johniam

Jeez I got to spell everything out for you guys. My point was that if Paul can give 5 senses instructions for the Corinthian believers, like no more than 3, one at a time, etc. then VP can give 5 senses instructions about practicing, phonetics, etc. It doesn't matter that the believers in Corinth already knew how to SIT, what matters is that manifestations in the church are decent and in order and VPs excellor sessions did not violate that. Simple.

quote: Twi's excellor sessions were hideously wrong. The spirit gives the utterance...you don't practice it. There's nothing in scripture that even vaguely resembles the perversions that twi practiced. quote: First one to find a scripture reference or scriptural support for "Excellor Sessions" gets a kewpie doll and a year's supply of "green cards". 1 Cor. 14:27 - if any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret verse 40 - Let all things be done decently and in order. Now get out of GSC brain for a second and think. If Paul can say 1) by two or by three, 2) by course (one at a time), and 3) decent and in order, then why can't some other man say 1) you move your lips, your throat, your tongue, 2) get real fluent at it, or 3) wonderful, wonderful, all right...now, speak in tongues, just keep speaking, isn't God wonderful? God is a God of order, not confusion. One of the major premises of pfal is that if the bible is really God's word, then there can't be multiple interpretations of it. But the critics say that anybody can interpret it any way they want and it's OK. This absolves them of the responsibility before God to try to understand His word. All these churches where "the spirit controls the tongue" are the ones where several people speak at the same time and there's no interpretation and maybe they break out the snakes. Not very decent and in order. The word utterance in Acts 2:4 (the spirit gave them utterance) is a very long greek word used only 2 other times in the NT, both in Acts. VP said it meant that the gift of holy spirit gave their mind the words to speak and he was right. Acts 2:14 - but Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them.... also Acts 26:25 - but he (Paul) said I am not mad most noble Festus, but speak forth words of truth and soberness. The spirit wasn't speaking, Peter and Paul were. The spirit gave them the words. You can keep the kewpie doll and the cards, thanx.

quote: Ahhhh... but there is that "nasty" little verse in Ephesians that says that God will do exceedingly abundantly above... The verse says "that is able to do" not "will do".

quote: So here's my question: If it didn't matter that this guy's "tongue" sounded wacky, how come we had to have practice sessions to make ours sound eloquent? The guy's tongue sounding wacky has to do with THAT you SIT; the practice sessions had more to do with HOW MUCH BENEFIT you get from SIT. Not only will practice sessions act as training wheels for doing it more on your own, but when you SIT with interpretation, the more fluent your tongue, the better the interpretation. Belittle it all you want, it still works.

Another thing about fluency: I was in choir from 7th thru 12th grades and many times we were instructed to sing words differently than they would be phrased if they were spoken. For instance, lowered instead of Lord, jaw instead of jar, deestance instead of distance, etc. I wrote a song in the 80s called 'walk in the spirit'. The song quotes a lot of Galatians, including 3:13 - Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. If you speak those words you have to hesitate going from the st in Christ to the next word, the th in hath going to the next word, and the ed in redeemed. You can speak it and hesitate with no difficulty, but to sing it in meter is more difficult. So in that part of the song I instructed those singing it to phrase the first four words as follows.....cry-stah-three-deem-duss. Made the job a lot easier. Fluency is just a part of speaking ANYTHING. To nit pick about fluency is like objecting to the fact that the tongue words have vowels, consonants, and syllables.

quote: Tongues are pneumatikos, "spiritual matters." Yeah, but you can still HEAR them with your 5 senses ears, right? If a tongue give an uncertain SOUND, what good is it? God's word is a spiritual matter, but we still have to read our bibles, right? With our 5 senses EYES? Right? You don't think the first century believers ever had to deal with this? This is just another bash VP thread.

Fluency is a natural part of any spoken language, so it is logical that it be part of an unknown tongue. So what if VP had us think about moving our lips, throats, and tongues; so what if he had us start each tongue sentence with a consonant; doing those exercises functioned as training wheels. Many people with religious backgrounds probably had to fend off the idea that tongues was weird, so VP got us to think about something other than "this is too weird" to practice tongues. No big deal to me; most of my SIT has been in my personal prayer life without any practicing placebos. Oh, by the way. It still works :).

Nothing right with him, either, he's dead. Nothing wrong with the other people I mentioned.

quote: Establishes and maintains a positive attitude makes life meaningfull Overcomes worry and fear Promotes prosperity and health Explains apparent bible contradictions Developes more harmony in the home Enables you to seperate truth from error Disciplines the mind by believing Teaches how to pray effectively. I thought there were 10 things on the green card. Hmm. This is ironic: Rascal can produce one in 5 minutes; I don't even have one. I think I had a different expectation than some people. All the points were fulfilled spiritually more than anything else for me. Makes life meaningful - I wear many hats like everybody else. I am a man, a father, a husband, an employee, a consumer, a taxpayer, a citizen, a voter, a homeowner, a licensed motor vehicle operator, and, thankfully, a son of God. THAT'S what makes life most meaningful for me. All that other stuff is ordinary by comparison. Sure, like WW said, anybody can claim meaning in a lot of other things, but it was pfal that taught me this, not BG Leonard, not Kenyon, not Bullinger, not Billy Graham, not Jerry Garcia or John Lennon. Establishes and maintains a positive attitude - again, knowing I'm a son of God and that I'm going to heaven and all hell can't stop me from going....what's not to be positive about? I got to go; be back later. OK, I'm back. Explains apparent bible contradictions - I was raised in an ultra liberal home; there was a bible in our house but it was more of a relic than anything else. Once I read matthew chapters 1-7 just for grins. It appeared that Jesus was disputing what Moses said so I concluded that Moses must have been full of it. When I later took pfal I was taught that Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses and that with the coming of the greater, the lesser is dissolved. Made perfect sense.

I wasn't "attacking" the poster; I was being a smarta$$.

I heard VP SIT with interpretation at a big function. I can't remember the exact year or the name of the function, but it wasn't an ROA, it must have been a day or weekend in the word. But during the morning meeting, VP, Don, Howard and their wives were sharing their hearts and when it came time for manifestations, all of them were done by a trustee or wife and VP SIT and interpreted. It wasn't flashy. Wanda W also SIT'd with interpretation and Howard gave a word of prophecy. I wondered the same thing about Rosalie once; if anybody heard her do it, but think about all the classes VP taught live from 1953 until the class was filmed in 1967. He HAD to have worked personally with a lot of those people. quote: This thread is beginning to look a lot like one of those many Excellors’ Session I ran years ago. Well, it's starting to look to me like yet another absurd ridiculous excuse to bash VP/twi. It just never ends.

quote: Weird, I don't remember Solomon preaching at people You were alive back then? Wow, you must use a lot of aloe.

quote: Okay, my jaw is on the floor. Do you really think their believing "quenched the violence of fire"?? Yes. Sure, God had to do His part, but if those three had been afraid, they'd be dead. Same for Peter in Acts 12 when the angel busted him out of jail. He was sleeping for God's sakes. Some things you can't believe for without God signing off on it; other things you can. I think believing has a lot to do with peoples' self esteem, which leads directly to positive and negative results. How do you feel when you go to a job interview? Think that just might have an effect on the outcome? Believing DOES work! I don't believe VP really thought that all believing equals all receiving; he didn't teach it that way. Raf, you're time in twi was in the late 80s/early 90s, right? He just did not teach it that way.

Newlife: The church I mentioned that I fit in to? It was a Presbyterian church with a trinitarian minister. I just didn't make waves. The minister even knew that my family and 2 other families there were ex way. Then one Sunday the sermon was on "Trust and obey". The first scripture covered was Luke 22:42 where Jesus prayed "Lord, not my will, but thine be done". The point was that even Jesus had to struggle with the concept of trust and obey. But if that "trinitarian" minister knew Jesus was tempted like we are, then somewhere in his mind he knows that Jesus is a man and he's not really Elohim, God. I bet a lot of trinitarians are like that. You may find a church where if you don't bring up the trinity, and are willing to gloss over other people mentioning it, all will be OK. Undercover 'brother', indeed :) .

quote: There is no "law of believing." There's faith in God. There's believing His Word. There's "the power of positive thinking." But believing doesn't work with the kind of mathematical exactness or scientific precision that laws do. So if there's no law of believing, then for someone to call it a law would be a figure of speech, right? To me, anything exaggerated is hyperbole. Like in Gen. when Nimrod built a tower to reach "unto heaven". Even if that project had been completed, the tower would not have reached unto heaven, so it's hyperbole. But you don't like that word here. So what happened to the mathematical exactness and scientific precision of the law of thermodynamics, or whatever law it is that says that if you get thrown into a burning fiery furnace, your body will be consumed by the fire? Didn't happen to Daniel's three friends. Laws can be superceded by other laws, including the law of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abennego's believing.

quote: I think I still have a lot of Way brain It's lunch time where I am, so here's some food for thought. Several years ago I was walking to the store and it was barely dark out. I twisted my ankle in a tire track. It was really painful. At first, I thought I had broken a bone somewhere. So I sat down for 15 minutes, then got up and limped the rest of the way to the store and then back home. I went to work the next day as usual but I couldn't put full weight on that foot until after the 2nd break (1:30 PM). My job at the time was to down stack wooden door parts as they came out of the laminating machine, several at a time. In between loads I was also responsible to run over to the desk nearby and log the parts I'd just down stacked (set on skids). Overall, the job was like being a shortstop and an accountant at the same time. In other words, I had to be on my feet practically the whole time. So until 1:30 I had to do this job limping with my ankle swollen to twice its normal size. The company was perfectly willing to allow time off for injuries. The company also had a good insurance package. Why did I put myself through this? Because I believe that you cannot be fully recovered from leg and foot injuries without walking on them. There is a process in which you just have to grin and bear it until you can walk on it with full weight. I wasn't going to spend all kinds of money to a doctor unless it was really needed. In this case, it wasn't needed. I figured that since I was able to make my way home from the location of the injury that I might as well give it a shot and go to work. The swelling didn't completely go down for another 2 weeks, but I didn't miss any work. What does this have to do with waybrain? I'm glad you asked. If you think you still have too much waybrain, OK that's cool. As much as I am still a believer in much twi doctrine, I have to admit that some of the quasi ettiquette we were taught in twi cannot be transferred to ANYWHERE else. So in order to "walk it off" according to my analogy, you have to actually mingle with people even though you know you will probably embarrass yourself from time to time. You can't just stay away in fear. Let's say you go to another church, you mingle with the people, you get to know them a little, and all of a sudden you say something without thinking that reveals to you your waybrain. AAAUUUGGGHHHH! Life is over! I can never see these people again! Right? NO! Just work through it. It sounds to me, newlife, as though you really would like to find a church you fit in with, but you're in the offshoot because it's a "safe zone" where you know what to avoid saying. If you really want to find a church, then you should keep trying. Just food for thought (burp).

quote: Job's fear did NOT, directly or indirectly, harshly or softly, contribute to what happened to his children. Job 3:25 - For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. I know I'm going to love the explanation for this.

quote: Believing is a law. As one believes, he receives. On the negative side, fear is believing: fear is believing in reverse, it produces ill results. One thing to keep in mind: in the pfal example of the woman whose child was run over by a car, the woman didn't just blow the negative thought off the top of her head, she obsessed. She was constantly fearful that something would happen to her little Johnny. Even the scriptures about Job reveal that he "continually" offered offerings and feared that his children had cursed God. So when VP said that both fear and faith produce results, it wasn't passive. It should go without saying that death claims us all and is absurd to think that VP feared that he would die of cancer.

quote: Obviously - at least to me - VPW doesn't spend a great deal of time focusing on what and how an Unb. might do that, the focus in PFAL is on the bible and what the Christian believer does. So in that way I do agree with Oldiesman, to say that it teaches a Law of Believing as an end in itself and stop there isn't what PFAL does. It's taught as the means to an end, but one that can be known and applied with or without the bible, God, or what have you. A lot of what VP taught was to counter errors he saw growing up in his church system. In this example, he saw a lot of people who believed that anything that happened was God's will. Somebody dies at 20 in a car wreck and it's God's will; stuff like that. I always processed the law of believing as a means for VP to teach people that they/we have more control over their lives than thought possible, and that God doesn't will for people to die prematurely, and that the "will of God" isn't lurking around every corner to afflict them. That's how I always took it. How many times do you suppose that people in VPs generation and possibly stll today grew up in a church and had a loved one die or something else bad happen and the minister just smugly said to them, "it's the will of God; sorry, can't help you". I've posted a few times the hitchhiking example when I prayed and got a 1000 mile ride to one block away from where I was going, but most times I hitched I didn't get results like that (didn't pray for rides either). The law of believing is not a vending machine, obviously, where you can automatically get what you believe for, but I don't think God minds if we try to believe for stuff, not as gambling, but as having a relationship with God and just asking him for stuff. My kids ask me for stuff all the time.

Wisdom? Let me show you my portfolio. Seriously, I've been out for about 13 years. I've been to fellowships from 4 offshoots, several churches, and even fellowships where people who had no affiliation with any offshoots got together just to fellowship. I even fit in one of the churches pretty good, but I, like you seem, had been in twi for years and just got comfortable with a lot of how twi fellowships are/were. One personal barometer of mine has always been that I knew any fellowship was right for me if I consistently heard things in the fellowship that spoke to my heart; things I "needed to hear". It could be in the comments made between songs, the manifestations, the teaching itself, it could come from anywhere, just as long as it came. Don't give up, newlife. Just relax and go where it's convenient for you to go and ask God for His help, of course, and it probably won't take long for you to find something that suits you. If the offshoot fellowship you're in really isn't cutting it, then you should move on, but please don't give up.

I think we've got a bunch of Jeudes worshippers and Jeudes apologists on this thread .

So moving a mountain is hyperbole? I say the word 'law' in law of believing is hyperbole. If you believe consistently you will get consistent results; positive or negative, saint or sinner. The word 'law' doesn't mean that every jot and tittle of what you believe is put under a microscope. Interesting that Jeudes condemns VP for exascerbating the woman's grief whose son died by getting hit by a car, but then he does the same thing by analyzing VPs cancer. Nice double standard. Jeudes is definitely misrepresenting VP; he quotes a few passages from the pfal book and then slants it in a direction that VP never intended. Certain people in twi may have gotten anal with people about their believing mostly at the twig level, but VP in pfal wasn't mean; he knew that people need love if they are down. In his tape 'the healing word' he says that everybody will eventually die, believing or no, and exhorted us to just love each other. Also, VP died in '85, not '84, and he was 68, not 67. 67 is young? So now we're getting anal and legalistic about how long people live. I'll be happy if I make it to 67. Then I can get free coffee from McDonalds. I notice that in the bible a lot of believed for miracles occur when people are doing service to God's people. Example: Jesus walking on the water to get to his troubled disciples. I've heard many stories about wows who got housing and jobs when all the odds were against them. How about George Meuller on that ship when the fog got lifted? Parking spaces? If I have to walk an extra thousand feet to get into value city or wherever then it must be OK with God.

quote: You may have missed this, dooj, but there was a time-and possibly it's STILL true- when cg was teaching this very thing- that God is NOT omniscient, that God is NOT transcendant, that God exists in the present with us (as opposed to inhabiting eternity), that God WAS surprised and taken aback when events happened- specifically using Genesis 3 as an example. John APPEARS to be saying much the same thing. I've heard this taught, but not as rubber stamped "doctrine" but as something to consider. I'm thinking God's pov/man's pov. We were taught in twi that Samuel and Kings are man's pov while Chronicles is God's pov, Examples given were Saul's death (impaling himself in Sam but transgressing against the word of God in Chronicles) and the Lord moving David to number Israel in Sam but Satan provoking him to do it in Chronicles. To me, it doesn't matter how it's phrased; from man's pov God definitely changed the rules in the places I referred to. I don't think God was surprised at anything, but He didn't make us to be robots. You don't like the phrase 'plan B'? Oh, well.

As you say, Jesus set the bar higher with the new commandment, but the verses you referred to in Romans and Galatians seem to say that love your neighbor as yourself is the same as John 13's love as Christ loved. I'm saying that the difference is that in John 13, BEFORE it was Christ in you, the 2 were different (not even possible for natural men), but in Romans and Galatians, AFTER Pentecost, they were one and the same. Jesus didn't know he would have to die until John 13; before that he was proceeding as if Israel would accept him. That's why the new commandment came then. Even in 1 John where I quoted, the next thing said after the new commandment is about treating your brother right and not walking in darkness. Jesus was actually speaking prophetically at the time he said to love one another as he had loved them. IMO it takes holy spirit to agape.

quote: Speaking of "rules", Jesus summed up the entire written Word of God available in His day by saying everything revolved around two laws - love God and neighbor...Paul and James echo the same thing in the epistles: Romans 13:9, 10; 15:2; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8...I don't think anything has negated the moral standards God set up that show us how we're to live. The rules before Gen. 3 are in Gen. 2:16,17. The changes in those rules are in Gen. 3:9-24. Then the changes after the flood are begun in Gen. 9:1-17 and amended in Gen. 11:1-9. Plan B is merely a figure of speech meaning that the best possible scenerio is not possible any more and must shift to the second best possible scenerio. Plan B implies preparation, no curve ball. In Matt 22:37-39 Jesus stated the 2 great commandments in the law, but he changed the wording in John 13:34,35. He even called it a new commandment. He said love one another as I have loved you, not as thyself. 1 John 2:7,8 refer to it. verse 7 - Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning (Love God with all your heart soul mind and strength). vwese 8 - Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. Love one another as I (Jesus) have loved you is the new commandment. The reason it's stated in Romans and Galatians as "love thy neighbor as thyself" is because with Christ in you, to love someone as thyself IS to love as Christ loved. That was not possible before Pentecost. I don't care how many Christians have failed to love as Christ loved, the body of Christ is spared from wrath and will get rewards for the good and no rewards for the bad. Simple.