Oakspear

It depnds on whether I have to get up the next morning One of our local hot spots has been doing early shows once a week, usually Wednesdays, 6 - 9pm. Susie & I saw Chris Duarte at one of those a few months back. These days, most of the music that I take in is local bands, but Lincoln has quite a few good bands, especially blues.

http://www.despair.com/sacrifice1.html

1. None of the proponents of water baptism are saying that it is necessary for salvation. Some are saying that it is necessary in order to obey God's Word. Opinions vary. 2. Just because a verse does not specifically mention water, does not necessarily mean that water wasn't involved. Baptism can literally mean immersion in water, or it can be used figuratively. Context can tell us which. 3. Wierwille's take on a verse or concept sometimes was the correct one, sometimes not. His teaching often only "fit" if you ignored parts of the bible. Some on this thread are attepting to make it "fit" by considering topics that Wierwille didn't. 4. There are many apparent contradictions (or real ones, depending on your view) that Wierwille never touched. It is not "tail-chasing" to try to reconcile these. Despite a yearning for "the simplicity of the Word", its anything but simple.

Noooooo....don't make me read it :o :unsure: :wacko: :blink:

"Putting it together so it fit" could reasonably be described as telling his students: "Dr. Smith taught about ABC, but I think he was off on C; Bishop Jones taught XYZ, but his conclusions on Y do not fit 'the Word'; now Rev. Brown taught CY so well that it brought tears to your eyes, but he was too much influenced by WordWolf on AB & XZ to be of much value. Therefore by taking these specific parts of what Dr. Smith, Bishop Jones and Rev. Brown taught, we can see the truth of da Word" What Wierwille did was closer to this: "Open your bibles, look at such and such a verse. Look at all these other verses scattered around the bible. Listen to my rambling analogies. See! We can obviously conclude ABCXYZ! Ya know keeds, I learned a lot from Dr. Smith, he really taught the experience of ABC, but he just couldn't put it together from the Word (like I could) and Bishop Jones, I ran into him in Oklahoma in a snowstorm once, but women always lie. He taught me a little bit about how to X, but I documented it fron the Word. Rev. Brown did his translation of the Polish bible at my house. Name dropping and casually mentioning people who influenced you and who you say you learned from is a far cry from crediting those from whom he got fully formed, fully researched, and fully thought through and published ideas.

So...many...words :o

Mark didn't say that. He wrote out in detail why he believed and practiced as he did, and you mischaracterized it. There are plenty of things that the bible says to do, but aren't "salvation"; for example, it apparently says to speak in tongues, but doing it doesn't earn you salvation.

I believe that "snapping" is partly due to buying into the image of an exclusive group that "the world" is against. If you can be convinced that no one else has the truth, and everyone else out there hates you because of it, it's a short step to distancing yourself from family and friends, and changing all your habits and interactions. It's a vicious circle: you make a statement that you believe to be the simple truth, but is incredibly insulting, your family is insulted and gets defensive, you see the defensiveness, perhaps your rudeness is met by some retalitatory rudeness and insults from your family. The cycle continues to escalate until you are purposfully distancing yourself from your loved ones. You think back and remember that you were warned that your family would reject you if they rejected "the Word". You smugly think you've got it all figured out and that Satan is running your family, blissfully unaware that your actions are driving them away; your family is convinced that you are brainwashed, totally clueless that they played a role in the self fullfilling prophecy.

WW, you remain the king of summaries

In my opinion, "Word Over the World" was never any more than a slogan, devised by Wierwille to keep us pumped up and keep new members pouring in. I agree, Martindale had to come up with his own unique stamp on TWI to boost his MOGness. Interesting that Rosie and the current Board of Directors, although they rarely if ever even mention Martindale's name, still hold to this "revelation" from a man who didn't understand that screwing other guys' wives was wrong.

Martindale declared that the "Word was over the world" in the mid to late nineties (don't remember the year). He claimed that he received this information by revelation, although he had John Reynolds offer some statistics to support this claim. At the time it made no sense to me, membership was declining, whole countries and areas of the U.S. were void of TWI fellowships, by any objective measure, the "Word" was barely over Martindale's living room, let alone the world. Reynolds' supporting information talked about fellowships being run in regions of the world, as if one measly twig in Berlin somehow "made the Word avaialable" to all of Germany, let alone Europe. One of the things that Martindale "addressed" was that Word Over The World was an achievable goal, and not some hazy, ill-defined future event that never comes. Yet, by declaring that something had occurred, with no evidense or indication that it had, it became ill defined. What did you believe that "Word Over The World" was? Does anyone ever remember Wierwille layuing out exactly what it meant? My view, and I don't recall if I ever heard Wierwille say it, was that Word Over the World would be achieved when several conditions were met: 1. There were enough twigs in enough places so that everyone in the world would be able to get to one if they chose. 2. The worldwide "ministry" and the local twigs were having enough of an influence that anyone who wanted to get involved would know just where to go. With the speedy growth in the 70's and early 80's, this didn't seem so farfetched.

He comes across as lazy. He comes across as a shameless self-promoter. He comes across as a pathological liar.

Hmmm...you do have a point. Oftentimes in TWI I didn't necessarily believe something, but kept my mouth shut

Well, your change would be true, but no more representaive of my opinion than my original. The "everyone around me" addition would accurately apply to resistance to peer pressure.

Since they were already dead, how did he determine this?

The three trustees at the time signed The Passing of a Patriarch. Howard Allan's note at the bottom said: "I've read it and all is true. I've felt it and didn't know what to do. So I will change to do my best for the man I helped to kill" http://www.greasespotcafe.com/waydale/gallery/papletter.gif

I never had a response either, back when I was "in", but one response would be that several of the offshoots teach exactly what Wierwille taught back in the good ol' days, but without the later abuse. Secondly, how would someone know whether or not there are churches who taught those things without any investigation. The variety of churches and other religious groups is staggering. Thirdly the "groundbreaking research" is largely either plagairized or otherwise adapted from other sources, hardly unique. Finally, most people, while involved in TWI, never take a hard critical look at the research and doctrines except through "Way-colored glasses". Very few people have ever taken the time to determine whether or not what TWI was actually true.

I'm not sure what is meant by terminally skeptical <_< , but as George says, skepticism is a good thing. We are all skeptical to a greater or lesser extent, we just have different threshholds of what it takes to convince us. And that threshhold may be different for various categories for the same person. One person may embrace a given religion without question, but is very skeptical about the claims of politicians. Another may be very suspicious about religious beliefs, but accepting of UFO's. See what I mean? We all have areas in which in takes a bit more convincing to get us to 'see the light". Personally, I'm a skeptic in that I won't believe something only because someone says it is true. I generally require some documentation, or evidense. However, I usually don't need rigorous scientific testing to accept the possibility that something may be so, and believe that there are things where it's not possible to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt. Skepticism is healthy, it keeps us from sending money to those guys claiming to be holding our million dollars in that Ugandan bank account :blink:

Some of us interacted with a few of TWI's youth at the "Family Tables" website before we were shut out. I for one was not impressed. For a group of allegedly college educated people, their thinking skills were not at all in evidence. All these young people are "chomping at the bit"? Who's stopping them? Want to do something for God? Go do it!

There was more "protocol" in TWI that no one else in the world ever heard about. It took me a while being "out" before I realized that most of it was fabricated by Wierwille, or that he had taken old ciustoms and tried to apply them to the present day. Even though Martindale was generally full of himself and full of crap -_- he was more often than not entertaining and could hold your interest. Maybe all the yelling stimulated the fight or flight response and we were all overdosing on adrenaline :lol: Some TWI teachers could put you to sleep in minutes. What I'm seeing here is a lot of the things that Wierwille apologists and those nostalgic for the "good ol' days" claimed was never taught. Things that are not in PFAL, or any of the books, were taught regularly by Wierwille, and Martindale documented them.

This kind of crap used to annoy the heck out of me. Even if we stipulate that barah (translated "create" in Genesis) can only mean "to make something out of nothing", the English word "create" has a much broader meaning:Main Entry: 1cre·ate Pronunciation: krE-'At, 'krE-" Function: verb Inflected Form(s): cre·at·ed; cre·at·ing Etymology: Middle English, from Latin creatus, past participle of creare; akin to Latin crescere to grow -- more at CRESCENT transitive senses 1 : to bring into existence <God created the heaven and the earth -- Gen 1:1 (Authorized Version)> 2 a : to invest with a new form, office, or rank <was created a lieutenant> b : to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior <her arrival created a terrible fuss> <create new jobs> 3 : CAUSE, OCCASION <famine creates high food prices> 4 a : to produce through imaginative skill <create a painting> b : DESIGN <creates dresses> intransitive senses : to make or bring into existence something new ...and even keeping to biblical usage, possess is used in ways other than demon possession - doesn't Melchizedek refer to Abraham's God as the posesser of heaven and earth? Humble enough to be bold?

Comment on the note-taking: Taking notes was an obsession in Way-world I was one of those people who could take notes that could be used as a syllabus, but after a few years I had notebook upon notebook that I never looked at. And what the heck did finishing anything have to do with taking notes?

What the f---? He just taught the bible ...and the worst thing that you can do is ask a bible question? I guess what he really wanted is adulation. I recall asking a Way Corps woman some questions after a teaching, her husband reproved me for it, using this VP & me example

Not sure if your "Um, no" refers to his country of origin or not, but there is not, and never was a country called Serbo-Croatia. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created from pieces of the former Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires following World War I. It later changed it's name to Yugoslavia (the land of the southern Slavs). It included the "republics" of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, as well the regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina (not sure of the spelling). Several of these broke off to form the independent nations of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia. The remainder of the country kept the name Yugoslavia, although it was primarily Serbia. I'm not sure if it still goes by Yugoslavia, or If the union of Serbia and Montenegro uses another name (Kosovo was included in Serbian territory). The language that most of the ethnic groups from the former Yugoslavia speak is generally called Serbo-Croatian, although Bosnians immigrants around here call it "Bosnian".

I'm pretty sure that you know that I'm not asking you to "prove" anything. I'm just trying to figure out why people come to the conclusions that they do. I think that's good. You experienced something, and you chose a framework in which you can understand and process that experience. I don't believe that the objective truth or falsity of the bible has anything to do with what you experience and how you choose to learn, grow and be comforted from it. Let's extend that to non-believers in the supernatural. They experience something, and prefer to choose a framework of understanding that does not include the supernatural. I think we can get through the day without damning the atheists and pagans, or laughing at the credulousness of the Christians.