Oakspear

The verses in Corinthians (that's One Corinthians for you Trump fans) do indeed indicate that one shouldn't expect to understand the language when someone speaks in tongues. However, this does not mean that the incident of speaking in tongues in Acts 2 is "phenomena" or that we should assume that other incidents of speaking in tongues were any different that in chapter 2. Acts 10 says that they were heard to speak with tongues and magnify God. How woud the hearers know that they were magnifying God? I suppose they could have assumed that they magnified God since they were spaking in tongues, or maybe they understood them. Same thing with chapter 19. Now maybe Corinthians trumps (no pun intended) Acts 2, or maybe the Acts 2 example trumps Corinthians. We leaned in PFAL to interpret Acts 10 & 19 in light of Corinthians, but might we alternately interpret Corinthians in light of Acts 2? I'm not ignoring anything, just suggesting other possibilities What I believe is irrelevant to this discussion

Correct, I am only looking at verse 41. Please enlighten me on how fire doesn't mean fire in this verse. I would concede that it is probably talking about fire figuratively and not literally. But it is surely not only referring to the "devil and his angels" ("devil spirits" is not a term that you will find in the bible) - Jesus refers to "all nations" (surely not including the devil and his angels) and separates them into sheep and goats. Whoever the goats are, they are told by Jesus to depart "into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels". A plain reading would indicate that the goats go to the same place that the devil and his angels end up Is "eternal life" limited too? Because in Verse 46 eternal punishment and eternal life are paired; it would seem illogical to assume that the word "eternal" means different things there My personal beliefs are irrelevant to this discussion Not strictly the subject of the thread, but I'm not the one who wrote the book

That's not relevant. If I hear someone speaking a language other than English, or to a more limited extent, Spanish, I don't understand because they are not speaking in tongues. Also irrelevant to the discussion, since it's not the first usage of speaking in tongues Also...

One would hope not, yet it says just that; specifically fire in v. 41 What I see is that you have ignored the use of a place of eternal firey punishment becauase it does not square with what you see somewhere else in the bible

I don't see that this follows logically. the first canonical mention of speaking in languages in Acts specifically mentions that they were understandable, the others are not specific, but I can see no reason to assume that the first usage was unique.

Maybe, but what about the preceding verses? This last verse usually is viewed as meaning that the lake of fire is only for the devil and his angels, but reading the whole context, it doesn't really say that

Apparently there is at least one reference to eternal punishment:

Acknowledging that some Corps folks had actual honest-to-dog leadership and management ability, the conceit that by just being a Corps grad gave one the ability to run a business or manage a department, or anything else for that matter, was laughable. I saw resumes similar to this from people who ran two-twig "branches" and only previously had "real" jobs in the realm of convenience store clerk or window washer. Even while mostly waybrained I was somewhat insulted, as someone who had built my own resume in management over several decades, to hear these nitwits brag about how they were going to get sweet management gigs.

And that questioning leads us all to different places One thing that I have seen (your mileage may vary) is that no matter what ones position on Jesus is/isn't God; Trinitarian/Unitarian, you have to explain away or ignore verses that contradict each other. I doubt I'll have time to fully document that, but that's where questioning & examining have led me.

Wierwille would have been proud! Tinkering wit puncuation to make it say what he wants!Regarding the Lord = God contention, some Trinitarians rely on the fact that when the NT quotes the OT, Yahweh/Jehovah is usually translated into Greek as kurios (lord)

Calling him just "doctor" was just annoying back when I was in, hearing people do it now is just plain creepy

I don't have a one liner, but due to the tendency within TWI to question mainstream Christianity, I started habitually questioning everything. Eventually that questioning outlook led me to question Martindale, which led me to question Wierwille...

Plagiarism does not depend on whether the plagiarized work is by a living person. If you pass of another's words as your own then it's plagiarism Are "we" passing off the words from the bible as our own? That's where the line is It's prett clear that in some instances Wierwille publsihed things under his own name that were word-for-word taken from another's work What do you mean by that? Not you, apparently, but many of us do No...I don't think that you do... This is the logical fallacy of the red herring

I wonder what the percentage was of people in Session Twelve of PFAL (or the equivalent point in Martindale's WayAP class) that did not speak in tongues. That's a rhetorical question, since we'll never know that number, since "nobody gets misssed" right? And records surely were not kept and if they were, we surely won't get to see them! Over the years I participated in only a limited number of PFAL classes; I can recall for sure only three people who did not speak in tongues at Session Twelve and did not thereafter. One was a guy who was very intellectual about the whole thing, never got into the emotional uproar that takes place at that key point of the session; he always said he was waiting for something to happen that never happened. The second was a lady in her late seventies who loved the social aspect of twig and was like a grandma to all of us, but she never seemed to understand what was being taught, or even make the effort. The third was one of my sons, who was in his early teens. He dug in his heels and just refused to do it - said it didn't make sense. My two older sons were just as non-questioning as their mother and I were, but Oakspear Junior questioned everything and was not at all impressed with what he heard. Looking back at my own SIT experiences, I didn't think I was faking it back then, and I don't think that I did so intentionally, but it was so easy to get swept up in the emotion and the groupthink

I don't think there was as much anger about the suggestion that monotheists were all worshipping the same god twenty years ago...before 9/11; today there seems to be a more visceral loathing of Islam by most Christians, even non-fundamentalists who would have had no problem with the concept back then. The first time I ever heard anyone suggest in my hearing that Allah wasn't Yahweh was at a Word in Business, or maybe the Rock of Ages and it was Martindale's foam-at-the-mouth delivery of "Da Truth". The highlighted (by me) portion of your comment makes sense to me and is a good way to put it, but when you come down to it, isn't every Christian worshipping different gods? I say this because, despite what creeds and doctrinal positions put out there, most people have their own view of the biblical god that may or not be the same as the person sitting next to them at church. One thing that I think that most Christians believe, even those who believe that the Islamic version of God is a different entity than their god, is that the god of the Jews is the same as the god of the New Testament

Even what he thinks is evidence to him (outside of any need to prove it to anyone else), even if the poles really were (or appeared to be) there to guide him home and were later disappeared (or were never really there) is only evidence that something apparently unexplainable happened. Even if "normal" evidence (witnesses, photos, Edward Snowden) were provided, who says that it was God? Or UFOs? Or Magick?

I disagree, the question isn't absurd; it's an accusation that is often made against atheists, that it's a "religion" Who do you imagine believes something that they don't believe? That sounds a bit like Wierwille's nonsensical rant about atheists not being possible Who do you imagine is riding a fence? I assume you mean paradox...how so? How do you figure those who do not believe are parasitic upon those who believe?

You made my day with that remark

Recently at Wheaton College a professor was suspended for, among other things, making a statement asserting that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same god. Since then I have seen quite a few vehement denials that they are the same deity by a variety of Christians. This past week, President Obama's visit to a mosque occassioned more angry denials that the gods of the Quran and of the New Testament were the same. Most of those who claimed that they were different entities cited differences between how the New Testament and the Quran described God. My position is that, despite differences in attributes between the descriptions in the two "holy" books, Muslims and Christians are each referring to the same god. Even if one approaches the argument from the point of view that Christians, and their view of God, are correct, the fact that Muslims view him differently does not necessrily mean that these deities are actually different. If one is to take the position that difference in methods of worship, and difference in attributes as written in "scripture" mean that we're describing two entities, then to remain consistant, one would have to also view the god of the Old Testament as a different god than the one described in the New Testament. Marcion took this very same position - founding a Christian sect that viewed the Old Testament god as an evil "god of this world". The purpose of this thread is not to debate the actual existance of God, or whether Christianity or Islam is true

Maybe. But I don't think we're talking about the same thing. In your example, assuming that the State Department of Roads or the telephone company hadn't for some reason taken down all the poles in the intervening few days, something out of the ordinary had happened, but the percentage of stories purporting to indicate supernatural occurences that contain no elements that are anything more than mundale approaches 100%. (In my experience - your mileage may vary) Even in your hypothetical, the Christian would credit God; the UFO enthusiast, aliens; and Gardnerians, magick. All citing the fact of the missing poles as "evidence" of God, aliens or magick.

Okay, got it. I read into your comment something that wasn't there, my bad! Hmmm...I'm not sure there's anything between the lines to read Ha! Yes, he's not all that popular here! That's not to say that something the Vicster said was necessarily wrong, but he is certainly not considered a reliable source I don't know if it's rubbish or not - I was just questioning select parts of what you said - and anyway, you have every right to post your opinions here, even if nobody agrees

Same here. Wierwille and Bullinger each contorted their takes on the bible in order to make it fit their number theories. What? Was the supposed "Christ" administration 1-3 years?

Interesting comment, why would there be any call to "be afraid", let alone think there might be "lumps" for posting in the "wrong" forum? Is there soemwhere in the bible where they are called gift ministries? Are you quoting Wierwille, or is this your own conclusion? Where is this definition given in the bible? I always thought that this phrase was Wierwille's way of getting people to view him as an apostle, since he certainly wasn't bringing any "new light"

I thought that you let me in even though I came out as a pagan.

Yup...good luck. I didn't write a book, but sent a ten page, single-spaced letter to John Reynolds, then on the Board of Trustees, breaking down everything that I could find wrong with Martindale's class. I got a call from Reynolds, but was thrown out of TWI shortly thereafter