johniam

quote: Welcome to the Cafe, jerrymcsherry, may I suggest that you look around a bit and get to know us and the place before you start swinging that sword of judgmentalism at folks. Also, here are a couple of threads that are "must reads" for new folks, especially ones who stomp in here like a bull in a china shop: New Arrival Guide to the Cafe What is The Way? P.S. The "Greasespot Gems" thread you posted on is for recording excellent posts by others, not a place for you to put what you think is great about TWI. We have plenty of threads devoted to that already. Of course, if you had actually read the thread, or at least the first post in it, you would have known that. Yeah, we gotta get Jerry in the class so he can be a 'quality GSC believer' . quote: The value of the discussion, IMO, is not whether the phrase ever had/has any virtue or merit, but in pointing out how such a phrase/mandate prompted a shift in thought processes that perhaps rendered a shut-down of conscience. Remember VP defined 'conscience' as habit patterns of action and thought. But wait! I saw the disney movie Pinnochio and I clearly remember Jiminy Cricket singing to let your conscience be your guide. You can't fool ME! quote: I think some times that the bible verses are simply an excuse to ignore that which one doesn`t want to hear and address. Yeah, like you with Gal. 5.

quote: The Gospel as a sales tool quote: VPW made a small personal fortune at our expense. We were his unwitting and willing sales force. Once again, this is all assuming that God had nothing to do with PFAL. quote: The same troubles we had before are still there, only worse for having been ignored for decades. In the end, I felt like I had been drawn so very far away from God... Speak for yourself. Aren't you tired of hearing that? You couldn't have felt too close to God before PFAL if you were convinced it was a genuine ministry. Maybe, just maybe it WAS a genuine ministry run by humans who ain't perfect.

quote: So why is it so hard for some people to deal with this? Reasons? Speculations? Inquiring minds would like to know! "Get over it" has been tweaked into "get over yourself". Nothing wrong with feeling pain or pleasure, but there is a point where dwelling on painful past experiences is bad for you. Then the pain becomes your whole identity. That old Elton John line comes to mind.....'Levon wears his war wound like a crown'. (this is my pain; ain't it purty?) It is THOSE people who need to get over it (themselves).

quote: It reduces people from being living and breathing souls to being butts sitting in perfectly aligned seats. But, don't concerts and sporting events do the same thing? Or school classes? Yeah, I remember Donnie once said that the greatest thing God ever did was the giving of holy spirit on Pentecost. Then he said that the second greatest thing God ever did was PFAL. Well, I'm sure glad *I* took it.

quote: Let's face it folks, twi used us as free labor to promote and recruit for their pyramid scheme...they made millions! This presumes that God had nothing to do with TWI/Pfal.

quote: You had me going for a moment there, John, I thought you were serious. As for LCM, based on my earliest TWI memories of him, which were favorable, and based on some GSC posts, I would like to believe that LCM had some spiritual savvy at one time, but I was definitely being a smarta$$ with the "heavy and gloomy' microwave attack comment.

Well...yes!

quote: Later a guy on staff had written a letter to him explaining how microwaves work and that they weren't really dangerous. LCM's response was "Well, you can't be too careful." This reminds me of a hilarious cartoon my brother drew in the 60s. Him and his high school buddy disagreed, He thought that a martial arts guy had it all over a body builder; his friend thought the opposite. So each drew cartoons illustrating their position. My brother's friend's cartoon had the muscular guy crushing the martial arts guy in a fight. My brother's cartoon did a progression of fear. The more muscular the body builder got, the more paranoid he became. First he says that dogs are pretty viscious and could tear a fellow's muscles. The last frame in the cartoon has the super muscular body builder screaming and running away from...a mouse. Little hyperbole there, but I think LCM got so muscular, spiritually, that he could no longer handle the 'heavy and gloomy' attacks of the microwave.

Yes, a spirit of 'error message'.

I agree; with the wrong attitude, studying the bible is just another work of the flesh. Perhaps it's a "this ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone" kind of thing.

Rascal, another verse comes to mind. Psalm 119:11 - thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee. Just how does one hide the word in his heart if one doesn't study the bible? Jesus studied the bible; he quoted it 94 times in the 4 gospels. Paul studied the bible; one of his critics accused him of being mad for it. How do you know we "don't manifest" those characteristics? Do you have PIs following us all around?

I give good candy. This year I waited until 2 days before, but Aldi's usually has a good selection of stuff. I get Milky Way, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Hershey's kisses...stuff like that. Because any one of those kids might someday be considering which house to toilet paper or throw eggs or rocks at and just maybe one of those kids will say, "not that house; they give good candy on Halloween". Naw, I just remember being a kid and rummaging through the candy bag and yes the good candy like I mentioned got thumbs up, but I hated like...jaw breakers, loose M&Ms, candy corn was OK, but I definitely liked the name brand stuff the best. Ten to fifteen bucks and you can get more than enough candy for the night. Why not?

YAAAAAYYYYYY! Oh, sorry.

quote: Some people came to fellowship just to get out of the house. Yeah, the leadership screwed up but good gravy! I think of what was going on in the trenches. It makes me wonder if some people ever really got born again. I personally saw some people that had been around for years and only knew the first three or four verses of the white retemories, and that was stretching their mind. Evidence was present that the last time they spoke in tongues was in the 12th session of the first class they took. I didn't know too many people who didn't SIT or like to in manifestations, but, yeah, we were a social bunch. In the early 90s twig cordos started saying "this is not a social hour". That worked 'great'; it sent the message that if you want to be "social" you have to go to the unbelievers. Yeah, some people played church, but even believers need bonding time. It seems the more time went by the more critical leadership became. And now they have their "household of Zion" and it sounds like a pretty lonely place without us "social people" there. I think some posters just like to rub TWIs face in the fact that the LCM regime that kicked them out of TWI has basically failed. They don't really blame TWI for every problem in their lives, they just say up yours TWI in as many variations as they can think of.

I like a lot of Paul's bass lines. He got stuck playing bass because John and George refused, yet he was good. The bass line in the verses of Lucy in the sky with diamonds is cool; it kinda sneaks through the music.

Hey, that's great! Congratulations.

I may be a guy, but the Beatles made a huge impression on me. I was 9 when they arrived and I liked pop music already. My older sister would bring me in her bedroom when I was 5 and she was 17 and she'd let me stand on top of her feet and dance with her. Then in Nov of '63 Kennedy got killed and not quite 5 weeks later on Christmas day the gloomy atmosphere caused by the assassination hadn't yet gone away. Then not quite 7 weeks after that came the beatles. I hadn't heard of them before. When people started talking about them my initial response was cynicism. Beatles? What? A bunch of bugs? Big deal. But the first time I heard I wanna hold your hand I really liked it. Not much later I wanted to buy and hear anything they did. NOW the gloomy atmosphere was gone. I remember seeing the movie A hard day's night in the theatre and girls were screaming. I didn't get high until 1970 but knowing the Beatles had done it was definitely influential in my decision to do it. I spent 13 hours in a bus station that year in Sheridan, WYO and was literally shocked that some of those people condemned the Beatles. "That's not MUSIC!!!" Those same people thought MLK was a commie and should have been picked off years ago, but my long term memory cuts off sharply before Feb of 1964. That's how much I was into the Beatles. Then TWI made us read 'The Marxist Minstrels' which does the same to the Beatles that Dr. John Jeudes does to VPW. That book even accused the Beatles of rape IIRC. I bought it, too. When Lennon got killed I was now the one who shocked people by saying, "yeah serves his punk a$$ right". Not everybody from TWI was like that but all the emotional bonding I'd done with the Beatles was gone by then. But in the coming years it all boiled down to...hey, I still like Beatles music in my heart of hearts or whatever. It also seems like they weren't as quick to use their celebrity to advance causes as SOME rock stars. I don't have the emotional bond anymore, but I can sure enjoy their music.

Ringo didn't join them until '62 I think; Pete best was the original drummer. His mom owned the Cavern Club, where they had steady gigs, but there were philosophical differences that led to Pete being replaced. Not trying to downplay your point; yeah, they didn't live in the 'stay in school' society we have today, although I heard that Paul was very close to quitting the Beatles and going to work for his dad for a few pounds more per month had John not threatened to kill him. I always thought it was a shame that the Sgt. Pepper music never got to be performed live. Had John lived I bet it would've been at some point. But the performance was good. They had a guy play keyboard instruments for the later songs, but other than that, what you saw was what you got. Thankfully, no loud screaming. From the Sgt Pepper era they did The Sgt Pepper song, With a little help from my friends, When I'm 64, A day in the life, the Sgt Pepper song reprise, Penny Lane, Birthday, Something, Here comes the sun, and The End. Lousie Harrison kept referring to George as her kid brother. If George were alive he's be 64 and she looked like she could have been 70. I don't know how old she is. She got into the US because her husband was a specialist in the mining industry. They were legal aliens. It was just a treat to have her share stuff.

Don't forget "svim vear".

quote: You know, you can place blame anywhere you want but until you own your own decisions, you wont get anywhere with personal growth. Amen.

This all reminds me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bugs had done a lot of damage and at the end of the cartoon he says, "Hmm. Could I have maybe gone too far???" The next frame has him tied up and chained and restrained extremely and he says, "Mmmnyatt. COULD BE!!!!!" Once I used a word that is borderline vulgar, yet used often by both men and women. It's most common meaning is used to express dislike for mostly situations, but sometimes people. Before the post was displayed, there was a message saying I'd used a "trigger word" and that the post would be screened before being displayed. The next time I came online it was displayed and that was the only time that's ever happened to me. A few times I've been warned by moderators to calm down and take disputes with certain posters outside the forums, but to me it's all about communication. We are all intelligent and are able to use other ways to express anger, offense, and other negative feelings if one way is forbidden. I like Larry because he is more likely to agree with my posts that many here and I hope he stays, but it's really his call. I second what others have said, that we have a lot of freedom here and IMO the moderators do a good job.

I'm talking about the fact that in the USA anybody basically can start a business, plus people who ruthlessly exploit others for their own gain are despised, well, more so than in nations with dictators. Basically, the individual has rights that are recognized. IMO that is Christian. Sure, other governments have allowed this in history, but no nation has ever had the 'total package' like the US has. I've talked to people born and raised outside the US and a lot of them are amazed at how much these freedoms are taken for granted here.

Obviously it ensnares you, too. You're going to spend every day of the rest of your lives cursing a dead man. Glad it's you and not me. The truth is that most of those girls consented. But because they're girls they're not responsible for ANYTHING, right? You've come a long way, baby. <_< This past year there were 2 disturbing headlines in STL. One involved a 46 year old female teacher at a middle school who was accused of, confessed to, and is awaiting sentence for having sexual relations with several boys. The other was about a 42 year old pizza place manager who kidnapped 2 boys, 11 and 13, and basically made sex slaves out of them. The prosecutor in the latter case said that "you'll never see anybody worse than this guy" or something to that affect. Really? So, a middle school teacher who victimizes adolescent boys is not that bad, but a pizza mgr is? The woman got 2 days worth of headlines and that was it; the pizza guy...well, do a search on Michael Devlin see what comes up. Apparently in today's society women aren't responsible for anything. Must be nice. We're not just defending a man; we're defending what he taught us and how it helped us, and all the evil in the devil's rectum doesn't invalidate that. We're defending Christianity; Christ's sacrifice of himself which God accepted and how the finality of said sacrifice makes us free. You guys aren't free; you're in bondage to a dead man. You foolishly think this pleases God. You got all your scripture, you got all your emotions, you got all your excuses, but you don't have peace. Who do you think you're kidding?

quote: If religion is man-made, that means that morals are man-made as well. Wow. I totally agree. I wish this concept was acceptable on other threads, like the ones that say VP is the devil. But as to the topic of this thread, I don't think morality is a 24/7 thing. Sure, we all take our beliefs wherever we go, but many situations are not moral just by themselves. For instance, going shopping. I spend about 1 hour going grocery shopping every week. There's no 'right or wrong' about this activity; I'm just getting groceries. We all spend many hours doing many activities that have no moral ramifications at all, so Christians and atheists can mingle with no ill effect whatsoever. But during those times when morality, man made or not, is the prime governing value in our decision making, how much impact does this have? Does a little leaven leaven the whole lump? Atheism may be more of a system of non belief than a system of belief, but atheists are just as moral (conscious of right and wrong) as Christians. IMO the existence, prosperity, and quality of life of the USA is strong evidence that Christian based morals at the government level isn't the worst thing that could happen to a country.

Dooj you do owe Oldies an apology; he said young WOMEN (mature adult female), not young girls. You guys all ought to take a cold shower together and clean out the toxicity in your heads.