Mark Clarke

Aren't non-profit organizations required to have their books examined every so often by some kind of authority?

I wish there were a Readers Digest version of this thread! :blink:

You mean like this? Everybody's going around in circles about whether or not it was plagiarism or copyright infringement for VP to use the words/writings/ideas of others. Setting that aside for a moment, let us consider a more crucial question. Mike claims that God gave VP revelation as to what points he should keep and use, and what points he should reject from others' writings. I brought up a few very specific points which VP adapted, which are based on completely false statements. Not differences of opinion about theologies, but proven matters of FACT that he had wrong in his writings. If God gave him revelation as to what to use from other people's teachings, how did these get missed? Regardless of whether he "appropriately" credited his sources, the fact that he took statements from those sources without even checking to see if the FACTS were right, leads me to question whether indeed God revealed to him what parts to appropriate. The points in question are in the Doctrinal Forum, BTW. The Kingdom of God / Kingdom of Heaven question is in its own thread, and three others (Throughly vs. thoroughly, lambano vs. dechomai, and holy spirit UPON vs. holy spirit IN) are in another thread called More Blatant PFAL Errors. You don't need to get into a lengthy debate - they're simple questions. How do you deal with these things if PFAL is "God Breathed"? I don't see much difference between saying "Sure there are errors, but I close my eyes to them" and "I see no errors because I close my eyes to them."

That was what Wierwille taught, but it's not what the word really means as it's used in the Bible. Look up the Greek word aionios or the Hebrew word olam.

I had a couple questions too, that seem to have gotten buried.

Thanks, Steve, for the further explanation of the Kingdom of God. My point about the terms K. of God and K. of Heaven are even more basic than that though. Setting aside what the meaning of the phrases are, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that they are synonymous and used interchangeably in the Gospels. This directly contradicts Bullinger's and Wierwille's claim that they mean different things. What The Hey keeps asserting that they have different meanings too (although he says one is part of the other). How then do you account for the fact they are clearly used interchangeably in the four Gospels? (I'm still wondering how Mike dealt with this discrepancy when he decided PFAL was the God-breathed Word, but it seems like he doesn't want to discuss that anymore.)

The reason, I imagine, would be that he was dead. Don was on the board when VP died in 1985, and remained so until 1997.

That's exactly backwards. We "trash" his name because what he wrote (and did) is no good. There may be a few things he got right, but for the most part it has been proven wrong by the very keys that VP taught. Jesus said a prophet is not without honor except in his home town. VPW dishonored himself, and proved he was no prophet. "By their fruit you shall know them." Anything that "worked" was because of what God did for them, not what VPW or TWI did. In fact in some cases God did mighty works in people's lives in spite of what TWI said and did. Could it be you're confusing the followers with the leaders? The leaders were/are jerks, liars, self-centered, etc., but the followers, such as many of us used to be, were duped into thinking it was God's Way.

"Dyslexics of the world, untie!" (brought to you by DAM - Mothers Against Dyslexia)

I'm not talking about what they mean to me or you, I'm just talking about how the Greek Words used in the Bible are defined.

No, but the people who did have given their testimony, as I described above. If one accepts eyewitness testimony for other things, why not for that? Interesting. I agree with 'some people' and 'forever' but not 'burn in hell'. As you say, we need to define 'fire of hell'. Depends on how you define 'heaven' and 'hell'. That's the confusion. There are at least three Greek words translated 'hell' in the KJV. One is hades which is simply the state of the dead, and has nothing to do with fire or torture. Everybody experiences that, but it's a state of unconsciousness and corruption. The Lake of Fire is a different Greek word: gehenna. It originally meant a garbage dump where they burned refuse. Its Biblical meaning refers to a specific place that will exist in the futute, where the devil and the antichrist and all who reject Christ will be thrown. But it is not endless torture, it is complete and permanent destruction. No doubt we will all experience hades (unless we are alive and changed when Christ returns). But the lake of fire is a different matter. And 'heaven' is not promised to the followers of Jesus. We will live with him on a restored earth and rule the nations with him. That's the great message of the Kingdom of God that he preached. If the knowledge is from the Scriptures it isn't natural, carnal knowledge. The spirit will not contradict what the Scriptures tell us; the Word and the Spirit work together as they are both from God.

Still waiting....

How long would it take to explain how you handle these three simple contradictions (four, counting the Kingdom of God question)?

How long would it take to explain how you handle this one contradiction?

Not thinking is what got us hooked in the illogical and senseless doctrines in the first place. "If God spoke directly to him then what he taught must be right even if I don't see how it makes sense."

Are they towing the line now?

It is God, not TWI or PFAL that provides us with what we need. It has nothing to do with whether we believe PFAL is God-breathed. I would ask you the same question: "How do you determine what is true and what is not?" How do you explain the obvious errors in PFAL, such as have been brought up here and in the Doctrinal Forum? Discussions can be carried on there so as not to derail this thread (not that it hasn't been derailed a lot already...)

Correction: Followers of The Way International are duped. The Organization itself is what is evil. (And seaspray, please note we are talking about the organization known as The Way International, not followers of the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Who is Jesus Christ. There is a big difference.)

When you say, "who already believe in said beliefs" you are forgetting that the eye witnesses did not believe it at first. They were only convinced because they saw the risen Christ. Every event that we know of, we learned about from eye witnesses. What reason would you have for doubting the testimony of those who saw him? There were many, many people who would have loved to be able to disprove the resurrection, and it would have been easy - just produce the body. But nobody ever did. That fact and the fact that the witnesses claimed to have seen the risen Christ is even attested to by Josephus (even though he himself did not believe). There are other factors too. It's interesting that you mention "loyal-till-I-die followers." The very fact that they were willing to die rather than renounce their testimony gives it more credence. If it had been fabricated, or in some way proven false, why would the apostles go to their death proclaiming it? What would they have to gain? It wasn't like cults today where a lot of money and power is at stake. There are a number of other factors that make the very existence of Christianity extremely unlikely if it had not been based on the historical reality of the resurrection. Check out this article by James Patrick Holding for more detail. Bringing it back to the topic of this thread, it's not that God inflicts punishment on "those who do no more wrong than not believe in a god." He has provided a way for anyone to escape the basic end of all mankind, which is death. And He did a lot to bring that to pass, even though none of us deserved it. For those who reject His plan, what else is there but death? Yet it is complete destruction, not unending torture in fire.

According to other threads here, Bob is still in.

This crap even inspired B0b St@n1ey to write a song about it. Remember, "It goes beyond abundant sharing / It's giving of pluralities..." I used to like his early songs but he became a total tool of TWI.

I agree this is generally true, but should be qualified as "in general" or "for the most part" as there are many exceptions to the rule. In my case, I happen to be more into communication, and my wife has had to learn it. But I understand we are unusual.

Or VHS and Beta!

He raised a man from the dead, who was then seen of many witnesses. What more proof do you want?

"With the coming of the greater, the lesser is done away with."