Mike

Sorry WW. I didn't see any of your posts in here, maybe because you didn't quote me and, I was up to my ears just responding to notifications. If any were important or on topic, can you please repeat them here?

I put zero stock in what seems to you to be accurate about me. You have not earned my respect, and I care not about your assessments. Your applications or God's Word to events of 40 years ago don't interest me. Besides, you haven't had TIME to digest how WRONG you were about me just a few posts ago. You got my pitch wrong, dead wrong. REMEMBER ??? Take some time to digest it before you spout off your church lady judgements to me. WHAT? Did you just blow that off? That you got my pitch SO innacurate? Go take a nap and sleep on it a while. I went through all these items before and see no reason to do it again. It's a distraction and way off my mission, and .... of course off topic.

It is not ridiculous when you see it from the RIGHT angle. "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." You are looking at the wrong guy. I don't. Why are you?

Absolutely NOT !!! I am accused of that often, and you may have read those accusations. Or you surmised that wrong, ...dead wrong. TWI was wrong about LOTS of things. I just got done saying that lots of the TVTs were wrong. Lots of TWI policies were horribly wrong after 1986, some before. I have thought the the Way Corps was either a mistake or badly managed. I witnessed VPW say that he was wrong about PFAL'77 being a replacement for the class. VPW admitted on tape, and on his tombstone that he blew it. The First John Epistle told me when I first took the class that VPW had sin in his life, and I never supposed that was stealing nickle candy bars. No, there were policy errors and deliberate sins at the top. There always are! ONE kind or type or another. The GREAT positive I believe is that God works with sinners like me and you and VPW, as far as we are willing to go. The great positive that went right in VPW's life is that God worked with him to pull together what God wanted. This process was aided by lots of smart people with great spiritual ability. It is the finished product that I preach is to be thankful for and that is the collaterals, in their final edit. God worked with the editors. I knew some personally. I heavily interviewed most of them, including Karen Martin a little. I need to get back to her, because we were interrupted by her brother's death. I believe the collaterals are God-breathed and good food for us to master. That is the best of the best in this ministry. I study them, and they help me read deeper into the Bible. I think TWI and VPW did some other good things, but lots of things went wrong also. I am thankful for what went right: the collaterals. That is my pitch. Never did I endorse all of TWI and all of VPW. I believe the collaterals are God-breathed and good food for us to master.

I rest on the words of Jesus here: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. I also like what he says about believing.

Why is it you have avoided my explanations above where I negated all that by saying I DO look at these negative things in private, with those who need it, and I only post publically what I feel qualified to post, which are the positives. But thanks for being such a sloppy reader, or deliberate obfuscator, because it allowed me to say AGAIN for others, that I prefer and insist on negatives being in private and at a lower priority FOR ME. My public posting is devoted to helping us all remember what went right. All these negatives are out in the open, and need no more attention, especially from me. <speaking close to the vest> Now, I should answer another one of your posts to distract you from carefully reading the above paragraphs, and thus allowing me to repeat it the next time you forget to address what I actually say.

Not sure what you mean with the bold fonts. I think you have a sloppy read on me and my positions, but I could be wrong. No, I'm not the hulk type. When I used the words "something like" up there I meant this was the goal in detail of how to deal with mis-applications of that otherwise decent meme. It took me years to come up with that idea for responding, and I have had a chance to practice my lines a little, but they didn't come out quite that hulky. "I see you think it's okay for you to reprove others, but heaven help those that reprove you." Sorry, that is out of the blue wrong. You completely misread me there. Did you see the wording where I said "This only works when I am right" ??? it sounds like you glossed over them inattentive. You are focused on the exact words of my response, and not the ideas. Funny, that should come up! I should call Douglas Hofstadter about this.

COMMON GROUND ALERT !!! I agree with you on this! I have seen that kind of thing in the TVTs. TVT means Twi Verbal Tradition (That reminds me that we probably have a lot of common-ground righteous gripes in the TVT collection we hammered out here in the early 2000s here. That would be a pretty unique archive search word, TVT.) */*/*/* Yes, common ground on the mis-use of common English words and their definitions in everyday life. "Trying is a half heart attempt with the foreknowledge of failure." That is a perfect example of a good phrase for the gym, or baseball team, but terrible in real life. I saw that meme misapplied often in TVT behavior. It especially is misapplied when referring to the past. "But I tried! " Here is how I fight it: When I am expressing an idea that uses one of these "loaded" words like "try" and I run into that stupid brick wall, I have a strategy. This only works if I am in the right, and they misapply the meme. Sometimes I am wrong and that meme could be properly applied to me. When they blurt out that meme, I look them in the eye, and with a demanding voice, say something like: “Ok, YOU come up with the right word for my situation! If you know what I am trying to communicate, that should be easy for you! Ok, time's up. Listen better to the IDEA that I am expressing, not the vocabulary, and shut up until you understand it! THEN we can both come up with a better word than try.”

Well I did say it better, but T-bone missed it. What we see in the NT are the beginnings of the crazy negatives that devil inspired Christians can do to each other. In the next century it got worse, after Paul died. The early negativity swirls got worse as the centuries ticked by. The early stuff is documented so we can spot the early signs of it and halt it. Did you spot anything and blow the whistle on it ever? I did. My twig and I came up with a precursor to the John Scheonheit paper on adultery about 6 years before him. I was flabbergasted when I first saw his paper in 1987. We in my twig saw the early warning signs and did an extensive 2 week study on adultery and fornication in our Young's Concordance. Amateurs though we were, we mirrored what was in that famous 1986 paper around 1981. His paper had 14 appendixes to bust "pick-up lines" and ours handled 10 of them.

Well the absent Christ was a pure doctrinal issue. The complaint was that it misled people and caused them to have a poor relationship with Jesus and God. If you choose to make false doctrines something you ignore, I am not the one to complain about it. Raf is not interested in the doctrine, but could see that this "absent Christ" was a bogus complaint, and hyped up negativity. Maybe if you read the thread you could agree on that level. It's not like GSC is my only learning grounds. It is pretty difficult to come in here all cheery and vulnerable and face the crowd with strength. I did that for the first few days I was here, but alphacat launched a campaign against me as soon as he recognized me. Actually, he started that campaign a couple of months against me BEFORE i came and posted my first post. When he recognized me it was a pile on. There's no defense in vulnerability when it's almost a literary gang-rape. I fought hard, and suddenly people who dished it out could not handle it when it came back at them. I see how vulnerability works with dogs often, but it requires a semi-serene atmosphere. Once a fight starts it often must go to the death, because their vulnerability-signal is to expose the neck while on their backs. I thought I did that in the serenity of last night when I offered you some options to make things go smoother for you.

I'm not going to budge on the Word, but I am always trying to better communicate. I am learning there. Are YOU capable of change, and admitting that the "absent Christ" is a good thing, and that we were taught rightly there? It's all in this thread. I won't budge on the doctrine I posted here, but I can modify how I express it. Find me a post that should be re-written here in this thread and we can discuss it. But the doctrine of the absent Christ is sound as we were taught it. Yes, some got it wrong. At least we can correct their error here and move on. Even Raf had to admit this "absent christ crisis" is phoney. It is hyped up negativity, and incorrect. Can you relax long enough to admit that?

I see dynamic swirls of scandal at Corinth. Paul handled it quickly. The Galatians lost it on grace. Peter talks about people destroying themselves for not getting Paul's Epistles correct. Most of the Church Epistles were reproof and correction. Paul had nostalgic fits that almost destroyed his ministry. Peter was to be blamed for being two faced with the Gentiles. Where ever there are humans enjoying the Word you get dynamic swirls of the adversary's attacks. Give that first century church another few decades and all is lost.

That love option is a two way street. I am thankful for your efforts to communicate with me lately.

There have been SOME that can hear me, and I dialog with them best I can. Most are mockers and not listening to me. They talk at me. At least that was my experience 20 years ago, and in many of the years in between. In recent years I have tried again a few times, and because lots of the most rabid haters of me are gone, I feel some progress has been made. The common ground we share is what went right for us as we learned the Word. I can usually connect with people if they can connect with their past's positivity around the Word. I have shared these days lots of my angst over what went wrong, and my chosen path to deal with those things. Shining as much light on dark places is what I insist on doing. Those who see this as a better solution than constantly moaning about what happened 40 years ago are the ones with whom I can have more common ground in the future. Constantly and exclusively moaning and groaning and mocking is not a solution and I wont look for common ground there.

Yes.

Actually, a lot of that did happen in the early centuries. Things moved slower then with their slow travel and communications, but you can see seeds of that in the correction and reproof epistles, especially Corinthians. It is only logical that the devil would seek to corrupt the places and people where the most Word was.

If I wanted to ignore the negatives, I simply would not come here and hear them constantly. Think that through for a minute. What you posted above may have applied to some mature grad back in the 70s, but certainly not to me in the 2020s.

Looks like you have not read how I corrected this error of yours. If you have read my position of NOT ignoring the negatives and only shunting them off for private handling, and still maintain what you just posted, then it is you who have head in sand. Maybe in the past 2 hours you did read or re-read better what I am saying to you today. Repeat: I do not want to magnify the negatives to the top of my public posting priorities, but I do give the negatives (in private) ample time to hear, process, and search for solutions.

I know for sure that God guided me and protected me in TWI, so that I could get as much of the good, and miss as much of the bad as possible. I've mentioned here several times that TWI was like marble cake, with dynamic swirls of light and dark. I was wary or VPW then and asked for God's help. I even went to Protestant churches to discuss the trinity, to make sure I wasn't leaving any stone unturned. I saw in those years that i dodged many bullets, that hit my friends. Why was I so blessed? I wondered about that for a long time. It finally dawned on me that if I was blessed that way, it was so that I could do work for God to bless others similarly. I try my best. The reason there was so much darkness on the attack within the ministry was because SO MUCH light was there to be had. OF COURSE the devil would concentrate much on TWI to suppress that light. All good people have their weak points and those were exploited. So here we are decades later. The light is still shining, and most of the darkness has passed. chockful, I disagree with the the iceberg proportions of the analogy you gave. I think the good was far more than the bad, but of course, for anyone who hit solid bad spots, the pain would be just as bad in that locality regardless of how things were far away. When I finally hit the bad spots in the mid 80s, it was grotesque and I wasn't used to it. It threw me off the track. But I had studied how great believers in the Bible had lost it and then bounced back. Somehow I did, and here we are.

Thanks much. I found from that link a bunch of You-Tube videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUgYujjYXLCJtX7xvv2_37w/featured If that doesn;t work, this video can link you to their Subscription group: It is called "Christian Training Centre of Texas" at You-Tube.

If you could get that telephone pole sized splinter out of your eye you'd have noticed that I said that I do NOT forget the negatives, nor do I expect others to do that. We can declare them null and void on our own lives, as the Word teaches, and IN PRIVATE we can help those who have not learned how to do this kind of declaration. Did you miss that? ...that I do want to handle some of the negatives that I am qualified to handle? Some of the negatives I feel totally unqualified to handle. I may grow in that area, though, as I work that which I am qualified to handle. I can handle the misunderstandings that happened in some people regarding the absent Christ. That is relatively easy to handle. Please go back and read what you missed. I know bad things happened at times and places. It is only in my public posting that I prioritize the positives up to the top of the list.

That is an interesting thought. I will consider it. I've spent most of my time reaching out to old grads and finding out from them how they handle the baggage. If you could link me to the Leonard people that could be a refreshing change for me. I did get a refreshing change 10 years ago when I discovered the local Deadhead community and I quickly learned to love Grateful Dead music and dancing. They have a sort of experimental, hidden, primitive Christianity thing going. I see a chain from Ken Kesey to the hippies doing this peace and love and look-like-Jesus movement, to the Jesus Freaks and all that, to Heefner and Doop, to the Groovy Rye Group. It is fertile witnessing ground. But it never occured to me to contact the Leonard movement. Do they have many young people, or are they mostly oldsters like us, and like lots of grad splinter groups I see?

I think you are on the beam, again, Oldiesman. It is the Word living in the mind of a believer that takes the place of the absent Christ. One perfect human is hidden; another perfect human displayed, and then another, and another, and another, and.... By us being perfect I am thinking of incorruptible seed, old man reckoned dead, and walking in renewed mind love. Christ, the physical man, is hidden so that MANY other physical men and women can take his place, and be his ambassador. */*/* Here's a thought: how motivated are we to learn how to tap into the same power Jesus found, if he were here to do his thing. Look at the example of the apostles in the 4 Gospels. They tried at times, but often gave up and deferred to "let Jesus handle it." We don't have that option, and we MUST learn it, because Jesus is absent.... temporarily. */*/*/* I was just finishing writing this post as I saw a notification that you posted again. I can't wait to see it. Thanks for you help here.

In the OT, I see that most of the audience Isaian had were natural men with no spirit. That we all have pneuma hagion is a game changer. As I said above, I do not ignore the negatives that happened, and deal with them in private. I have a much better set of GOOD NEWS items to talk about in public that Isaiah did not have. The positives get top, public priority for me, ESPECIALLY here in GSC where the negatives get top, public priority. There is NO SHORTAGE here of the negatives which did happen being displayed. There IS a conspicuous absence here of the massive number of good things that we were taught and that came into fruition in MANY lives.