Raf

Oldies, The answer to your question is irrelevant to my point. It distracts, and I'd rather stay on point: You DO dismiss the evil. You say you don't, but to even hear it causes you to spring to VPW's defense, every time. You have to accuse people of blindness if they don't agree with you. Where does that come from? Yes, Jesus Christ paid the price for my blessings. You are correct. And VPW took advantage of those Christ-purchased blessings to figuratively fleece and literally f* the flock. The Bible tells us to watch out for people like that. It does not tell us to compare the number of times they resisted temptation to the number of times they succumbed. It tells us to avoid these people, not to debate their legacies. What was it VPW said: Small minds talk about people, great minds about God's Word? There's a piece of advice I'll take from him. But enough of him, already, far as I'm concerned.

It's disingenuous to say we're comparing Hitler and Dahmer to VPW. What we're doing, oldiesman, is critiquing the validity of your defense of VPW in this regard. The point is, you can't dismiss the evil for the good. It doesn't work that way. I don't think VPW is the worst of the worst. In fact, if not for this board, I wouldn't think much of him at all. He is not a part of my life. But when I see people trying disingenuous defenses, like we're supposed to revere him or think the earth moved under his feet and the sky tumbling down whenever he walked, well, that's when I have to have a tad more sympathy for the women he used as receptacles than I have for his precious legacy.

No, Oldies, Wierwille wasn't a cannibal. But here's the consensus (others feel more strongly, but most agree on the following)... He committed serial acts of adultery and justified it with a tainted interpretation of scripture. He slandered and expelled those who confronted him. He pretended to write things he did not write. He pretended to research things he did not research. He pretended God intervened in his life via two snowstorms, at least one of which most definitely did not happen (most feel neither happened, but in deference to the miniscule possibilities raised by others, I'll decline from insisting on this point). He did this in order to claim some kind of supernatural stamp of approval on his ministry, and since at least one of those did not happen, we are obliged to question his integrity on the matter. And that's without even MENTIONING money. These were not things he did in his private life. THESE ARE THINGS HE DID IN HIS MINISTRY, IN GOD'S NAME. Those are the consensus points. So did he ever pray? Sure he did. Did he lead people to Christ? Of course he did. But are we supposed to ignore the harm he did to God's people? Not on your life. Oldies, why is it so important NOT to remember the harm done by a cult leader who used (usurped?) his position in the body of Christ to harm people? Why is it so important NOT to hold him up as a warning to others? Because in SPITE of whatever good he did (and he did do some good), Victor Paul Wierwille has a badly tainted legacy. I'm sorry, but when you twist God's Word to your own lascivious ends, you don't get a "Get out of bad memories free" card. You get the legacy you earn. [This message was edited by Rafael 1969 on February 11, 2004 at 13:18.]

I'm sure Jeffrey Dahmer once gave money to a homeless guy. And I know for a fact that he resisted the temptation to eat people far more often than he succumbed to it, so we should really weigh his life in that perspective. Yet somehow, that doesn't seem to matter to people who insist on calling him a serial killing cannibal. I don't get it.

Be happy to help in any way. rafael@livingepistlessociety.org

See if this works. Zix, I have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't change my avatar.

Paw! Ask him for a copy! Let's all chip in for the rights. We could post the thing here.

Mr. Lingo: Koestler's conclusions were plain old-fashioned wrong. I'm not saying anti-Semitic. I'm saying factually incorrect. Modern Jews were not descended from the Khazars, and Yiddish is not the Khazar language written with Hebrew letters. This factor ALONE disqualifies Wierwille's works as "the God-breathed Word." Wierwille's stuff is interesting, and sometimes quite valuable. But to stake your life on it (I'm not saying you would) takes a healthy dose of idolatry mixed in with closed-mindedness masquerading as steadfastness. Not that I'm making accusations, mind you. Just an observation.

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been away from these discussions so long. Have I missed anything? Hi CoolWaters! God Bless You.

The speculation that the former and disgraced president of the Way now lives in a home owned by TWI is fair game. A photo of said home with enough information to identify its location is not fair game. This is my opinion. Official positions may vary.

Literally. In the opening scene of ROTK, I could not tell when they started using the CGI Gollum on screen.

Bernard Hill was outstanding. Come to think of it, Sean Bean got robbed in FOTR, and Andy Serkis was robbed in both sequels (I use the term loosely).

Spoiler below: Highlight with the mouse if you want to read it, but it discusses details of the movie that you won't want to know before you see it... I guess you're right. But then, I figured out the ending to the Sixth Sense about 30 minutes into the movie. As for Mystic River, the moment the mute showed up in the grocery store, my date and I looked at each other and nodded as if to say "He did it." Then, as the movie progressed, it seemed that he did it to keep his brother from running off with the girl. Later we find that wasn't the motive, so we got the motive wrong but we got the killer right. I loved what they did with Tim Robbins character, because I never felt that he was guilty, but I was dying to know how he got those cuts.

It's not funny. I mean, I'm listening to it, and it's not funny. Not even slightly. If Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and the ZAZ team all deconstructed and rewrote it, it still wouldn't be funny. At all. But hey, to each his own.

I didn't realize that she won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress by the time I posted that message. She was so deserving.

I have all four (including The Hobbit) in a boxed set. Not themed to the movies, but they don't have Alan Lee's wondrous illustrations, either. If I'm not mistaken, the Lord of the Rings comes to about 1,000 pages.

Well, at least Johnny Depp got nominated for Pirates of the Caribbean. Whew! I thought for SURE he would get snubbed. the fu@!(?

As an acting vehicle, this movie must be seen. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney all deliver for director Clint Eastwood. As a murder mystery, its only flaw is that you can figure out the killer's identity almost from the first moment he/she appears on the screen. You spend your time wondering what the killer's motive was, only to find out you were wrong about the motive (but not the killer's identity). The mystery is good, but it's the acting that carries this movie.

Excellent movie. There's a scene in which Ben Kingsley is shown working at a gas station/convenience store. I remember seeing it and thinking... Hillary was right! Ok, never mind. Anyway, Excellent movie. If you can like a movie without necessarily liking any of its main characters, so much the better. Everyone in this movie is deeply flawed, though one of them crosses the line to being off his rocker. Highly recommended.

Any movie that can make Charlize Theron unattractive in a nude scene gets an automatic Best Picture nomination from me. Seriously, she is outstanding, and the movie is compelling. You're forgiven if its subject matter (real-life female serial killer) puts you off. But if you can stomach the plot (and all of its stomach churning, brutal honesty), you will be rewarded with a powerful, powerful film.

Finally finished the first book. hey, I have a busy schedule. I'm lucky I finished it at all. bravo to Peter Jackson for ending the first movie about one chapter into the second book.

The Air Supply song and the Billy Squier song are very, very different. Savage Garden: To the Moon and Back.

You know how you buy an album (?) or CD for one or two songs, and then you hear the rest of the songs on the CD and some of them are bad but others are really, really good - yet they never got any airplay (or hardly any)? These are songs that didn't quite become "hits," but are really good songs. I call them "Greatest Misses." What are yours? Running on Ice, Billy Joel James, Billy Joel Temptation, Billy Joel Baby Grand, Billy Joel and Ray Charles How Can I Not Love You, Joy Enriquez Only Love, Linda Eder The Edge of Forever, The Dream Academy Lonely is the Night, Air Supply

Yes, Ginger, but were they superduper sad sorry preacher men? You see, that's the question.

I kept nothing from PFAL. I told it everything it wanted to know. Ahhhh. Ambiguity. The devil's volleyball.