Raf

I love how he adds 250 miles to The Word. Does The Word say 250 miles? Nope. How about putting it in Australia? Make it hard for him to find. Put it somewhere so that the sin would take actual work to commit. Why did that tree exist in the first place? And if another religion approached you saying the reason for suffering is that someone ate from a magic tree at the suggestion of a talking snake, how much serious consideration would you give it?

Ok. So. It's a remake. And it probably involves a historical place that is easy to visit in more than one capacity (casually or in a bit more depth). This is not helping me. My extrapolations could be off base.

Wait, Space Jam wasn't a remake either. I imagine the thing only 1 1/2 people did was to watch the original. That would mean no one felt a need to rewatch it. So it's not Citizen Kane or Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet. So I need a remake where the original is not required viewing. "Animated" sequence that might give someone [presumably] motion sickness. I'm gonna go with Total Recall. Final answer.

Ok, it's not Tron because that's not a remake. Maybe Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Father of the Bride, though I can't think of how either fits all the clues. A remake with an animated landscape scene... Space Jam?

No need to get into it. I think the only reason to bring it up here is in recognition of the role of shared experiences in group cohesion. I don't foresee this new class being any different from the original in that regard. By the way, if anyone is interested in Vince Finnegan's variation on all this, it's in a class called "His Story: God's Purpose of the Ages." The class materials are online and free. Speaking in tongues is about 2/3 of the way through the class, which I think is cool in that it takes the emphasis off the gimmick at the end. I'll post a link to this FREE class when I have time to look it up.

Or a pet.

As respectfully as I can address a premise I now find ridiculous... How do we account for a God who creates a tree whose main purpose in existing is to kill man, places it in a garden, then creates man.... and places him in the same F---ing garden? He could have put the tree in Australia. Or some other life-supporting planet in some other solar system. But no. Puts the tree right in front of the man and says don't eat of the delicious fruit of this here yummy tree. You did WHAT?!?!?! Well, without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin... according to whom? Who came up with THAT idea? Doesn't God get to decide the wages of sin? Why couldn't the wages of sin be $1.50. Because that wouldn't be just??? Who said shedding blood is just? Isn't it just because He said it is? I thought He decides what is just and what is not. The notion that the death of Christ served some independent standard of justice neglects Him as the author of justice. Who did Christ's death pay? God? Why not just forgive the debt? What do you mean, he can't? Sure he can. He's omnipotent. Of course he can. Unless the plot prohibits it. That's the only thing that makes sense.

While we're at it, there is no Biblical basis for "fluency in SIT." There is a skeptical basis for "increasingly convincing bullsh!t," but that is totally the same damn not the same thing.

Rocky, Thank you. I trust more than one person shares your opinion, but you and Word Wolf are the only ones I know to say it out loud (that the conversation prompted a change in opinion). Others... See, when I was a believer, if someone asked me the Biblical basis for a belief, I would cite a chapter and verse with maybe some exposition. "What is the scriptural basis for excellor sessions?" If the answer isn't "here's the chapter and verse," then it's either, "I don't know," which is fair, and "there is none," which is accurate. WW: I accept that we are not on the same page and I am grateful that you approached this subject the way I did at first: as a believer who looked at the evidence and realized what we did was not the same as what we thought we were doing. My post extrapolated from a set of facts. My extrapolation is arguable. The facts are not. Thank you for seeing the distinction. [If I'm reading right, this applies to T-Bone as well, but I need to read their posts more carefully]

The worship manifestations were the ultimate "how" of how TWI "brainwashed" us all. Once they were able to convince every last one of us that we weren't faking tongues (we were, every time), they got to work convincing us we weren't faking interpretation and prophecy. The group cohesion that was accomplished by this shared self-deception was worth its weight in bullsh!t. Whenever someone new was initiated, the entire church came to reinforce him. That's exactly like the first time I did it! No, no, no, you're not faking. It can't be counterfeited, remember? Now on to interpretation. Here's how to fake it manifest it. We don't fake it of course. People who fake it say things like "muck and mire." If you find yourself saying "muck and mire," you're faking it. If you call God "Heavenly God," you're faking it. But if you sound like someone ran inspiration catchphrases through a Psalm-bot generator on Twitter, that's not faking it. Got it? Good. Now don't fake it! If you stumble, don't worry. It's because you've got stage fright. It's totally not because you're faking it and this practice is no more inspired of God than the average burp. Wow, you sound exactly like the tape we just played to plant sample messages for you to emulate as you learn to fake it I did when I first interpreted. Well done! God is working in you just like He worked in everyone else in this room who totally didn't fake it like you just did because you didn't because none of us are faking it and if you shout that the emperor is naked we will ostracize you as a devil spirit possessed lying liarface and you'll be the only one to admit faking it because the rest of us totally are not. Prophecy time! Now this is important. It's going to sound just like interpretation because it's faked in the exact same way the Bible says they produce the same exhortations, edifications and comforts. So what you're going to do is make sh!t up rely on God to provide the words. Unless the words are muck and mire. God hates muck and mire. YOU DID IT! ISN'T GOD WONDERFUL! Man, nothing blesses me more than knowing that the power that created the rings of Saturn and the diamond rains of Jupiter took the time to bless us with a message specifically for the people in this room, a message of such generic banality it sounds like it came from a random Biblical baby food of the day calendar. Hang on, now, hang on. See, something amazing just happened. See, I just joined an offshoot, and they think interpretation is going to sound different than prophecy, because interpretation should be a perfect prayer and praise to God and stuff like that, so, without faking it now, let's all adjust our interpretations to provide messages that are not the same as the interpretations we've been producing all along. Holy sh!t that worked? I mean Hallelujah! Just like the Word says, interpretations and prophecies are different after all! By the way, I know we said prophecies should be generic banalities, but did you know that they can be personal, too? Yup! See, the Bible says prophesy should leave the hearers amazed at the precision. Banalities don't do that, but personal prophecies do. How about that! You're producing personal prophecies just like the suggestion I planted in your head the Word says! Once you have hundreds and hundreds of people backing each other's bullsh!t, it becomes an act of shame to admit you knew it was BS all along. You can't buy that kind of loyalty. "You can say what you want about TWI, but they're the only ones who teach the accuracy of speaking in tongues." Yeah, sure they do. Sure they do.

My study of this topic led me to believe that the New Testament strongly encourages generous giving without attaching a percentage to what qualifies as generous. There is no "at least." Your giving should be a reflection of your faith, your understanding of the Word, the extent to which you preach the word (in word or deed), your diligence in seeking the things of God, and your agape love. Ten percent was never a standard of giving for the church.

Ok, where were we. The show ran for eight seasons on a traditional broadcast network. The seventh season was interrupted by the pandemic. It was the only season without a planned ending. When the show returned, one of the two original main characters was gone (the other having left many seasons earlier). Despite the absence of anyone who could be referred to by the title of the series, the quality of the show barely diminished (as it had become a little more of an ensemble series during the course of its run). The vast majority of the main and secondary characters were women. The men were really there primarily to propel the women's stories. One actress wore a fat suit to hide her pregnancy for half a season.

I did not go in determined to manufacture errors. They were simply there for the finding. Anyone who had studied the books knew they were there. Like the meanings of "all" changed. They could not both be right. And Judas hanging himself having two explanations that cannot both be accurate. And David being a man after God's own heart after the episode with Bathsheba, except that's not what the Bible says. We didn't even get to the good stuff. You didn't like the methodology because it was HONEST, not because it was flawed.

It is almost impossible to overstate how much this reeks of bullcrap. I'll be gentle: If Euclidian geometry were wrong on one point, Euclidian geometry would be perfectly content to remove that one point and salvage all the others. This is not true of PFAL and God's Word. By PFAL's standard, if the wrong pronoun is used in the wrong place, the entire word of God falls to pieces. Nothing in Euclidian geometry makes that kind of assertion about the whole of geometry. Further, let's dispense with the intelligence-insulting conditional "if" in your opening sentence. We produced more than 30 such contradictions and errors, even after handicapping ourselves with a ludicrously generous definition of "error," and for you to come here 20 years later and say "IF there are contradictions" is such a craptacular crapfest of crappy crap that it needs to be flushed before toilet paper is applied because no septic or sewage system could handle the volume. By the way, to avoid an allegation of plagiarism, the old poster Mr. PMosh gets partial credit for the preceding paragraph. If PFAL were God-breathed, it would be correct about the characteristics of the God-breathed Word. And if it were God-breathed and therefore correct about the characteristics of the God-breathed Word, it would share those characteristics. It doesn't. We've demonstrated it time and again. In 20 years, you have not adequately addressed a single demonstrated error/contradiction. You just pretend they don't exist. Dodge. Distract. Deny. Never admit an error is an error. It's dishonest handling of "The Word" and it would insult our intelligence if it were possible for us to think any lesser of your tactics.

To me the hilarious thing in all of this is that the verse in question [knowing this first] has nothing at all to do with interpreting the scripture. That's a bad translation. Wierwille comes SO CLOSE to revealing this, but it would undermine his larger point, so he lets the bad translation stand instead of out and out correcting it. However, if you apply the keys to How the Bible Interprets Itself, you're left to conclude that this verse does not illustrate what PFAL uses it to illustrate. This verse is talking about the ORIGIN of scripture, not about the reader trying to understand it. So the whole doctrine of "private interpretation" is misleading. The Bible never says to avoid it [because it's the world's least necessary instruction. You never saw Stan Lee worrying about people privately interpreting Spider-Man. The Bible assumes its meaning to be clear, and the section of II Peter 1 containing this instruction is telling its readers that "we" [I no longer include myself in that pronoun, so, y'all] are not following cleverly devised fables dreamed up by man, but real doctrines revealed by God. That is, of course, if you still believe Peter wrote II Peter, but that's another can of worms and off-topic here. Here we assume for the sake of this discussion that Peter wrote his epistles, and we discuss accordingly. In that vein, Peter was not talking about the meaning of scripture. He was discussing its origin.

The show's original focus was on three characters, two of whom, in the first season, could have been "the" title character. Although the identity of the title character is ambiguous, it's generally agreed that it's the oldest of the three characters. As the show progressed, the focus shifted subtly from the household of the main characters (one of whom was eased out of the show and the subject of a previous clue) to the circle of friends that helped the main characters confront their issues. One scene found the [presumably title] character on the set of her previous series and mocking one of that series' notable tropes, which was walking down a corridor to make a conversation look more important.

Not sure I know this one. Maybe a few more clues.

Quite certainly.

No. I should be more clear that the show did not end on a cliffhanger. The production company knew the last of its eight seasons was its final season, so when relationships did not resolve, it was by decision, not by running out of time.

I'm here... Rare for its genre, this show featured one significant primary relationship that ended without a positive resolution and a significant secondary relationship that ended without a positive resolution. Oral sex is performed on screen on two females during the course of the series. We don't see the oral sex, but we see the women's faces. One of the scenes ends tragically. The series dealt with profound themes of alcoholism and drug abuse, the long term effect on multiple generations, death, depression, gambling addiction, grief and the decision to give a child up for adoption. It's a comedy. Well, it was.

No idea on the fourth clue. I have an idea on the fifth. but nothing solid. The first three are all giveaways to me.

I would be impressed if they sold the new class freely to anyone who would buy it, if we didn't have to attend a fellowship or whatever in order to take it. Buy it like you'd buy a book or a video or Netflix. Cultflix. Dumflix. That would impress me.

"I wlll teach you the Word as it has not been known since the First Century." Umm.. the Word was not known in the First Century. Most of it was not written in the first century. And no one had a collection of all the documents. "Exactly!" The Bible teaches that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Wierwille tells us God reached him at a point he no longer believed the words Holy or Bible on the cover of the book. The ministry of VPW was NOT the ministry of a believer. It was the ministry of a con man who wanted "abundance" and no longer believed the Bible was holy. No wonder he scratched out verses and replaced them with "literal translations according to usage." In the end, he had no more respect for the Bible then than I have now. He was a counterfeit.

Mistakes are perfectly normal. Everyone makes them. It's only when your words are held to an impossible standard... say, PFAL's definition of God-breathed... that mistakes undermine a claim to inerrancy.

In case anyone is late to this 20-some-odd-year-old "conversation," the real problem is that Wierwille in his writings which ARE allegedly God-breathed provides us with very specific characteristics of the "God-breathed" word, characteristics his own writings do not live up to. We have cited multiple examples, any one of which would disqualify the thesis that Wierwille's writings are God-breathed according to Wierwille's outline of the characteristics of God-breathed writings. The preferred method of dealing with these... let's call them Actual Errors in PFAL, has been to dodge. Distract. Deny. Anything but admit an error is an error. I swear I am not making any of that up. Anywho, My views have changed dramatically since we first engaged in this debate. I've come to the realization that the only thing Wierwille wrote that was genuinely true was that he reached the point in his life where he no longer believed the words "holy" or "bible" on the cover of the book. Everything he said and did in his life from that point forward is consistent with a con man milking gullible people for everything they're worth, abusing their sincerity for his own personal profit. But to be certain, one can remain a faithful believer in Christ while also realizing that Wierwille's characteristics of the God-breathed Word not only don't apply to his own writings, but they don't apply to the Bible either. Because the Bible is not God's Word. I'm not saying that because I'm an unbeliever. I'm saying that because if you read the Bible, you realize very quickly that it does not consider itself God's Word. It doesn't even consider itself a thing. The Bible is not aware of itself as "a" book. That's why Wierwille can say he didn't believe the word "holy" (because his education showed him it wasn't) or "Bible" (because that gives the 66 documents a unity they never had in authorship or compilation). Wierwille came to the same realization I did. He just chose to milk the church where I chose to leave it. The Bible is not the God-breathed Word even according to the Bible! God's Word, Biblically, can be learned from reading the Bible, but they are not the same thing. They do not pretend to be. When you see it that way, contradictions and errors are just things to ignore. Mistakes made by men making a good faith effort to communicate God's will. Nothing falls apart if a preposition is out of place. Luke and Matthew can just disagree about what happened to Judas, neither of them knowing for sure because they didn't know any apostles. Biblical errors and contradictions are the natural result of different authors writing about the same characters decades apart with conflicting sources of information. And Wierwille's errors can just be ignored as the growing pains of someone who adjusted his teaching as he learned more, whether he was sincere about it or not. But Wierwille's books are God-breathed? Nonsense. Not if Wierwille was right about what God-breathed means. And you can bank on that regardless of how you feel about my current beliefs.