WordWolf

Sounds like an old school version of "20 Questions." (Not the show with the computer.)

The bigger nonsense-which is why they backed off quietly on it no matter how many times vpw said it, was "God is Spirit, and GOD CAN ONLY SPEAK TO THAT WHICH HE IS." Sometimes it was "God is Spirit, and GOD CAN ONLY GIVE THAT WHICH HE IS." These were, and still are, nonsense. God gives spirit. God is Spirit. (For the sake of discussion, I'll agree.) God gave manna. God is NOT manna. Follow me through this supposed "Great Principle." (Others have posted here about this before.) The idea is that God gives you "spirit". God then communicates with that spirit- since He can't communicate with flesh and blood. Then your spirit communicates with your flesh and blood. Wait, what? HOW? If GOD'S Spirit can't manage it-and we're talking GOD ALMIGHTY here- why should I think my own comparatively miniscule spirit can manage it? If MY spirit can communicate with flesh and blood, then so can God's, and the stated reason for me to have spirit is negated. (If I have been given spirit, communication is not the reason.) ================= God can do whatever He wants whenever He wants. If He wants to communicate with someone, He has lots of choices as to how to accomplish it,and is NOT limited due to being Spirit. (Too much work trying to simplify things ends up trivializing a TRANSCENDENT God into a God we can define into a neat box.) I noticed that this obsession with trying to simplify deep concepts into neat little slogans that fit on bumper stickers affects lots of teachings and lots of subjects. In the Advanced class, it ends up ruining other material. A made-up explanation is given as to how God communicates with non-believers who don't HAVE spirit. Supposedly, God has to ambush them with spirit, giving them spirit they never asked for nor wanted, in order to communicate with them. This explanation was given for the handwriting on the wall. ("Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.") Supposedly, the sole reason the false prophets and seers were unable to give an explanation was they didn't have spirit and the message was purely in a spiritual dimension. When one is not forced to make up elaborate rationalizations for one's doctrine, they are then free to seek the truth. FF Bruce had a better answer. He pointed out that these words were given without vowels, so the resembled a message something along the lines of "a dollar and change" rather than "weighed, numbered, divided." No need for an elaborate construct when the mundane answer works just fine..... ============= I also noticed that people were completely oblivious to the arbitrary nature of the supposed definition of "phenomena." Whenever something happened that wasn't specifically promised, twi feels compelled to give it a title-"phenomena." That's anything that happens that wasn't guaranteed by God. Instead, they smugly categorize the unexpected as "phenomena" and are unaware that this does nothing to actually EXPLAIN what probably was inexplicable to begin with. They're convinced this actually addressed the subject. the way international has found many ways to istill errors and blind obedience in people who deserve a lot better than twi...

"We broke the rules, but we won the game. Nothing to lose and everything to gain."

If it was pre-me, then it wouldn't be a gameshow like "Joker's Wild" or "Card Sharks"...

Never seen it, but the groundskeeper has to be in "Caddyshack."

The claim OF accuracy drew in some people. Bullinger's approach was used to appeal to the intellectual, partly divorced from mentioning it WAS Bullinger's approach, and claims it was primarily vpw's approach. Naturally, HE didn't understand it as well as he claimed, which is how he ended up trying to quote Bullinger and making mistakes as he went along. Example: Peter denied Jesus three times. Bullinger claimed Peter denied Jesus six times. In the taped pfal class, vpw (without mentioning Bullinger) claimed Peter denied Jesus "THREE TIMES THREE" times, or NINE times. vpw never actually covered 9 denials- all documentation matched EWB's 6 denials. For a man who supposedly knew the material well enough to never need a syllabus, even the very first time he taught "his" (Leonard's stolen) class, he sure made plenty of avoidable mistakes YEARS LATER in the tapes. He confused "anabolepto" for "eidon", he confused Felix and Festus- and then proceeded to quote AGRIPPA instead. "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." (And I quoted that from memory just now, complete with the names. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but if he really was the so-called 'master' of the material, he would never have made easily-correctible mistakes like that. the way international was-and is- based on nothing more than lies and deceptions, and the plagiarized work of others, larded with the personal errors of vpw who convinced himself that God was ok with ORGIES.

Right- they claimed two mutually exclusive positions at the same time, so they could invoke whichever was most expedient for them to claim at any moment.

"Diamond Dave" Lee Roth's "Just a Gigolo".

"Billy Madison?"

vpw was a conman who could bs convincingly. His OTHER skills were lacking. He wanted to turn preaching into a business. He succeeded through hijacking and plagiarizing. He ripped off what he saw. He ripped off the books of others to make "his" books. He ripped off the classes of another to make "his" class, supplemented by plagiarizing the books of others and adding it to that class. (Initially, "his" class was a Leonard's class with his name in front.) Once he had a product, he needed a flock to fleece. He had limited success with regular people. However, once he saw there were young people with Christian ideals, idealism, and casual attitudes towards physical contact, he used all his skills to recruit as much of their movement (the Jesus People) as possible. (Remember, part of his trip was about ORGIES-that's why he asked D00p about them specifically and in detail, asking for more information than D00p had and ignoring D00p's comments about being glad to be delivered from that sort of thing. He also told D00p is was ok with God and tried to use a Bible verse to rationalize it.) There's no current movement of idealistic youth to draw from. The current climate now includes THE INTERNET- so if twi finds kids, those kids can find out all about twi and read what I'm telling you now. So, twi can't repeat the past because the past is gone, and there's no pool of undereducated (can't find out about twi), idealistic Christian youth to draw from, apart from twi lacking anyone with the sheer skill at chicanery and flimflam that vpw had. Most people can't lie, con, and deceive as convincingly as he did. Exactly- twi has nothing to offer NEW followers except stifling control. Very few people actually WANT stifling control. twi offers the same to OLD followers, with a big dose of nostalgia and "we are the sole holders of the truth". Eventually, this won't work because the OLD followers are getting OLDER. twi lost 80% of its followers 1985-1990, then lost more people in the late 1990s when then tightened the vise on people's lives. With a few people leaving every year, and virtually no one joining, the average age (mean, median and mode) of twi'ers goes steadily up, up, up. The GSC actually gets more new people than twi does, and we don't go recruiting! Eventually, twi will be composed of elderly people in the top seats (instead of just rfr being the only elderly), supervising a staff of elderly, who pass along orders to the elderly rank-and-file all over the USA. I don't think it will take much longer, either. It's been 20 years since they lost most of their numbers. The last people to join were soon after that (in any real numbers), and were in their 20s. Those people are now in their 40s, whether or not they're still in twi. Those who were in charge in the 1990s were in their 30s-50s, which means they're now in their 50s to 70s, whether or not they're in twi. So, we now have people in their 50s to 70s overseeing people in their 40s to 70s, with a few feeble attempts to garner enough children of them in one place to displace water in a hot tub, let alone look like there's significant numbers of THEM. Then again, much the same can be said for most of the splinter groups...

Exactly! Then again, vpw never did have any actual TRAINING or EXPERIENCE with the kinds of programs he claimed to set up. He went to school, but was never in any sort of PROGRAM to teach leadership experience, or counseling, or anything else Christians expect from those who claim to be there to lead them. He also invoked references to the military with "his" program, but he also had no experience THERE, either, which is why "his" programs lacked any resemblance to the POSITIVES of being in the military. The only thing he had there were a few aphorisms about OBEYING WHEN GIVEN AN ORDER. In fact, over time, they did NOTHING to correct any of those things. There were additions to give people experience in HITCHHIKING, in optional training as a rodeo clown or bronco-riding or whatever, and in rock climbing, but no improvements along the lines one would actually use when dealing with Christians. The only "professional" training the corps ever got was Dale Carnegie training in SALES. That should make it obvious what the priorities were in training "leaders" in twi- they were to be professional SALESPEOPLE.

Small wonder vpw REDEFINED THE MEANING OF THE WORD "APOSTLE". When he was done, their personal witnessing wasn't an issue. Honestly, though, I see "apostle" as "sent one." Wherever vpw plagiarized "his" definition from, I find it interesting and irrelevant. Then again, when one is "sent", it raises the question of who "sent" them and how....

He pulled the entire content of the comma thing from Bullinger's work. vpw was fond of making up stories, or grabbing other people's life experience and claiming it for his own. If you read "TW:LiL", you'll see he'd claimed to "preach to the trees" when growing up, despite an absence of witnesses and of any PIETY when growing up. This story was lifted from BILLY GRAHAM's life- Billy did that to try to overcome shyness. He also made claims about a pair of imaginary businessmen who were generous in charity donations while being hated by their community they donated to, who got things done by sitting alone in a room and THINKING about them without actually DOING anything about them. Yes-if something was good enough TO PLAGIARIZE, THEN he listened to it, otherwise, you might as well not even bother with him.

If this show never appeared in syndication, then I never saw it. My television-watching days started in the 1970s. I'm wondering if it was something like "Spy-Smasher" or "Mister Scarlet". One or both of them had a short-lived television show. This wasn't an ANIMATED show, right?

*wild swing* "Sledge Hammer?"

twi and its affiliates thereof- and the Word-Faith movement in general- mistake 2 similar things for each other, with catastrophic results. A) Trusting God. Believing God's promises, believing the Bible. Those are good things we're supposed to do. (If you take the Bible as your standard.) B) Exerting a mental "believing-force" on reality to bend it to your whims- or worse, exerting a mental "believing-force" on God Almighty to bend HIM to your whim, believing He's some sort of Divine Genie, but only after your Believing has roughed Him up or put Him in his place. One is not the other. God doesn't need any more power than He already has. Go ahead and pray and trust God. If bad things happen, it's because this is a fallen world, and the sun and the rain fall on everyone, not because you failed somehow to exert sufficient "believing-force" to prevent it to happen.

Yes. These were all quotes from fairly early in "the Princess Bride." Here's where they were said. "We are but poor, lost circus performers. Is there a village nearby?" Vizzini's first line to the princess, before abducting her. "I wonder if he's using the same wind we are using." Inigo Montoya, wondering about the ship behind them that kept gaining on them over time. "Did I make it clear that your JOB is at stake?" Vizzini yelling at Fezzik, about how much faster he wanted to move up the Cliffs of Insanity/ "He has very good arms." Fezzik, when seeing the Man in Black managed to get handholds once the rope was cut. "You are wonderful!" "Thank you. I've worked hard to become so." Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black.

"We are but poor, lost circus performers. Is there a village nearby?" "I wonder if he's using the same wind we are using." "Did I make it clear that your JOB is at stake?" "He has very good arms." "You are wonderful!" "Thank you. I've worked hard to become so."

No.

Millions of years old, possibly billions. I really don't care the specifics once we get past one million. Like Genesis, I don't think the exact number matters much in the discussion. I'm aware there's "young earth Creationists" out there, but I think they reflect a misunderstanding of both science AND Scripture, and poor scholarship towards both. We know from science that the Earth APPEARS very old, millions or billions of years old. That means the Earth either IS millions of years old (or older), or that the Earth is younger but was created to APPEAR millions of years old (or older.) Either answer, technically, fits the evidence. Personally, I reject the second position because I don't think that evidence exists purely to exist, and that we're designed to at least ATTEMPT to be logical, and were given a logical universe and a logical planet to work with. (I begin with those presumptions. Some people begin with those, some begin with others. These are mine.) Those who think the scientific evidence reflects a young Earth, IMHO, lack an understanding of the scientific evidence, ignore the limitations of some things, and completely disregard the most reliable methods of determination. I think that's a shame.

I think God's going to exceed our understanding. I think God's not going to sweat all the hours we put into this "Trinitarians are idolators!" "Kill the non-Trinitatian heathen" business, except as wasted time where Christian went for the throat of Christian. We were warned long ago that biting and devouring each other runs the risk of us being the consumed ones. Hasn't stopped Christians from killing each other over this and other subjects senselessly. What a misuse of free will, to kill other Christians while their mutual enemy laughs at both!

Physically, none of us is perfect. It's personal belief that each Christian (and I see I Corinthians 12 and 14 agreeing with this) has certain strengths and areas where they lack strength. Begin teaching a room of Christians on any subject, and I think several will say "What?", several will say "Hm," several will say "AHA!" and several will say "Well, of course!" Some, as soon as you begin an introduction, will begin "connecting the dots". That's personal inclination, interests, and personality. Account for that, and-even if all Christians HAVE been give an identical Spirit with 9 or more POTENTIAL enablements- you'll see an incredible variety on what they do and how they do it. Heck, just take the subject of Divine Revelation/word of knowledge, and how they'll approach the subject will vary widely...

As you figured out, you missed a lot. Some of it you missed because you weren't in the room when the recorders were turned off- a LOT of things were said by vpw and staff and were never committed to paper. (Among the things you missed were risking life-and-limb in the LEAD program by hitchhiking and then going up sides of mountains with undereducated guides. Most people survived without injury, but that doesn't account for hitchhikers raped, or those suffering permanent injury during the wilderness section.) Some of it you missed, however, because they were never even spoken. vpw's "material" was all plagiarized from other Christians. (Occasionally he mentioned a source, usually he did not.) I have no problem with a Christian being an "eclecticist", and borrowing from the styles of others. In fact, I RECOMMEND it. (Everyone has their strengths and can teach you something.) However, vpw hid his sources and claimed it was the results of his skills and receiving revelation from God Almighty entirely. In case you're wondering about the names, most of what we've been able to find were: EW Bullinger: the administrations/dispensations, the systematic study of Scripture, number in Scripture, Witness of the Stars, all the usages of "Holy Spirit" in the New Testament, all the content in the book "How to Enjoy the Bible" (4 sessions of pfal's 12 right there.) Bullinger was unique in that his name was not hidden for much of his work- but it was NEVER mentioned in conjunction with many other works. 2 of his books were basically put together without attribution and called "vpw's" book "Are the Dead Alive Now?" BG Leonard: the Holy Spirit field in general, and the format of a class. vpw took Leonard's CTC class on Gifts of the Spirit. Later the same year, he asked Leonard permission to teach Leonard's class once locally. Leonard permitted it. vpw sent him a photo of the students for Leonard's scrapbook then stopped communicating with him. Meanwhile, vpw told "his" students that this was "his" class on "Receiving the Holy Spirit Today." It was a photocopy of Leonard's class in every way, and was modified over time into the pfal class most people took. Leonard is the one who taught on "the other 6 manifestations". vpw's lack of understanding on them while continuing to teach on them is why twi's understanding on the subjects were pretty shallow. JE Stiles: the book "Receiving the Holy Spirit Today" was Stiles' book on "the Gift of the Holy Spirit", with additions from Bullinger and Leonard. Stiles was the man who led vpw into speaking in tongues the first time. EW Kenyon: the Word-Faith subject- which other Christians have plagiarized from Kenyon as well. It's why you're personally blamed by some Christians when bad things happen to you. (They're comforters as miserable as those Job faced.) A handful of other Christians were used- vpw copied THIS man's style, and THAT man's radio show, and so on. He even went outside Christian circles. He had a phone hotline to "the Liberty Lobby" we never heard about. vpw would listen to their ultraconservative, fictionalized fears of the current state of the Union, and then speak of their claims, freely making "predictions" of doom and making sure other people all claimed vpw was getting those from God by revelation, not man by technology. (vpw often lied by omission more than lying by direct statement, then led people to believe he'd said ONE thing when he said another-but MEANT them to think he said another. An example: he said he was on the basketball team in high school, played basketball all through college, and was involved with the NBL team the Sheboygan Redskins. He phrased that very carefully. What it means in plain English: He was on the basketball team in high school, but was on no other team at any other time. He PLAYED basketball in college, but not on any TEAM. He had some connection with the Sheboygan Redskins, but that is an incredibly vague term that can mean he tried to drum up attendance at their games, advertised for them, or any of dozens of other teams. What did he get people to believe? They thought he said he played on the basketball teams in high school and college, and played on the Sheboygan Redskins. The only source one can find that claims he ever DID play for them- and someone managed to get the entire team roster of the entire history of the Sheboygan Redskins and posted it (he's not there), is a paper someone wrote. Their source? twi's book where vpw claimed he was "connected with" the Sheboygan Redskins. In other words, all sources say vpw never played for them- except in the intentional misunderstanding of people who read vpw make his vague claim. All as he wanted. And his claim outlasted his lifetime. If not for the internet, it might still be unexposed. If you're interested in this-and I recommend at least one read-through- we had a thread called "The Way: Living in Wonderland" were we discussed vpw's and twi's claims in their book "The Way: Living in Love", and the related history. In the last pages, I assembled the documentable twi history and wrote out a short biography of vpw himself- as documented all through the thread, with sources listed.

We had a thread a while back that began with a very short post. It said that "man's basic spiritual problem" is SIN. I can't argue with that, myself.

Welcome. You'll find that many people (myself included) have SOME good memories of twi. Most of us who do temper that with the knowledge that the good times we had were paid for by sufferings of others, so we acknowledge them but put them in perspective. You'll notice that there's a gamut of beliefs among posters. There's Christians who agree with almost everything vpw taught, much of it, or are currently Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, atheist, agnostic, wiccan/pagan, and nearly everything else you can name. (I haven't seen anyone post as a declared Muslim yet, but I may have just missed it.) All points of view are acceptable- so long as manners are maintained and civil discussion is not precluded. (I can believe anything I want, but if I disrupt all the discussions I disagree with, that's not acceptable- my rights continue to the end of my fist, but end before the tip of your nose. :) ) Feel free to read, respond, start discussions, and so on. Please try to keep posts to their relevant forums. Feel free to Search and to ask for threads with more information on any subject that interests you. Feel free to join the games in the Reading Room. And feel free to disagree with me or ignore me- I'm just another poster on the board..... :)