Raf

At the time of the post you are citing, this forum was in About the Way. As such, The Way's teaching on II Timothy 3:16 may have been relevant to the conversation, even if it is not relevant to the actual truth of the subject. I agree with you: just because Wierwille said it, doesn't make it so.

Ok, so... Caught up on Agents of Shield. Would have made a nice ending to the series. Caught up on Flash but we already knew that. Now on Arrow. Better than I remembered while trying to keep up the first time. Damn but Laurel is hot.

SPOILER ALERT for a 31-year-old movie! So Kevin Costner is having an affair with Sean Young (a woman) who is the lover of Gene Hackman, the secretary of defense. Hackman accidentally kills Sean Young in a jealous rage. Will Patton, who works for Hackman, wants to cover it up, so he makes up a story about a Russian mole ("Yuri") exploiting Hackman's affair to jeopardize U.S. national security. That mole, Patton says, killed Sean Young. So he puts... Costner in charge of the investigation. Fast forward: Costner is innocent... of the murder. But that story Patton made up? Turns out it was true: revealed in the dialogue above, Kevin Costner was a Russian mole who seduced Gene Hackman's girlfriend to compromise him. Ah, the good old days when a Russian mole infiltrating the top levels of the administration was ficti[CENSORED]

Kevin Costner talking to Gene Hackman's lover at the beginning of the movie.

No Way Out: This is the climactic scene, where Will Patton's character puts together the fact that Kevin Costner, in charge of the investigation to find out who was sleeping with Gene Hackman's lover, WAS the person sleeping with Gene Hackman's lover.

The tape series was called "A Pivot Point in History." The letter was called "A Pivot Point Revisited"

That is correct. Tom is Kevin Costner's character. It's a 30-year-old movie. I'm not ashamed of spoiling the ending. :)

Bump. I don' know if cwb01 is coming back, but this is an interesting question. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Frye?

I was recently reading II Timothy 3:16 in the American Standard Version (note, not the NEW American Standard Version, which I prefer). I found it interesting that they worded it: "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness." So in this translation (and not in many others), the impression is not that "All scripture is inspired of God," which is nonsense*, but rather that all scripture inspired by God is useful, implying that there are scriptures not inspired by God. And here we get to what I think is a significant point (which you folks have been raising) about "semantics." *That is, what do the Bible's writers mean when they use the word "scripture." I don't think Paul was referring to his own writings when he talked about scripture being "God-breathed." The preceding verse (context) talks about the sacred writings his readers would have known from the time they were children. THOSE are the "scriptures" of verse 16, not the letter he was writing to them at the time! A few years back I started a thread about a letter Chris Geer wrote to his followers in the USA (Geer was running the show in Scotland at the time of the massive 1989 TWI split). I called the thread "The Epistle of Chris Geer to the Americans." I'll never forget the reaction: people accused Geer of being so arrogant and narcissistic that he would write an actual epistle! The nerve! Meanwhile, that wasn't Geer's word. It was mine. And I was using an old-timey word in jest, because as you all know, an "epistle" is just a letter. That's it. There's nothing magical in the word "epistle" that makes it "The Word Of God Uh." Same with the Bible's use of "scripture." It just means "writings." We can't assume every time we encounter that word that the writer (or author, or Author, or whatever you want to put as the word there -- lol) is making some ontological statement about the nature of the scribbling. Not all scripture is God-breathed, obviously. Whether everything written in the Bible is God-breathed is for believers to debate, discuss and decide (naturally, I contend none of it is, but that comes with the territory these days). But I don't think it's appropriate to cite II Timothy 3:16 as evidence that the writer of II Timothy 3:16 believed II Timothy 3:16 is The Word Of God Uh. That, as others have pointed out, would be quite circular.

A: "We thought we'd never see you again." B: "So did I." A: "Couldn't you have manage this better?" B: "Not so fast, it's difficult for me to follow in Russian. It's been very long for me." A: "How thirsty you must be for the sound of our language. Evgeny Alexeivich, wouldn't you love to hear Russian again? Imagine Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy..." B: "Solzhenitsyn, Aksyonov." A: [chuckles] "Even them, always the sense of humor."

Here's the deal: The article we wrote was a rebuttal. It was kind of pointless without the teaching set that was being rebutted, so it's rather unfair in that regard. For example, WW quoted a line earlier, "had God foreknown- or forced or tracked or whatever you'd like to put as the word there..." Our rebuttal is nonsense without the original quote. I do not think our paper has much value without the teaching series it is rebutting. Then again, it's been well over 20 years since I've even seen it.

Not UNCLE. And I don't think that's where the man was from. I was actually quite surprised to learn where he was from. Then again, that was the point.

I don't.

Can we all agree that this topic, however it started, has become almost entirely doctrinal since TLC's act of necromancy? I mean, you can almost make the case it belongs in the European forum, but About the Way? not seeing it.

I resent the characterization of our work as "easy." It was exhausting. That said, on its own terms, Geer's thesis was preposterous. On its own terms. On philosophical terms -- that's another matter entirely.

"Let's get out of here." "My date's not going to like that much. But what the hell, his wife will be delighted."

"Tom is the one who saw you at Susan's. He's known about you all along, isn't that right? We do know what that means. If Commander Farrell is the man who was with Miss Atwell, then Commander Farrell is the man who killed Miss Atwell. And we know that the man who killed Miss Atwell is Yuri. Therefore, Commander Farrell IS Yuri, quod erat demonstrandum."

Wonder Woman

Rude. Look, if you're not open to exploring what other people think, that's fine. No one's forcing you. But the namecalling is juvenile. You believe a man born of a virgin walked on water and then took a 3-day nap for our sins because God couldn't just say "I forgive you" without slaughtering him first. Personally, I now find that "wacky" and I'm embarrassed I ever believed it. Had the concept been introduced to me as an adult, I would have laughed as hard as you laugh at Scientology or the Book of Mormon. But I respect the fact that others disagree with me and I'm even, occasionally, willing to explore what the Bible teaches on its own terms. This forum is for people who are trying to process their exits from The Way International. We're open to people who DON'T want to exit, though we would probably find that "wacky." What we don't do here, generally speaking, is consider ourselves above each other's company. But if you're too good for us, by all means, the exit fee is three times the entrance fee. Don't forget to tip your servers. And the door is always open if you want to come back.

Pretend I'm posting as a moderator for a moment here: That's nice. We urge all posters to keep their comments focused on people's arguments, not on the people making them. If the starter of this thread has lost all credibility with you, that says NOTHING about the validity of his or your argument. I'm sure he has his feelings about you, too, based on your dismissal of his position. So what? If you don't like what he said, challenge his argument. And be ready to have your argument challenged right back.

I am not aware of VF being "exclusionary" or "elitist" in the sense of his group being the only group that gets saved. I would say that is inconsistent with the character of the man whose teachings I followed throughout most of the 1990s. It's been ages, so that could have changed. I would be surprised as a matter of character, but not as a matter of potential.

I don't know about the rambling...

I actually like the "So that's who she was" ending of Flash more than the actual resolution of the Thinker/Devoe storyline. But what I really liked about this season was that they had SO much more fun than last year.

None of this addresses that "Jesus" said one thing about salvation, Paul implied quite another and the writer of Hebrews a third. These people just flat out didn't agree with each other, and it's not because they were talking about changes in administrations or audiences. The distinction is in the writers, not the audience. The writers of the gospels did not agree with Paul. The Occam's razor approach to this adequately addresses the issue without creating an unnecessary framework of different audiences. "Can you lose your salvation." This is a yes or no question. "Depends on who 'you' are" is an interesting approach, but it's only necessary because different writers provided (what appear to be) different answers to a fairly straightforward question. Shall we call it an impasse? Take the last word...

I meant Black Lightning, not Black Panther.