Trefor Heywood

One has to wonder how they got round the biblical axiom: "I was in prison and ye came unto me..." (Matthew 25 v 36).

That's gonna be confusing for telephone bookings! Caller - "Hello I would like to book two tickets for The Day after Tomorrow.." Telephone Booking Clerk - "OK that's Thursday, what movie would you like to see...?"

Thanks CircleGame - obviously as we had no River Jordan over here the splash bit got left out! :D-->

But how can they feel perfect when there is nobody left to scream at, erm oops... reprove just so they can demonstrate how perfect and superior they are?

I outlined it all in my story. There can be few who are not glad that they left now with hindsight, whatever the reason was.

I think I managed to avoid being in the Way Ragazine - does that make me a Ninja?

Perhaps because triangles were considered to be a representation of the Trinity? -->

That would be a clean sweep indeed WordWolf! :D-->

I will box clever like I did with the the first two. I will buy the theatrical version and use it until the EE comes out then give the theatrical version to my sister in law like I did for the first two! She doesn't mind second hand presents! :D-->

The observation I make about The Thirteenth Tribe was that it was at least original research, not plagiarised as was most of VPWs work. Koestler never used his conclusions to espouse Holocaust denial, he simply concluded that both the Nazi persecutors and their victims were under a misapprehension as to what anti semitism actually was. It is a large jump from stating that a large number of modern Jewry were not descended from the twelve tribes to claiming that the mass murders never happened and I am sure that Koestler would have been annoyed to know that his work had been used to justify the theories that VPW propounded as gospel.

The more I read, the more I am glad that I left when I did. I wonder when LCM last had to clean a house or repair anything. I wonder when he last felt and acted like a human being. Reading ckeer's post I actually started to feel very ANGRY at the way leadership treated him and his wife. There was no prevailing Word - just power exercise by prevailing TURDS!

We have a UK version called You've Been Framed! which is largely composed of similar stuff. The strange things is that they are supposed to be UK home videos but many of them appear to have originated in the US or Japan. As there is a cash reward for every video submitted I wonder how so many of them are of non-UK origin as the programme is only advertised and shown here. Like your US one, it ceased to be be funny years ago.

If you are taught in class that "God told me to tell you" is a no no and yet you are expected to think and do everything leadership tells you without question as having the authority of God.

I don't remember the word splash in the song being used in TWI! Just the inevitable second verse: God's blessings on you... etc.

Colleen: Thanks for your sweet words! :D--> Yes, a hug is on the cards if I can find the Smokies (guess at Tennessee)... George: Of course you feel more upset about losing some people more than others, but when a person has had an effect on your life it's not always easy to feel glad about it. I cried, yes I actually cried, when I read Death of a Patriarch, even though I had been out for years and knew VPW was deceased. Something still moved me. I didn't find out other stuff about him until later, from reading posts at Grease Spot. Hearing about the demise of Bin Ladn or of LCM might well produce a different result!

Chas - the guy was merely the ward bishop or the branch president and was clearly an a$$hole. No you were not excommunicated and your being told to keep away would not have endeared him to his stake president - heck even excommunicated or disfellowshipped members are encouraged to still attend church! But interested in returning or not, you are still "on the books" as far as SLC is concerned. Unlike TWI, such an order was only a local one and not binding upon the whole organisation. I had my name removed by writing a letter so am not carrying a torch for the LDS, but I thought in fairness this needed to be pointed out. Warm regards :D-->

If John Donne was right we are diminished by any man's death. A total summation of a man's life is never possible in human terms, how we balance the good and the bad and the lasting results and effects. But it made me think of how the last brake upon his successor was gone - it was a case of apres moi, le deluge.

Regarding the Focus on the Family's argument of the "slippery slope to this that and the other (also made in a similar way by other posters) I found this in an email: One could have used the same logic to state that if you allow heterosexual marriage then homosexual marriage is sure to follow so we should not allow heterosexual marriage! :D-->

I would take ANYTHING such is this coming from Focus on the Family under advisement. They have an agenda too and are very selective in their materials on the issue. I heard LCM blame the collapse of the Roman Empire upon this too - he apparently is no student of Gibbon, nor of any other authority upon the subject. Empires have risen and fallen over the centuries and for all kinds of reasons and in most of them no serious historian would put homosexuality high on the list of causes.

For anyone to treat a 13 year old in such a way, no matter who they are or what they represent is especially reprehensible. But TempleLady is right - you have no been excommunicated - that is a formal process involving a church court to which you would have been invited and you would also have received a formal notification of the result. So you would still be "on the books" of the LDS Church. There are always those in different organisations who like to exercise "unrighteous domination", who think they know more than they know and can do more than they can do - TWI took this to especially ridiculous extremes.

The authority issue is interesting when one thinks of the issue of membership. We were always told that TWI had no members - they kept records of grad status of various classes, but one never went through any form of joining ceremony so one was not effectively subscribing to a predefined set of rules out,ining privileges, responsibilities and structure. One therefore made no official assent to accept any authority. If you join the LDS you must assent to accept the authority of the Prophet and the General Authorities, if you join the Catholic Church you must accept the authority of the Bishops and the Pope. Records are made and kept. I never had to sign anything or make a public assent that I accepted the authority of VPW and yet for some years I implicitly accepted it. Anybody in a leadership position claimed it for their area and sometimes as we know, misused it. But they had only as much authority as we were prepared to allow them. There was nothing to leave or resign from - it was a matter of disassociation - them from us (M&A) or we from them. It's different with other groupings - you have to write a letter to LDS HQ to have your name removed from membership records for example, and I am not sure if there is any arrangement at all to officially leave the Roman Catholic Church.

Whatever thes right and wrongs there are major differences between M&A and excommunication. As Temple Lady has already pointed out the LDS practice (although it can be for other reasons besides the ones stated also) it is not a way of shunning or avoiding people. Excommunication in the Roman Catholic Church works on a broadly similar principle too - one is excluded from the sacraments but still allowed to attend. TWI was not a sacramentally based organisation - communion maybe once a year for example. TWI believed that once you had heard the Word of Truth (as defined by TWI) and rejected it (you didn't blindly do everything leadership told you) that you were a cancer, posessed by Satan, and should be delivered up to him.

If that was the case Mr-P-Mosh, then marriage was being attacked at a very early stage. And Cain was guilty of the sin of Nodomy! :D-->

I seem to recall reading in the Way Rag an article abour "Ebony Outreach"... Sounded very condescending.

Weren't Adam and Eve married? That wasn't the year 0000 - it was 4004 BC according to Archbishop Usher! :D-->