WordWolf

Honestly, I strongly recommend getting involved with other Christians for that. The GSC is not particularly adapted for that, since it is intended to be a site open to Christian and non-Christian. Face to face is best for that. If you're not up to that for any of a hundred reasons, you can find thousands upon thousands of forums and websites for that. Send me a private message if you have difficulty finding one you like. Actually, a smarter idea would be a private topic with you and every Christian here you want to hear from, asking for such sites. However, I recommend your OWN search first. Only you know what suits YOU.

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that the guy whose only "research book" was called "Rise and Expansion of the Christian Church" oversaw an organization thru a decade, and it experienced a "negative growth rate" of greater than -2000% ? And this is the BEST they can offer?

Man, that Jesus must really have been walking in error in the garden of Gethsemane.... Father, if there's any other way to do this...let's take it. Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done.

Switching from CoC to twi-or vice versa- is a lot like having the stains removed from one pair of pants and placed on another pair of pants. :D-->

In the videotaped class, vpw said that his response upon hearing the guy say Paul was a sex pervert was to stand up, say "SHUT UP!" and leave the room. Since, on other occasions, he's said he was slow to leave the room on people saying the Bible was full of myths (said Don had left several minutes earlier), and he did NOT yell at that, one might wonder why this PARTICULAR statement produced what one might call a "knee-jerk" response. I would ask that question, anyway....

Vickles, all my advice is already on the "Registry Keys" thread. :)-->

YES. That goes back to Zixar's point about "never install ANY program until you've checked it out." "Anything that's ad-supported has a high risk of having embedded spyware." I've heard of programs that "detected spyware", then you download the free program to remove it, which adds new spyware in the process. Check reputations with TRUSTWORTHY sources. AdAware and Spybot:Search and Destroy are VERY reliable, and free for the downloading. (Spybot is technically shareware and does deserve some money donated in exchange for the valuable service.) I like to run them both daily, and again after ANY download of ANY kind. Ditto an antivirus program. In short, most advertised anti-spyware programs ADD spyware.

I agree with everything except Zixar's last sentence. Certain other programs will increase the security of your computer, and many of them are free for the downloading. Spybot Search and Destroy has an immunizing function as well as its spyware scanner. It will protect you before certain programs hit the machine. Antivirus programs have a "guard" or "shield" that will catch some viruses as they attempt to download to you. Other programs eliminate specific security flaws in programs. Plus, various programs (including the aforementioned) can be used to do an active scan and remove malicious programs, data-miners, keyloggers, trojans, etc that somehow made it past your main protection. I'd say an updated firewall, an O/S other than Windows, a browser other than IE, an antivirus and the other programs, and the external router are probably the MOST secure you can get. However, you can have an amazing level of security purely thru free programs of each type.

Here's how that worked, Refiner.... You took pfal EARLY in your twi "career". You learned Bible study and research tools after that. By that time, you already sat thru it 2-5 times, and are used to just memorizing and spitting back its contents without critical analysis. Besides, vpw supposedly knew better than you, so any questioning of him usually was suppressed by yourself before you took it any further. As you've seen, there WERE some exceptions here and there..... Most of us figured it out after we left, tho.

I agree with a la prochaine as to how meetings went. Me, I was approached in a non-standard fashion, and you won't get much insight from my details. Simply put, I needed information they had. I was NOT love-bombed. I already knew about love-bombing and sat right next to the door. If they had acted like brainwashers, I was going to run. pfal WAS pushed, but not every 15 seconds. Not everybody fit the formula. The people in my area weren't so formulaic. Then again, we're talking NYC, where conformity is a joke.

So, Suz, you have no problem with the film putting forth that the bin Laden family was never questioned, and that an exception was made for them to leave the country, when all other planes were grounded.... even though these were shown as patently untrue years ago and can easily be reviewed by anyone checking the Snopes website? I'm not a fan of either political side, but I resent attempts to lie or deceive, especially under the guise of "reporting the facts".

A comparison between Bullinger's 7 dispensations and vpw's 7 administrations was done on the "Mastering pfal" thread a few weeks ago. (Partly by me. ;)--> ) Their listings agree with the following exceptions. Bullinger includes the Gospels as under the Law, and has dispensation 6 as the Millenial Reign of Revelation 20, an event yet to come. vpw lumps the Millenial Reign in with the rest of the end-times as one administration (which, apparently, includes something over 1000 years in it.) vpw adds an administration for the Gospels-the "Christ" administration. Having compared the 2, I'd say Bullinger's set makes more sense. (This should hardly qualify as news.)

Actually, just as there's differences in spirit between God Himself, angels, and the spirit for Born Again Ones, there would be differences in soul between man and animal (possibly between types of animal, even.) Since there's differences in Body, but animals all have a body, this isn't so far-fetched.

Got it backwards. vpw said the one Greek word should be 2 words in English, representing 2 different things-"faith" (a noun), and "believing" (a verb). According to vpw, a natural man, thru believing God, gets born again and receives faith.

Posted by Refiner. [WordWolf replies in boldface. ] [Mike would say the Orange Book is 100% correct, and it's the Bible that's wrong. He justifies that by claiming the Bible was virtually rewritten over the centuries so as to lose all accuracy. ]

Depends. On certain subjects, I DID look them up myself (like the "four crucified with Christ", and so on.) Others, I figured I'd get around to eventually, like the contradiction between athletic vs military imagery lcm pushed. I was working on that one when lcm drew his line in the sand and I left. I think, eventually, I would have examined a LOT of it, but some of that would have been years or decades later.

Whoever taught that was ignorant of the Bible. And where in the Bible does it say that? In Acts 8:26 an angel of the Lord speaks to Phillip and give him directions. Philip was already saved. In Acts 12 an angel busts Peter out of jail. Peter was already saved. Trefor is right. So much was taught concering devil spirits that any teachings about angels were easy to miss. TWI could give intricate details about devils spirits - names and kinds and exactly how they operate, but very little was ever mentioned concerning angels where they now fit in. The entire subject of angels and their relations with us-or lack thereof- in twi, was based on a gross oversimplification and misunderstanding of Hebrews 1:14. Contrasting Jesus with the angels, it says "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" twi took off from there, and began speculating lengthy teachings on the subject, never checking them against Scripture. They started by saying that this meant angels were supposed to minister to us until we get born again, after that, we're on our own. I myself heard the great forehead explain that this is why sometimes it would be good NOT to speak The Word to someone, why sometimes it would be good for them NOT to be born again-because that would make the angels scram. I'm not even going to dignify that "private interpretation" with a response. It should have been obvious to me from the get-go why this was so wrong. (I knew it was nonsense from the beginning-twi never seemed to have any real understanding of "Advanced" level materials, but I didn't have a lengthy explanation.) An heir is an heir APPARENT until the heir INHERITS. The heir APPARENT of Britain is Prince Charles. If, however, a tragic polo accident kills him today, he will not inherit-the next in line will inherit. It should be obvious from even a cursory look at the book of Acts that twi's official stance fails miserably to account for the actions of angels since the day of Pentecost, and the rules since then are supposedly fully in effect now. The only generalization one MIGHT get from that verse is that angels are ministering spirits. That covers a lot of ground.

Uh, maybe that was on "Love, Always". It wasn't on "Spark in the Dark."

Then how about editing the previous post and deleting most or all of the name?

Technically, it's an IMAGE of him in the picture, but, yes, that's him. :)--> Unless he's had plastic surgery done and changed all his features or something. Then it's what he looked like BEFORE the surgery. Who did you think it was? Lou Diamond Phillips? Antonio Banderas?

In 20/20 hindsight, the irony is almost blinding...

So, Is Sal Arico's "Watching" still for sale? (Me, I prefer the title cut....)

The following exchange happened when discussing the assignments for the year, and the "make-work" nature of the reshuffling.... Just Thinking: "This is different from rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic how?" My 3 Cents: "Because they didn't use string to line up the chairs on the Titanic."

I finally made the list! :D--> BTW, that "buzzkill" I was referring to was when people were having a good time, then some twi moglet arrived and declared it would be a meeting and started passing out songbooks...... ========================== Socks said the following on a Doctrinal thread, about vpw: "Wishing he was the man he knew to be was an ominous statement for him to make. Being the man he knew he shouldn't be affected his life's work."

Must have been blasphemy also to designate the passover lamb for sacrifice every year, too....let's be consistent, here..... Evan, I think you missed my earlier post, where I said I find this a lesser issue, and prefer we all just get along. It's on page 6, 6/13/04,