I'd like chicken for dinner." lcm decided that everything he uttered was infallible, and to question that was to question God Almighty. Naturally, his gross incompetence combined with that and led to one major failure after another, plus one minor failure after another. One evening, lcm went up to the podium and made an announcement: God Almighty had just told him that The Word was now Over The World. Naturally, this sounded like nonsense- twi was now tiny compared to what it once was, and NOW they got to EVERYONE? But this was the era of overt blind loyalty, and to even THINK lcm was wrong was heresy. Now what? Well, if twi's goal was accomplished, they needed a new one. Now that The Word was Over The World, lcm announced twi had crossed into The Promised Land of The Prevailing Word, which has pretty much been the twi slogan, goal, etc since then. www.greasespotcafe.com/main2/waydale/waydale-documents-html/staff-meeting-at-the-way-international-headquarters-on-04/14/1996.html Where did the slogan come from? lcm was lousy at Bible research (an odd deficiency for a Biblical Research ministry, but there's been a low standard since the beginning-although vpw was very good at FAKING IT for the masses.) His one supposed claim was he understood Acts. He even taught a class and "wrote a book" on the subject, "The Rise and Expansion (of the First Century Church)". Mind you, twi's expert on how the early Christians exploded in numbers oversaw a period of 80% of the people leaving- followed by slow trickles of more people leaving after that and during his reign. He used the KJV for Acts 19:20 "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." I'm not aware of vpw using it like this, but perhaps he did and lcm ran with it. That wouldn't be the first time. vpw taught ONCE on "athletes of the spirit" and lcm (the dumb jock) ran with it, wouldn't let it go, and plagiarized a Hollywood movie (Staying Alive) to put on a 2-hour dance production on the subject. (I kid you not.) As you can see from the link I provided, lcm was seriously unstable while he was making his initial explanations about how this was supposed to work. Since lcm was kicked out (officially he was "placed on spiritual probation" and the official word is that he's out), nobody's had enough personality to even ATTEMPT something new. If they did, rfr would have them kicked out as a threat to her authority, as if the remaining twi hasn't strangled out the ability to think from the remaining insiders. So, wherever vpw or lcm left off with stuff is where it will stay, more or less, until twi closes its doors because nobody is listening any more.

The Q quotes didn't clue me in. However, Mc Coy's exchange with Data did. This is "Encounter at Farpoint", the series premiere of NextGen. Give me a little time, my internet access is sporadic today (moreso than my time! :) )

vpw criticized hypocrites who cherry-picked the verses they wanted and skipped the verses they didn't like. Then, of course, vpw WAS a hypocrite who cherry-picked the verses he wanted and glossed over the verses he didn't like. He'd acknowledge them lightly in public but never seem to bring them up when discussing conduct of leaders and so on. vpw was quite experienced at finding verses that he could DISTORT to make it sound like they supported what he wanted to believe. In private, he "found" a verse that said God was ok with ORGIES- although they weren't His optimal choice, He would ACCEPT them. So it should surprise no one that a verse that says "no condemnation" would be creatively interpreted to mean that no instance of GUILT should ever remain after doing anything, no matter how sinful an action was. vpw moved the boundaries of interpreting Scripture so that Christians were allowed to sin a lot so long as they didn't feel guilty about it. And he championed that position.

A lot of the time, the only drug used was alcohol, and that's available all over the US, so it's easy to find near any twi locale. vpw, of course, made drinking alcohol a part of the twi experience at a certain level- HE drank the stuff every day, including when he traveled. (A poster here posted their surprise- when vpw was expected to visit for TWO days, that person was tasked with buying a FEW bottles of Drambuie for him, something they'd never HEARD of before then. Apparently, vpw went through something like a bottle a day of Drambuie when visiting.) So, he prepped for women to accept a drink (or 2 or 4) when he offered them one, when alone with them. As for the rest, I have no specifics, only general information. It's common knowledge that tranquilizers were a LOT easier to get a prescription for sometime after the early 1950s. It's hardly shocking if vpw was getting valium or something similar. He might even have convinced an innocent, non-twi doctor that he was having trouble sleeping and gotten a Rx for them. At the time, that was not rare in the US. So, he worked with alcohol and some sort of tranquilizing agent, and neither was prohibitively hard to get at the time. ==================== I thought I saw someone comment about orgies in twi. As far as I know, there were no actual orgies in twi. (At least, I've never heard of any, and I wasn't invited if there were any.) However, now that I give the matter a little thought, it's obvious this was something vpw WANTED but couldn't HAVE. Look back at when he hijacked the hippies. He read about Christians in the Haight-Ashbury area omong the hippies. He'd heard that there was a lot of "free love" among hippies, including orgies. vpw headed out specifically to THOSE Christians. (Not any more local to him, even though it would have been easier to stay in contact with some, say, within a state or so at some college.) He approached them, and noted (even in the sanitized version) how comfortable they were with each other's bodies. He EXPECTED to find hippie Christians who were comfortable with orgies, and that seemed to support his expectation. When alone and drinking with J1m D00p, vpw asked him-repeatedly- about attendance at an orgy, and pressed for SPECIFICS. At that moment, vpw VOLUNTEERED his own invention- a twisting of a verse to claim God was ok with orgies. When D00p resisted the idea, vpw dropped the subject. Time for Plan B- sex with individual hippychicks without orgies. When pliant hippychicks failed to drop out of the sky (boy, what a waste of time to have gone to Haight-Ashbury, he hasn't been able to score any boom-boom from the trip, even after!) he goes to Plan C- using the recruited hippies to recruit youngsters (which he was already doing), and recruit from among THOSE youngsters to bring some on campus, where he could try to cheat on his wife and see how many were willing to have sex with him. That led to Plan D- tricking women into having sex with him from among those on campus. If you look at this from a perspective of "was vpw looking to score sex partners?" then the entire history of twi becomes frighteningly CONSISTENT and makes a lot of sense. Granted, I think he also wanted money, a comfortable living, and much bestowed respect, but the path he selected seems to have been steered straight for "youngsters who might be ok with casual sex with an old married guy."

When vpw went to Haight-Ashbury to hijack the hippies and recruit them, he was looking for youngsters who'd be cool with casual sex. twi's own account quoted vpw happy with how casual they were physically with each other. vpw went to J1m D00p and asked him, a few times, what it was like to ATTEND AN ORGY (which JD had shown up for once, but left a few minutes into it and was embarrassed about the whole thing.) After he convinced JD to describe it to him, vpw told JD that it was ok with God to PARTICIPATE IN ORGIES, and quoted a verse of Scripture out of context, then distorted its meaning ridiculously to claim it supported his doctrine. When vpw was refining his vague ideas that he stamped into the first way corps, and tried to make a real program out of what he already had running and called one, he set up the thing as a sort of predatory watering hole. He began by requiring each candidate to write up an autobiography and submit it. When any woman wrote something about an incident of sexual abuse in her past, vpw set her autobiography aside, and he targeted her for sexual abuse of his own when she was on campus. At least two women reported that they had such an incident in her write-up, and vpw called them alone and fed them a line about God wanting him to molest them properly so they'd be healed of whatever happened before. One of them reported that he had her autobiography in his hand when she arrived. Many of us know that those who have suffered abuse in their past are easier to victimize later. I'm confident, based on his behaviour, that vpw knew it as well, and counted on it. We also know he tried to have the women drink with him, and some of those drinks had drugs in them to knock them out (at least one reported here about having survived such an encounter with that pervert.) And yes, there was a whole framework he set up to find the women most east to victimize, to arrange to have him alone with them, and to have someone monitor them afterwards to hush them up, or have them ostracized and silenced if they showed signs of preparing to speak up. He also told lcm that he'd HAVE to do the same-he'd have to "loosen up" regarding extramarital sex. vpw's greatest accomplishments may revolve around the most thorough part of twi- his cadre of insiders to facilitate sexual abuse from vpw to God's precious ones for whom Christ died. Whenever I hear someone question whether the word "worshiped" is a bit strong to apply to how some people saw-and see- vpw, I just remember that they made a graven image of vpw. There's an ugly metal statue of vpw in the auditorium. And twi sold smaller models of it for homes, so any twi'er could have a graven image of vpw in their home. It's also S.O.P. for twi'ers to have photographs of the Board up in their living room. (The small wallet-sized photos would end up on a shelf or table.)

I agree with your points (from here, as I have not read the book), but I have to add something about that LAST point. You said that passage implies that everyone "are going to go through a fire". I think that passage implies nothing about a PERSON "going through a fire." It seems clear to me that the person's WORK will "go through a fire" and the person will be untouched by it. Let's look at the verses you mentioned, in 3 different versions. ========================== 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 New International Version (NIV) 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. 14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. ======================== 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 Contemporary English Version (CEV) 11because Christ is the only foundation. 12-13Whatever we build on that foundation will be tested by fire on the day of judgment. Then everyone will find out if we have used gold, silver, and precious stones, or wood, hay, and straw. 14We will be rewarded if our building is left standing. 15But if it is destroyed by the fire, we will lose everything. Yet we ourselves will be saved, like someone escaping from flames. ============================= 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 New American Standard Bible (NASB) 11 For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13 each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. 14 If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. 15 If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. ====================== ====================== ====================== I think that's what it's saying- the WORKS are tried by fire but the person is spared the flames no matter what.

Correct! The possum playing possum is voiced by William Shatner. (His daughter is voiced by Avril Lavigne.) Hammy the Squirrel is voiced by Steve Correll, which is why Hammy suggests "Steve" as a name. For those who haven't seen it, it's loosely based on the newspaper comic strip. Small animals are dealing with suburban sprawl reaching them. (In the movie, we also have humans who have to deal with animals there as well.) It's reasonably funny, and has some hysterical lines.

I find sexual predators in general to be blights on society, without qualification. I find it disturbing when I see someone trying to excuse serial predators. For example, vpw set up an elaborate structure to facilitate sexual predation. He set up so he could find women to target, he set up places to prey on them, a network of people to conspire with him, and walk them through an innocent arrival somewhere through "exit counseling" them to keep their mouths shut or report they were going to speak up so he could have them excoriated. That's not even addressing setting up doctrine so he could have a "script" to work from they'd already accepted. Then people come along and make it sound as if vpw walks into his office one day and a woman's sprawled nekkid across his desk with a flower in her teeth. "What's he supposed to do?" Well, even IF such a fantasy thing happened, the MARRIED MINISTER is supposed to turn and run from his office until he can get one or more people to accompany him back to his office. This is why Billy Graham has made it a practice to arrange never to EVER be alone with a woman- not even in an elevator. It allows him to be faithful to his marriage before God, anf it allows God's people to trust him to refrain from opportunistic sin. All of this is different from conspiring to commit sin, making elaborate arrangements, then carrying them out- which vpw did and taught lcm and others to do as well, making them two-fold the child of hell he was, if at all possible.

"No, I can talk. I'm just driving." "The homeowners charter, which you signed, says the grass is supposed to be two inches, and according to my measuring stick, yours is two-point-five." "Mother, is that you? Beckoning me into the light? Must... move... toward... the light!" "I don't want to die, Dad. Not for real..." "Lets call it Steve!" "Steve??" "Steve's a pretty name!" "I really thought you were dead!" "I learned from the best." "What about this one, this Depelter Turbo?" "That's a contraband item, ma'am, as it is illegal in every state... ...except Texas." "I don't care if this violates the Geneva Conventions, I want it. "I thought you might, so I took the liberty of installing it for you."

That's it. My first clue was harder because I lost track of which thread I was on until I came back to update it.

"No, I can talk. I'm just driving." "The homeowners charter, which you signed, says the grass is supposed to be two inches, and according to my measuring stick, yours is two-point-five." "Mother, is that you? Beckoning me into the light? Must... move... toward... the light!" "I don't want to die, Dad. Not for real..." "Lets call it Steve!" "Steve??" "Steve's a pretty name!" "I really thought you were dead!" "I learned from the best."

"What's the use in trying, all you get is pain. When I wanted sunshine, I got rain."

"We gotta install microwave ovens Custom kitchen deliveries. We gotta move these refrigerators. We gotta move these colour TV's."

"No, I can talk. I'm just driving." "The homeowners charter, which you signed, says the grass is supposed to be two inches, and according to my measuring stick, yours is two-point-five." "Mother, is that you? Beckoning me into the light? Must... move... toward... the light!"

"I couldn't leave her if I tried."

"Hard To Handle". The Black Crowes did a version of this song.

Eh, is this "Mister Jones and Me", by Counting Crows? (Or "Mister Jones", I'm never sure.)

Gee, that guy hardly sounds like a Real Genius to me...

I don't see that to be the case, either. I didn't use any "academic techniques" with the Wheel of Time or Harry Potter. (I didn't go to any school offering a degree in either, but I've heard there's a school somewhere with at least a class on HP.) Again, it depends on how deep you want to go. The most elementary SWIMMERS can all hang out in the shallows, to go deeper into the water, you need to swim better than that. With any book, you can get some level of understanding by reading it no matter who you are, so long as you have something approaching an average level of reading comprehension. With any book, the more skills you have (the deeper your background), the more levels you'll understand the book at. Again, that's ANY book. With moderate skills, you'll see deeper and more profoundly than the D+ English student who read through it. With more dedication, you'll bring a broader range to the table, or a greater wealth of specialized knowledge, and you'll understand more. And if you really put in several years of work, you'll find things that the average person would think you made up. (Regarding Hamlet, I've found at least one teacher I had was INDIFFERENT and didn't seem to get a certain point Shakespeare made. So, attitude affects dedication, which affects how far you go or how hard you apply yourself. To very specifically address your point, ANYONE can read Proverbs and should be able to see it's got a lot of wisdom in it, and understand SOME of that wisdom, enough for their preferences. Not everyone could do a read-through of, say, Ecclesiastes and find it equally wise. Due to its handling of DEEPER issues, it can seem like nonsense to an indifferent reader, who might completely miss the points made all over the book. I got accused of polarizing the posts of others a few posts back. I think I'm getting that type of RESPONSE to my posts, however, and I'm not actually trying to make things either/or.

I disagree. Not even addressing matters of the supernatural and doctrine, I would disagree. When I read Hamlet, I come away with a deeper understanding than the high school and college students that read it each semester. (More than I did at both levels, and I understood it a lot at both levels.) That's interest, study, and familiarity. However, they get the basic story-they understand who does what and basically why. Anyone can read "the Wheel of Time" and get an entertaining read of a story they understand. Then there's people who "sleuth" the series, digging for all the nuances the author included for those who look VERY closely. Those people get a lot more out of each volume. When the Harry Potter series was coming out, I took time off sleuthing the Wheel of Time to sleuth HP. It was a LOT easier than sleuthing WoT, but a lot of the same principles applied. Lots and lots of people read the books, and many just got what was on the surface. Some sleuthed deeper, and many of those guessed wrongly because they didn't have enough experience with sleuthing books. I did, so most of my guesses were correct (and I was correct as to which ones were wrong that others proposed.) Anyone with a coherent Bible version that's fairly accurate can get a basic understanding of salvation in Jesus Christ and so on. The basics are of primary importance, and those come through. Those who approach it with a degree of historical knowledge, cultural knowledge, Koine Greek or other language knowledge, those people will be able to get more out of it. Those with a lot of that knowledge will see deeper yet. (That's why ex-twi'ers generally can only see but so deeply- we all had a limit on our education, and few went far beyond that. And I don't count myself among them.) So, I expect almost anyone can read the Bible and get a basic understanding. However, the deeper matters will need more dedication than the average person will devote. That goes for ANY group of adherents with ANY book they consider "holy". They will put in the time, they will be more dedicated, so they will get more out of it.

Because perception is SUBJECTIVE, and someone touchy on a subject can see an insult in it even when that insult isn't even there. US television writers have to tread a thin tightrope to produce scripts that won't result in SOMEONE starting a letter-writing campaign for the same reason. I left the entire discussion about inerrancy ALONE except for a specific instance where ONE poster posted ONE thing and said it was a contradiction and proof of contradictions. I rebutted that and pointed out I thought it didn't take a lot of work to see how that specific instance fit together. I don't like it when people jump to conclusions that fast- I find it sloppy, and altogether too common nowadays. (Just a reminder: I don't spend all my time on the GSC. Out in the big wide world are lots of people with sloppy logic who tick me off all the time.) That one poster thanked me for posting what I did, and said they'd follow up on their own. "The end", I thought, but a few OTHER posters seem to have seen themselves in what I said when I was specifically addressing ONE poster, and thinking of a bunch of people who've never heard of twi. I was even ASKED about that, I clarified my point, and STILL got someone interpreting my points as addressing them in a general way when I was addressing someone else in a SPECIFIC way. There's an assumption there that there was an assumption that ANY apparent contradiction can be worked out if you just asked someone else. Someone brought one up, I worked it out as if asked. If I'd been asked about it earlier, I would have posted it sooner. When I see an apparent contradiction, I look at it from all the angles I can find, and if that doesn't present a logical answer, I call in others for insight. Often they have access to resources or commentaries or whatever that I don't, or have pondered this very issue before, and can fill in all or part of an answer. I find that's a good strategy to follow. "In multitude of counsellors is safety." I don't know how that became universalized as a Thou Shalt rather than a "rule of thumb." Seems the contents of my posts are being read through a perception filter that's polarizing them. Sorry to hear that. I hate it when I can't find an answer and end up with a persistent question that lasts years. It feels like unfinished business or a discordant note. I suppose that could be annoying. Then again, if you find that lots of people are assuming that- and most of that is as substantial as me not even thinking about you and you deciding I was trying to "character assasinate" you, then there's a simple solution- stop thinking everything's about you. I used to ascribe a much greater importance to my existence in other people's discussions. Once I adjusted my perceptions closer to reality, I found it remarkable freeing. (Of course, it was a slight ego blow that I really wasn't in ANY discussions when I thought I was in a LOT of them, but in the long run, I much prefer it this way.) Just maybe, you're missing a nuance or two here, yourself. But I agree that a difference in perspectives could avoid bitterness in a disagreement here. I was quite surprised to discover I've apparently been in a heated argument for over a day. This is the first I've heard of it. Next time, I'd like to know sooner. Otherwise, I might miss the entire thing. This. I don't think I can add anything to this post, so I won't try.