johniam

DAY 1 God: Adam, I've made a helpmeet for you. Her name is Eve. That's her right there. Adam: Wow! Not bad. How come you made her so pretty? God: So you'd be attracted to her. DAY 2 Adam: (walks right up next to her; smells her) God, how come you made her smell so good? God: So you'd be attracted to her. DAY 3 Adam: (walks right up next to her; rubs himself against her a bit) God, how come you made her skin so soft? God: So you'd be attracted to her. DAY 4 Adam: (asks her out to brunch; talks with her a lot) God, how come you made her so stupid? God: So she'd be attracted to YOU.

He's just another dime a dozen educated bigot.

If confession is anything, then the Steelers. They've been saying since Sunday that they don't just want to go to the Superbowl, they want to WIN, but Seattle's players just seem like they're amazed to be there and that's it.

Rascal, sometimes your posts are like a cry for help. Recently you have posted of positive TWI experiences (the ROA memories thread) and positive current stuff (the exceedingly abundantly above all you could ask or think thread).....yet you struggle. For all the positives you seem to gravitate toward despair. As though because of VPW and his evil, all positives are null and void. You were duped; that's all that matters. Like you're gonna get up there and God will look at you and say, "What? Eternal rewards? You? Waw haw haw!" No no no! Stop that. You're like my cat. His name is Ngurng. He got 'deboned' a few years ago, but he keeps his own hours. Even in winter he stays out all night half the time. But when I get up and come into the kitchen, he's ready to come in and I pick him up and vigorously massage first his lower back, then up to the middle. After 30 seconds or so he's purring at a good clip. Then I let him eat. God will do this....for YOUUUUUU! Seriously, you deserve an answer of PEACE. Don't EVER think you don't deserve to be peaceful, OK?

and NOW there is kuh reist in me I know the mystery here in the BAH dee of kuh REIST I will stay I believed what God said He raised Christ from the deh udd and GOD in His mercy has shown me the way ay..... apologies to Helen Sudduth

OK, I've now read the whole book and I'm impressed with it. It isn't long and it makes very good points. It basically lists 5 "love languages" (words of affirmation, quality time, giving of gifts, acts of service, and physical touch) and theorizes that most people have one primary love language of the 5, so what communicates love for one person might not be true of another. Therefore, many marital difficulties can be minimized by each spouse (or even 1) knowing the primary love language of the other and feeding it. Someone posted a few years ago (can't remember the thread) about doing something special for his wife on her birthday or something. Spent money, put a lot of thought and detail into it, and she just blew it off and went to sleep. The poster was devastated, but it makes sense to me that people are all different and rather than try to memorize and apply everything we've ever read or heard about ettiquette and love to every body.....it would be easier and more efficient to hone in on the things each person is most sensitive to. I'm sure everyone responds to all 5 love languages to some degree, but it probably is true that one or two of the 5 will speak louder to each individual. And it isn't limited to a spouse either; what about kids, friends, co workers, etc. Sure, I could use a system like this (try to figure out what peoples' primary love language is) just to see what I could get from them, or I could also do it to see how I could better connect with them to bless them. Right now I'm inspired by the book and mulling it over in my mind a lot.

Belle: I ain't playing. You may be, but I'm not. You can believe whatever you want, but it looks like to me that you want to do everything possible to know God's will EXCEPT go directly to God.

quote: is that we have essentially nothing to show for our TWI servitude except for the psychological & emotional wounds (damages) with which TWI has so disgracefully left us. Speak for yourself. Don't any of you people ever get any prayers answered?

I'll never forget session 12. Especially when he asked everybody to stand and breathe deeply. There was a powerful presence in the room...EVERY SINGLE TIME! If it was just my first class or just during the first year or 2 after taking it, then maybe I'd consider questioning it, but EVERY TIME I was in a 12th session it was there, didn't matter the size of the class or who ran it. I refuse to deny that this ever happened. Is it possible that some of you actually DID make an idol out of VP and so for YOU it is necessary to rebuild everything just to get the idolatry out of your system? I never worshipped the guy, just dug his ministry.

quote: Were there any ROAs in later years where the weather played havoc? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Why, no. Let's see....1980. I didn't get there till Wed afternoon and I heard tales of peoples' camping gear becoming unfit for use and so they had to leave. 1979 one outgoing wow told me that the training was in the ROA tents and on the day they left a quick storm blew several people's bibles and stuff all over the place. Corps week 1981 was VERY interesting weather wise so I heard. Lots of rain during Living Victoriously 1982. 1993 was a washout. That's all I can remember.

quote: With modern technology, instant communication and new discoveries coming to light, it seems that there is a lot more about historical cultures and Biblical times, beliefs and religion that we didn't know before. That raises even more questions about the integrity of the Bible. Let me get this straight. I'm supposed to question the integrity of the bible because it was written by men, but this so called modern technology, etc. is better even though it ALSO was written by MEN! Hey, watch out for those men. I hear they're fallible, jealous, political, evil, and wrong. Anybody whose motive to question the scriptures is to merely prove VPW or someone else wrong is highly suspect. They've ALREADY handled the word of God deceitfully. Whatever happened to showing yourself approved before God?

quote: i suppose those in Acts were in big trouble then they didn't have the "bible" They had the OT. Jesus and Paul quoted it all the time. The more sure word of prophecy is the scriptures; it says so in the very next verse. Hello.

This is hearsay, but Mark Olthouse (not Mark Sr. who died a few yrs ago, but his son) got a degree from Calvin College with greek and other classes he took in TWI. The college put up a fight but he got the degree anyway.

Consonance and dissonance are also musical terms. If you hit 2 consecutive notes on a piano at the same time, it sounds really bad. This is called a dissonance. If you hit do and mi at the same time (major 3rd) it sounds good. This is called a consonance, or consonant interval. The object is to create a dissonance by using minor or diminished chords and then resolve the dissonance by using major or augmented chords, but some composers will create a really really bad sounding dissonance and then resolve it with a lesser dissonance. Anybody remember the 1st Mothers of Invention album? The bit where they go..."it can't happen HERE!" and later..."Whooooo could imagine that they would freak out in..."? I saw Zappa in 1974 and he actually told the crowd that the harmonies in those parts were made by deliberately using 8 consecutive dissonant intervals. Cognitive dissonance sounds like what TWI used to call "orderly disorder".

I think it's a matter of degrees; everybody gets mad and WHILE you're mad there's time to savour the moment...yessssssssss....being mad is GOOD.....ahhhhhhh......this is nirvanaaaautopiaaaaheavennnnnblisssssaaahhhhhhhhhhhyesssssssssssssss. Most people just get mad and let's be done with it. Others like the way it feels and start looking for excuses to be mad all the time. THAT'S when hate can come in and get comfortable.

quote: the Word of God is Jesus Christ, not the Bible. I wouldn't know who Jesus is without the bible. Consider that Jesus himself, when the devil had him atop a pinnacle of the temple said "It is written" not "gee this is quite an experience." Consider that Peter called knowing that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation a MORE SURE WORD OF PROPHECY than having been with Jesus at the mount of transfiguration, which really WAS quite an experience. My liberal as hell mother always was saying that the bible was written by men, meaning that you couldn't trust it as the word of God. Well, my driver's license was also written by men, yet it carries a measure of authority. If I show it to a police officer or to someone requesting ID I fully expect those parties to respect that piece of plastic written by men as PROOF of my identity, and they always do. The bible is God's "ID" and IMO He fully expects us to respect that! If that makes me jealous, holier than thou, or ignorant, then SO BE IT!

Smart? Me? Now you're scaring me. What I find unique about the book is that the writer puts everything in the context of communication. The last book I read like that was "Intended For Pleasure" which, like many marriage books puts everything in the context of sex. But this book puts even sex in the overall context of communication. I have an associates degree in communication. This has not done much for career advancement, but it did get me to notice things I was taught about communication in things I see and hear. If Dr. Chapman had started out saying, "Sex isn't the only thing going on in a marriage and I'm going to prove it. Watch this!", then people would have been argumentative from the get go, but he didn't do that, he put it in the flow of love languages/physical touch/ dialects....communication! That was smart, IMO.

quote: Who's interpretation of what the word says? Yours? the Viksters? Jerry Falwell's? Benny Hinn's? I'll take VPs over the pope's any day.

quote: what is "the same yesterday, today, and forever"? Heb. 13:7,8.

Sometimes people use their experiences to justify not believing what the word says. Like the person who's "sure" the dead are alive because he went to a seance or heard an audible voice. How to know the difference between a godly experience and a counterfeit one is to "compare spiritual with spiritual". That is, to compare the spiritual which is the same yesterday, today, and forever in the bible with the spiritual you experience.

I checked the book out of the library. I like to read books like that every so often. I'm half way through it, but I think one of my wife's love languages is quality time, with the dialect of listening. She'll say stuff to me that repeats the same situations over and over again, and it seems like what the book says is true; she doesn't want me to spit out a solution, she wants me to reaffirm that she's OK and everything's gonna be fine. I don't know what mine is yet.

Well, nothing really happened to us, but those kids have gotta be really confused. Even special ed kids look up to adults and trust that they will do them right. Crazy.

No that wasn't it. The one I saw was short and mentioned plagiarism. I had heard stories before about him being a ladies' man but nothing about plagiarism. I personally don't think any of it matters for MLK or VPW: let their words stand or fall on their own merit.

I think a lot of what VP emphasized in PFAL was to offset or counter what he himself was taught in the religious environment he grew up in. Even today many religious people think the "will of God" is this ominous force in the sky that just might pick you off if you're not "right with God". He presented God as loving, kind, something one could snuggle up to by comparison. Literally, Mark and CM are correct: the word of God is not limited to scripture and some verses don't make sense as the will of God. Ezek. 27:28 The suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots. OK. What's in it for ME? Unless the cry of thy pilots is a hip hop band, I cannot act on that as the "will of God". But if I want to know what the will of God is about something, my first option would be to go to scripture.

Last week Thursday a special ed teacher in my special ed son's school was arrested for 19 counts of statutory sodomy. This means she (yes, it was a 46 yr old woman) performed oral sex on at least 3 special ed boys, but not my son. What happened was she confided in a friend as to what she was doing. The friend told another teacher in the school, who told the principal, who then called the police. The principal called our house and said she was sure the teacher never was alone with our son. Later, we got the paper's article about the incident on the internet (we don't get the daily paper) complete with a color picture of the teacher plus her home address. She's married!!! Poor husband. We had our son look at the picture and he said she was an assistant in his math class but that she never touched him or anything like that. The principal said that when children are molested they usually display noticeable changes in behavior at home and our son didn't do that so we feel secure that he was unharmed, but all 19 counts allegedly happened this school year. This lady was still an apprentice last year and before that she worked for the school district in another capacity and was considered a "pillar of the community". The principal said they're sure and can document all 19 counts. If women's prisons are anything like mens' she's dead.