Mike

Hang on ma'am! I'll save you! I'll just tear my shirt into strips, tie them together, and throw you a line_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ;)

I hope you're a prophet, because I could use the work. It's pretty rainy here.

Yes, they hold on to some of their TVTs but drift farther from the collaterals every year. They have nothing resembling the outreach excitement and numbers we saw decades ago, though.

rascal, After reading your post #1 on the new thread you just started I think I should take back about 60% of what I just posted above. I can now understand your angst much more. If there's anything I could do to help I would. God bless you.

rascal, People here have often communicated to me that maybe I need to switch to decaf and calm down a little. Yesterday waysider did it in a most polite and gentle manner. May I suggest the same to you? You seem a little artificially worked up in your focus on rooting out all evil. Relax a little. The worst of twi is long past, like I posted above about twi being destroyed twice already. The winds of trend used to blow in twi’s direction and hoards of people went that direction. As we see now, many who came to the class did so for not-the-best reasons and many activities eventually evolved into not-so-good practices. Those winds are blowing in the opposite direction now. The only people who are going to “sign up” with twi nowadays are people who are bound to go down some OTHER hole if twi were to be utterly removed from the face of the earth. The only people who are going to “sign up” with me are those who are willing to brave hurricane force winds of trend blowing them AWAY from the collaterals. I think you can relax your “shouting from the rooftops” exposing the evil with which you have taken on as a personal duty to root out all vestiges thereof. Your dedication is beginning to remind me (and some several others here) of the same Corps mentality that we all had enough of long ago. Your focus seems a little like a 1985 Corps Clergy who changed her playbook but held on to her tactics. Relax a little. We’ve all been set free of the twi shackles.

I think TWI was destroyed in 1986, and again in 2000.

rascal, On THIS we agree. I have spent 5 years here observing and trying to show others over and over that the doctrine most grads, especially the heaviest complainers, was NOT from the PFAL teachings but from a host of evolving and multiplying TVTs, or Twi Verbal Traditions. When it came to the tough treatment the Corps received, the original intent of that treatment was training. We all were told that going into the Corps was a heavy commitment and that training was supposed to be tough, like boot camp only more on the mental and spiritual side than on the physical, although that was included too. When I heard of the what the Corps was all about I said "I'm not ready; that's not for me; not yet anyway." I was content to learn and live OUTSIDE the Corps program and thought of it even as a calling. I admired how quickly others felt they WERE ready, but now we know a lot of them weren't. Imitation is thought of as the highest form of flattery, but I think it's also the worst form of learning. Sometimes good for starters, but not always. I saw lots of VPW imitators in the Corps. Cheap imitations they were. They were able to get the tough love down right away, imitating the earlier successes in the boot camp tough training approach. But as the older leaders started dying off and Dr retiring from the scene, the younger tough-love imitators dealt a lot of damage. Tough love is something I saw Jesus Christ use, but when necessary and with Word of Wisdom. He first had to master tender love to qualify for the more rare times more intense situations where tough love was necessary. I think Dr did pretty well in learning the same wisdom, but not-so the younger leaders. They skipped over that part, and got the counterfeit in place. I found that many joined the Corps with no plan for what to do if that track was not best for them. A lot of impetuous decisions were made and people found themselves in a program not suited for them but they HAD to stay. It was either the Corps or nothing, so they had to do whatever to stay in. The gut-retchingness of the decision to leave the was self manufactured by many into being equivalent to leaving God. They just built a entire system in their minds that wasn’t the Word, and the young leaders enforced all this with no wisdom whatsoever. All the while, from 1975 to 1985 Dr was gradually mounting up a campaign to call them back to the pure doctrine of the collaterals and love, culminating with his very last teaching in one last desperate appeal to top leadership to get it right and come back to the revelation and forget (or at least temper) all the slogans and program TVT doctrine generators. If people had kept it all more simple and just had listened a lot would have been different. None of the abuses complained about here are to be found (Oh, some TRY!) in the collaterals and articles. They all come from both leadership and Corps program followers building a huge set of broken cisterns farther and farther removed from printed PFAL. I have seen dozens of Corps people over the past ten years who clearly put Dr’s publicly spoken words over his printed words. I have seen tens of Corps people tell me that what Dr told them IN PRIVATE overshadowed what was in the collaterals, and they told me this with a flair of pride in their voice. Did Dr do wrong. Sure! Was he the subhuman monster portrayed by some here? Not at all. Should we hang on his every spoken word and policy and program and think it’s God-breathed? No, not at all. But the printed material is quite different. So, we agree on this: “Genuine spiritually healthy doctrine and practice just doesn`t do this to people. It doesn`t lead them to become monsters, predators preying on the innocent.” In studying the collaterals I don’t get the slightest tug in that direction. From the young Corps leaders I did get that tug, and a lot. But the collaterals are pure.

brideofjc, You wrote: “Verse in John?” Yes. It should be clear from the context. Are you familiar with the PFAL teaching on the four crucified? *** You wrote regarding the posting here that supposedly identifies errors in PFAL: “It's all in the Greek, Mike.” Pshaw! What about Orientalisms and Ohioisms? What about Figures of speech? Could it be that you are exaggerating the value of your Greek learning? What about the Aramaic? What do you think of those who think the originals were in Aramaic and then translated into Greek a little later? Does that bother you? *** I had mentioned that I use an entirely different method of looking at the collaterals. I get different results. It's all in the method. You responded with: “What would that be? One eye closed and the other squinted so tight that you can count your eyelashes?” Is there any reason you want to be rough with me like that? Did I offend you or something? Hey, I like to talk serious here, but if you want to get into a pizzing contest I might think about doing a Zorba the Greek tap dance number on top of your table in between all your drinks there, and kick over one into your lap only at the very end. But then again, maybe you can still learn something from my being more civil with you, so I’ll refrain. Besides, I’d rather teach the audience the Word than show off my theatrical skills. *** Ok, let’s start again. You responded with: “What would that be? One eye closed and the other squinted so tight that you can count your eyelashes?” What I do is one eye squinted so tight that I can count my eyelashes, and the OTHER closed. Huh? Wait a minute! Doooooooooouuuuughhhhhhhhhh! See what you made me do! The method I use is the same thing we were taught in PFAL to do with ancient manuscripts and available texts. There are many elements to this method. I mentioned a few in passing above. Here’s a specific example: When a contradiction is encountered in PFAL, the method Raf & Co. (sorry Raf, you’ve been immortalized in my nomenclature now) is to pop a Champagne bottle after a little sorting through it’s validity. The method we were taught and I employ is to sort thorough it A LOT and forget about the Champagne. My goal is to see when and where and how it fits, holding the assumption that SOMEHOW it must fit. We were taught that if it doesn’t fit after all known methods are employed you let it sit and wait. Dr taught us that sometimes he had a verse sitting in waiting for 15 years before God showed him how to handle it. The "SOMEHOW it must fit" probably got your gourd, but it's the assumption you use when dealing with scripture manuscript discrepancies. I'm not looking to prove that PFAL is God-breathed; I am now to the point that I ASSUME it's God-breathed. The proof took place decades ago and is done. Assumptions are necessary and unavoidable in every endeavor. It's good to be aware of them and to choose them carefully. I did that long ago. It's done. There are other differences in our methods, but time is short. *** When I withdrew the italics approach you wrote: “Hedging are we?” No. I said several times that the self contradiction is minor compared to the contextual violation. *** I mentioned that I think most posters on this thread shoved that entire passage under the rug 25 and 35 years ago because of the chills of verse 17a. You responded with: “You know why people tried to ignore it? Cause deep down that Holy Spirit thing was convicting away, asking each and every one of us what we were building?” Speak for yourself, John. I was building something different than you were. convicting conschmicting The LAST thing in life I needed was to be convicted of my sin. The RCs are WAY ahead of you and all Protestants in threatening people into heaven. I had nightmares of hell as early as the 3nd grade. There were vestiges of RC condemnation that cropped up in my head as late as two years ago. Probably STILL some in there. I was building a relationship with the Father and His Son. And the way verse 3:17a was fixed for me helped me all the more. I don’t want a god who’s a mere fire escape from hell. And I don’t think God wants me to view him that way either. I want a Father like Jesus had! I dont want a god who would destroy me if I sin like 17aKJV threatens. The god you are describing seems pretty common, traditional, and miserable. The old man the bird and the hippie. If you want to convince me of THAT value and validity you’ll have to get in line... a LONG line... yawn

rascal, You wrote: “You don`t have to believe mike, you have closed your ears and your heart to the anguish suffered at the man of the flesh that you venerate.” No, I close my ears and heart to SOME THINGS, but not that. Here’s what I do close off too: the WAY it’s presented, WHERE it’s presented (like in public or private), and the intent behind it. When I don’t see those lined up right, I’m locked tighter than a safe. I close my mind to that. Anyone want to search out all the places here where I’ve testified that I have a closed mind? I can remember about three or four. *** And you’re also wrong about me not being hurt. You wrote: “It certainly wasn`t insignificant if YOU were the one who was drugged and raped...or it was YOUR family member who died from following vic`s doctrine and instructions...” It took me years to heal from the wounds of several TVTs and twi people. I still deal with it to this day, although I HAVE improved greatly. In 1998, before receiving any of this this healing, I had gradually reached a point where a few of my e-mails to clergy and leadership reached a negative-VPW pitch comparable to the most ardent and eloquent of posters I sometimes call “complainers” here. And, I might add, because I CAN relate to those who hurt, IN PRIVATE it's a totally different situation with them there than in public here. I can discuss some things with them there in a totally different way. I can offer this to you, to talk by phone and show you. I’ve had private communications with many women here who previously were infuriated with me. Abigail is one, and she allowed it to be posted how it all went down. I don’t call them complainers when I’ve talked to them personally and it’s different. Others here can verify that I'm quite civil and personable, not an attack dog like so many Corps became. *** You wrote: “I can recognize that we are either of the flesh or of the spirit....our fruit as described in galatians identifies which and what the consequences are.” Can you recognize how Paul reports in Romans 7 that BOTH are present at once within a man? *** You wrote: “This isn`t a forum FOR us to share eloquent and intense teachings on God and his son, that would be inapropriate.... It is a forum to discuss what happened to us in twi.” What happened to me in twi was largely good; intensely good too. Thousands of others also experienced this. Besides, you don’t have to use this forum (but you probably could) to show me your comparable fruit, comparable to the results PFAL brings me. There are other ways to do it, but “do it” MUST be done to get MY attention. I feel very safe in the meantime assuming that your ability to bless is FAR less than Dr’s, so Dr’s direction (with destination: printed-PFAL, not personal vpw) is what’s got my attention. *** You wrote: “Mike It dies NOT apply to me.... *I* am not hurting people in the name of God. I am not lying stealing killing and destroying, using my reputation as God`s leader to intimidate and scriptures as my weapons to enforce compliance to my will... ...Not even CLOSE!!!!!” If PFAL is God-breathed, then you are hurting people, and I’ll promise to help you heal from it all when you finally realize it. If PFAL is not God-breathed, then I’m not hurting anyone any more than Kenyon, Bullinger, Stiles, or Leonard did.

waysider, Thanks, but no thanks. You're not the first to suggest this, but you did it in the nicest way. I gotta give you credit. So, what would I say my problem is to a shrink? I most certainly DO have problems, but I've found that the more I apply PFAL material to my life (as opposed to merely studying it) then my problems get more manageable. Everyone's got problems, it's how manageable are they. I feel pretty good when just reading PFAL too. But the deeper I read it and apply it the better my life it. I do blow it in the application, but that's life. So, I'm not going to shell out $100 to say I have a PFAL addiction. That's like saying I have a food addiction, but I'm in pretty good shape, not overweight at all, gulp, at least not in the summertime. I have lots of typing time in the wet winters. Are you making the case that my problem is too much typing or an internet addiction? ...cause that's been suggested too. I would think I should be in a fairly long line of posters you'd want to suggest that to. How about this: "Doc, you gotta help me. I just can't fit in with the rest of the crowd. I just want to focus on the positives of that time and I can't quit. It's robbing me of personal relationships with others who are bitter about that time of their lives." Just kidding. How about this, let's just you and me try to keep up this more friendly way of chatting and see if we can get to the bottom of some other things. In the process you may decide to back off of this suggestion, or find another way to slip it to me.

ikikikikikikikikikikikik honka sis sis sis sis sis sis sis sis ikikikikikikikikikikikik honka sis sis sis sis sis sis sis sis ikikikikikikikikikikikik honka sis sis sis sis sis sis sis sis ikikikikikikikikikikikik honka sis sis spit pa cough bli whaaaaaaa? WHAT? Oh! I must have fallen asleep. Where am I? What day is it? I need some coffee. These mid afternoon slow days are more tiring than work. What was I doing? Oh yes. GreaseSpot.... doojabble! MY THUNDER! She’s going to steal my thunder.... got to open the thread FAST! Where? where? Oh wow, it’s an entire 30 minutes later... Oh GOOD... nothing posted... she was bluffing... I still have my thunder to post!

I hope others do too.

waysider, I re-searched most of those things out long before the ministry collapsed in '86. I can still teach the four crucified with no notes and a clean noteless KJV Bible. It's easy to find all the passages in each of the 4 Gospels by simply searching fort the ALL-CAPS rendering of the inscription hung on the cross. The only proof I need at the end is to open my interlinear and show that the word "one" is added to the King James version of John and is not in any of the Greek manuscripts. Raf's thread and the majority of posters there have a pre-commitment (which they often deny) to find errors in PFAL. They don't work the principles we were taught when reading it, but instead work principles designed to find and even manufacture error. I've posted there and argued this ad infinitum in other threads. I use an entirely different method of looking at the collaterals. I get different results. It's all in the method. *** So, you're interested in I Cor 3:17 are you? Do you find that a comforting verse as is in the KJV? Did you ever read that verse in your TWI days? If so, how did you handle it then? Here's a preview: I Cor. 3:17 “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” Notice the italics in there. If we remove the word “temple” then we have: “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which ye are.” I mentioned earlier in this thread that this verse seems to almost contradict itself. Do you see it? In the first half of the verse we’re warned that we might be destroyed if we do the wrong thing. In the second half we’re “comforted” to hear that we’re holy. How skitzo is THAT? If you want to put “temple” back in, fine. It may even be implied by the Greek grammar technicalities that are beyond me. But it still is an odd verse, isn’t it? If you check the context, back even to the beginning of the chapter, you’ll find many soothing references that line up with us being either the temple or holy. But then verse 17a rears it’s ugly religious condemning head. The way our culture has conditioned us (especially RCs) to dread hell and God’s condemnation, this first half of verse 17 overpowers the entire passage, if not the entire chapter! I think there is a reason no grads here have picked up on this, and a reason IT SEEMS hardly any of you EVEN READ this verse in the good old days. I think the reason this passage is such a stranger to most of you is because of verse 17a and it’s negatives. I think most posters on this thread shoved that entire passage under the rug 25 and 35 years ago because of the chills of verse 17a. I know when I first saw it I just HAD to ask my twig, branch, and limp leaders RIGHT AWAY! They didn't have answers, so I eventually brought it to Walter. He settled it in no time flat. He and others had seen it and worked it. I see now that hardly anyone here spent any time with that chapter at all. Another reason I’ve been delaying my exposition here on this verse is to give everyone a chance to speak up if they had worked that difficult verse and it’s context. So, this is the last call. Anyone who can explain the pain of verse 17a and how it does NOT contradict itself and the chapter, SPEAK UP NOW.

been there done that So are you totally trusting Raf & Co, and that thread? Is that now your ultimate authority? Raf & Co. does your thinking for you?

This is one of the most rambling off-topic threads I've seen in awhile, so I'm not worried about it here. The originator, I think, has abandoned it and not posted at all on any thread since Christmas. *** What do you mean by "incorporate materials that would later prove to be Biblically inaccurate"? What materials? What authority do you cite in this matter of being Biblically inaccurate? How do you know this is the case, especially when we have no originals, the original languages are dead, and we live in a completely different culture. Do you have revelation, or are you citing the latest authority that you think is trustworthy. Remember, you used to trust Dr, so, according to your own stand, you're a bit on the gullible side, or at least you used to have that weakness. What have you done to fix your "trust selector" since TWI? Did you see my long response to you in the "pressed down music" thread?

IMHO hype, exaggeration and distortion are relatively easy to post. What's difficult is getting things accurate. Ham, I'd say you got the proportions entirely wrong in your analogy, so it breaks down right away, serving only the purposes of besmirchment. You minimize the benefits of Dr's teaching and maximize the damage of his flesh to reflect and harmonize with the demographics of active posters here. If you were to want to do the same for what I suspect is a much larger read-only population here, and what I KNOW is a MUCH MUCH larger population of GreaseSpot avoiders who strongly appreciate Dr's teaching, you'd have to dump that analogy altogether. Try maybe an analogy about a gentle giant who plants and plows people's fields leaving them a huge harvest to gather, but who inadvertently (or even negligently) may step on a few toes at times. This is what the vast majority of grads think of Dr and his teaching. They just don't want to fellowship with grads who focus on the negative.

You people crack me up sometimes. I wonder how difficult it would be to find a Ham post where the those same “ingredients” are praised. Kenyon, Bullinger, Leonard, Etc. I know of many others here who will praise the content of those men’s writings, or symphonize with other posters who do the same, and lament that these wonderful teachers were plagiarized. So, Ham, did Kenyon serve bad stew? Bullinger? Leonard? I’m trying to get you in trouble with posters who love those teachers.

I agree. And this applies to you and me too, right? When you or I walk in our old man nature, the doctrine we teach is easy to manipulate by the adversary to hurt people. But you and I can also recognize the deadness of our old man nature and choose to walk in the mind of Christ. When you or I do that we CAN get doctrine right and bless people. Same for VPW. When he walked with God he blessed big. When he didn’t the adversary was SURE to get in there and maximize the damage. That’s not the whole story. It’s an insignificant part at best. He was able to bless people when they recognized that the evil in everyone’s life is going to happen but there can be good also, just like in Romans 7. If we can’t overlook the evil in a minister’s life then we will never find a minister, because all are of Adam’s fallen race except for one, Jesus Christ. I disagree. I think it’s REPORTS of his evil that are out there for the whole world to examine. I think those reports are largely exaggerated and sometimes even downright false. There’s no way I’m going to give the same validity to complaints about 25 year old offences that I give to the massive and ongoing benefits I derive from his written works. I see that the complainers are often quite empty when it comes to their retention of the good I know did come from his teaching. If those posters who give such eloquence and intensity to reporting Dr’s evil also were able to give me eloquent and intense teaching on God and His Son (like Dr did), THEN I might give some credence to their reports. But that is not the case; not even close. Dr’s good and pure fruit (the books and articles) is also out there for the whole world to examine, but I CONSTANTLY see here that what Dr taught in print was not nearly as well absorbed as the corrupted twi verbal traditions (TVTs) were absorbed. It’s all in what we choose to look at. No it’s not built on that at all. The insignificance of bad fruit is a RESULT of my doctrine, not a foundation. The foundation is the GREAT GOOD that you have turned your eyes from, the pureness of the new birth, the forgiveness of God, the price paid by Jesus Christ, etc. etc. When these wonderful doctrinal items are focused on the damage is minimized and healed. WOW! You got THAT one right! It takes OUT OF THIS WORLD cleansing to fix that sepulcher, AND yours too, and mine too. I thank God He makes a way where there is no way. If you think your old man nature stinks less than Dr’s, please read the scriptures I posted above, in the post before this one. If you think you can discipline your walk better than Dr’s, let’s see YOUR fruit. I’m not interested in how well you can “blow the whistle.” Anyone can do that; the world’s full of finger pointing. Try walking in that mind of Christ with all that whistle blowing energy you seem to have and see if you get better fruit.

From what I've seen in God's Word, we ALL are disgusting when we walk in our old man nature. The degrees or intensity of how evil any one action is are a purely human phenomenon. What we humans perceive as “not all THAT bad” really means we perceive the damage to others as minimal. For instance, getting drunk and driving a car that hurts someone else is considered by humans as very evil nowadays. Getting equally drunk and sitting on the front porch is something we might be more willing to give a pass for, even though God is robbed of the fellowship He craves and deserves equally in both instances. Another example: Our laws go even farther in the sense-knowledge mis-recognition of degrees of evil. Attempted murder is often far less punishable a crime than actual murder. The intents in the hearts of two people may be equally evil in intending to kill, but our laws reward the incompetent would-be killer with less punishment. Dang! I’d like to put equal distances between me and BOTH of those evil minded people, regardless of their unequal ABILITY inflict harm. It’s the intent that would matter to me. If they both have equally evil intent in the heart I'd feel equally threatened, because ability or luck can change. The sense-knowledge recognition of degrees of evil is superficial and dull. What happens in the heart is very difficult for people (and especially governments) to discern, so we usually fall back on the focusing on the external damage caused to weigh the degree of evil from our perspective. In everyday life we often give a pass to those who do not have the ABILITY to harm us, even though their hearts may be quite off base. God is equally offended because He looks at the heart. Jeremiah 17:9-10a The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins... Romans 3:10-18 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans 7:20-24 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? This is talking about US ALL. If someone thinks their heart is free from this curse, then they have not seen what Jeremiah and Paul saw. I’ve often posted this: if any one of us had the troops, we’d have invaded Poland by now, just like Hitler. This is figurative language of course. But I know from experience and from the Word that if we loose it, break fellowship, and happen to have a lot of power and ability, then the evil that’s always in our hearts can leak out in most embarrassing way. It’s often a good thing that we are not very, very powerful people. The more earthly power a person has, the easier it is to display what God’s Word says about the heart of all of Adam’s descendants. The more earthly power a person has the more motivated is the adversary in tapping that power for his purposes. Thank God most of us don’t have the troops to inflict this kind of heart on too many others. Fortunately, we can walk in a mind other than our own old man nature. We can walk in the mind of Christ. That’s right. You don’t have that power. Neither do I. But we CAN walk in the mind of Christ and put it on to rise up to that level of forgiveness. We can get better and better at walking that way and minimize the leaking out that old man nature wants so desperately to do. Eventually we can become the man we know to be and become Jesus Christ men and women, with that old man nature dead. This is what makes it all worth it. If I didn’t believe that we can rise up to this height, I wouldn’t bother with any of this stuff. We were often taught what Ephesians exhorts, that our real enemies in life are not the humans who inflict damage but the spirits that direct that damage. That doesn't necessarily mean we close our eyes to the humans who damage. But I've seen that most WILL close their eyes to the spirits involved. There will never be any satisfaction for those who want to “get even.” There is great satisfaction in sorting all these things out to see what is treasure and what is worth forgetting. Putting on the mind of Christ is available to us grads in ways and in abundance that have not been experienced in thousands of years. Our destiny is to rise up and be like him, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh Yeah! The TOPIC! I found my recording of "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life." What a gem! It's too bad Pressed Down didn't do it!

I always used the line-out method for passages that were added, but for better translations I often used marginal notes. Sometimes I used white-out. But before any of this I'd always try to check Young's Concordance or my Greek Interlinear. If there was no backup for what I was taught I'd hold off altering my KJV and do it with a marginal note WITH A QUESTION MARK. I wouldn't try to witness (especially to churchy people) the alteration until it was verified. I'd be very interested in knowing how many people went through any verification process before inking or teaching these things. A large part of the idol worship of VPW went along these lines: accept what he said without verification. I had already been duped by several hippie mystics by the time I got in, so I had to verify everything. It slowed me down at times, and I sometimes envied those grads who jumped on board right away. Now I see that they are quite disappointed.

Sorry. My mistake. It just looked like you were about post social security numbers in your excitement. ;)

Hi waysider, I thank you again for the note of mitigation you sent me after posting this. That was a very decent thing to do. I’d like to return the favor here in the way I approach this. I’d also like to invite you over to the other thread (titled “A note on forgiving”) for when I answer the passage on I Cor 3. It seems the two threads are converging a little. In your post above I’ve numbered the items to speed things up a bit. 1. The word “fosisticated” is a self-deprecating humor gimmick employing a Spoonerism and a misspelling to mock a lack of sophistication. The misspelling is “sofisticated” and the Spooner rearrangement is the “s” and “f.” And now, class, we see why explaining a joke completely STRIPS it of it’s humor. 2. Yes, I agree. That was the point of my play. I was abiding by the rules until skyrider brought up MY subject. 3. I know that in my old man nature I have often misplaced proper Godly priorities in both of those areas of sex and alcohol, and a few other common things like that. Sometimes, because there were others within my sphere of influence, I hurt them in the process. When I have recognized this I have tried to change it and only found what Paul reports in Romans 7 that he found out about HIS old man nature: it resists change. Luckily for me and the others, my natural human-interaction type powers to hurt them were small, so the damage was usually small. I also found that God was eager to take me back EVERY TIME and give me another chance to walk His Word and bless others with my relatively weak powers. As I learned more Word my ability to bless increased, but the nasty old man nature seemed to never really tame. In life in general I’ve seen that other people who have MUCH greater natural human-interaction type powers than I are capable of blessing them MUCH MORE than I when they walk the Word. But conversely, those SAME more powerfully endowed people are capable, I’ve seen, of hurting MUCH GREATER the people in their sphere of greater influence when they walk in their old man nature. God is also eager to let them try to bless again. I’ve seen in my life I can SOMETIMES go in and out of fellowship several times in one hour. It’s not always like that, but it happens. The more work I take on and the more stress, the more likelihood of a frequent “loosing it,” followed as quickly as possible by snapping back in line with the Word. 4. Of course, when anyone walks in the old man nature it’s as selfish as all get out... get out of fellowship, that is. 5. When I worked on HQ staff I used my salary, ABS money, for “not-the best” purposes at times. This is to be expected from #3 above. But I also put the money to good use too when I walked with God. I also took a cut in salary to work on staff. Plus, there were many times when I worked EXTRA hard to bless the folks on the field. I’m sure these same things all applied to Dr, just crank up the volume for how much he blessed people when he walked the Word, and crank up the volume for how much he hurt people when he walked in his old man nature. 6. No, I’m not surprised. What did surprise me was how many people seemed to worship him back then and didn’t read what the Word said about Dr’s old man nature, that it was as stinky as ours. I’m surprised that people are surprised. We should have expected he had sin. If you were the adversary would you tempt him with stealing nickel candy bars at the dime store, or would you tempt him with thousands of hippie chicks? I’m surprised at how unfosisticated some grads are at these things. He was a man! Back then many grads thought he was super-human and SURPRISE, SURPRISE, he’s not! Oh the pain! So now they rush to the opposite extreme and he’s suddenly sub-human! Get some balance and quit being surprised that Dr had sin. HE TOLD US HE FELL SHORT MANY TIMES. I believed him. If I had only two choices: to interact with religious goodie-goodie or to interact with a real man who struggles with his old man nature like me, I’ll walk away from the goodie-goodie in a heartbeat. I know from God’s Word there ARE no real goodie-goodies, outside of Jesus Christ, just a few religious people who can maintain an illusion walking all the time, but all are burdened with a rotten old man nature. I’m bored silly with that from my RC upbringing. 7. Again, I agree. I also see that there are so many people that are so totally baffled by my stand that they can’t resist bringing up my topics from other threads. You too participated in the derailment with your post, but like I said, this is understandable. I need to point out to you that the topic title went A LITTLE broader than you mention here. It’s titled “ pressed down music, i am a leaf ((NOT))!!!!!” so there the primary topic of Pressed Down music PLUS the secondary topic of the leaf in the tree Pressed Down sang about. I indicated this in my Highway Patrol play with the Chief’s lines where he said: ““Ok, music, music, music, a little twi bs, music, music, more light ministry bs, ok, ok.” I think I stayed in those bounds. I had stated my opinion on the topic's title in Post #19. 8. No, this is not at all accurate. I believe he is in the category not of God nor of Jesus Christ, but much more in the category of Paul or any of the other biblical writers and/or compilers. HOLD THE HOWLS. Remember, I did say “...much more in the category of...” In Dr’s last HQ teaching “The Hope” he said (paraphrasing) he did NOT consider himself in the category of Paul. It’s more that the collaterals are the vaunted thing in my life, not Dr. Wierwille. There were many more people besides his contributions there, so I am well aware that I am respecting Bullinger, Stiles, Leonard, Kenyon as well as Dr in my belief that the collaterals are God-breathed. Why doesn’t anyone accuse me of vaunting them too? Then there’s Dr staff, that he attributed as helping him not only with natural abilities, but spiritual too. That means there were staff members, editors, and even “ghost writers” (some have posted here) that got revelation from God in helping Dr putting together the books and articles that I vaunt. Why am I not accused of vaunting them to god-like status. It’s the end product I vaunt. I wish VPW was the man he knew to be, but he wasn’t, but he did teach that man to me. That man is Jesus Christ. 9. I have started threads. Many. And I tolerated massive derailments of what I tried to say, but I still got to say it. 10. VPW did miraculous things for me and many thousands of grads who do not post here. Many, many of them have told me they choose to focus on the positives they received from Dr and totally avoid this place. Most of them are lacking the time, the fight-energy and the knowledge to come here and take the kinds of things I take. I can take it because I have had ten years to clear up the gaps in my knowledge, remember the things that were forgotten, and move on to the deeper things that the collaterals teach. Most of the grads who are happy with what water walking Dr did for them have never attempted to master the collaterals, so they have not the ammunition to face many posters here. I do. I’m just telling you that there are MANY grads who are happy with their TWI experiences, but the never post or even come here. Dr did walk on water. Did he sink also, yes. He said so. I’m trying to walk on water right now... (blub, blub) It ain’t easy! 11. I was taught more Word by Dr than my RC upbringing ever could teach me, better than any Billy Graham could have ever reached me, to regard the name of Jesus Christ as the sweetest name I know. There’s no way I’d know God or His Son if it weren’t for the class and the support that went with it. Sure I was sidetracked at times, but the teaching was always there in tape and book and magazine form for me to get back on track. There WAS one pure thing in our experience: we saw God! Because we saw God more clearly than anyone since the first century OF COURSE the adversary pulled out all the stops and tried to stop us at every turn. These things take time to sort out, but IT CAN BE DONE.

waysider, Before I get into your post, I must apologize for something too. Just now, HOURS after I posted it, I edited my little Highway Patrol play in Post #28 I noticed that there was glaring error in the posted draft. While reading Post #20 the Chief gets his lines wrong, and makes it look like frank123lol was the person he was after. I fixed that. I don’t like to edit that late after posting. While I was there I did some other minor touch ups too. Sorry if that confuses anyone.