Oakspear

One of my favorite guitarists is Chris Duarte, I try to see him when he's here in Lincoln every year. He's on tour now, on the west coast this week, then over to Oklahoma & Kansas. He'll also be touring with Bluestone a Japanese band in September & early October on the east coast then over to Ohio, Minnesota etc. http://www.chrisduartegroupfans.org/dates.htm

From the beginning of my association with twi I took statements such as those (heard many similar things from other believers before taking the class) to heart. That as a Research ministry, twi was dynamic, not static. I always felt encouraged to bring up questions when my study or gut feel, even, contradicted what twi was teaching. The great majority of the time, the questions were encouraged and there was no “VP says it, that settles it” attitude, but rather, “if that what your heart tells you to believe, then stick with it.” When I did run into VP=Truth, I would remind them that it contradicted what he, himself, had said. Too bad twi didn't stick to this. It was the core reason for the downfall, imo. Just thought those quotes were worth repeating. Suda I don't know if they ever really had that attitude Suda, let alone stuck with it. True, Wierwille said that we shouldn't follow men, and that we shouldn't take his or anyone else's word for it, but when you come down to it, isn't that what he expected us to do? Despite the large number of bible verses that are read straight from the KJV, how many things did we accept just because he said so? When he said this means such-and-such, or defined Greek or Hebrew wordss in such a way that his view was backed up, or camed to conclusions that had no visible means of support? Sure, there were people who would tell you things like “if that what your heart tells you to believe, then stick with it.” - but were you ever allowed to teach those things? Yeah, I had the occassional person tell me stuff like that, but the more common response was to "hold it in abeyance" until I saw what Wierwille's point was; someday I'd "get it".

We were discussing giving people enough information to make an informed decision on the last page... A national political talk show host, when criticized for not giving "equal time" to those of opposing opinions, responds by saying "I am the equal time", in other words, the other guys have their say in their corner of the media, he'll have my say in his corner of the media. I have a similar opinion of "both sides" of the TWI story. TWI has the Way Magazine, Sunday Service tapes, classes and fellowships to get their point across. TWI doctrine lives on in some of the offshoots as well. They have a platform for deseminating their views. The anti-TWI view is not given equal time in any of their publications or classes. Why would I want to give both sides of the story, when the other side is perfecty capable of speaking up for itself?

Did any of us join TWI because they already taught what we had decided to believe? No, in most cases what we learned in TWI was a marked departure from what we believed previously, we wanted a change. Maybe TWI was right on those 2 "main" points, maybe not. I would venture to say that the meager research skills that we learned in TWI were insufficient for us to be able to discern truth from error with a 100% accuracy.

Some questions can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no". One who sees the issues of a particular question in black or white terms might believe so, another who views the same issue in shades of grey would want to clarify terms before answering. A wordy, roundabout response is not necessarily a non-answer.

I was a WOW in Sidney and Kearney Nebraska 1980-81 We had only one car in our WOW family. Two of us hitched a ride with some wayfers who owned a bus wwhile the other two drove my WOW sisters car with some folks from another WOW family as passengers. The bus threw a rod in the middle of Iowa. We ended up living in tents behind the gas station for three days while we waited for a new engine for the bus. We met up with the rest of our WOW family and finally made it to our destination on Friday (the ROA has ended on Saturday). The town was fortified against us before we even witnessed to anyone. Radio programs preaching against us, churches holding vigils outside our home, local youth ministers attempting to "rebuke" us in the name of Jesus in grocery store aisles, teenagers trying to run us over with their cars, people picking fights with us. The 10th Corps family coordinator was only 20 years old and made sexual advances on both of my WOW sisters, various locals and any woman who regularly came to twigs. A local guy who was in the county lock up found out about Romeo spending time with his wife in the family trailer and things almost got ugly. Once Romeo engaged in foreplay in front of a mentally challenged twig member, he counselled a young man in the twig to "just get laid" in order to solve some problem he was having. He impregnated a woman and used family funds to get an abortion. One WOW sister showed up pregnant and got an abortion. She later was sexually involved with one of the two new people that we had signed up for PFAL. Yup, it felt like 10 years...

Regarding impolite disagreement, I have found that I find it easier to be rude to the people who I have never met and have no outside contact with. With posters whom I knew before GS, or whom I have met at Weenie Roasts or in my travels I find myself making more of an effort to be patient with when I have a difference of opinion. I like to think that most of the time I am making an effort to be respectful of other people. Even considering all of that, a discussion forum is still a different atmosphere than a Sunday dinner at someone's house. Topics are started and opinions expressed for what reason? Supposedly to engage others in debate and discussion. Of course there are exceptions to that. It would be inappropriate for me to post my opinions about prayer on a prayer thread in the prayer forum, but it would be appropriate for me to exprress my opinion about it in a thread about the efficacy of prayer. It would be inappropriate for me to start debating whether the dead were alive after death on a memorium thread, but not in a doctrinal thread about death and the afterlife. There are many here with some very strong opinions about our time in TWI, why think that some strong statements aren't going to provoke some of the others here? Regarding the worth and value of PFAL specifically and TWI's teachings in general, I am not so stubborn that I won't admit that I heard things taught that made sense while I was in TWI, and there were surely things that lined up with the bible, and there were times when I was around some good people, and even had some experiences that I could choose to chalk up to divine intervention. However... I don't see the PFAL class as anything special. Oh I did at one time, but in hindsight it was not what it claimed to be. It claimed to be the work of a man who had received a promise from God to be taught (by God) "the Word" since it hadn't been known for almost two millenia if he would teach it to others. In my opinion it was nothing of the sort, but a motley collection of material, some plagiarized, some original, and some reworked from other sources. His conclusions betrayed, not a devotion to biblical "accuracy", but often a woeful lack of understanding of what his sources were saying, a virtual absence of logic and common sense, nad a devotion rather to push his own agenda, his own views, no matter what the bible actually said. The class was full of made-up definitions, analogies and illustrations that he pulled out of the air, references to "old documents" that no one else had access to and declarations that had no scriptural or any other kind of backup. Another poster wrote of mining gems out of all the rubble, as if these supposed gems were worth all the trouble. To take the analogy futher, the gems were setting out in the open for all to see and claim while we were sifting through the rubble! the problem with using PFAL as any kind of source is that there is all that rubble to go through. All of that dirty bathwater to get through When "working the Word", how easy is it to rely on an incorrect Wierwille definition, or accept an unsupported Wierwille conclusion when "working" a verse or a section of scripture? That's why some of us have thrown it all out and started over, not because we necessarily thought everything was wrong, but because it is not worth the time to separate out all the garabage, all the lies, all the little things that can get you going down a blind alley. That's what I'm talking about when I use the term "Waybrained". It's an unconscious use of Wierwillisms or PFAL jargon without thinking. Like making a point in an argument by quoting PFAL, especially when the quote is demonstrably wrong. Again, this doesn't mean that PFAL is all wrong, or even mostly wrong. Just that it's a rat's nest of error and that it makes little sense to use it as a source

Christian = believes in a god or gods Pagan = believes in a god or gods Voila! There's no "real" difference!

Whoever taught you that was incorrect. I recall Wierwille made that statement in "da class". It probably counts as one of the "Actual errors". Maybe you learned it somewhere else, but it still reflects a misunderstanding of what an atheist is. An atheist is not someone who is without belief, but someone who is without God. Maybe some agnostics "don't care", but that's hardly the definition.

Oh, so now you wanna stay on topic Okay, you can make a case, I reverse my earlier remark...still disagree with it, but it's a valid argument to make...carry on

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html Is there any difference between atheists and agnostics? An agnostic is one who claims not to know whether or not there is a god or gods, some agnostics claim that one cannot know. An atheist is one who does not believe that there is a god or gods. Is there a "real" difference? http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm

How do you measure volume on a discussion forum New thread in doctrinal: http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=15046

Ah, then you haven't heard that I'm omniscient Since there is a real difference between the two, I feel free to make said judgement.

Folks can use the information any way that they please. EWhy would pawtucket want to even try to dictate that? While accepting that some posters cross the line on occassion (some more occassionally than others ) I must ask - "What do you expect?" This is a forum for discussion. No one is expecting you to pretend that you believe something other than what you do. But to think that your opinions will be given a pass is not being realistic. Value everyone? Sure value everything? No. If your opinions are such that they support what many here are passionately against, then they will be spoken against. Prejudice? Is it prejudiced to speak against something that your experience has shown you is harmful? You said it. But perhaps you're not capable of playing in this particular playground. and for that, I thank you.

In which case, your "case" would be in error

Information overload. Interesting observation. We had so much information thrown at us, with little opportunity to digest or analyze it, no opportunity to question until the end. is taht the way that the bible ought to be taught? Sure, and for many, the supposed gems would overshadow the false definitions, the made-up stories and the illogical conclusions, leading one to believe that it was a great class, when a huge percentage of the information wasn't even getting through (information overload?) Does it? So if you kept so little, what was the point? Seems to me that someone posing as an expert would present inforation that wouldn't require so much "sifting" and throwung away. Actually, I believe that the VP apologist/defender label is used primaraily for those who dismiss or minimize Wierwille's abuses because they got some goodies. I don't believe that I've ever seen you do that. Others have. And if you do love all or part of PFAL or are thankful to Wierwille, why is it a problem if others call you that? If PFAL was ever presented by TWI as some gems in a pile of rubble that you would have to sift through, I doubt very many would have taken it.

Kind of like the "real" world, huh? In my experience, a small minority of posters consider the thoughts and ideas of other posters and respond accordingly, the rest talk past each other. I disagree with you there. Not that these labels aren't used pecipitously at times, but my observation is that those newbies who "uses some “Way Speak” verbiage and hits the hot buttons of “good associated with PFAL” and “due respect accorded to vpw as teacher of PFAL”, get tarred and feathered and labelled predominantly when they make a judgement against those of us who have no use for Wierwille and PFAL, or offer some "helpful" advice about how we should "get back to the Word", or move on or be positive or whatever, with no consideration as to why we feel the way we do, and with the condescending attitude that we have somehow "lost our way". Your characterization of how the newbies are treated is very much a one-size-fits-all description. I wouldn't argue too much with this. For those of us who see Wierwille as a vile predator and as a poor teacher and plagiarist, of course we want to set people straight!I've got more comments on your post, but I have to go to work

I would guess that some thought that they were the true spiritual successors to Wierwille & PFAL and that Martindale was illegitimate. Kind of ironic since Wierwille stole the class in the first place

Part of what fuels discussions/arguments here is that there is no clear consensus on what was "good" in PFAL and what was "bad". What one person throws out for what they consider sound reasons is viewed as "throwing the abby out with the bathwater" by others. Like the phenomena whereas many posters feel that TWI was great until the exact moment where they realized that it wasn't, and that anyone who stayed one minute past their departure was foolish, many of us view the TWI teaching that we have retained and those that we have discarded as just the right mix.

For what it's worth.... I personally believe the accounts by women who were raped. I wasn't there, obviously, but it all seems plausible to me. On the other hand, I can understand why not everyone would accept these accounts as 100% accurate. We all have different threshholds of credulousness (is that a word? ). Some of us have differing experiences within TWI that make certain things that happened to others seem unbelieveable. A skeptic might also recall that people have been known to make false accustations. Then there's the fragile thing called memory. The mind will "fill in the blanks" when it has incomplete information and stories change in the telling. That being said, once again, I overall personally believe the accounts. Could some of the details be off? Probably. Could there be some confusion about some of the facts? Maybe. But the main points have convinced me. If it was just one account I may have remained skeptical. But it's not just one account. For me, the main point is that Wierwille, the so-called "Man of God" either raped or otherwise took advantage of women sexually. The fact of his actions is all that I need to know to form an opinion about his morals. Whether any of these girls or women were willing participants is, to me, irrelevant to my opinion of Wierwille. None of those women made a claim on my allegience or obedience. On the other hand, to vilify other posters who have their doubts, or who are not convinced 100% is wrong. When I first came to Waydale and Grease Spot cafe, I doubted them too. I doubted a lot of what I read. I still stuck up for certain TWI practices and doctrines and had my cyber foot handed to me by certain posters. Vigorous debate, passionate persuasion: yes; name calling and character assasination: no.

Interesting points T-Bone. I didn't think that you were setting doctrinal standards for God supplying, just was throwing it out there. Yes, actions do speak louder than words.

Thanks T-Bone, I'll adjust again... 1. Recognize the existance and have a loving relationship with the heavenly father 2. Trust that this heavenly father will meet all your needs simply because he is a loving father 3. Asking for specific things in prayer is okay, as long as you don't expect any specific timetable, and aren't disappointed if the results are different than what you expected or are non-existant I also see points of disagreement: * "Believe" when you pray * Understand that God expects certain conditions to be met before he meets those needs Perhaps the "conditions" can be understood in light of the details of 1, 2 & 3. After all, exactly what is a relationship with God? At one point to you pass from “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," and not doing the same? Does God honor intent? If you think that you seeking first, does that mean that you are? Is there some kind of doctrinal standard for seeking first? Is there a definition of "God" that one has to accept?

T-Bone, I don't think that johniam is saying anything that much different than you. Just wording it differently.

One way to interpret this verse is that he translated from Hebrew to Aramaic. Another is that he explained it to them. Which is more accurate? Hmmm...not familiar with that one, I'll have to look it up. Yes, but does everyone agree on what he wrote? Or even that Luke wrote it? What Pond saidI think we're arguing two different things here. It seems like you're arguing that God (and by extention his "word") is accurate. What I'm saying is that there are so many interpretations by many people all saying different things. Does nitpicking the details make sense when there is absolutely no consensus on what God said or still less what he meant.

With the story suitably embroidered...