johniam

Yes, IMO. I had a thread on the open forum last year in which I asked people from New England what there was to do in Rhode Island. This was part of my preparation for a week long trip to visit my sister who lives in New Haven, CT. During that week we saw Spiderman. It was really good. There was one actor who had all the speaking/singing lines for Peter Parker/Spiderman, and there were 8 other actors who rotated in the fight scenes. This theatre had a harness system on the ceiling which allowed them to do the fight scenes directly above the audience. I imagine that must have been pretty tiring, hence the rotation. The thread is called for New England residents. There may be more details there. Don't want to go too far off topic.

quote: Did wierwille encourage me to take daily steps to ensure that Jesus was mediator and lord of my life. Nope. I beg to differ. He taught us the 5 basics: prayer (including SIT), study the word, fellowship w/ likeminded believers, abs, and witness. Any church does these. What daily steps do you now take that supposedly supercede these 5? quote: My family never ostracized me. Good for you.

quote: The indoctrination and subversion in twi would not be possible without ISOLATION. Well, this isolation would not be possible without OSTRACIZATION, from family, friends, etc. who were willingly cooperative. That door swings both ways.

This illustrates the 'stalemate' of faith. I can't prove he did; nobody else can prove he didn't. I was talking about this with George Aar once and he came back with, "Yeah, well, I can't prove that Spiderman doesn't exist , nyah, nyah!" I can prove Spiderman DOES exist. I saw him on broadway in NYC last year. I kept the program and there's pictures in it. But, really.

quote: If you wrote a book of your twi experience..... 1) What would you title your book? 1. No one here gets out alive: the story of the way. 2, If the thunder don't getcha then the lightning will: the story of the way. 3. Women's bodies have a way of shutting the whole thing down: the story of the way. 4. the story of the way. 5. It was/ he did: the story of the way.

quote: I am simple folk.....but, I am still curious why we thought we could improve, perfect, expand or excel in an unknown language. Anybody? 1 Cor. 14:4a - He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself...

old man riverrrrrrr... ribbuh. RIBBUH!

Nothing specific. He's still recovering, nothing has reversed.

God never "required" those who SIT to "identify the language(s)". In Acts 2, the original outpouring, languages were generally referred to, but in Acts 10 they were not. When Peter recounted the event in Acts 11, he said nothing about languages; he said the holy ghost fell on them as on us in the beginning. That was all he was concerned about. That's all God was concerned about. "In the beginning" refers to Acts 2, so the events of Acts 10 were just as legitimate as in Acts 2. No need to identify the languages. At least, that's what GOD thinks. Pig latin is an American white boy phenomenon. My mom taught it to me when I was 12. It's not really latin, it's tweaked English. Don't even know why they call it pig latin. Here's how it works: If an English word begins with a consonant, you say the part of the word after the first letter of the word, then finish the word by using the first letter (consonant) and following it with the syllable 'ay'. For instance, the word 'mother' would be 'other-may' in pig latin. If an English word begins with a vowel, then you say the entire word, then finish it with the syllable 'way'. The sentence 'I love the Lord Jesus Christ' would be ' I-way ove-lay e-thay ord-Lay esus-Jay ist-Chray' in pig latin. Most of us used it as an occasional game. Hey, lets talk in pig latin! Other than that, it's use could be, say, I'm 14 and my 7 year old nephew is spending the day with grandma (my mom), but he misbehaves and has to spend an hour sitting in the corner. Later I come home and my mom wants to tell me what happened without embarrassing my nephew, so she tells me what happened in pig latin, which I understand, but my nephew doesn't. Nice. If an American white boy sat through pfal and tried to fake SIT by using pig latin, he's be busted immediately. Every adult knew what pig latin was. But ANY language could be tweaked that way. If you sat through pfal and just spoke Spanish, someone might accuse you of speaking a known language, but if it were tweaked like that, nobody would know. Comprende? quote: You said,"SIT is a manifestation of the spirit of God". Yet, you have done nothing to corroborate that assumption. 1 Corinthians 12 is corroboration enough for me. Again, I have logic in my brain.

quote: Speaking in tongues is considered by some to be the cornerstone of their belief system. It's actually one of three "cornerstones". Jesus Christ is THE cornerstone, but doctrinally, there's SIT, Jesus is not God, and the dead are dead. That's what separates twi from mainstream Christianity.

quote: Wierwille taught SIT is irrefutable proof. He was wrong. No, he was right. The bible doesn't say that 2+2=4, but if anyone has any logic in their brain, they know it is true. VPs logic was a) SIT is a manifestation of the spirit of God, b)you can't manifest the spirit of God if you don't have the spirit of God, c) God and His spirit are incorruptible, therefore, SIT is irrefutable proof that you're born again and all hell can't stop you from being part of the gathering together. Sorry to be Debbie Downer on you (lol).

BTW, not much of a turnout yet, but has anybody noticed what the poll says? LOL. Raf, you can huff and puff all you want but you won't blow down a house built on the ROCK!

quote: Communal self delusion. We encouraged each other to keep up the lie. That is YOUR standard. I'm not subject to your standard. So what did you do when you spoke in tongues at fellowship or at excellor sessions? Some Spanish version of pig latin, or just jibberish?

quote: I'm not disputing that the Bible says believers can speak in tongues. If you disagree with that, ok by me. It's irrelevant to my point. My point is that I faked it. I encourage others who faked it to come clean. Period. My point ends there. No, you're forcefully implying that all twi SIT was fake. quote: I have to say....I fall into the camp that thinks it was really a mass delusion. Mass delusion? Those words are not found in scripture. They ARE found in Freud's essay 'Civilization and its discontents' however, He used those exact words to describe all religions. Nice to know whose side you're working for.

I heard that the church of Scientology has their 'auditors' ask people all manner of personal invasive questions and tape record the sessions. Then they blackmail them into 'loyalty' or else the content of the tapes gets played to the wrong people. Wonder if THAT'S how they get rich celebrities to be so committed? Yeah, Ill just BET twi doesn't want recordings of some stuff.

quote: johniam, on 14 September 2012 - 01:04 AM, said: ...That's just your opinion. You act like just because you did it disingenuously then so did everybody else and God has nothing to do with any of it. Prove it! Can't be done, John, one way or the other... That's exactly my point! This whole thread illustrates something VP said: too much complicated theology and not enough simple believing. quote: What constitutes proof... This isn't even a little complicated. Speak in tongues into a tape recorder. Spend the rest of your life trying to identify the language. Travel the world. Talk to linguists. Identify the language. It's really that simple. You can try it with TWI folk. You can try it with your family. You can do it yourself. Find one person who can produce a verified actual language that they've never learned. Spare is the third and fourth hand stories of people who spoke in tongues and there just happened to be a native speaker of the same language nearby. I call that urban legend, and if you don't agree, fine. Find the speaker and reproduce the result. Because what you're going to find is that speaking in tongues does not produce an actual language, which it would if it worked and was not being faked. Remember. A tongue can be of men (understood somewhere on earth) or of angels (not understood on earth). You're just trying to bully everyone into accepting your premise again.

quote: The "interpretations" that came from me were made up on the spot. The "words of prophecy" that came from me were, likewise, fabricated extemporaneously. It was all a lie. No it wasn't! Remember, the words of interpretation and prophecy are inspiration, not revelation. Revelation is a direct message from God; inspiration comes from within yourself. If I had a bad day, I might be inspired to speak about hope or healing. If I had a great day, then perhaps about how God is faithful and just. You DO make it up on the spot. It just takes the spirit of God for someone to consistently minister grace to each different configuration of hearers in a godly way. If you thought it up hours earlier and memorized it you might fool people or luck out SOME of the time, but it wouldn't feel right. No exhortation, edification, or comfort. It would be hollow. That's just your opinion. You act like just because you did it disingenuously then so did everybody else and God has nothing to do with any of it. Prove it!

John Lennon once sang: There ain't no Jesus coming down from the sky / now that I found out I know I can cry. Rather, there ain't no John Lennon coming out of the Dakotas. Once you've experientially known the power of God. Once you've had prayers answered. You just don't regard the naysayers. Been in too many believers meetings to count. Sometimes those words are so precisely what I needed to hear I felt like I was walking on air. During my wow training they had us get up at 5:15 am and have a believers meeting. (uh, God, you're breaking up...) Don't do this while driving????? Marching while chewing gum is harder to do than THAT!

Something comes to mind. In the last weekend of April in 1985, I went to HQ with 2 other guys who were apprentice corps like myself. We stayed in a big house in St. Mary's that a lot of believers lived at. This was one week after VPs last SNS teaching. It was OK. They had a party at the house. Some of the people who lived there were staff. But I got the definite impression that most of the people who lived there were not really happy; they were just riding out whatever they were doing; going through the motions. It was weird.

LCM used to say that part of our hope was what was going to happen to the unbelievers. One of his fantasies was to fly around and knock down church steeples, I think. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; the reunion part! That's the ticket. Yeah, the reunion. Maybe we WILL fight with unbelievers, but maybe we'll have desk jobs during the Armageddon war and then we'll be cops and social workers during the 1,000 years that the devil is chained up. I don't know.

I thought of something. Didn't occur to me until a week ago. Most here, I think, still believe in the hope, the return, the gathering together. Now THAT is going to be the reunion to end all reunions. Imagine what that will be like. Hopefully we'll get to visit with each other for a bit before we help Jesus annihilate the unbelievers, or whatever.

My 10th grade geometry teacher had a terrible cross to bear. Namely, her 4th hour class...us. There were more professional quality class clowns in that class than any other I've been in. Nobody tried to upstage anybody, it just flowed. Poor teacher. She tried to teach us about the Pythagoreum theorum. One guy goes, "Huh? Puh FAG orus?" Didn't Archimedes get his head chopped off by a soldier?

How about this? They simply feel appreciated. When I left twi I definitely did NOT feel appreciated like I had back in the early and middle years. I think it would be a crap shoot to try to stay in twi and feel appreciated at the same time. But how much impact does feeling appreciated have on the job? In a relationship? On a bowling team? In a church? You don't really have to be in a big group to feel appreciated. No matter how large the group is, you probably see the same number of people in the same rotation day to day, week to week, don't you? Yes, those fears and insecurities might keep people from leaving every so often, but without feeling appreciated, those fears wouldn't have a leg to stand on. IMO.

I'll tell you what I think of VPW. He's DEAD!

Socks: Do you remember the original version of 'Stand and be counted'? If I recall, JN was sent on the field during the 77/78 ministry year, but one weekend they got you all back at HQ and had you play for the SNS. Stand and be counted was one of the songs you played. Brian led into the chorus with a buh-da-dum buh-da-dum buh-da-dum kind of piano riff immediately before the words 'stand and be counted' were sung. I thought it was cool. It reminded me of the style of Todd Rundgren's Utopiah pianist Roger Powell (who later played with Bob James). But, alas, the "sanitized" version which appeared on the 'God's Team' album did not include riffs like that. Might get somebody possessed, y'know. Tell me that rings a bell....