Oakspear

Speaking of Karl, if you read the whole chapter that the exerpt is quoted from, he does the best job that I've seen describing the wackiness and lack of actual research that went into the whole athletes of the spirit concept. There's a presentation that he describes involving not only Martindale, but Wierwille and Cummins as well, that includes the infamous "there's gotta be a text that says such-and-such" statements, bending definitions, out-of-context interpretations, and in short a great illustration overall of how "research" in TWI was a self-serving bunch of bullsh--

Less confrontational, kind & gentler....yakkity smakkity... ...so what? When Pawtucket interviewed me for "Episode Seven" a few years ago, one of things that I brought up was that it wasn't so much whether "leadership" actually interfered in peoples' lives, but that they thought that they could. No matter how "nice" they act, do they still reserve the right to stick their noses in?

It's controlled by TWI, the status of being a separate corporation is just on paper. They never revealed, when I was in, that Gunnison was a separate corporation.

I work in retail grocery, not as bad as the toy stores & department stores, but still very much holiday driven. People who are in the store 52 weeks a year, twice or 3 times every week suddenly don't know where anything is We close one day each year: from 6PM December 24th through 6AM December 26th. I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt standing at the door at 6:01 and telling people that we're closed.

Pretty much...nice change o'pace

I'd love to see them try and take on the Jesuits. They have two weapons, surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... their weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... their three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... okay four...no... Amongst their weapons.... are such elements as fear, surprise....never mind

Allen? :blink:

They're a little young to be drinking beer...the boyfriend is from Kansas and has been a KU fan since he was a kid. Oops, didn't see that it was pawtucket who posted that...

I'd call it someone expressing their opinion. I don't agree with that opinion any more than you do, but that opinion did not prevent you from expressing yours. Neither the administrator nor the moderators got involved. Nebraska is up 31-21 over Kansas. My daughter and her boyfriend are over at Memorial Stadium wearing KU gear, probably not too happy right now. That's the contest that seems to be the most important up here, southern neighbor

Any reason why we wouldn't be able to? :huh:

The thread is about the election of Barack Obama and there's complaints about making it political? :o Of course, this becomes an opening to whine about the imaginary unlevel playing field. Personally I'm thankful that we can have a change of adminsitration without a coup, unlike so many places in the world. <_<

...in between sh!t happens exC Ah...Craig's b'day...happy b'day Reverend Martindale...do you still have those cards that folks hand-crafted for you, staying up all night to bless the man o' God? You know, the ones that you criticized for having "inaccurate" versions of bible verses in them? Hmmmm?

Wait a minute...I can't vote three times? :huh:

Ignorance will never fade away.

Many people leave TWI, without TWI every really leaving them. If, upon leaving TWI, one believes that it was the place that "the Word was taught like it hadn't been since the First Century", but that people like Martindale screwed it up, then I can see where today's TWI might look appealing. To fully leave TWI behind one has to see that the problems were systemic and not just the result of some rogues.

Well, if I was someone else's "evil S.O.B.", please let me know! T0m J0yce Lincoln NE, originally from Queens NY

I don't

I once went to a "believers costume party" dressed in a black shirt, pinstripe suit and white tie, with a fedora and sunglasses, carrying drumsticks...I was that guy from Acts 10 who was in "the Italian Band" (Cornelius?)

I guess it depends on how you define "cult". A lot of the really "bad stuff" that gets discussed here passed me by, but I have no doubt that I was in a cult. In retrospect, the seeds of "mind control" were sown in the PFAL class itself. If you graduated from that class believing that Wierwille was utilizing keys to reading and understanding the bible and coming up with "accurate" answers, you were manipulated to some extent. Early on in PFAL Wierwille stopped simply "reading what was written" and started inventing interpretations, definitions and sources to back up what he said the bible said. He was subtle enough about it that most of us hardly noticed it. Our subsequent attempts at "working the Word" generally were based on his shoddy research, questionable premises and made up definitions, that "checking it out for ourselves" was a hopeless proposition.

Right. There's never been a lull here before <_< So it must be the new moderators :blink:

Oldies: Of course someone can be serving God while working at Dunkin' Doughnuts or the Federal gov't. But I don't believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that Dunkin' Doughnuts, the Federal gov't, or most, if not all of our employers claim to be representing God. I concede that it is not impossible for an individual to be serving God while a member of TWI, but the initial point was that according to TWI, serving God is serving TWI. The corollary of that statement being that you cannot serve God without serving TWI.

Reminds me of when I was a WOW in a small burg in western Nebraska. Apparently the interim Corps had been told to "get involved". My interim Corps WOW coordinator dragged me to one of the local "help the less fortunate" agencies. He told the head of the office that he wanted to "get involved". She looked at him quizically and asked "get involved in what?" :blink: Mr. Way Corps had no answer other than to smile sincerely.

Good move...it's really the only way to flush all that crap out of our systems.

The terms bride and body are figures of speech, I believe in this case, metaphors. More than one metaphor can and often does apply. If there is some verse that clearly states that Christians aren't one or the other, then there is no reason that I can see that both metaphors can't apply to different aspects of Christians-as-a-whole. TWI made this error with other metaphors, most notably the whole athlete of the spirit teaching.

Maybe we need a god who sends draught (pronounced "draft") - we'd all be happier (or at least think we were)