Mike

You're assuming that the showing of inaccuracies is valid. I don't assume that; I contend those showings are inaccurate themselves. You seem to think their proof is a done deal. I don't. I find many problems with the techniques used by those doing the showing. I reject their findings. That ought to answer your question totally.

Actually I wasn't making a logical argument there, just a hunchy observation: that you know not what you reject. I suspect (based on many similar, deeper observations of other grads) that you have only a partial knowledge of some of the materials (note the double incompleteness), AND that it's partially forgotten, unknowingly distorted, and hopelessly mixed with other teachers' comments and writings. If I'm wrong I'll be delighted to encounter a full-bodied PFAL mind. But I strongly suspect you DEDUCE from anecdotal memories and others' stories (rather than DIRECTLY OBSERVE) that the contents of the writings are not valuable to you. Everywhere I go for the past ten years I encounter vast unawareness of the contents of the writings. Those few who do study one or two books do so with a huge chip on their shoulder, and encounter many corresponding distortions. Inaccurate knowledge of the writings seems to be the rule, and the many grads who reject the writings seem to do so based on emotional reactions to all the stories and other peoples reports on the writings. Like I say, I'll be delighted to encounter any grads who honestly know the materials that so many reject unknowing. Do you think you are one, and that you knowingly reject the contents of the writings?

I feel sorry for YOU. You're missing the good stuff and focused on bad. That HAS to be unhealthy. In your zeal to magnify what is perceived as evil (and some might even be factual) you're missing the good that got put into print. If you were better aware of the good that is in print, then you might be able to make a better choice of focus.

The attitudes and tools of those "doing the showing" are not the same attitudes and tools I've adopted. Hence I think their "showing" is full errors. I don't have any reason to adopt their strategies. I don't see them turning thousands of people toward God's goodness like I saw vpw do with his ministry. Well, I think I am doing this. I don't think the traditional sources for God's printed Word are valid enough, just approximate. It's not like you can point to a God-breathed text, ESPECIALLY IN ENGLISH, and say "That's God's Word." What you study is actually an abstraction for God's Word, starting with English versions, then reaching back to relatively modern critical texts, then reaching back even farther to ancient fragments, leaning more and more on "expert" translators and language scholars to assist you. You make your many judgments as to which scholars to trust, and where, including yourself, and you hopefully reconstruct an image of what God's Word IS, and then you try to study it. My approach is much simpler. I've come to believe that the 1942 incident was true, that God taught vpw what to put into print, and that is GOD'S solution to problem of abstraction that faces traditional Christians. I think you're mistakenly seeing "high maintenance" where I am experiencing "active enjoyment."

It's strong enough to endure LOTS of assaults, like the ones I get from people who are outraged by my choice of focus. I think you misunderstood me. When I said "look at" I meant "look with focus, magnification, and high repetition." It's not like I have to run and hide from the negatives that some want to magnify, I just simply choose to not magnify them myself. What I DO MAGNIFY are the positives I learn about God from the collaterals. I can briefly look at the negatives, and deal with them. I just don't mull over them, over and over. I'm in a high repetition cycle with the goodies, though. It's in the areas of focus, repetition, and magnification that I reject the negatives and choose the positives.

It's all in HOW one looks at these things, and in WHAT one looks at. I choose to look primarily at the end product of the 1942 incident: the written teachings. As a result of that focus I now have the good and loving God in my life, a vast improvement over what I had before. I benefited and God gets the glory. It's not vpw who's elevated in my perspective; it's GOD who is elevated. If I chose to look at all the things that were wrong in vpw's life and what went crazy in the ministry, then I'd get rapidly talked out of my relationship with God. It's NOT the case that I spend a lot of time thinking that vpw was great. I just read his writings, writings that are actually from a large extended team of his prior teachers and his twi editors, not merely from vpw the man. I don't sit around thinking "The snowstorm was true. The snowstorm was true." I sit around with the writings and find all kinds of great enjoyment in seeing the God of Jesus, Moses, Paul, David, and all those wonderful people proclaiming His promises to me. I sit around thinking "God is good. God is GOOD!"

I look at it differently. First of all, we know nothing of Mrs Wierwille's ignorance. That's far from established. I'd totally ignore that point until a lot more was established. AT LEAST I'd want to have the exact text of what she supposedly wrote. Second, Dr OFTEN mentioned how God would tell people to keep quiet about things. It was a recurring theme in his teachings. Third, people change in many ways from year to year, decade to decade. So do audiences. How things get expressed change with these evolutions. This happens with all of us. Lastly, the supposed discrepancies between the accounts COULD be looked at as complimentary, like we look at the 4 Gospels. I choose to look differently.

There is one magazine article where he very briefly mentions it. I forget which one. All the other memories of this story are blurred TVTs (Twi Verbal Traditions) that could have been spoken by anyone, but mistakenly remembered as VPW being the speaker. It's conceivable that VPW spoke it out on some other occasion, but I never heard him do it, nor heard OF him doing it. It's been my observation and recollection that after it was published in the '72 book by Elena Whiteside he hardly ever got into it or anything like it again. He moved on to other things after that book.

There are more pieces to this puzzle on pages 23 and 24 of "The Bible Tells Me So." Then, still more pieces can be found on page 14 of "God's Magnified Word," Volume IV.

Hi WW, Just thought I'd help a little since I'm home sick.

Human memory is a fascinating thing. One thing I’ve noticed that’s universal to the human condition is that we trust our memory MUCH more than we should. This goes all the way back to Eve. I’ve noticed that hardly anyone ever goes back to the sources of their memories, and hence hardly anyone ever discovers how flimsy it can be at times. Sometimes memory can be fascinatingly accurate, but many more times it forgets and/or distorts things, and can even invent things. I’ve done many experiments with my memory to see that I fall square into the category I just described. It can be very interesting to re-visit the source of long held memories. Just for the sake of memory calibration, quoted below word-for-word is the ONLY thing Dr mentions in the film class about the 1942 intervention: The reason the Dead Sea is so dead is because it has only an inlet no outlet. The reason some people are so dead spiritually is because they have only inlet no outlet. They do not give. As you give you receive. As you receive you must give for it just works like this. As I receive God’s Word I give it out, as I give it out I receive. Many years ago God said to me once, He’d teach me the Word like it had not been known for centuries, if I would teach it. I thought that was a pretty good idea until I really got into the depth of the Word, then I found out that as I taught it nobody believed it anyway cause they already had preconceived ideas on the accuracy of God’s Word. But I learned this that as long as I kept God’s Word He kept filling me. He kept giving me more. He had said, if I’d teach it. And my friend Dr. Higgins used to call from Chicago from one of the great hotels there, where she had her office. She was an osteopathic physician and surgeon one of the greatest. She used to call every night between 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning to my office. And she knew that if I was still working the Word of God I’d be in my office at that time and she only asked me one question, "What did God teach you today?" The snow storm is mentioned in Elena Whiteside’s book on page 178. Sometimes class instructors read from that book or paraphrased it while running a class, so that may have been the seed of a “memory” that Dr mentioned the snow in the class.

Th... thee...the...thee...the...thee That's All Folks!

waysider, Come on now... be nice... You forgot this part:

Hi Raf, It's been six years now since we first met. I do feel quite free and thankful to enjoy the contents of those books. The written materials, book and magazine form, are free of the problems that plague most people here. It's nice to see you again. I thought it ironic that Lifted Up's quote included a reference to you, so here you are in the flesh. Maybe someday we can chat about writing or wordplay. I'm done warring. BTW - Do you know where the word "pun" comes from? It's an acronym for Play Uhh Nwords. :D (edited to correct spelling in last line)

I’m sure this is not surprising to anyone, but I look at these things very differently. What MAY be surprising are the DETAILS in how I do (and resulting from) my differing observations, should anyone take the time to closely examine them. I do not look closely at weather reports, nor anecdotal information. Though I did cite Lifted Up’s report, I wouldn’t want to base any aspect on my life on his report verifying VPW’s report. What I, however, DO LOOK at is the heart of the matter regarding that day in 1942: that God promised to teach Dr His Word “like it had not been known since the first century” if he would teach it to others. Since I fall into the category of those “others” that Dr taught, I’m in a pretty good position to asses the validity of the heart of the incident, i.e., the reported promise of God. Ten years ago I set out to closely study the FINAL WRITTEN FORM of that teaching of Dr’s to “others” that he often claimed to have received from God. Contrary to my previous ten years of ministry investigations, these last ten years have TOTALLY ignored all other information (especially the negatives) on Dr’s ministry, no matter who offered it. For these past ten years I have focused greatly on the final written forms of that teaching only. In all my discourses here I have pointed out how there is considerable unawareness and/or forgetfulness in most grads with regards to this specific material. Ten years ago I included myself in this category and sought to correct it. From my earlier ten years (1888-1998) of investigating the kinds of things commonly reported here, and from recent my ten years of investigating the written teachings, I conclude (1) that God did indeed promise to teach Dr on that day in 1942, (2) that Dr taught (or is teaching via print) these wonderful revelations to me, and (3) that Dr’s report of snow on that day is as believable (if not more) as Lifted Up’s report of rogue snowstorms. I’ve done my best to cover all the bases, and I believe that if ANY of us grads choose to look away from what went wrong 25 and 40 years ago, they (like me) can then clearly see that we were given a lasting treasure to study and enjoy immensely. *** God bless you all and I wish you all a great new year. I don’t wish to get into another round of the “Mike Wars” here. We’ve been through this stuff ad infinitum. I’m only posting this as a possible last stand, seeing from another thread that open discussions of these matters may come to a halt or some other kind of change. I’m grateful to Pawtucket for allowing me to present “ANOTHER other side” to the TWI story in huge quantities here.

We were taught a rather different kind of SIT than I saw elsewhere in Christian circles. They were far more emotional about it. Like my previous post indicated, we were heavily taught to note where OUR initiation action in the manifestations was crucial. Most other practitioners of “glossolalia” got into the idea of God operating it, while for what we did WE had to operate. I’d discount any brain scan research done on glossolalia for this reason. What we did was different. Some of us even got into the idea of developing “fluency.” We strongly separated ourselves from the emotion based tradition of glossolalia. *** Not necessarily so with rogue snowstorms in rural settings. Below is what Lifted Up posted on the subject of rogue snowstorms exactly 6 years ago to this day in a thread titled “Dr's Last Teaching - LOST for 17 Years!” posted Jan 1 2003 Post #159 Lifted Up Rafael wrote... "It didn't snow. The weather reports from that day in that region prove it did not snow that day." What weather reports? I have been staying out of this for some reasons, but I can't help being curious about that statement. Just from a weather reporting point of view, a snow shower such as that in question would be unlikely to show up (or proof that it didn't happen) in any old weather reports, unless the point in question is precisely at an observing and reporting point for weather data. General conditions...the high and low temperature for that given day and whether or not there was precipitation...at even a very a nearby point...just will not tell you either way. I experienced a very brief and local but intense snow shower one day back in 1979 when I was running near HQ. One minute it was not snowing, the next minute the snow was almost blinding, and fell hard enough to whiten the ground; five minutes later it was gone. Just a couple miles away, it evidently did not snow at all. I have actually seen that kind of thing a number of times; most noteably in the mountains of central PA, but here it was happening in fairly flat country. The same idea of extreme local weather variations happens in warm weather. I sometimes have a fun time explaining to insurance people, or their clients, that I cannot tell them for sure that there was or was not a storm causing damaging winds at their precise location, because we had no reports either way at the particular time and date they are interested in. (It is easy to be out in the boonies around where I live and work). Sometimes of course I can tell them for sure there was nothing around...of course these calls are not for weather from sixty years ago, either. Of course, if there were evidence that the temperature was close to, say eighty degrees at the time in question, then the occurrence of a snow shower at that time might be deemed implausible...just like the creation of a dry area across the red Sea by a strong east wind. The context of the discussion can be forund here: http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.ph...4226&st=140

waysider, For those who want the more full story: 1. - The 1942 intervention by God was in the category of phenomena, not revelation. It was of God’s doing. We were taught that the revelation manifestations were operated BY US, and energized by God. Phenomena is operated by God. 2. - When Dr taught us in the Advanced Class that SIT was necessary for revelation he was talking about daily ongoing revelation for what’s important in our lives, jobs, and our relationship with God. He was NOT saying that SIT was necessary for ALL revelation, just for LOTS of it. This SHOULD be obvious. Before Pentecost and before SIT there WAS revelation, just not lots of it. Very few people, prophets mostly, could rise up from the senses and hear God. After Pentecost anyone could get spirit, but they still needed to built it up to rise above the senses with SIT to get lots of revelation. When we more fully and more accurately embrace what we were taught, then apparent contradictions melt away.

freedombound, Oddly, I actually HAVE met a large number of people (lately) who are into this practice of cutting. First of all, though, it sounds like socks was onto a major dichotomy clarification. Some cultures practice cutting like tatoos, for religious decorative purposes. It sounds like this guy you mentioned was not into that practice but the other one, the one that resembles a self punishment of sorts. I hang out with artists and writers often, and many are young, like in their early 20's. It seems this self mutilation thing is a rather recent thing in our culture. All of the "cutters" I've met (about 6) are under 25. My first questions, freedombound, would be WHEN did this occur and HOW OLD was the person? One reason I ask about the timing is because I do know what you mean by "Again the point is what do we expect to find down in the Valley???" It seems to me that the types of leadership that would shrink away from wanting to help the down and dirty came later in our TWI experience, while the earlier leadership was far more inclined to get in and help, unflinched by the outrageousness of the oppressed, HAVING BEEN THEIR THEMSELVES OFTEN. It was later in the game that leadership was on the hunt for "quality people" and didn't want to get their hands dirty. One last thought: SOMETIMES the afflicted citizens of "the valley of human need" DO NOT WANT deliverance. They like being different, and cutting areas of the body that are exposed certainly does this job well. Did you see any said wounds? SOMETIMES getting rid of distractions, those who did not genuinely want deliverance, was the right thing for the health of a fellowship. I'd be most interested in the year this all took place. It doesn't sound like the 70's to me.

"If you don't control your thoughts the advisary will..." ...Yeah! And before you know it, he'll even have you spelling his name wrong... II Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Benjamin Franklin was the only President of the United States... ...who was NEVER President of the United States! Firesign Theatre "Everything You Know Is Wrong" 1974

The point I aim to make is a valid one. My point is that many modern people think absolute truth was only for the ancient days of robes and sandals. If they think that way they should be up front and say so, that they think the scriptures are a lot of bunk, and that only modern scripture rejectors have any real truth. I think absolute truth is available today. This is not popular. This Cult Awareness is a back door way of rejecting the idea that God is real and can intervene with His revelation. I feel this should be brought out to the forefront, that many modern people only want to tolerate flimsy "relative truths." This is contradictory absolutism, that there are absolutely no absolutes. I feel this needs to be pointed out. I did. Thank you.

I think there's a hidden agenda in Cult Awareness Schemes, and that is there is no absolute truth to be had, and no one can ever claim to have any kind of true authority. In this respect Cult Awareness Schemes become an cult in themselves, with the authoritative take on the rarity of truth. This contradiction is typically shoved under the rug just like other cults do. If a typical Cult Awareness Scheme were to be applied to Jesus or Paul or Moses or David, all four would be regarded as evil cult leaders to be avoided.

Again, you are addressing the obvious. I had THIS in mind when reading John's suggestions: "Create a mechanism for modifying beliefs & practices."