WordWolf

"The Passing of the Patriarch" is in the documents accessible from the GSC Main Page! Once a year, I recommend reading thru them all.

Oh, and you would be able to do the scene, fire bullets from a fake gun, and NOT go "bang-bang" the first time? :)--> I think if there was SOME kind of noise when he pulled the trigger, he could have restrained himself.

I agree with you about "Running on Ice." :)--> Is the "Lonely Is the Night" by Air Supply the same song Billy Squier did by the same name, or another? ========================= Let's see, little or hardly any "airplay".... Rush: "Hand Over Fist", "the Pass", "the Trees" Styx: "Half-Penny, Two-Penny", "Nothing Ever Goes As Planned" John Mellencamp: "Let It All Hang Out" Robert Plant: "Billy's Revenge" Spin Doctors: "You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast" "What Time is It?" Living Colour: "Funny Vibe" The Beatles: "Hey Bulldog" The Smithereens: "Beauty and Sadness" The Call: "For Love" "When" Steve Earle: "the Devil's Right Hand" Cake: "Sheep Go To Heaven"

One of the things that I think that was of genuine benefit in the foundational class (yet was not written by the finger of God) was the rule: "If you don't know, say you don't know...It's wrong to indicate that you know when you do not know, when you guess..." Yes, I think the last book was beyond vpw's level of ability. Yes, I think it is not of primary importance, since it addresses events I'm going to miss for almost the entire book, and, like most people, I am first concerned with MY skin (and admit it.) I think it was a good idea that he did NOT tackle it. Can you imagine what would have resulted? lcm couldn't make sense of Genesis 3, and vpw had our financial plans stuck in Malachi, not even in the New Testament, or whatever.... ====================================== That having been said, I believe this thread belongs in "Doctrinal". That also having been said, I'm willing to clearly state that I have opinions on a few things, and I'm willing to share some. Bullinger-type calculations put 666 as 3 sets of 6, where 3 signifies completenes, and 6 is the human number, always falling short of 7, the Divine number. Thus, Bullinger would say "complete imperfection" or perhaps "complete human." I suspect the second answer may indeed have merit. My suspicion stems from II Thessalonians 2:3-11. I have an opinion about the wording used in those verses. I suspect they might give us some insight as to this person. "The man of sin", literally, "sins". I found it interesting that out of several Greek words translated "man", this one was "anthropon", which is the same word used by people who try to claim that man started as some sort of proto-ape, anthropologists. (I'm not speaking of ALL anthropologists, but some use their "science" as a religion and a creation story.) So, a natural man of sins, plural. He's not a specialist in one sin, but a sort of general practitioner. He "opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he, as God, sits in the temple (Holy of Holies) of God, showing himself (setting forth) that he is God." Speculating again here.... He's actively hostile to all forms of organized religion ("opposes"). He claims HE's God and sets himself up to be worshipped. So, he raises a new, alternate religion to supplant the ones he's shoving down- one where HE is worshipped. II Thessalonians 2:8 calls him "that Wicked". "Wicked"..Greek word "Anomos", used also as "anomia", a state of normlessness, where there is no right or wrong, only moral relativism. The next verse says he's have lying wonders. My speculation is that this man will claim a religion of moral relativism, one of those feel-good "nothing is wrong" ones, that also preaches the perfectability of man, and setting forth that he, as a man, hasd reached that state of perfectability and therefore is to be worshipped and seen as exemplar. The lying wonders will appear to lend credibility: he's not all talk, and the people can see he can obviously do SOMETHING. So, that's my best guess. Make of it what you will, but try not to make a NEW RELIGION out of it, please... or if you do, at least make a better looking statue of me than that ugly thing they did of vpw....

Geek moment... Zixar, it was GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 that first featured the "new" X-Men- Sunfire, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, etc. X-Men 94 was the first issue in the regular series after they replaced the original team. The X-Men as a whole have always (since the 70's, at least) been symbolic of outsiders and discrimination of various kinds, regardless of the type. That's what makes them so accessible. :)-->

Hm. I got Professor X also. Yeek. If lcm's a TimeLord, does that mean he'll keep coming back with different "face"?

Zix, does lithium go up when it hits water, or does it just get wet like most things? Now I'm thinking it was probably sodium.... All I know is they STOPPED doing that "experiment" before I got there. That never stopped another guy I know from waiting until he was alone at the end of the day in a lab, putting clorine bleach and dishwashing detergent together in a container, then making for the door and locking up behind him while the thing bubbled over like crazy. "I told you not to do that experiment anynore!" He did it anyway. He was nutty like that. I was nutty in a different way. I would do things like getting a few extra chairs for the gang at lunch, then KEEP getting "a few extra chairs" until told to stop-usually after about 6-8 of us had maybe 20 chairs surrounding us. :)--> Then, for variety, I started arranging them in geometric patterns and things. :)--> I went back the year after I graduated, showed up VERY early one time, made a geometric pattern of the chairs like I used to, then slipped away. When the others arrived, they knew I had to be around SOMEWHERE.... :)-->

Ok, that's where vpw got it from, but do you have any independent sources corroborating that? WhatTheHay sounds like he's seen a wealth of evidence supporting this. Can he cough up a link or two so the rest of us can catch up?

Actually, the reason the air smells cleaner after a rainstorm is because it IS cleaner. There's pollution in the air, plus pollen and all kinds of stuff. Releasing charged particles in the air (like with an ionizer or with a rainstorm) causes the pollution, etc, to become charged, which results in them "settling out", or sticking to objects that are NOT the air, nearby. So, the air has less pollution in it. The one drawback to this is that you now have a tiny increase in the amount of residue on all the surrounding material. That's why homes with ionizers in constant use have cleaner air but need to paint a little more often. :)--> I'm curious about the "current" use in hospitals of magnetism to aid in the regrowth of bone. Do you have a resource on this one? It's news to me. On one of the older tapes, vpw was claiming that the effect of the body of eating a heart meal with starches, etc resulted in consuming more grain alcohol than if you had a few drinks. I'm not familiar offhand with how the body breaks down starches and carbohydrates and the like. However, I don't remember hearing that a by-product of regular digestion was alcohol. Last I heard, alcohol is broken down, and starches are broken down. If memory serves, both are broken down into SUGARS. Alcohol doesn't stay alcohol, and nothing in food (unless, perhaps, someone drugs your food) breaks down into alcohol. If someone with some real knowledge of this would speak up, I'd appreciate it. BTW, he followed it up by pointing out the medical doctor in the room (the Wine guy) and said that if you really wanted to know, to ask HIM. I'm thinking this was based on a misunderstanding of how starches are broken down in digestion, but, hey, I could be wrong....

Man, I LOVE that story, Oakspear. It just hit my funnybone straight-on. :)-->

Sorry, my sarcasm-detector was napping. :)-->

Year 2027 just asked for stories like this...

Uh, this IS on-topic. This is a discussion of doctrines we were exposed to in twi, and told to believe, and their lasting effects on us, or lack thereof. In this case, the fact that the material was stolen from other people is irrelevant to the main body of that discussion. We're discussing what we are currently doing with what twi taught, NOT where twi got it.

*thinks a moment* Zixar, thanks for reminding me. Must have been something else, like sodium or potassium. Magnesium goes up if LIT, and phosphorus goes up in oxygen, correct? He was dropping a chunk of SOMETHING, we know that. Dot, actually, last I heard, he was no longer teaching, especially freshmen intro, but for other reasons I don't feel like getting into at the moment.

A LOT of the really important things of God are NOT matters involving study of some new Greek word or something- they're "heart" matters that can't be learned in a class. Kit, you trashed your copy of "Babylon Mystery Religion." Did you ever get "the Babylon Connection", also by Woodrow? Basically, it corrects the mistakes of the previous book, and repudiates it.

It's amazing how quickly people will fire off blanket statements to cover just about any situation. One non-twi (nbw) group will ask people-to their face-how long since they left the organization by asking them "How long since you left The Truth?" No group I was ever in, but that's good for them-no response of mine would have been especially appreciated.

None of my stories are from twi. In fact, the stupidest things tended to just barely miss me. One teacher in high school NEVER, EVER wore a tie. I didn't think much of it, until I found out why, from a upper-classman. The year before I arrived, he had sat in the same teacher's class. Now, each science class had a bunsen burner safety lab. We wasted the first lab of each just to say "don't set stuff on fire." You sat thru the lab twice in freshman year (intro bio, intro physics), once each in sophmore, junior and senior years (usually, in order, bio, chem and physics.) This was a physics class full of juniors and seniors. He's teaching the safety lecture, they're finishing his sentences since they've seen it all before. However... the teacher wasn't paying close attention. "Ok, now, you always use a small blue flame..." True, but he had a large yellow flame in front of him. Actually, it wasn't in FRONT of him like you are supposed to have, he was sort-of bent over the thing. So, when he stepped back from the flame, it was noticed by the class that his tie was on fire. He put the fire out with no real danger and somehow managed to finish the lecture. Same teacher, same year. He's demonstrating something with an acid. He spills some on his hand. A student suggests "Uh, don't you need to wash that off immediately?" "Don't worry-it won't hurt you." *pats hand on pants-apparently he's losing a little sensation in his hand* Several minutes later, the teacher decided his hand was in trouble. So, he dashed down the classroom, turned the sink on full-blast and shoved his hand under it, spraying acid solution across his desk. A little later, he needed to be excused. His pants were smoking from where he brushed the acid onto them. Same teacher, same year. Demonstrates that magnesium and water are volatile when mixed. Most teachers use a little of each and make a tiny explosion in the lab. He used a fist-sized chunk of magnesium and blew up the container when he dropped it in. ================================================ My own high school graduation might qualify, I suppose. We did a wave when the valedictorian's speech ended. One plan, which was discovered, was to throw ALL the graduation caps, not UP at the end, but directly at the principal. (He was really arrogant.) Apparently, they found out, and had us file past a receiving line and shake hands on our way out. It worked well and was pretty smart of them. However, it meant that most of us were in our seats for several minutes. The instant the receiving line started, you would have thought you were at a concert. Frisbees were being tossed back and forth, and a giant beachball was in play. My parents still have a photo of that thing somewhere. I'm sure I'm just glossing over memories of some REAL crazy things.....

Dawayback, A) The keystone books "of" vpw were basically photocopies of books by JE Stiles, EW Kenyon, EW Bullinger, BG Leonard. vpw claimed to have written them himself with input by God. He made some side-comments here and there after this that none of his class was original, and occasionally (if you looked VERY hard) one of their names would come up. (Except the late Bullinger, whose work came up more than that, but hardly enough to justify rewriting "How To Enjoy the Bible" and 1/2 the appendices in the Companion Bible. vpw's naked, open contempt of all other Christians was a deliberate smokescreen to the fact that he HIMSELF assembled his class from materials readily available to him. So, the "divine origin" of pfal was a naked lie. B) Second of all, vpw's been shown to make up snowstorms to dress up things as "holy writ" before. So, when you hear that vpw saw snow nobody else saw to confirm the divine message he heard, go back to said divine message. That divine message, supposedly, was that if vpw would teach it to others, God would teach vpw God's Word like it hadn't been known since the first century. Let's look at that one. In the first century AD, there were no printing presses. Gutenberg was born a LOT later. What was known was the spoken word and the Old Testament. There was no unified vision of things, as Acts clearly shows, and as the Epistles show. (Why rebuke division if there is no division?) So, "as it was known in the first century" is a cute concept which is a convenient fiction. In the first century AD, Christians were on the run. The made sure other Christians were not in financial straits, and spent time together where they could find it, eating together, etc. Where they found a haven, they stayed and taught. (Like a short time at the School of Tyrannus.) They were hardly an "organized" bunch, definitely not centralized. If they saw a need in another city's Christians, someone passed the hat around, and they sent money. Compare them to twi. Everything centrally organized. Everything centrally controlled. Everything STANDARDIZED-everyone took the same classes. All the money goes ONE WAY. Permanent locations. What the top leader says, goes-no questions. Organized meetings. Extensive study of Greek, but NO time for charity. The first-century Christian church would never RECOGNIZE twi. So, the idea that vpw's work in any way RESEMBLED the first-century Christian church is a pipe-dream, and I'd bet you never ever heard the question brought up. Third, EVERYTHING vpw taught was ALREADY being taught at the time he "learned" it. Supposedly, GOD would teach him "like it hadn't been known since...", but it was already known! So, THAT part was a fiction. vpw's "God" should have known better. Fourth, vpw learned all this from other people's works, not by studying the Bible himself, and not from the utterance of God. So, the entire basis of this claim is false. So, the supposed basis of authority of twi was the supposed vision that supposed man of God vpw claimed to receive. This vision was either completely made up by vpw, or was received from a source OTHER than God, who would know better. C) The idea that things were perfect at the "root" locales was false. Things were godly and a blessing on the field in many places. Sometimes that was true at the hqs. Sometimes it wasn't, as vpw or lcm would fly into a rage over some picayune detail being less than perfect, or decide this would be a good time to find an impressionable young female and initiate her into "blessing the man of God." D) Many people there were a blessing, many times. Many teachings were great blessings, as were the times with other Christians. That was true. That does NOT excuse anything that was false. =============================================================== BTW, Dawayback, You missed a lot of Mike's initial diatribes. First, he said our modern Bibles are "unreliable fragments" and "tattered remnants". Then he said they were "approximations." Then he said they are "close", but short of the mark. Apparently, now he's back to the "unreliable fragments" and tattered remnants." (Those of you following along at home, please adjust your scorecards.) Mike has also declared that, as based on the 1942 promise, ("I will teach you My Word like it hasn't been known since the First Century if you will teach it to others") vpw's work has completely replaced the Bible as the source of information from God Almighty to man. His current statement, as you can see, was "God worked with others and told Dr to include their work at times, with the appropriate corrections." In English, "God instructed vpw to plagiarize the works of others and make whatever alterations were necessary, all to bless YOU." Mike's problem with the Bible? "God's Word was LOST in the First Century. God solved this problem with His 1942 promis and Dr's faithful participation in THIS project." So, there would be no need for God to give vpw the entirely-false message vpw claimed to have received, or for vpw to plagiarize (at God Almighty's behest) the works of other men of God if the Bibles we have can accurately convey the intent of God Almighty. If they COULD do that, then vpw's entire ministry was a lie and a sham, and Mike's entire mission in life is based on a lie and a sham. All of you can settle down now.... The Bible has been shown to be accurate. vpw's side-comments about it being less than 100% perfect notwithstanding, and Mike's assertions that it's "unreliable" or "tattered" or "an approximation" to the contrary. Here-see for yourselves. http://www.probe.org/docs/auth-bib.html http://www.biblebelievers.net/BibleVersions/kjcforv1.htm http://www.fni.com/cim/briefing/bibrelia.html So, if you're worried that the Bible's not accurate, read up. It's STILL the written Word now as much as it was when first written. (Those of you who don't want to believe in the Bible are of course free to continue to ignore it, but it DOES hold up historically.) (Edited to correct the link locations.) [This message was edited by WordWolf on January 09, 2004 at 6:29.] [This message was edited by WordWolf on January 09, 2004 at 6:30.]

If they want to make it a modern horror flick, they can cast Bea Arthur as Endora. :)--> The mind boggles at some of the casting possibilities.... who might play Dr Bombay? Uncle Arthur?

I thought you were going to suggest watching them in a machine that plays them BACKWARDS. It REALLY changes things. The Godfather becomes an upbeat story about a mob family that slowly loses money and power, and goes back to Italy. Jaws becomes a movie about a shark who throws up people until they open the beach. Friday the 13th movies are about a guy in a hockey mask that heals people by pulling a machete out of their heads. :)-->

You noticed. vpw and lcm derided the RC church for the doctrines of papal infallibility and apostolic succession, then tried to claim those very things.

I thought it was "the Star". "The Sun" was a bad paper for years. It was "that gentleman.....who took over...as editor of the Star...that family-loving newspaper the Star...that total degraded sh*bag who should be put in prison for his crimes against women."

Rocky, I believe that story has been discredited as a real answer from an exam. In still quote it because I find it fascinating, mind you, I just don't believe it's true. (Check Snopes if you like.) ========================================================== In this one case, I agree with what Johnny Lingo posted. I think he's dead, and we'll find out at the appointed hour if he's in the same crowd as the rest of us. =========================================================== Here's an alternate answer, however..... Ever read Dante's Inferno? It's by Dante Aligheri, and titled "the Inferno", thus, Dante's Inferno. It's a classic of Italian literature. In fact, some people consider it to be THE classic of Italian literature-Dante's mother, in particular, I think, had something to say about that. The Inferno is a journey through hell-Dante's personal vision of what it's like in hell. We travel down through each level. Hell has levels so that sinners who committed worse sins are lower and tortured worse than those who committed lesser sins. We reach the bottom of the Ninth Circle of Hell. Dante's vision of the lowest point of the bottom of the Ninth Circle of hell is described there..... It is Judas Iscariot....surrounded, not by fire, but by ice... unable to move, but forever conscious, and aware of the terrible betrayal that he committed. That is what Dante believed was at the lowest point of hell. But, I say, that UNDERNEATH Judas, is VPW. Forced forever to stare thru the ice at Judas' behind. Well, that's one possibility, anyway. ============================================================ For those of you wondering, I adapted that from something Ben Elton did once. You may know him from "Blackadder."

I recommend everyone turn the computer off for 30 minutes and take a brisk walk around the block. That's just a suggestion, though. Feel free to ignore it.

Well, just off the top of my head, vpw had a tendency to bash conventional Christians if he had enough time in front of the microphone. In know the Rock of Ages '79 set had at least one tape- "the Battlefield-the Mind" where he compared his teaching on free will-favourably of course- to the amount of time they discuss it in "any theological cemetary or seminary I've heard of." Obviously, he seems to have been absent at seminary whenever they discussed Calvinism and free will-this is a regular subject, BTW. Last time I sat thru the "Living Victoriously" tapes, I had the impression that each tape had at least one point where he took a potshot at conventional Christianity. The book has either edited out or softened mant of them. Example: opening tape=opening chapter. "The Roman Catholics would have us believe that the word "protestant" is a negative word, that it means you're protesting against something. That's a lie from the pit of Roman Catholicism..." He then mentioned how the word "Protestant" has as its root "speaking forth", which is confirmed by my dictionary. The book gives the explanation without the derogatory comment. I'm unsure if it was simply thought that the comment was more profitable this way, or if it reveals a bias in the editor, meaning that they didn't really register the insult. Really, though.... Find any tape where either has time to ramble on for a while, then listen. You'll probably find SOMETHING. vpw WAS fond of bashing other Christians. In fact, that thing that Mike lauds to the sky, what Mike calls vpw's "last" or "lost" teaching, basically says 2 things: A) The best thing for Christians out there is pfal-all 3 levels. B) Outside of twi, there's no real accuracy among Christians.