Mike

If you can believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, then you can rise above this fear of fantasy.

I gotta go use my window cleaning skills a little bit while the sun is out.

The truth of the tape is not the point. The point was that VPW was playing a tape that goes against your theology here. The real VPW wanted us to know that Jesus was very real and very present when we get hip to him spiritually. Your anti-idol theology is plain wrong because it says he wanted us to look away from Jesus. I just showed you 10 times he emphasized looking toward Jesus.

I hear you. But when those verbal communications drift from the Word, things go wrong.

I think the Fog Years were from roughly from 1985 to '90. But the name "Fog Years" was invented well after the fact, after 1990? The transition period I was talking about a few posts above was a little earlier: 1981-85

Except PHYSICALLY at Starbucks. Right now God thinks the best way is for Christ to be IN YOU (spiritually) as you walk through the door into Starbucks. And it's not like they cannot do it. They just don't want to reduce down to that measly level, when the better spiritual level is available. Now every once in a while, like with Stephen, or John, or Paul he seems to make a pre-Return appearance of sorts. Did you see my post on the AC tape VPW played for us about the girl who got healed by Jesus from a horribly deformed spine? Maybe Jesus' priority list could include a Starbucks date? Ask God.

Sorry OLG = Older Leader Grads

The period of time I was describing there regarding OLGs (Older Leader Grads) was 1981-85, which may have been before your time. We leaders had been prepared for Craig way ahead of his coronation in '82. Almost immediately after Craig became president, VPW had a stroke. Not sure of exact date. He was also visibly getting weaker and then had his eye removed. VPW was declining as Craig rose in the spotlight. ALSO during the years 82-86, MUCH of the attention of the young Corps men that I knew personally was on getting onto the ministry payroll so that they could ditch their secular jobs. There was a competition among them for who will qualify for a regular check from HQ next. A few of them admitted this to me years later. This was all plain to see in the window cleaning industry, where I was attending and sometimes leading weekly breakfast meetings. A big item I was addressing above was the big turn of attention away from VPW those years '82-'86 and onto LCM. Craig was handed power of the purse in 1982, and that turned a lot of heads in his direction. We leaders did not see VPW calling such attention to seeking Jesus Christ in his later years. You and a lot of the younger posters may have no knowledge of this transition period where attention was shifted from VPW to LCM, starting as early as 1981. I have studied in detail what VPW said and did during this period, because someone pointed out to me how things went down. When all this was happening, I was as oblivious to it as everyone else was. I did not come to any real awareness of this until after 1998.

What I am saying is that VPW was not responsible for Jesus being absent from so much TWI thought and activity. He fought against that. He used that phrase once, and constantly referred to the spiritual presence of Christ within. */*/*/* I found in the archives this absent Christ debate raging 20 years ago just like it is today. Below is my re-write of a post I made April 5, 2003. The original post can be found at: https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/1005-the-ubiquitously-hidden-teaching-of-vpw/page/6/#comment-35722 */*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/* The TWI Verbal Tradition (TVT) got way out of hand on LOTS of things: grace/license, guidelines/law, discipline, tough love, etc., just like all other churches. The first century church got out of balance this way and eventually became RC. But I've found a most beautiful chapter in Dr's last book about Zacchaeus. It’s called ‘Climbing High to Seek Truth.’ It really dispels the myth that Dr’s teaching was bereft of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That DID happen in TVT, but not Dr’s teachings. Here are some of VPW's last words to us, from that last year, and his last book. */*/*/* On page 207 he writes: As we pass through life, we must climb ever higher and higher in our hearts and minds with the greatness of God’s Word. We must always keep progressing to see more and more of God’s Word and His promises manifested in our daily lives. Then on pages 212-213 we see: All I know is that the Word of God says Zacchaeus was a publican and he was rich. We learn one other thing about Zacchaeus in this account and that is that he was motivated by a wonderful desire: He wanted to see Jesus. Luke 19:3 And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus - who he was. Perhaps it was simple curiosity prompting him. The text doesn't say. But whatever the reason, at least he wanted to see Jesus. I wish that today, across our nation, there were more people who wanted to see Jesus. When people ask to see Jesus today, we've got to show him. When they want to see Jesus, who he is, we can show them God's Word and the greatness of Jesus Christ's position in the Word. Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but he couldn't. The reason he couldn't see him or get to him was for "the press." That doesn't mean the news media, such as newspaper, radio, or television reporters. "Press" means "numbers of people." There were so many people surrounding Jesus that Zacchaeus couldn't get a glimpse of him. Verse 3: . . . because he was little of stature. Zacchaeus was short. The biggest thing about him was his desire to see Jesus. Verse 4: And he [Zacchaeus] ran before [ahead of where Jesus was walking], and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him: for he [Jesus] was to pass that way. Zacchaeus climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to get a view of this noted person, Jesus, whom people were talking about. Zacchaeus took the necessary action to fulfill his desire. That's very important. If you want to see Jesus Christ through God's Word, you need to move, take action. Zacchaeus took the initiative and climbed up into that sycamore tree. */*/*/* Ten times I count the phrase see Jesus in these two pages. Couple this with the introductory paragraph I gave you from p.207, and it's progressing to SEE JESUS that he’s urging with us OLGs to do. It’s for other grads too. */*/*/* On pages 214 and 215 he writes: I want to tell you, whenever there are men and women desiring to know the Lord Jesus Christ, they will have that desire met according to God’s Word. Those people who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall (absolutely) be filled. That’s right. What an example of fulfilling this promise from this record in God’s Word. Again, he’s telling us to hunger for the Lord Jesus Christ. */*/*/* On pages 221 and 222 he writes: Jesus Christ is a physician of the soul. A physician is not needed when one is healthy. Jesus Christ comes to seek and to save, to give wholeness to those in spiritual need. He seeks those who are lost-men and women who need the Lord Jesus Christ. He has no problem extending himself to you and to me, because we are the people he came to seek and to save. Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus Christ is "able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him." Jesus Christ is always ready to meet you. He met Zacchaeus, who had climbed up in a tree to see him. Wherever there are men and women who really want to hear, Jesus Christ is always there. There is no one so low that the arms of the Almighty are not underneath him. There is no one so high that the arms of the Almighty are not over him. And there is no one other than His Son who can save people. For there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. Ladies and gentlemen, whatever you have to do to know the Lord Jesus Christ, do it. Wherever you have to go to learn about him, do it. The one great driving force of your soul should be to know Jesus Christ. Who is he’ The only way you'll ever know who Jesus Christ is to come to God's Word. The Word makes known Jesus Christ. The Word tells you who he is. It is that Word which brings you to a knowledge of salvation. What do you need to hear God's Word. Jesus Christ was that Word, the Living Word, who met Zacchaeus that day in Jericho. And he brought Zacchaeus to the great reality of being a believer, because Jesus was willing to teach him and Zacchaeus was meek to learn. If you want to experience the truth of God's Word, climb high to seek truth. God always has and always will seek out and teach those who are looking to Jesus Christ as their savior and lord. */*/*/* When all these words were coming out in print, we OLGs were all on our own trips, all imbalanced in one way or another, and these things slipped right by us (or out of us). I tried to show some of these kinds of things to the CES bulldozers in the early 90’s after they had been blowing the whistle on how the TVT had lost track of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I believed them for a few years, until I found a ton of things like these quotes. The reason I believed them at first, in the late 80’s, is because I clearly saw it the TVTs, but I hadn’t yet learned the VAST separation, the VAST difference between what got put into print from what went on behind the scenes. This is the case for other things that got out of balance besides the lordship deal. The print record, and also the tapes, has lots of things that we OLGs were learning how to tune out. We would say things in our heads like: “Yeah, yeah, that’s just Dr” or “How many times have I heard THIS before” or “He doesn’t really mean that. He just misspoke, but I’ve a hot line to the Father and I’ll correct it immediately and just forget about it.” Us OLGs have some accounting to do. How come we didn’t see the VAST difference between TVT and the Word of God that God was teaching to Dr and Dr was getting into print. How come we didn’t see that VAST difference? Because we ended up on the victim end of the Sower-and-Seed, that’s how! We drifted away from the pure Word in PFAL and went back to tradition and KJV "research" on our own with no 1942 promise to back us up. And our fruit tells exactly which 3 of the 4 "Sower and Seed" victim categories we fit into, when “all nine all the time” waa the standard which we were shooting for. We got work to do. Thank God for His patience with us.

Does anyone have any idea what I am referring to in VPW's very last book, OMSW? He had an entire chapter there on seeking Jesus. Anyone remember it?

I don't doubt that the TVTs handling of absent Christ from TWI-1 became mainstream, official doctrine in TWI-2 and -3. Thanks for the tip on TWI-4. I will have to study their written positions in these articles. I had never seen them until last week. What I was pointing out is that the class and the book did not foster an imbalanced perspective on Jesus being totally absent, just physically, and just temporary. This may be an item TWI-4 needs to work on.

I don't buy that empty virtue signalling. If God appoints us to take Jesus' place while he is hidden, then who are you to forbid God?

TWI did not make a big deal out of the absent Christ; the TVTs did. Here is that ONE tiny PASSAGE in the PFAL book: "I believe that The Word takes the place of the absent Christ, and that the holy spirit takes the place of Christ in us through God’s Word."

With more detail: Jesus Christ left the physical realm. He is physically absent. At the same time, Jesus Christ is spiritually present in anyone who believes in him.

It's not the focus of my efforts any more, but I will mention it when it comes up in context. I did not abandon my position; just demoted how much attention I put into promoting of it.

The phrase in that article is "in Christ's stead" and I am not very familiar with that use of the word stead. I am wondering about it's etymology; is it related to "steady" ? There is SOMETHING to learned by God hiding Christ on the day of the Ascension. No one seems to want to take that as a positive act on God's part.

I don't see what you mean. I am not technically familiar with infinitives in grammar. Maybe you can explain with details? I am only focused on Acts 1, and how strongly God hid Jesus with that cloud, and for how long he would remain hidden. A God-hidden Jesus could be described as "absent" once, as long as the context is clear that it is from our point of view that he is inaccessible. If that word "absent" had been used lots of ways and in lots of teachings, then we'd have had a bigger problem. The word "absent" got picked up by the TVTs and it was given life it did not deserve. People who paid more attention to the TVTs, instead of the collaterals and the Bible, got robbed. Yes, this was a problem in the ministry, that relationships with Jesus Christ were confounded by the overly absent Christ in the TVTs. It will be interesting to see the last attempt by VPW to fix this, which was an entire chapter in his last book. I posted on this almost exactly 20 years ago here. Does anyone have any idea what I am talking about? The absent Christ was a raging issue here 20 years ago. I wonder if anyone remembers?

No, I'm not talking about infinitives, nor anything grammatical. What I am trying to point out is that, ALTHOUGH the words "hidden" and "absent" are very different in ordinary usage, in THIS usage things are different. When people make something invisible, such invisibility is most often detectable and thwart-able. The classic H.G. Wells story of an invisible man had it's interesting exceptions to the invisibility, such as snow and rain. Human devised invisibility is not absolute, and someone could be present, but still not absent. If the invisibility were busted, then the absence would have been only one of perception. That was what I meant by "raw" definitions. The way we define words, "absent" and "hidden" have some big differences, in spite of a few similarities. But when these words are involved in an action taken by God Almighty, then things can change in how the situation is viewed. Here the perception of hidden is much stronger, and the difference between "hidden" and "absent" erodes. But this word "absent" was not used in the class to signify any kind of lack of awareness on Jesus part of our situations. It was used ONCE in the class to describe OUR PERSPECTIVE of Jesus physical presence in this time before the Return. Had VPW done other teachings involving Jesus being absent or unaware or disconnected, then THAT would have been wrong of him. Instead, what happened is the idea of an absent Christ was strengthened and repeated in other contexts in the TVTs, but not in the teachings. What I noticed with many grads is that they would rather pick something up in a TVT (Twi Verbal Tradition) than pick up a collateral to get something with better detail and accuracy. VPW did not teach an absent Christ. He used the word "absent" once to describe our perspective until the Return. VPW taught the opposite of an absent Christ. In his last book he included an entire chapter to fight this TVT on the "super absent Christ" that grabbed so many minds in TWI. Anyone want to guess which chapter in OMSW taught us to seek the very present and findable Jesus?

You're looking at the definitions of the raw words. But these words have a very unusual player involved: God. When God made Jesus hidden or invisible to us, and then He tells us by an angel when we can see him again, that invisibility is full and total TO US. Jesus can't be found by any of our efforts, and from OUR PERSPECTIVE he is absent. We look, and he's not in sight. He's gone. That is our perspective. This is the context that these words fit in with. Now from God's perspective and from Jesus' perspective, we are in the center of their focus. They are not absent from us from their perspective; they are tuned into us. This is the perspective I picked up from PFAL. I did not pick up a perspective that Jesus abandoned us; just the obvious, that we can't see him or hear him. We were not taught that Jesus was twiddling his thumbs up there. That was a stupid TVT.

Not so. Jesus said God's words are spirit and are life. He aspired up to the Word to the extent that he became the Word made flesh. I concur on JAL. In 1988 he was righteously on top of a deadly TVT doctrine that was circulating thru the ministry, which was one of gaining abundance by planting images in our brains, a distortion of the believing images of victory. These were believing images of red sports cars taped to refrigerator doors! He was selling the book "The Seduction of Christianity" that tells of similar abuses to the law of believing. We at TWI-1 had drifted into this kind of "appropriation witchcraft" in our TVTs and practices. JAL was right in pointing out this problem. But then he want one step too far and said that we were taught it in PFAL. This was Sept 1988, and the same month I got a hold of a bootleg set of PFAL videos. I worked those videos for a whole year, and presented my findings to JAL when he returned in the Fall of 1989. I documented this for him, with segment numbers and how many minutes into the segment he needed to listen. Then I quoted that passage of the film class. I found about 19 places in the class where VPW clearly says that first we got to get a promise of God in mind, and THAT is what we believe; not just any old thoughts. In the film class we were taught to NOT do what the "The Seduction of Christianity" warns about. We were taught very clearly in PFAL that there must be a promise of God in our believing or it is wrong. I showed all this to JAL and he was totally uninterested. He was happy the prior year to lay out the accusation that PFAL blew it on this, but not at all interested when I showed him that HE had blown it, and just forgot what he had heard in the class. He told me point blank that he did not have time for me, and had to move fast to collect up all the disciples of VPW before someone else did. All he wanted was people, and accuracy and truth be damned.

Here's the transcript: https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/25318-changed-positions-on-doctrine-twi-vpw-and-so-on/#comment-618198

I was making a strong association with what JAL would do, which is to simplify and deepen the conversation by eliminating the audience. I was only making a weak association with one of Paul's moves, which was to separate out a small subset of willing students, from the larger body which included negatives and hostility. School of Tyranus ? spelling? On the other hand, aren't we supposed to make strong associations with Paul and with Jesus in that we want to imitate them?

It took me 4 years to get seasoned, and the 5th I enjoyed a lot. I did miss the adrenaline rushes that colored my earlier years. No, I was not in any way insinuating that people here might be paper tigers or anything negative at all. What I was simply stating is that the audience can change the performance, even for the seasoned. Private, one-on-one interactions was what I was promoting, and I had no hidden agenda. You got a lot of brain cells devoted to being suspicious of me and my motives, and it seems like such a waste. You are building a pure idiot anti-idol to be me in your world, and it is just a waste of your calories. I am constantly correcting mis-impressions like this that you folks constantly generate. Relax, a little. Animosity is not the most healthy state of mind. The attitude of gratitude, as Pressed Down put it, is your best state of mind.

I forgot to correct this, earlier. My "vast knowledge" is more the kind an engineer has, in that I know where to "look it up." I have searchable digital formats of the collaterals and more. Plus, I have processed all sorts of index files, for example a topic index. Maybe I can get ChatGBT to augment my aging brain on this?

You should take this valuable tip from JAL and from me and from the Apostle Paul. I saw in Facebook debate years ago that people I know personally for years, face-to-face, would behave like different people when they posted text and debated in politics and science. I see public posting very much like a stage. I started posting here and started doing Open Mic performances about the same time. Getting up on a stage will alter a personality in a number of ways, some more easily controllable than others. For years, in coffee shops and bars, I'd sit and talk one-on-one with another performer. Then he or she would get up on the mic and it's a different person. People present themselves differently in a one-on-one conversation people, and when there is no audience listening in. When you are on a stage, there are often bright lights shining in your face, and you can't see the audience. That makes live performances a lot like radio performances. Posting here is much the same. It is complicated to keep track of an audience. I always had friends in the audience, and I could hear their responses. But there were always strangers in the audience also. Stand-up comedians know this with with every punch line: "Know your audience." They either laugh or they don't. Everyone knows this to some extent. But people are different when in private, especially in person face-to-face. Voice phone is a close second, compared to text. I have gotten to know a bunch of GreaseSpotters in person, phone, and private e-mails. I encourage you all to do it, if you don't already do it. If you really have something good to offer people who are hurt and confused, doing it more in person cazn be more efficient. The voice phone and video phone that Facebook has perfected is perfect for world wide communications. There is a delay when it is all the way around the world. There is one former GreaseSpot lurker from 2005 in India that I have talked to this way. I regularly voice chat with someone in Korea about free will with Facebook.