johniam

I don't know much about LSU; never followed them, but growing up in MI there was already an us against them type rivalry between U of M (which defeated Fla. yesterday, YAY) and Michigan State. However, if you're a U. of Michigan fan, you NEVER root for Ohio State...in ANYTHING! Mortal sin. Back in '76 I hung with a guy who graduated from U. of MI the previous year. We were watching the baseball playoffs that year. The AL featured Yankees vs Royals and this guy was rooting for the Royals...UNTIL he found out that Royals pitching coach Galen Cisco had attended Ohio State. GO YANKEES! (IIRC there's a small road sign honoring Galen Cisco somewhere in St. Marys, where he is originally from). I'm not that fanatical, but I'll be rooting for LSU next Monday. Always had to bite my tongue about being a Michigan fan around TWI HQ. Also, congats to Mizzou for defeating Arkansas in the Cotton bowl yesterday.

I think prayer is a good thing whether SIT or with understanding. No, I don't think God respects an SIT'd for prayer more than a prayer with the understanding. In 1 Cor. 13 it says though I SIT like a house a'fire and have not love, it profits nothing, right? One of the 12 things VP said SIT was good for is it "magnifies God". If you think about it, God inhabits eternity; can't magnify eternity, EXCEPT in our understanding. If I understand God better, my prayer life will probably be better. So if SIT will cause me to understand God better, that's a GOOD thing. Still has to be in love, yes. SIT is like spiritual technology. Physical technology makes the things we do more efficient. Take telephones, for instance. At one time, if you wanted to use a telephone, you had to use land lines and you had to be geographically where the phone was. Later they came up with cordless phones and car phones, but you still had to be in a specific geographical area to use them. But now with cell phones, you can use them pretty much anywhere; no more geographical restrictions. SIT is like that. Before Pentecost, if you wanted to worship God, you had to be in the temple or some other place. With SIT you can worship God anywhere. I think God gave us SIT to help us in many things, not just prayer. At worst, it's one more thing that can be misused; at best, it adds to what we already have, like Paul said in 1 Cor. 14. quote: Paul does say some thing like if I pray with my understanding or pray with the spirit. Why would he pray with his understanding if it was less than the best? Exactly, you need BOTH. Neither one negates the other, it's like praying with a tag team.

John Hendricks once said that TWI HQ wrote him a letter threatening to sue him. He said he wrote back and reproved them. He has a series of 'To Know God' classes with a very similar format to pfal. They send out 'lights' instead of wows and they just changed the name of their corps program also. I don't think JH's ministry has been sued, but TWI may still be trying to pressure them.

quote: Cman, I'm going to offer you the French late night Champagne benefit before the New Year's Party Cult Way Brain break of pre-party bonus points... You might want to work on a new rendition just for originality? That was cool. At first I thought it was latin. In high school I was in the choir and one time we sang this song acapella; it was called cantate domino (con tah tay doh me no) and it was all in latin. I would never have guessed it was the star spangled banner. Clever how the guy had the star spangled banner going forward while the film was going backwards.

John Hendricks' ministry has 'prayer power line'. It's the only thing they use the internet for I think. We haven't been part of their fellowship for 3 years now, but we still get them. It's an email listing people by name, their need, and if applicable, a time constraint in cases of surgery or court cases. Everybody in that group with a computer gets the emails. That's a good thing, I think. Those SIT alerts were supposed to be a really big deal, though. I just wondered if people could just make them up.

I'm wondering to what extent churches like the Presbyterian or Baptist could sue. There's got to be SOME legal precedent for it; it can't be solely based on who has more money to spend on lawyers. Can it?

quote: and if you ask me what i would do differently, i don't know the answer This place seems to have a personality of its own. Sometimes posters try to be "the voice of GSC's conscience" but that doesn't work IMO. Recently, I've wondered what impact that way corps website has had. I hear that John Lynn and other known names are posting there who don't post here. Perhaps some corps feel that website is a less hostile atmosphere than this one. Is it possible that enough WC have shifted to that website to cause a void here? It seems like the posters who post the most here are those who've gotten slammed with some frequency. You'll never know how the water is if you don't jump in. Perhaps there are a lot of new posters who need to take the plunge. Also, perhaps those posters who left have gotten what they wanted from here, nothing more to it than that.

Thanks. I was hoping to hear from some of you who were in TWI fairly recently, although I thought that because LCM had the ministry in such a vice grip of control that there wouldn't be any need for SIT alerts. If you had to account for every waking 15 minute period of time then who needs a phone call? quote: but i think god saw our stupid little hearts hope it will count for something ???? well if i know god, it will..... You BET it will! :)

For the uninitiated, an SIT alert was when your leader up the chain called you and had you write down word for word a supposed message from "the top" that was pertinent to the whole ministry. I have been privy to 4 SIT alerts, 3 which I received myself, and 1 somebody else told me about. Two of the 3 I received myself were the ones both before and after VP's death. I was later told that VP himself composed them and I have no reason to believe they were NOT genuinely spread from HQ throughout the ministry. The other 2, I have my doubts. I got one in spring of 1979. I had just gotten home from work and I was REALLY tired and had planned to go straight to bed. I lived with my twig cordo at the time and when I got home, he, though right there in the room with me, made me write it down. It went something like...."Lies of the adversary through the news media...something something...require you to witness RIGHT NOW!!!" I blew it off, went to sleep like I planned. I never heard anything more about it from the twig leader or anybody else in our area. The limb leader was in that city. ????? Did anybody else get that message at that approximate time? The twig cordo was generally not given to relaying bogus info or any other type of mind games. ????? The one told to me by someone else is pretty weird. From 1985-1989 my twig leaders were a corps couple. The so called fog years and the POP paper came out during that time. The woman of the corps couple said that in 1983, late in the year, she got an SIT alert saying that Don and Howard had conspired to take over the ministry. She lived in Iowa at the time and said it was more confusing than anything else. Can't remember what the alert told her to do about it other than pray. Does anybody know if there was a policy or procedure about SIT alerts, or could anybody with any leadership status at all just make one up and call people? Anybody know this?

That was awesome; I listened to the whole thing. When I was a senior in HS we did 4 sections of it in the choir Christmas program. The high tenor part was really hard. But wow, what music!

No, I never heard about that. I usually screen out Christmas music, especially after it's been playing all over for a month or more, but I just happened to notice this. I used to think TWI was anal about lyrics back in the 70s. It seems they have spilled over...NO word in culture, perhaps.

I've noticed in the mall that the music programs in some of the stores are different. Christmas songs I never heard before with modern arrangements. Not too shabby. I did hear one instance of politically correct influence. I was in a grocery store and that song 'Santa Claus is coming to town' came on. The actual lyrics include...he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake...well, in THIS version they sang...he KNOWS when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake...so I guess somebody thought it was questionable singing about some old man seeing kids sleeping. Hmm.

quote: I've written a book about my experience called Losing The Way and its going to be published in June'08 by a small press out West. It's very exciting but sad, too. I just want to help other people who have been through similar traumas move on and create new lives. Is the book like Karl Kahler's, solely about TWI as he experienced it, or more about recovery, using TWI as just the primary "villain"?

Shock the monkey

WD is not calling anyone a liar. As I read all this, he just doesn't assign the same VALUE to the supposed facts given even if they are actual facts. He says they could be facts, but could be opinions as well, be even if they ARE facts, so what? I agree: the word's still the word no matter what people do. You don't have to agree.

Yeah, my family.

The first 2 posts make it obvious that its intention is to be about WD; compare it to the last several pages of the 'offense' thread. But cream rises to the top. If your pov is the love of God or compassion then why are you so threatened by a few "dissenters"? Evil overcomes good?

quote: John - Here you and I agree. (I guess that means the end of the world is coming! I've posted this before, but in a relationship you gotta give each other their space. There've been times when "the little general" said "CHARGE" but Jean said retreat. What am I going to do? Lay some guilt trip on her? If she really doesn't feel like it, then I should respect that and not think the worst. Sometimes I don't feel like it. If this was happening 9 times out of 10, then maybe there's a relationship or medical problem that needs to be addressed, but relationships are like finger prints and snowflakes: no 2 alike. It's not wise to compare your relationship with others' because there are times when you gotta do what works best for YOU, and if you're always referencing other people first then when do you develop the instinct to individualize your OWN relationship. I actually met a guy who was always comparing his once marriage to Ward and June Cleaver, of all people. Maybe he really WAS too hard on the beaver too often. <_<

quote: I didn't get the impression that the woman had to want sex all the time - just make her hubby think she did/does. This reminds me of an episode of 'Everybody loves Raymond'. Raymond's mom got with his wife and told her to have sex with him more, as though the mom just assumed that Raymond wasn't getting enough sex and it was his wife's fault. His wife tried to take her advice and Raymond knew something wasn't right and when he found out what was going on, his reaction was the same as my reaction to "make her hubby THINK she did/does". Ewwwww! Raymond had some harsh words for his mom a bit later.

I notice you use the words 'alcoholic' and 'drinker' interchangeably. So everyone who drinks is an alcoholic eh? You personally watched generation(s) of your spouse's families destroyed by alcoholism? You must be, like, really old.

quote: So I wonder.... is this what men really want? Does any man out there want to be thought of as a walking imbecile that can be lead around by "the Little General"???? YES!!! quote: Sure.. I can see a mutually agreed upon fun time occassionally, but if I were a man I'd be highly insulted by a book that teaches this kind of stuff as a lifestyle. I'd like to try that "heavenly bar bq sauce" . What if the wife gets all dolled up and sexy and answers the door that way and.....husband lost his best client that day and really doesn't feel like sex???

I worked for a place that had it's party in January. No Xmas issue; just let's have a party when rates are lower. Anybody who's religious can have a party anytime they want; doesn't have to be at work. I never accepted or turned down a job by saying what do you call your Xmas party and when is it!!!!! Not much going on in January anyway.

quote: Notice the words *hit regularly*....as if once in a while is appropriate and understandible no doubt The thing is....the definition of what constitutes *nagging* is questionable....heck, in my marriage...it seemed to escalate in direct relationship to how much the spouse had had to drink Well, that explains it. I SHOULD have worded it like this; if you can say "women usually nag because..." then I can say "men usually drink because...". Better? :)

Was it 'Letters to Karen' and 'Letters to Phillip'?

You know. I actually agree with earlier posts saying that if a relationship deteriorates to the point that there is hitting regularly or even anger, lack of peace, whatever, then the relationship should probably end. I wouldn't be posting now if I was constantly looking for an excuse to hit, as some imply. I'd be in a cell somewhere. But women can adversely affect a relationship at LEAST as well as men, and I just see a lot of "not my problem" attitude. By the way, the definition I used for 'nag' is from a dictionary. It was not gender specific and the only other definition in this dictionary is about a horse.