Mike

It's getting late, even here on the West Coast, and I think we're ALL tired. Let's think of some positive things we can all say to each other tomorrow. We do enjoy free speech here more here than in any other gathering, club, website, or conglomeration of PFAL grads. I don't need to call this a splinter group to communicate that, although I did assert that this was a splinter group here before and no one minded. A differend kind of ritual observed here as pointed out, but we all are grads of PFAL it seems.

Oh Sheeesh! EWB, Can?t you see how many questions I?m answering here? Several times in the past week a big bunch of posts slipped by me do to the about of work I had. If you question was in there I apologize. It?s easy for me to get way behind in this process and loose track of the backlog. I know in the last week there are about 20 posts at least that I only skim read once and never got back to them. I am human. You?re pretty demanding. Are you aware of all the answering I?m doing here? Your question may have been answered in my reply to someone else with a similar topic. Are you reading all the posts I reply to? At this time I can?t remember any outstanding questions of yours. Please re-state your long lost question and put yourself in my shoes as to the volume I?m dealing with here.

Garth, I'm so glad for this "heads up" on cynic. If he throws me a curve I can claim my dodge was predetermined and I just had to go with the flow. Sorry to diasppoint you, but I don't have the time to go down that long twisted alley with him, and I do have free will, so I wont. Sorry. I know you were counting on seeing a little blood.

WordWolf, Nice work. Looks like you put a lot into it. Too bad your spin is so negative on it. There are SO many spins, I choose to not bother with it. I?d rather work on some of the backlogged questions or comments you had. Your attempt to summarize this situation leaves out so much that is important. It?s heavy handed and off the mark. Your summary more represents your disjointed efforts to counter my message than it does my message. For an antagonist such as yourself to undertake a ?summary of Mike?s message? is SURE to be a refuting summary, or a summary of your refutation. For you to portray it as a journalistically unbiased ?summary of Mike?s message? is as dishonest as you attempting to write the autobiography of someone not yourself.

cynic, Sorry for the sloppy rendering THAT time. It?s too bad you didn?t see the others posts on the same subject that would have clarified the issue for you. You?re right, my posts are NOT in the same category as PFAL. If you were to put out the number of words per day, answering the number of intense, hostile, and intricate posts per day that I sometimes put out, your persnickety perfection in prose may suffer a little too. As for my supposed ?denigrating English Bible versions, historical biblical texts and the doctrinal sufficiency of Scripture? I?d say, once again, that your incomplete survey of all my posts on these subjects gives rise to a misconception of my position. You?ve probably picked this up from others, or from noting abbreviated exchanges between me and others. There are places here where I?ve gone into some elaborate explanations how I do NOT denigrate English versions any farther than we all KNOW they suffer, and I have testified that the historical texts are FAIRLY well reconstructed but not perfect as is well known. The last one I?ve correctly stated is impossible to prove from within the found scriptures that we found ALL the scriptures, but I have TOTALLY mitigated this by saying that since God and Dr were happy working within the traditional canon to teach PFAL, then it was good enough for me. I plead not guilty to your three charges.

Garth, Was cynic the one who jumped my Calvin Klines a few months ago? I remember someone jumped in and blindsided all of us on free will. It took me a while to figure it out. Was cynic THAT guy?

sirguessalot, Are you taking some kind of creative writing course?

mj412, I reject your limited definition of what GreaseSpot is. Pawtucket is the one who defines this place, not you. He has so defined it that it, that it is the ONLY splinter group that allows total free speech. Mj, if you don?t like free speech there are other sites that wil cater to you... maybe. You can start your own totally antiPFAL site. OR, much easier, you can to other threads on this forum. That?s MUCH easier, isn?t it? Bye.

rascal, I love reading Galatians. The "Christ Formed In You" teaching is from Gal.4:19. I reject your application of Galatians to VP. I reject all charges you make here against him. I reject such an application by anyone you would recommend. I reject your repeating message, no matter how many times or ways you construct to put it. I rejected this message 5 years before I ever started posting here. My rejection started formulating in 1978 and finished in 1998. Do you really think there?s anything you can do to make me change a 20 year in the making and now finished for 5 years decision? I finished considering this whole question in 1998, and at that point I closed my mind to any other consideration. If you had been reading all my posts, or if you had gone back and exhaustively read them you?d have see this and you?d have saved yourself some sweat and some time. There?s NOTHING you can say that would convince me. Have you ever made your mind up on something and said something similar to yourself? Have you ever closed your mind to all arguments to the contrary? EVER?

rascal, Just to set the record straight, I maintain that NOW after 20 years, and COMPARED TO the massive blessings of God?s Word we have, the hurts of the past are RELATIVELY insignificant... or should be. When these hurts happened they were entirely different, and if I were to wax eloquent on them I?d have said so convincingly. However, I chose to NOT look back to those hurts. Part of the healing is to place them in proper perspective. That?s VERY hard to do when they?re fresh, but they aren?t fresh anymore. Refreshing the hurts of the past will not heal, only fester. Let?s let them fade as they are supposed to.

cynic, What you deem obvious about my view arises from the RECENT posts I have written. If your view was formed with a view toward thoroughness, you?d have read that this shift in my focus is relatively recent (5 years) and that the previous 27 years were spent in verification. I?ve written it here many times. You view on this element is partial and incorrect. You then wrote: ?Your claim to have biblically verified PFAL is inconsistent with other of your assertions...? followed by some of my comments on free will. Maybe you didn?t understand them, though. I?ve stated that ?free will? as opposed to ?blind determinism? is not explained in the Bible. It?s understood, but not explained. There was no need in that non-machine age. Now there is, so God had Dr ?fill in the gaps? or ?flesh it out? from it?s bare-bone treatment in the Bible. A similar thing exists with ?foreknowledge.? There?s not an inconsistency here. It?s just that on some needed subjects, there?s more detail in PFAL. You then CORRECTLY stated: ?One does not both find biblical verification for PFAL teachings and hold that they were divinely revealed to Wierwille and are biblically untrackable.? Your error in application, though, is that it was before 1998 (coming back to PFAL) that I did my verification work. In this work I did not see anything on free will, even though I looked hard. I supposed I was just not a good enough researcher and that it was in there somewhere. Since then I have found that NOBODY can track free will in the Bible. It?s not explicit in this area, only implicit. AFTER 1998 I saw that God, in PFAL, augments the ancient Scriptures to handle some things that were not so trackable before. Free will and foreknowledge are two. I did NOT see this in my verification stage.

Garth, If you sell all your possessions and give me the money...

sirguessalot, It's your partial perception of PFAL that fails miserably to really address any of this. As you GET the full PFAL perspective, THEN you'll see what it addresses. I see the change of administrations all over the place here. Someday soon we'll have to do a thread on it.

cynic, You wrote: ?You obviously have not found, nor deem it necessary to find, biblical verification for what you have accepted as inspired and doctrinally authoritative from Wierwille.? Yes I did find that necessary. It took me 27 years to complete this, to my satisfaction, before I decided to shift my focus from traditionally methods. I thought it was VERY important to be leery of Dr and rest heavily on the hand-me-downs of traditional scripture. It was only AFTER working this for 27 years that I swapped what I trusted most from traditional methods to PFAL. When you say the opposite of this that I just stated of myself, and then you say this negation of fact is ?obvious,? it becomes obvious that you have not read all that I?ve written here. You?re probably picking upo what is ?obviously? my set of beliefs from others as they mischaracterize me here. You are participating in ?mob rule? kind of thinking through these details. I suggest you stop this, and also that you try to talk plain English here. We?re just family here.

Did fortunateone get trampled?

rascal, Unfortunately, you misrepresented me to Fortunateone, maybe on purpose, but I?d like to think accidentally. That way you may feel different when I correct what you said about my message and stand. You wrote: ?Mike here claims that vpw wrote for God and that his material is the *replacement* for a bible that is too worn out and outdated to be of much use to us in this day....? I?d say it?s not a replacement for the Bible but a replacement for the traditional SOURCES from which we can GET the Bible. I?d say that PFAL is more like an augmentation to modern Bible versions than a replacement, much like the ?many words added? that Jeremiah wrote by God?s instruction to replace a worn out (cut up and burned) scroll of God?s Word. I?d say you also mischaracterize me in ?...a bible that is too worn out and outdated to be of much use to us in this day....? because I have OFTEN stated that I think modern Bible assemblages like the critical Greek texts, and translations and versions are of MUCH USE. Without them PFAL would make sense or have a foundation on which to rest. I?d say that the Bible itself says that it will be outdated someday, at the Second Coming, when that which is perfect is come and that which in part is done away. I see PFAL as ushering us into the next administration because it?s time. That's 4 misrepresentations in one sentence. Do you think it?s time for you to reevaluate your take on me?

Sign me up. . . . . (Uma goodness!)

Meg Ryan?

Dooooooooough! Look what you made me do sirguessalot. My 1000th post and I blew it on guytalk with you! I could have said something SIGNIFICANT! I kuda been a contenda!

Does he get any girls?

Fortunateone, It'll take 24 pages to explain it to you. Reading it all "as is" is faster.

Sirguessalot, Who ME? Little ole ME...? In a real printed BOOK? Do I have to wear one of those silly costumes with tights or can I wear my blue jeans?

Sirguessalot, I liked this which you wrote: ?Smash yer faith to bits, and see what can't be smashed. Boil it to see what can't be boiled.? This reminds me of Pawtucket?s Principle. It sounds very similar. Many great men have said similar things. In the last magazine article he was to write, Dr says MUCH the same thing. When Dr wrote "Jesus Christ Is Not God" he hit right on target a massive error the adversary wove into the fabric of Christianity. Dr took this error on directly, and ignored the huge resistance the tradition lovers put up. And, this is not the only tradition he directly challenged. Then there are other traditional doctrines that Dr somewhat indirectly confronted, while making available the tools we would need to take them on directly ourselves. The time has come for one such tradition to be examined, and decisions must be made to either confront it or remain conformed to it. It?s the tradition of where we go to get the best rendering of the ancient Scriptures. This has been a main topic of my message. In some of Dr?s last writings to us, which appeared in the Way Magazine Jul/Aug?86 issue, he encouraged us to ask ourselves questions of ourselves like this mentioned by Sirguessalot and earlier of Pawtucket. Actually, in that last magazine issue, he asked us TWICE to do these self examinations. A man?s dying last words are usually treated with extra care and respect in nearly every culture on earth. The fact that this same encouragement occurred twice gives it even more special status. It?s time we look at some of these last words our beloved father in the Word wrote to us. In that magazine?s main article, ?Our Only Rule for Faith and Practice,? on page 17 he writes this: ?You have to honestly come to the place that you?re willing to keep asking yourself, ?Where did I learn what I believe? How did I get to the place of believing what I believe today?? For the most part, men believe what they have received from tradition and not directly from reading the Word of God. Many times the Biblical truths have been completely dis- placed by man-fabricated teachings. What you have previ- ously believed may not stand the test of God?s Word when it is rightly divided. Therefore, you must not only be content to give up tradition and wrong teaching, you must be thankful to give it up?happy to give it up?and receive, instead of man?s tradition, instead of man?s imagination, the true divine revelation of God?s Word.? Let?s look at some of the details here. In an overall sense, it?s interesting that he would be saying this to us grads of the class. We might think that, having taken that class many times, we already DID do all this that Dr is encouraging us to do in that passage. Maybe he?s not talking to us grads? But a quick look at the magazine article?s context shows this IS written to us grads. Plus, look how personal it is: count the number of times ?you? and ?I? appear. There are two short third person sentences, but the rest is personal and in the second person. Then look at these words in the first sentence: ?...willing to KEEP asking yourself...? Before we knew the accuracy of the Word we asked ourselves this often, but now he?s asking us to KEEP asking this! Why? He answers this with ?What you have previously believed may not stand the test...? From this, and many other things Dr said and wrote in his last years, I have come to the conclusion that there is more in PFAL than we received. We all TOOK the class, but did we RECEIVE it all? Did we receive it all correctly? Do we remember it all? Maybe some of our POST-PFAL beliefs need a tune up. Here?s the second place in the same magazine issue where Dr URGES us to think everything through. It?s on page 12: ?We have to honestly come to the place of asking ourselves: Where did I learn this? How did I get to the place of believ- ing this? Who taught me this? The counterfeit is so much like the genuine, you have to know the accuracy of the Word to separate truth from error.? ************ In another set of Dr?s last words to us, his last taped public teaching titled ?The Joy of Serving,? he again issued some interesting comments TWICE to us in that same short, last teaching. It is posted here on this website. In those twice spoken last words Dr told us that we had a need. He said we need to MASTER the written materials of PFAL. Our beliefs were not EXACTLY lined up with what God taught Dr and Dr taught us in that class and they needed to be corrected. This teaching was primarily addressed to leadership, as it?s opening plainly states. It was presumed by most that the leadership already HAD mastered PFAL, but according to Dr, it wasn?t enough. Plus, for many of us, our focus on PFAL had been quite a few years prior to this last teaching. By the time of this 1985 teaching enough years had passed for out first exposure to start leaking out or getting mixed with incoming error. Additionally, some PFAL material may have never reached us, or not accurately. Well, that was almost twenty years ago. What has happened since Dr spoke that last teaching is tragic. First the teaching was LOST! It got lost in the shuffle of all that went on shortly after Dr?s death, and has only resurfaced in the last few years. During the intervening time, the PFAL class materials that we were told to master have been put aside instead of being mastered. Most grads have moved on to some other teaching having never heard Dr?s last/lost teaching. So, this last spoken teaching, and these last quoted printed words all line up to say something in unison: we may still have crippling tradition hindering our walk with our Father! We?ve got some work to do! So, Sirguessalot, there?s a lot of smashing going on here, and a lot of intact books that seem to have survived the throw to the floor and have a bounce of liveliness to them. Should we rename it Sirpawtuckalot?s Principle? [This message was edited by Mike on June 15, 2003 at 17:17.]

Hi. I came back just in case Exy still wanted to talk. Besides it's too late to work, and I have fellowship in a couple hours. ************* Sirguessalot, The only "ME" in that hierarchy is by protest. And it a protest on MY part! I'm CONTINUALLY trying to get the attention off me and onto and into the books. Count me OUT! I'm a student. I've seen the Master. Come and see for yourselves.

Oh Garth! Lighten UP! It was just a principle, not an EXACT fit analogy. [This message was edited by Mike on June 15, 2003 at 16:40.]