Mike

Found it. Here it is: Members 4.8k Posted 9 hours ago I mentioned elsewhere that there are 3 separate accounts of the Paul's conversion on the Road to Damascus. The first one is in the narrative, and is at Acts 9:4-16, with Luke as the narrator. The second one is a flashback, with Paul speaking, and is at Acts 22:7-11. Here is the third, at Acts 26:13-20: 13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. 14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. 16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; 17 Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, 18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. 19 Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: 20 But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. */*/*/*/* What Paul saw was a heavenly vision. It had to be a vision, because the flesh and blood man, Jesus, was hidden from sight in Acts 1 by God, for good reasons. Later Paul teaches that we know not Christ after the flesh, so that we can know him in a BETTER way, with his spirit inside us and growing. Jesus got up from the dead in flesh and bones form, and he is coming back that way: this same Jesus the angels in Acts 1 said is coming back. */*/*/*/* OldSkool, I am assuming that the vision had sound, like on the Transfiguration Mount.

I can't find my response. In it I asked you if you had seen all 3 accounts in Acts of the Road to Damascus incident. I'll keep searching. I hope I didn't fail to hit the "Post" button. I quoted all three sections from Acts.

No, that was a misunderstanding. I handled it somewhere.

I think you missed my response to that. It's in Acts 26 that paul says it was a vision. I'll look for it.

No. I was just trying to untangle a tiny typo from OldSkool there. ...AND crack a joke.

I accept as my guiding lights those people whom God brings into my life, and that strengthen the light I already had. One of the first people I received some light on Jesus outside the RC was Baba Ram Dass. He was a Phd Psycholigist at Harvard, and a colleague of Timothy Leary in early LSD research. Later he became a hippie guru and wrote "Be Here Now" which gave me a lot to go on in my search for the absent Christ. Ram Dass had a lot wrong, but the little he had right was light I needed as an RC at the time. When I am not debating the merits of the collaterals, I am leaning heavily on the KJV and a few other favorite Bible versions. They are not ALL bad! Not by a long-shot. But when it comes to the power that can defeat the adversary, like SIT, then we have some problems. Also JCNG is a bit obfuscated in them, as is the goodness of God in places (1 Cor 3:17 for instance). ADAN shines thru pretty well, though. But this discussion on the absent Christ, and then the canon, should be evidence that I lean on Bible versions a lot still, and always have. I am even making my own, a hybrid of the best sources I know for each verse and each word. Many guess here how I am a sycophant for VPW, and that is completely false. The way that grads and especially Corps would idolize him long ago sickened me. It was a long slow process between 1971, when I first heard of VPW, to 1998 when I decided to accept his writings as produced largely by God, with VPW assisting by teaching what God taught him. I had to see the fruits of his teachings alive in my life before his collaterals became my solid, unmovable foundation. I myself now build on top of that foundation, often all by myself. Many critics of PFAL outside TWI would criticize us as worshiping Paul, and that also was untrue.

Ok, thanks. I think I handled it then by guessing. I see little revelations to individuals over centuries, but not a major intervention that involves doctrine and visions and all that. Those revelations were not "game changers" but more like keeping the game going assists. I am defining "intervention" and "intervene" on the fly. I could be wrong in that, but I thought it through a lot.

In this post of OldSkool's I never understood fully what the other sentence was in the conflict. If he answered my question on it, I did not see it yet. LATE EDIT: It got straightened out.

My own work on the OT canon was very skimpy because I learned early that IF the OT scriptures were in the same disarray that the NT suffered, then John the Baptist would have had to correct the problems so that Jesus would have something solid. But God had everything arraigned for the Nativity and including prophets and several people prophesying. I am confident that young Jesus had a perfect set of scriptures to learn from. The OT had an impressive technology to protect it that resembles computer file transfer techniques of today and the way nuclear weapons are manufactured, called the Massorah, or the Fence. The NT had no Massorah, and before the ink was dry, most of Paul's leaders had lost it, and there were persecutions happening by then by Nero. Paul was shamed, being in prison, and Timothy was unrecognized by the reprobate church that it had become by the death of Paul. No one knows what happened to Timothy, as he is not in any historical records, just a skimpy line in RC tradition that he became the Bishop of Ephesus, with no verification. The OT had no such problems. The people had been "bred" for this, to produce the Messiah and that seems to include preserving the scriptures for young Jesus to grow up with, and a cousin with a healthy dose of the spirit, and relatives who could get spirit upon enough to prophesy.

First things first. I had made a mistake in that post of mine you quoted. I left out Timothy. Please add him into that list with a "late edit" note at the end to make sure others see it first, and don't start reading this thread with and error dangling like that. I also made some additional comments in that vein if you could gather them and add. If you can't find them, I will. Let me know, because I am trying to "finish" on the absent Christ thread. I did not understand what you asked me to do for this thread in the absent Christ thread, to paste something here. It made no sense when I clicked on what you left me. Below, on THIS thread is similar material that was initially confusing to me. I am on my lunch break now, and must get back to work soon. Maybe you can edit out, or down, some of the confusing stuff below for people coming in here with no notion of the discussion we had already on the absent Christ thread.

My best understanding of Jesus post Resurrection body was that it changed and it seemed to have different properties. Flesh and blood were two big items to a person, yet I see "blood" missing from Jesus' assurance to the apostles that it was really him and NOT a vision or a spirit or a phantom. That is why I think SOMETHING was different about his blood was related to something different about his body. Maybe that change meant he could no longer be tempted to sin.

If you have any light on that Acts 17 verse I would like to hear it. Usually no one does. I can't explain it any better than quoting it and rough and gereral paraphrasing it the way I did. I don't accept the Apocrapha. It is never quoted by the NT writers. That was one question about the "non-canon" VPW answered for me at Rock'72. He said he tried to include the Apocrypha, but could not make it fit. I vaguely remember lots of difficult items in it, but it's been over 45 years since seeing it. I wont bother with it.

I do not look at something like that as a lie. God and Jesus are in perfect harmony, with Jesus completely done (seated) with his work for a while. If they WEREN'T in total harmony (and had differing goals or positions) then I would have a problem with God mis-representing Jesus' position.

Well, I dont have any problem with God giving Paul some revelations that sounded and looked like Jesus the man. Do you? It does upset traditional applecarts, but I don't see any real problem with that.

I often wondered that. There were other gaps of nothingness like that, like between Malachi and John the Baptist. There is an astounding verse in Acts that seems to address this, along with other scriptures. I collected LOTS of verses on this topic, but never had the time to work them. This one verse still fascinates me and seems to say "Don't worry about it. God knows how to keep it all fair and make sure no one who wants Him misses out." Acts 17 22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

In the Advance Class we were taught that God will make a revelation in such a way as to be perfectly understood by the recipient. Here we sit struggling to understand ADVANCED TOPICS Christ in us, and Christ seated at God's right hand, and the hidden Christ, Ambassadors for Christ. It took years for God to get all that through to Paul. In the heat of a battles Paul was in before all that revelation was completed, a vision or a voice like how God communicated to him on the Road to Damascus could be worded the way you quoted. How Jesus does things seated at God's right hand I do not understand. All we are given is what we need for us to grow up in him and be effective ambassadors. What Paul needed the most at that time was the assurance that God and Christ had a solid handle on the situation. That Jesus would stop being hidden and do a mini-Return just for Paul seems unnecessary. It was the assurance of safety and more missions that Paul needed, not the flesh and bones presence of Jesus. That is the best I understand. This is basically an advanced JCNG issue. I did all my JCNG study in the 70s and felt no need to advance it to include the absent Christ... until recently. A lot of others HAVE studied these aspects, and if you search around you will probably find it. I hear John Lynn and John Scoeinheit did an advanced version of JCNG, but I can't remember the name of it. The PROBABLY handled these things, like what is Jesus doing up there? Also Walter Cummins probably did work on this topic.

Yes. Those who stayed at the level of receiving only a sermon did not grow much. It's receive, retain, release that leads to growth. Retain means making the Word your own, seeing the sermon (and more) as you work the scriptures and versions. I was taught this early, so I did it. I made it my own. This canon talk is one example how within months after taking the class I was doing my own research in the KJV best I could.

I had written prior to that: The best I understand it the NT canon was assembled by Paul, Mark, Luke, and John. God gave them revelation for it. Their canon was not recognized for a long time, but God kept giving revelations to whomever He could to preserve and pass on that canon. *He had his hand on the process all along.I only saw one statement bold fonted by you there. Was it in conflict with the statements above it? */*/*/*/* My statement "He had his hand on the process all along." was referring to God, not Paul, if that helps. I see God's gentle had guiding the process for centuries with small revelations to those who had inherited the copies Timothy had. Oops !!! I forgot to include Timothy in that list: Paul, Mark, Luke, John, and Timothy. There could have been others like Matthew, but the scriptures I found pointed directly to these. */*/*/* Yes, I knew Paul died then, but he coordinated it up until his death, and then Timothy, Mark, and Luke had the ball to run with, according to 2 Timothy. I disagree with your statement: "Matthew and Luke are sourced from the information in Matthew." Did you mean to write? : "Mark and Luke are sourced from the information in Matthew." According to my careful prosthesis, Mark and Luke were given revelation to steal the copyrighted material from Matthew, and then pick and choose what God wanted to be put in their Gospels. Now any student of the Firesign Theatre KNOWS that I am joking in that one sentence. But on the serious side, I believe Mark and Luke put in writing whatever God told them to write, and if some of it was from Matthew, that was God's revelation to them. Much like today, and that is not a joke. Luke says he got it from above. We were taught to stand in awe that none of Paul's Secret Gospel appears in the 4 Gospels, even though they knew Paul well, because that writing was given to Paul. */*/*/* The revelation it took to get these 1st Century massive written messages in order was an INTERVENTION by God IMO. In the centuries following Paul and John finishing the NT canon, THAT is where I see God's gentle had guiding the process for centuries with small revelations to those who had inherited the copies Timothy and John and the others had assembled. This took about 3 or 4 hundred years to finish. Then God had to wait a long time to get Martin Luther to see Romans 10:9 and the like, and then drop everything for it, in spite of facing stiff persecution. God probably got some revelations to various translators over the centuries, but finally found a tough daredevil in VPW to "put it all together" with massive revelation as to where to search, what to filter out, what to bring in, and what few things he needed to hear directly from God. This process lasted 42.5 years, and it was not all done by VPW. God inspired lots of people to work with him. Plus, God inspired lots of people to come to HQ and teach. So I see, after the 1st Century, God's gentle hand giving revelations to many people for good handling of the surviving scriptures. God's only direct Intervention that I see was the 1942 promise to fix things, bigtime. We see God fixing damaged scriptures in Jer. 36, and elsewhere.

Thank you. I know it is easy to sound harsh in ASCII text, especially when typing lots of data. This is the very reason they invented emogees, and I should learn how to use them better. I eschew the over use of them that can flood the process, but I may have an imbalance there. :(

I missed you Nathan_Jr over the weekend. We covered a lot of the "absent Christ" and I hope you get to read it. Boy! This GSC sure has a lot of homework attached to it.

Yes. I am able to do that, but I have to add that to my workload. Things like this take time. It would actually be a pleasure to work on another project that is more positive toned like the canon. I started my canon research when I noticed that academic churchianity research into the NT canon made it sound like it was a result of several centuries of fighting, literally to the death. Hard to see God's hand in that process. I always felt my faith failing as I read about this process. It looked like the canon we have was established by a 400 year fight. So, what I did was mark in my Cambridge Wide Margin an "S" with a circle around it signifying this is a "Scripture talking about Scripture." This went on for about 10 years. I was pretty amazed, because nearly every time I opened my Bible to read, I found another one or two "S" verses. My wide margin filled up with them. I transferred it all to paper files that are still in that 3" thick folder. Early in that 10 year process I noticed that the ENTIRE epistle of 2 Timothy was devoted to the early assembly of the canon the Apostles recognized. THAT should be the first thing I digitize for you. I wrote up a short paper that shows this and sent it to Walter. His encouragement helped me sustain the project for those ten years. You can start reading that Epistle with this in mind. The structure that I discovered was (a) the adversary’s attack on the integrity of the Word Paul taught, and (b) Timothy’s job to fight it and preserve Paul’s revelations. That structure alternates over and over about 15 times in the Epistle. Peter’s second Epistle does the same thing, except it only has the cycle once: Chapter 1 is (a), Chapter 2 is (b), Chapter 3 is (a) again.

Oh NO! I was more confused than I thought. waysider was also in the mix. Did I mention that I had 4 surgeries inside my eyes last year. They helped a lot, but I am still training my outside eye muscles to read with both eyes.

So sorry. I thought you were OldSkool above. I'd be happy to discuss this, though I am rusty on it. The last time I worked on it was before the ministry meltdown in 1986. Please read what I said to OldSkool on this.

Oops! I confused responses to OldSkool and Nathan_Jr sorry

Sorry if I had sounded condescending. How do you work those scriptures I mentioned today? */*/*/* I partially answered this in another response this morning: "You literally have no actual trust in scripture without wierwille to interpret." This topic of the NT canon bothered me, until I saw how 2 Timothy is structured. I wrote it up and sent it to Walter. He liked it and we conferred often on it over the years. I got ZERO help from VPW; neither in any teachings, nor in face-to-face discussions. I had seen the the NT canon confusion you see in academia, and even in Young's Concordance's article on it, so I asked him about it at the Rock'72 when he parked his camper next to my van. His short answer on this was: "I never teach on the canon. I only teach that Pau's Epistles were assembled in order at a very early date." I worked on the project alone mostly, and showed my results to Walter several times. He said he agreed and had worked it himself.