Oakspear

What makes you say that?

White Dove, if you are upset that people seem to be applying a double standard to your words and experiences, might I suggest that they are only holding you to your own standards. You are the one who rejects any testimony that is not documented, you are the one who rejects any testimony from second-hand sources, you are the one who belittles those who have first hand experiences and question their memory and even their motives. Most of the incidents where posters are doing this to you appears to be a holding of your feet to the fire. As far as first, second, third hand reports are concerned, First Hand Testimony is from a person who has witnessed or experienced what is being reported. It is still first hand whenever that person tells anyone about it or writes about it. If the are quoted in a newspaper, write a book or post it on the internet, it's still first hand information. Once someone tells someone about that information without actually having the person physically in the room, or having the newspaper article, book or internet posting right there to refer to, it becomes second hand to the person hearing or reading it. In other words, if I tell you about an incident in my childhood, it first hand information to you, but if you tell someone else, then it becomes second hand information to the person that you tell it to, despite it being first hand information to you. If you are going to disregard information that someone passes on second hand after possibly hearing it from the source, don't be surprised when information that people that you personally know have told you, is not accepted as anything other than second hand, because it's the same thing.

...and I'd like to know what you think!

I'd not thought of it that way, but yes, it is. He didn't leave his denomination until 1957, but had his own private radio ministry from 1942 on, incorporated in 1947 and had the name changed to "The Way" in 1955. Started pushing speaking in tongues in 1951 (Tulsa trip) and began PFAL classes in 1953.

I'd be interested to know the thought process behind the decisions by some to remain "officially" within TWI, i.e. collect a salary, outwardly remain part of the chain of command, etc. while supporting in word and deed those who, right or wrong, stood against TWI. Did some think that G##r was going to ride in and take over as titular head of TWI? That some bottom-up change from within was going to take place? I know that while I was involved in TWI, from time to time the rank and file, non-leaders and non-Corps twig leaders, would sometimes wait out the leadership turnover if they thought the appointed Limb Leader or Branch Leader was a jerk. They'd lay low, minimally participate, and see what the next guy would be like. By the mid-to-late 90's even this wasn't available any more, since the fringe participants were considered spiritually weak and guilty of "unproductive evil" and driven out. I wonder if this wasn't part of the mindset of those who hung around while viewing the Trustees as "not doing the Word".

What did Martindale think would happen when he sent those letters out? Sheesh! What an idiot. It loooks like he facilitated the formation of offshoots/splinters with his actions.

One does not preclude the other.

It seems that there were two main types of exodus back in the 80's, the "en masse" defection, where a Limb or Region leader cut ties to TWI and many or most of his Limb followed, and the individual who just walked away under his own steam. From what I have read at GSC and other sites over the years, the en masse defections were about the so-called loyalty letter (or at least that letter was the last straw) for the leaders, and the rank and file decided that the local leaders who they knew were more more likely to be trustworthy than the far-away Trustees who they didn't know.

Get well

Abi, I can't keep silent any longer. I sent Mark a check for $100 so that he could distract Geisha in order that she stop praying for me.

Frame, I believe what WordWolf is saying is that the original version of PFAL (initially titled "Receiving the Holy Spirit Today") was a virtual copy of Leonard's class, not that the final version was.

I do know that during the 90's TWI acted as if Caballero & Townsend never existed and that they had never been on the BOT.

In addition to the obvious "hurt in some other way" aspect of the subject at hand, what struck me was the assumption that God would have lower standards for choosing leaders than we ourselves would. God doesn't need guidelines? :blink: Didn't he reveal some guidelines in da bible?

I think that he was the head of the Home School Legal Foundation or some such.

Less dignity? I don't think you could go any lower after the last two

Marvel can't print comic books? Who says we need a comic book? I like Spider-Man. Marvel is in business to sell comic books, and apparently they are doing that. Where does it say that Obama is concerned about some "fantasy book"? Hmmmm...don't quite see the connection :blink:

I'm not sure that this is taught in the OT, at least not clearly, and I'd have to re-read the gospels (part of my plan for 2009 actually) to see if it's even taught in the gospels. The whole "Jesus had to be sacrificed to redeem us" thing seems to bear a suspicious resemblance to the "slain god", or "sacrificial king" mythos that you find in cultures across the world.

Yes <_<

In my view the argument is not as black & white as God vs. Man. Who physically wrote the bible? Man. There's no more reason to suppose that the bible is THE Word o' God than any other of a number of "holy" books. To me it's not God on one side and men on the other, but men in an inumerable number of corners, got maybe in all of them, some of them, or maybe none of them.

When was this? I took that class twice, once in '82, and once in '91. It was in both times.

Was it the speaking in tongues, or "magnifying God" that convinced Peter & the others? I think we assume that it was the speaking in tongues, but if so, how did they know that they were magifying God? But even if it wasn't the SIT, I wouldn't put it in the category of a blatant error, just an honest (IMHO) interpretation of what was written. Part of why I bring this up is that from our 2009 vantage point we sometimes think that speaking in tongues, defined as "speaking a language that is unknown to the speaker" was new and unuique to the new church, when it had been fairly common among prophetic and ecstatic groups of that time. Now if you want to redefine speaking in tongues to restrict it to Christians as a manifestation or gift of the spirits, okay, but I don't think that the people of that time saw it that way. None of the other manifestations/gifts are unique to Christianity.

I remember it the way you do socks, a fellowship in every community, "making the Word available" to anyone in that community. By the time Martindale made his announcement, it was clear that we were going backwards in accomplishing the goal of Word Over the World, TWI never recovered numerically from the Graet Exodus of the late 80's. When Martindale announced that the Word was over the World, he told us that he got this information by revelation, not by comparing the original goal with the then-present day results. Afterwards, he and John Reynolds tried to show us how isolated fellowships run by U.S. military people proved that the Word was "available" to that entire region of the world, or how twigs run by expatriate Zaireans in France meant that the Word was over Europe. After this announcement the idea that lack of growth in an area was indicative of that area having rejected The Word became popular. Whole twigs in these cities (or states) were advised to move if they wanted to "move the Word". This happened in Omaha a few years before I was kicked out. By the time I did leave, there was just one anemic twig in the whole state of Nebraska, which was classified as an outlying area of the Kansas City branch.

Ask and ye shall...http://www.greasespotcafe.com/main2/editor...ant-living.html

Maybe this one isn't blatant, but here goes: Wierwille taught in The Word's Way (not sure if it made it into PFAL itself) chapter "The Lord's Brethren" that the brothers of Jesus specifically named in the gospels could not have been Joseph's sons from a previous marriage. His reasoning was that an older brother would have invalidated Jesus' claim to the throne of David. The only problem with that was that in another collateral chapter "The Geneology of Jesus" Wierwille teaches that the geneology in Matthew, the "royal" geneology is Mary's, while the geneology in Luke is Joseph's. Therefore, the existance of any of Joseph's older sons would be irrelevant to any claim to the throne of David. If one looks through Bullinger's appendixes and come to the one regarding the Lord's Brethren, one would see that Bullinger states the same thing that Wierwille did, dismissing the possibility that James, Joses, Simon and Judas were Jesus' older half-brothers by Joseph's first wife, since their existance would invalidate Jesus' claim to the Davidic throne. However, Bullinger wrote in his appendixes that he believed that the geneology in Matthew was Joseph's, and the one in Luke was Mary's, making his position consistant at least. To me it looks like Wierwille simply parrotted what Bullinger said about the brethren, without fully understanding Bullinger's reasoning behind it, and subsequently making no sense. Just one of several examples where Wierwille apparently didn't understand what Bullinger was saying, but liked his conclusions.