Mike

Do you want me to count the number of times that I have RECENTLY posted that I post mostly to show that most grads' complaints about the written teaching we received are unfounded? There may be some of valid complaints about other situations in the ministry that were pretty bad, but even those can be exaggerated and after 30 years should be put to rest by now. But the complaints about the formal teaching are largely the result of having missed or forgotten large and crucial portions of that teaching. THIS I can show people here, and THEN maybe a few might want to look into it deeper with me. Please, look back at my posting record and at how many times I have posted in essence exactly what I just posted, because this is JUST ANOTHER thing in the long string of things you have missed. You are so focused on dragging me into your theological bla-bla-bla that the class was in error that you are INTENSELY BLIND to the content of what I am posting. Really, go back and see what you missed. You may learn something.

geisha, Why VPW? No one else put the Epistles of Paul in front of me and made them live with their writings. No one else showed me what Jesus had to go through for me.

They each knew only SOME of the locations, but none of them could put it all together and successfully distribute it. Those are the jobs God gave to Dr and he got it done. Most of us would have never heard of those guys, let alone filter through them and put it together.

...SOON as in "be patient" ... Be patient like Mark has been patient. *** Ok, Mark, way back when you wrote to me: “You even admit that there is little change from the 4th to the 8th centuries. You're right - NO ONE knows about the changes that occurred from the 1st century to the 4th. So if we have no evidence of change before, and evidence of little change later, why are you so convinced that there were such catastrophic changes? In addition, the quotes of the Scriptures in the early church writers, which were in fact earlier than the 4th century, also attest to the fact that there was no "catastrophic change" in the MSS prior to the 4th century. And again, not everyone forsook Paul.” All his top leaders did forsake him and followers soon followed. It looks to me that even Timothy did in heart, though not immediately and not in overt actions. Timothy failed to make a dent and the Roman Catholic church took over catastrophically. Everything was lost for centuries in practice and that’s reason to suspect the earliest copies were botched. The persecutions testify that they had lost the power they once had learned, Peter talks in his dying last words how so many had lost it. The doctrines that did flourish were way out there, so it looks like a catastrophe to me. ******** You also wrote: “Your explanation of why consisted of repeating that you started by assuming PFAL was God-breathed. But if you want anybody to take you seriously, you're going to have to deal with these questions. And I agree that's not the topic of this thread or the Snowstorm thread. That's why the threads were started in the Doctrinal Forum (the first one not even by me, BTW). You have dodged and avoided direct questions there even more than here.” Who said I want ANYbody to take me seriously? I only expect the hungry and meek to take me seriously. Are you hungry, Mark? Are you starving to know what went wrong with our wonderful ministry, why it went from SO good a time to so bad? Are you meek with perplexity as to what went right, what went wrong, and what can we do about it? If so, then we can talk. If not, and you are satisfied with the theological system you have worked out, THEN BY ALL MEANS start a thread on it and help people with it. Only those who are ready can follow me and get it, and from those who are not I do NOT have to put up with their interrogations and accept their challenges. To them I can point out what was forgotten or missed, and this may help some get ready. ******* Then you wrote: “Then what is it that enables you to completely deny the plain factual errors in the supposedly God-breathed PFAL? You're STILL dodging the issue. It IS relevant to this thread because, for ANYTHING to be accepted as God-breathed and therefore worthy of being the only rule of faith and practice, it has to be at the very least shown to be without glaring errors and contradictions.” Sometimes it’s more a matter of me plain denying you the opportunity to derail me with what YOU THINK are factual errors. This is where I invoke the right to dodge you and your distractions. Other times I successfully work out the apparent errors for myself and move on to more exciting things. I will not put myself under YOUR schedule to deal with what you think is important. I see that you are hopelessly biased and unable to hear what I say, so why should I bother working on apparent errors with you. It would endlessly sap my time. I could even be successful in working out one point with you, but instead of shifting gears and looking at PFAL differently, you’d surely move right on unphased to ANOTHER apparent error to sap still more of my time. Do you deny this? You could do so in ASCII type and I would believe your behavior to the contrary would better predict your future actions than any promise.

Mark, hang in there, I'll get to you. Back on Post #151 I started posting in green fonts highlights from the section of Session Six where we all first heard about "only rule." Let's continue. But why is it that one person follows Plato and another person follows Aristotle someone else follows Socrates, somebody else will follow Freud or Hagel or Nietzsche, why? Very simple. Let's say that I am a student of philosophy and I study all these different men. They are all lodged up here what they have said. Now I have a hodge-podge of different opinions, viewpoints up here. All of these men are centers of reference for learning but in areas they vary and differ. So here I am with confusion. Now in my mind I begin to catalog. I separate out that which appeals to me or that which I feel is right or truth philosophically. And let's say after a period of time by the process of elimination I come to the place that I believe that Aristotle had the greatest amount of philosophical accuracy. And I say "well as for me from now on I am going to follow Aristotle." Then what do I become philosophically? An Aristotelian. Or if I should decide that Plato is the most accurate of them all then I become what they call in philosophical circles a Platonist. Or a Freudian. Do you see how this all came about? All because the natural man has to have a center of reference for learning which is outside of the individual seeking. He has to have a point of contact. But we not only need a point most of us have had multiple points, thousands upon thousands. I bold fonted the idea that will soon develop into the "only rule" idea.

You're not so generous, giving me only two choices, and both scatological.

With them it was dismembered, in a way. *** But how about THIS: Buried, but no one knowing WHERE it is buried, like stolen treasure. This is the metaphor VPW uses in OMSW. *** I imagine that some could be shocked that I could even propose the Word being dead, but I was referring to the WRITTEN physical Word, and not to THE Word of God, which is spiritual and untouchable. In the OT there are several stories of the written Word being destroyed or lost in several ways.

What about DEAD and buried? Who'd even WANT to dig that up?

Now let's not get bogged with a few trees and miss the whole forest.

Yes, I've often marveled at olfactory memory. The nose knows! What I was getting at in that Post #177 is that it would be hard to teach the alphabet to Hellen Keller with her sense of smell or taste.

Well, actually this is only the film class, not the final written book and magazine form. I'm reviewing the highlights of what we all were exposed to over and over, and some of us claim to have memorized. This section of the class seemed to many students to be a rather dry subject, and it didn't have any strong "attention getters" like goodies we can receive from God, and it came right after the emotional high of "Christ in you the hope of glow-ry" so it is not the most memorable part of the class. In fact, this section of the class put many students to sleep, but as I said, due to my background interests I was always on high alert for this section. (Plus, I was usually the AV man for the class and had to be on top of the machinery at all times.) I would look around and see people dozing at this point. Now, as we discuss "only rule," I can see from what people offer as their "only rule" that no one got really it the first time around as to what was originally in the class on this subject. **** It depends on what you mean by "really." See Post #177 for a more information on this.

You are forgiven. Go in peace and sin no more.

Still continuing with Session 6 of the class on "only rule" You see how the learning process operates. Put it in the field of philosophy. This is a field of course many people know I am dynamically interested in and whether I'm qualified or not in the field someone else could judge. But I do have a major in both philosophy and history and I've been deeply concerned about the philosophical field. But why is it that one person follows Plato and another person follows Aristotle someone else follows Socrates, somebody else will follow Freud or Hagel or Nietzsche, why? Very simple. Let's say that I am a student of philosophy and I study all these different men. They are all lodged up here what they have said. Now I have a hodge-podge of different opinions, viewpoints up here. All of these men are centers of reference for learning but in areas they vary and differ. So here I am with confusion. Now in my mind I begin to catalog. I separate out that which appeals to me or that which I feel is right or truth philosophically. Here is where the need for one center of reference or one rule for faith and practice is beginning to develop. The teaching is an analogy where we could substitute Biblical researchers or versions of the Bible for the named philosophers. I'm cutting out sections that are repetitious and not needed for this discussion, just in case some of the grads who somewhat memorized have noticed that some things are missing.

The green font text I was posting was the class transcript. It was VPW speaking. Maybe I wasn't clear about that. Did you think that was me talking about being limited by the five senses and then the baby? I went back and edited in a line to explain it better. BTW, please note that I haven't been following you around from thread to thread throwing all sorts of challenging questions at you about what you have posted AND not carefully reading your posts. So the situation was not quite symmetrical. I was being hounded and the hounding reflected a casual skimming of my posts. You weren't being hounded, so I just wanted to point that out to you.

Yes. *** BTW, what I meant by popularization and simplification is this. From one point of view, the simple popular one, the sun rises and sets like it travels around the earth. This is incorporated into our speech. According to classical physics it's not literally true, though, and there the earth rotates and it only looks like the sun rises and sets. This is a bit more complicated and a less popular way of speaking, even though in the context of classical physics it is factual. If we were to go one more step into complicate and one more step away from popular, in Relativity Theory it is quite valid to say that the sun rises and sets from the earth's frame of reference. Someday there may be another theory where it is again not "true" but these things are not at all important to many simple points that common popular language would want to express. The same is true for saying that we have five senses. In addition to inner ear balance, we could say that temperature sensing is different from touch sensing. We could also include the up-stream sensors in the small intestine that sense what kind of food is in the works and send messages to down-stream glands to get ready for it. There are many mores senses we could add into the discussion IF we were discussing anatomy and physiology, but we're not. Here's another point: What use could Helen Keller have for the sense of balance? It's information we're talking about, and balance is not important nor commonly thought of as a sense for learning the higher things of cognition. Same with taste and smell. They could (or should) be lumped together as one sense.... AND THEN even rejected altogether as not important to this section of the class, but like footnotes, that would be an unnecessary distraction to most students.

The point is building. Do you remember this section of the class? It's the build up to the "only rule for faith and practice."

This question does not make enough sense to me to answer. Could you start all over and re-phrase it? Please note: you're lucky I feel like burning time right now. I think you're not trying to be as cooperative as I am. And could you tell me why you're asking this? Will it help you understand "only rule" or help you (and others) resist learning it?

Ok, it's noted, so let me guess. You want to say that Dr made a mistake by listing the five senses and leaving out the sense of balance that the inner ear sends to the brain?

Which one? This thread has been moving fast and I'm also talking to you in Doctrinal at the same time. ...(crazy technology!)

They're coming to take you away, Ha Ha!

No, first I answered a question and then I posed a question.

Instead of resisting learning and asking resisting questions why don't you just go along with the class and submit your questions in writing when it's all over?

Your iconic statement is : Blathering fool, ignore him and he'll go away Should I invoke it?

I think that comes later with learning, and it's not an INPUT sense. It is a complex behavior learned BY WAY of the senses of touch and sight. The inner ear semicircular canals can be thought of as part of the sense of touch FOR SIMPLICITY.

Continuing on with the class transcript for Segment 31, Session 6: The reason a child can learn is because a child has the five senses and it has a center of reference outside of the child. The baby is born for instance and lo and behold right after it is born they give it to its mother. The mother immediately begins talking to the baby and says, "my, aren't you just the cutest thing." And it's redder than a beet. And she'll talk to that little baby just like as if that baby is already graduating from high school or from college. Well, what is the mother to that baby? That mother is a point of reference. A center of reference for learning outside of the baby. Pretty soon father comes in and when father comes in they allow him to hold the baby. He's scarred to death because it's so tiny he's afraid he'll break it in two. But he looks at it and he says, "my goodness, looks just like me or like your mother." The father becomes a center of reference. It has sisters and brothers, all of these are centers of reference for learning which are outside of the baby.