Raf

Different movie hint: a 1990s drama about a crazed nanny.

Has it been 10 years? When I think of all I could have done with that utter waste of time and energy...

Yes. There's a saying: The difference between a cult and a false religion is that in a cult, there's someone at the top who knows this is all a scam. In a false religion, that person's dead.

Old Skool: Make it once or twice a week instead of once or twice a day. Make the hearers primed to receive a comforting or encouraging word instead of weary at the vain repetition. I come into a meeting, eager to hear words of exhortation and comfort from God. You go into the same meeting, eager to be called as the vessel through which these words of exhortation and comfort will be shared. You're called, and you bring forth the message that's in your heart. Maybe you thought it out beforehand, but you're clever enough that you don't always need to do that. You just speak, and your mind supplies you with memories of similar comforting messages and the tiny or vast Biblical knowledge stored in your brain. The message you speak, which you WANT to contain exhortation and comfort, SURPRISE! consists of exhortation and comfort. I, primed to hear such a message, am exhorted and comforted! SURPRISE! Then we reverse roles when I'm the one called. It's God! Poppycock. Horse manure. I don't know what to make of Steve's accounts. From a skeptical standpoint, one could say that we're bound to hit on some stunning prophecies over the course of decades of operating the manifestation that will result in people responding in the way the Bible predicts (which, did you ever notice, rarely happened?). A broken clock is right twice a day, right? Or maybe Steve is absolutely correct in attributing those rare instances to God's intervention. Who am I to dispute it? Steve offers it as personal experience and belief, not as "proof." And he's entitled to that, as we all are. On the other hand, prophesying to a bedridden cancer patient that death will come calling shortly doesn't strike me as all that much of a miracle. I predicted my sister's death in August. That wasn't God cluing me in on anything. She was approaching the fifth anniversary of an ALS diagnosis. While longer survival rates are not uncommon, they are certainly the exception. Now and then you get a bizarrely lengthy survival rate, like Stephen Hawking. But that's exceedingly rare. ALS patients don't go on to live 40 years after diagnosis, as a rule. As an exception? Yes. As a rule, no. And I suppose we can't attribute Hawking's longevity to his faith: he's about as atheist as they come. I have no reason to believe Steve's wife was exercising a divine manifestation when she told a cancer patient the end was near. But I certainly have no Biblical reason to discount the possibility. For all I know, maybe THAT was what this poor woman needed to hear. I deeply appreciate the honesty with which everyone on this thread, including those who think I'm dead wrong, have addressed this subject. Thank you all.

The monarchy of Gondor is restored when fat, uncouth American John Goodman takes the throne.

Hint, he's in a movie whose title will never be won by Rosalee Rivenbark. A 1990s comedy about a sort of beauty contest.

Wierwille and TWI defined and explained the three manifestations in terms that invited, nurtured and rewarded fakery.

An Affair to Remember the Titans. FYI, I met coach herman boone. Nice guy

I think I'll make this a little tougher... Harold Ramis Ghostbusters Ernie Hudson

I'm going to admit being a little surprised that there wasn't a stronger reaction to my thoughts on interpretation and prophecy. What gives? What's the difference? Can't be proof: in all three manifestations I readily admit I can't prove my position. So what are you guys thinking?

This has nothing to do with nothing anymore, but I see that Landry appears to have pulled down his paper from his Web site. I wonder if he got wind of its use in this thread.

You got it!

"Maybe." LOLOLOLOLOLOL

The short answer is yes. CES and STFI are the same group at different times. Love your proposed prophecies! Nice analogy. The difficulty of proving or disproving interpretation and prophecy is that I can't even think of an indisputable way to do it even within TWI, where we KNOW there was fakery and, I think, everyone admits faking it at least once (rare is the one who admits faking it in every instance). I think that's why this thread ended up concentrating on SIT even though all three manifestations are brought up in the thread title.

Steven Segal is a do-gooder who proves very difficult to assassinate, but Uma Thurman will not stop trying until she gets the job done.

Nice job, AHAT! Try to have a little more fun meshing the plotlines as if this is really one show. But you've got the right idea. The Winds of War Games

Something else I find interesting: I don't recall if it was this thread or another one that explored the same issues a few years back, but I know someone told a story about faking the interpretation or prophecy and getting busted by the class or fellowship coordinator. Something along the lines of, "you faked that, didn't you?" Mr. Coordinator Man probably looked SOOOOO in tune with God when he recognized the fabrication, and the speaker was duly chastised. Try to see this from my perspective and appreciate the humor: The coordinator could say "you faked that, didn't you?" to ANY speaker at ANY meeting at ANY time and be right. How much of a reinforcement is it to you, then, when you are at a meeting and the coordinator spots a fake, lovingly reproves, then turns to you; you SIT and interpret, and Mr. Coordinator Man doesn't call you out! Hallelujah! God, who told Mr. Coordinator Man that Johnny Jumpup faked it, was silent when you interpreted. Yours must have been genuine! Your heart is in the right place. You're trying to do God's will. You sure as heck don't WANT to fake it. And God is calling out fakers in your presence! So when He does not call you out, that's your verification, your authentication. You didn't fake it because if you did, God would have told Mr. Coordinator Man, who would have told you. Reinforced self-deception? Yes, I recognize that I am DEEP into "you can't prove it" territory. I'm not trying to prove it. I know I faked it. I know others did. I'm coming clean. I invite others to. But there is no logical, Biblical way to suggest that everyone's in the same boat, so I won't push it beyond expressing my thought on the matter.

Prophecy, unlike SIT, really and truly is impossible to prove (or disprove). We rely here entirely on the integrity of those bringing forth the messages. I can record SIT, play it back, and establish to a reasonable degree of confidence that the words spoken are not a language. But I can't play back a prophecy and establish that it was really the speaker extemporaneously bringing forth a comforting message rather than God inspiring the same message. "Prove it," with prophecy, really makes no sense. I can't disprove it any more than you can prove it. I can tell you I made it all up and that it wasn't God working in me. I had/have a pretty decent knowledge of the Bible and heard enough samples of prophecy to fake it with the best of them (psst: YOU were the best of them). Interpretation is a different ball of wax. It should go without saying that IF all SIT is phony, then all interpretation is phony by definition. That wouldn't stop God from working in someone's heart to bring forth a prophecy when it's time to interpret, so again, I can't prove the content of interpretation is uninspired. In my opinion, it's a safe bet that the message you brought forth in a tongue and the message you brought forth in interpreting that tongue were utterly unrelated, but that's my opinion. It's rather like trying to describe a hotel's penthouse when I haven't even gotten out of the lobby yet. Even if I'm right, you have no reason to believe me. Some things I find interesting: I brought up the CES/TWI disagreement over interpretation to illustrate my point about how I can't be the only one who faked it. In reality, the difference doesn't prove anything because both sides have an explanation that acknowledges divine inspiration in the process. According to CES: Believers SIT and then interpret, but in TWI one of two things happened. The believers either prophesied when they should have been interpreting, or their minds interfered and they changed the wording of the interpretation to fit what they thought it should sound like. For example, if the tongue was "Lord God, you are ever faithful and true," the "polluted" interpretation would be "I, the Lord your God, am faithful and always true." According to TWI: CES believers are either full of it and making it up, or they're altering the interpretation in reverse of how CES claims. Those are the "spiritual" possibilities that can explain how a CES believer can speak in tongues and interpret and always have the message come out one way, while that same believer operating the same manifestation in TWI several years earlier would produce a radically different type of interpretation. Those are the "spiritual" possibilities. The rational explanation is that both sides are making it up as they go along and it should be no suprise whatsoever that the interpretation matches the theology. Wouldn't it have been great, during these prophecies, for the message to have been something along the lines of: "My little children, be warned, you're in a cult. These people are in it for the money and the power. Think for yourselves. Run! Run far away!" Anyone ever have THAT happen? Would have edified the hell out of me.

Major League Wesley Snipes US Marshals

Actually, John, in this context is a gerund, not a participle. A gerund is a form of a verb altered for use as a noun in a sentence. "Running is my favorite sport." Running is not a noun, but it is the subject of that sentence. All subjects are nouns or pronouns. So running is a noun in that sentence; it is a gerund. Participles are verbs altered to be used as adjectives. We distinguish between running water and standing water. Running and standing are verbs used as adjectives. They are participles. There is no problem using believing as a gerund, which Wierwille did. The problem was differentiating Biblically between faith and believing. We're expected to believe, for no Biblical reason, that faith and believing are different things. In Greek, the silliness is more obvious: there is no appreciable difference between pistis and pistis. Wierwille's distinctions were arbitrary, capricious and frankly a little silly.

That's the Samarin link, chockfull

I missed this particular line earlier: the study you suggest is exactly the study Samarin produced. Naturally, his sample size was wayyyyy under 100 percent, and I have no reason to believe he included anyone from TWI in his sample. But it was more than a handful of people from more than just the USA. But for what it's worth, there it is. I have seen nothing to discredit Samarin's analysis. If anyone finds something, let me know.

I thought a vocabulary issue might be the stumbling block here. My fault for casting this whole discussion in terms of "lying" and "faking." Those words undermine a person's integrity, and the defensive response is both natural and predictable. In a conversation like this, it's also unavoidable (well, not entirely unavoidable: I could have just not posted anything). If referring to free vocalization and the subconscious injecting itself into a process energized by genuine love and integrity helps people to consider that this MIGHT be what they did, then I would naturally prefer the less objectionable terms. But make no mistake about my position: in terms of what we did and the results of what we produced, I am NOT drawing a distinction. I just think one way of expressing it is more palatable and less insulting than the other. Good of you to stick with the dialogue, Old Skool. Till we meet next...

Will cross that bridge when we come to it. Since I cheated, I'll wait a bit longer before posting the answer to the last one.

I'm going to nudge you a little bit by suggesting, politely (I hope) that this sentence is self-contradictory. Terms: glossalalia in Samarin is distinguished from the actual production of a language and appears to fit the description of free vocalization we see in Poythress. (Those two original links have come in quite handy, no?) If you KNOW you didn't fake it, you can't admit what you did COULD be glossalalia. You would have to not know you didn't fake it. At this point, I don't want to talk you out of what you did. My opinion (worth the paper it's printed on, and it's not printed on paper) is that you don't know you didn't fake it. You know your heart was pure and in a Godly place. You know you had no intention to deceive anyone, not yourself, not God, not your fellow believers. You know you love God and want to do His will. But this thread has troubled you and you don't know what to conclude. You don't like being called a liar (who would?), but your sense of certainty in the legitimacy of what you have been doing is shaken, if only a little. Ultimately, you view this as trusting man (in the form of the arguments I have presented) vs. trusting God. And you choose to trust God. Presumptuous of me to speak for you, but that's the only way I can make sense of your comment. Am I off the mark?