“About a year later the woman’s only son was coming home from school early. Mother had not met him at the street corner. As the boy walked out into the strret, he was hit by an automobile and killed. I went to the funeral service of that boy, and guess what the minister preached? “God now has another rose petal in heaven.” Imagine that! That the God who created the heavens and the earth should want to kill a little boy because God needed another rose petal in heaven. Do you know what killed that little boy? The fear in the heart and life of that mother. She was so desperately afraid something was going to happen to her little boy that she finally reaped the results of her believing.”
Of course saying “God has a rose petal in heaven” is NOT the same as saying God killed the boy.
So here we have a grieving mother and family, vp shows up for the funeral, is blaming the mother for the death, and internally criticizing the “accuracy” of the minister’s remarks.
What does he choose to emphasize?
For those who will pretend to not see that point, or who will be unable to bring themselves to see it,
I shall make it clearer.
A child dies. Nobody rejoices.
A minister performs the funeral, and MUST try to offer some comfort to the family.
What does he tell them?
He says their precious little child is in heaven, with God.
Whether or not one believes this is true, few would be so slow-witted to miss that this offers comfort to the family.
(Funerals, except for the most crass, are NOT places to correct someone's doctrine.)
vpw then finds something to complain about there-even if he has to manufacture it to show how awful
those wicked, nasty ministers can be.
He changes the minister's message from "God now has another rose petal in heaven"
to
"God KILLED that child IN ORDER TO have another rose petal in heaven."
Amazing how evil the minister's words were-once vpw changed them.
Amazing how vpw can take a FUNERAL and begin finding fault with comforting the bereaved, the hurting, the suffering.
Then again,
if certain people here are correct,
and vpw really DID say that every time one receives based on either believing or fear,
that God Almighty's the one that makes it happen,
the vpw HIMSELF said God killed the kid.
If, as vpw said
"Believing is a law. As one believes, he receives. On the negative side, fear is believing: fear is believing in reverse,
it produces ill results."
and
"If a person is afraid of not being able to hold his job, do you know what will happen? He will lose it. If one is afraid of a
disease, he will manifest that disease because the law is that which one believes (in this case, what one believes negatively),
he is going to receive. People have a fear of the future; they have a fear of death. Fear always encases, fear always enslaves,
fear always binds. This law of negative and positive believing works for both Christian and non-Christian.
When we believe, we receive the results of our believing regardless of who or what we are."
and, supposedly, he ALWAYS claimed that
"You say it, you believe it, and God will bring it to pass.",
then, yes, the mother feared, and God granted the results of her fear and killed her child.
Mind you, that's not what the minister said.
If vpw did say this, then I think it would be appropriate to reply to him
"Imagine that! That the God who created the heavens and the earth should kill a little boy!"
Then again, this whole "vpw said it was ALWAYS from God" thing is untrue, and misrepresents vpw's words
in order to make him sound more Biblical. He was inconsistent-sometimes it was of God, sometimes God was
powerless to prevent us from reaping the consequences of believing.
If he had lived and stayed in power, he would have come up with more and more crazy stuff, ...
Is this a hypothetical prophesy? I think this statement is crazy. Where VPW is concerned, I think Dr. Juedes is dedicated to thinking evil and now resorts to hypotheticals; a sure sign of being unreasonable. On every other issue of his life, Dr. Juedes is probably quite reasonable and admirable.
A lot of what VP taught was to counter errors he saw growing up in his church system. In this example, he saw a lot of people who believed that anything that happened was God's will. Somebody dies at 20 in a car wreck and it's God's will; stuff like that. I always processed the law of believing as a means for VP to teach people that they/we have more control over their lives than thought possible, and that God doesn't will for people to die prematurely, and that the "will of God" isn't lurking around every corner to afflict them. That's how I always took it.
How many times do you suppose that people in VPs generation and possibly stll today grew up in a church and had a loved one die or something else bad happen and the minister just smugly said to them, "it's the will of God; sorry, can't help you".
John, thanks for sharing that. Yes I see that and have similar thoughts about why he wrote "Christians Should be Prosperous" in the sense that he observed the churches of his time begging. He looked upon his brethren acting poverty stricken and downtrodded, begging for this and that and thought it could be better, Christians shouldn't have to beg. Perhaps that was one of his motives; a desire to get folks out of the begging routine and into God's principles.
quote: Believing is a law. As one believes, he receives. On the negative side, fear is believing: fear is believing in reverse,
it produces ill results.
One thing to keep in mind: in the pfal example of the woman whose child was run over by a car, the woman didn't just blow the negative thought off the top of her head, she obsessed. She was constantly fearful that something would happen to her little Johnny. Even the scriptures about Job reveal that he "continually" offered offerings and feared that his children had cursed God. So when VP said that both fear and faith produce results, it wasn't passive. It should go without saying that death claims us all and is absurd to think that VP feared that he would die of cancer.
Every morning, millions of parents send their kids off, worried that some terrible thing will befall their kids.
Every afternoon, millions of parents receive their children back, their DAILY fears having failed to come to pass.
One poster here has commented how his parents were FULL of fear each day, and nothing happened to him.
Another poster here has commented how his parents DID NOT fear, and a horrible thing befell him.
Johniam:
"..is absurd to think that VP feared that he would die of cancer."
vpw:
"We are what we are today because of our believing. We will be tomorrow where our believing takes us."
"Believing is a law. As one believes, he receives. On the negative side, fear is believing: fear is believing in reverse,
it produces ill results. "
"If one is afraid of a disease, he will manifest that disease because the law is that which one believes (in this case, what one believes negatively)."
Johniam, we agree.
The teachings of vpw would say that people who died of illness had 2 problems.
A) feared they would catch the disease
B) lack of believing that God would heal the disease
Johniam agrees with Juedes that this is error- that this is NOT what happens when people get sick, so when vpw got
sick, it wasn't due to fear, and when he didn't heal, it wasn't due to lack of believing,
Is this a hypothetical prophesy? I think this statement is crazy. Where VPW is concerned, I think Dr. Juedes is dedicated to thinking evil and now resorts to hypotheticals; a sure sign of being unreasonable. On every other issue of his life, Dr. Juedes is probably quite reasonable and admirable.
I dunno.. makes sense to me. Look at his track record.. he published the little are the dead alive now book.. that didn't get a whole heck of a lot of attention.. but it was enough at the time to foster an "us vs. them" mentality. Kept inquiring minds off of his preclivities..
Then JCING. That was VERY successful in giving da "faithful" yet another iconoclastic statement to circle the wagons around..
then the advanced classes. Oh yes.. noah castrated by his son.. the u.s. being taken over by "them"..
always something out there.. kept us so busy, that few slowed down enough to look what was in their midst..
loy took it even further. The "homo is da enemey, the homo is among us.."
then "debt is da enemy, debt is among us.."
even..
"da pet is our enemy, da pet is among us.."
one ridiculous doctrine and purge after another..
Oh yes. I think if vic lived on another twenty years, without too much dementia, we'd have seen one "extraordinary" biblical discovery after another..
"If he had lived and stayed in power, he would have come up with more and more crazy stuff,"
Is this a hypothetical prophesy? I think this statement is crazy. Where VPW is concerned, I think Dr. Juedes is dedicated to thinking evil and now resorts to hypotheticals; a sure sign of being unreasonable. On every other issue of his life, Dr. Juedes is probably quite reasonable and admirable.
I think it would have been more accurate to say that "every other so-called minister of God who placed themselves in the position
vpw had placed himself in has come up progressively more and more crazy stuff, and it is likely that vpw would only have been
just another one of them, hardly the greatest man of God in 2 millenia that he put forth that he was."
Funny how oldiesman can comb over lengthy articles refuting error from the mouth of wierwille, skip over all of that,
and find the one speculative sentence to object to.
I think oldiesman is dedicated to thinking evil of anyone who criticizes vpw to the smallest degree and now resorts to
ignoring 90% or more of someone's response and cherry-picking out only what he can object to.
On every issue of his life not related to vpw and twi, oldiesman is probably quite reasonable.
So here we have a grieving mother and family, vp shows up for the funeral, is blaming the mother for the death, and internally criticizing the “accuracy” of the minister’s remarks.
What does he choose to emphasize?
He chose to emphasize that it was the fear in the heart and life of the mother.
He wasn't condemning the mother; he was emphasizing the fear she had, and taught it that way.
Her fear is what caused the accident.
Yes the driver may have had some responsibility; on the other hand, what if the child just didn't look and jumped in front of the car and the driver could not get out of the way?
Fear brings results. In this case, one of the results was the mother not teaching the child how properly to cross the street.
THAT is the point of the teaching; not that the mother was under blame or condemnation.
He chose to emphasize that it was the fear in the heart and life of the mother.
He wasn't condemning the mother; he was emphasizing the fear she had, and taught it that way.
Her fear is what caused the accident.
Yes the driver may have had some responsibility; on the other hand, what if the child just didn't look and jumped in front of the car and the driver could not get out of the way?
Fear brings results. In this case, one of the results was the mother not teaching the child how properly to cross the street.
THAT is the point of the teaching; not that the mother was under blame or condemnation.
Whether or not the mother taught the child how properly to cross the street is incidental to what vpw taught.
Kindly quote-citing the page- where vpw said that in the Orange or the Blue Book.
That issue didn't come up until raised BY US on the messageboards.
vpw said his mother's fear killed him. Period.
Orange Book, pg 44.
"What one fears will surely come to pass. It is a law. Have you ever heard about people who set the time of their death?
When somebody says 'Well, this time next year I will not be here," if you are a betting man, bet your money;
you are going to win. If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would
have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accomodated."
Orange Book, pg-43-44.
"Do you know what killed that little boy? The fear in the heart and life of that mother. She was so desperately afraid
something was going to happen to her little boy that she finally reaped the results of her believing."
I would also like to point out that we have no documentation that this woman and her child EVER EXISTED.
We know the attitudes vpw claims towards such people, but we have no guarantee they were REAL and not just
made up to supposedly illustrate the so-called "LAW" of believing that fails to work as written,
so people desperate to prop it up have to add all sorts of codicils to handwave away all the times it DOESN'T work
The only real way to make the thing work, WW, is to say God allowed the boy to die because of her negative believing, which was taught all the time. That is the same thing as saying God could have and would have stopped it, but chose not to because of a law. So God becomes responsible for the death indirectly through inaction, on purpose because He himself set it up that way.
Oh yeah, the devil is the author of death (no such Scripture). The devil actually killed the boy because he had access through the fear. So through inaction, God lets the devil be the agent.
Wait a minute, it was fear in the heart of the woman.
Let me get this straight. God sets up a universe on a law where He is only free to act when there is enough of the correct amount of believing (how much is enough?). Otherwise, his hands are tied. The devil is free to operate within the fear side. So both watch to see whose power will get to operate. Now God’s hands are tied by both believing and the devil.
So my son comes home from school. No you may not have supper today and you must sleep outside in the snow (where the wolves are free to eat you), because, dang, you didn’t follow the rules yesterday. This is how it works in this house. It’s either or. No exceptions, grace, or mercy.
I dunno. I thought we got a Savior because we couldn’t do everything just right.
I don't recall VP saying "the laws of the universe brought this to pass".
To the best of my recollection he said "God set the laws of the universe in place" so he was acknowledging God setting up the rules and design.
This is far from atheistic as Dr. Juedes has asserted.
The system being in place, whether or not you receive something has nothing to do with any involvement from God.
The laws of the universe are in place, and your receiving will be based entirely on what and how you believe.
vpw:
"If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would
have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accomodated."
You're misrepresenting Juedes and ignoring when he explained your misrepresentation.
Juedes clarified, attempting to shore up your understanding.
Amazingly, you completely skipped this, although you quoted and criticized a few of his sentences following.
Juedes:
"It is striking to me how strongly people have responded to this article on the "law" of beleiving. Perhaps this response hints at how entrenched the idea was in TWI, and perhaps also at how much damage it has done to people (to themsevles or to people they know).
My article does not say that VPW promoted atheism. It does say that "the law of believing" is an atheistic system. In VP's view, Christians and non Christians "operate" it to do good or to do evil. While VP mentioned God's promises, they really don't make any difference to the "law." He told the story of the mother who caused her child to be killed by her negative believing. Does that mean that she knew the promises of God were "available" and used her believing in God's promises to kill her child? Certainly not!"
This IS what vpw said.
"If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would
have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accomodated."
God's involvement in this transaction is NONEXISTENT.
The person believed and was killed by the interaction of his believing and "the laws of the universe."
God set up these supposed laws millenia ago, and can merely watch in impotent fury if one of his precious children
has determined they could die. The only thing he CAN do is send a prophet to try to convince them to change
their believing, but if the person remains resolute, God MUST stand aside and watch them die.
The only real way to make the thing work, WW, is to say God allowed the boy to die because of her negative believing, which was taught all the time. That is the same thing as saying God could have and would have stopped it, but chose not to because of a law. So God becomes responsible for the death indirectly through inaction, on purpose because He himself set it up that way.
Oh yeah, the devil is the author of death (no such Scripture). The devil actually killed the boy because he had access through the fear. So through inaction, God lets the devil be the agent.
Wait a minute, it was fear in the heart of the woman.
Let me get this straight. God sets up a universe on a law where He is only free to act when there is enough of the correct amount of believing (how much is enough?). Otherwise, his hands are tied. The devil is free to operate within the fear side. So both watch to see whose power will get to operate. Now God’s hands are tied by both believing and the devil.
So my son comes home from school. No you may not have supper today and you must sleep outside in the snow (where the wolves are free to eat you), because, dang, you didn’t follow the rules yesterday. This is how it works in this house. It’s either or. No exceptions, grace, or mercy.
I dunno. I thought we got a Savior because we couldn’t do everything just right.
No fair making sense here, another spot. We're discussing how vpw's rules don't work- or attempting to rewrite them
so that they DO work, depending on who's posting.
Not that I don't agree wholeheartedly, but we're busy circling some nonsense.
Abigail, thanks for sharing that. Unfortunately, very unfortunately, one of the errors that crept in twi was to think evil about someone when evil happened to them. i.e., "you weren't believing"..
I think this was a practical error that crept in twi, even in "those good old days" and should have been corrected with love and compassion. Sometimes it was, but often it wasn't.
I believe this practical error was NOT from the doctrine. I know we had been taught that practical error comes from doctrinal error, but I think this one came from the adversary, from "thinking evil" when someone got sick or hurt. It was like a knee-jerk reaction to think evil. The leaders should have realized this and dealt with it with reproof and correction. Sometimes they did, but not often enough.
As I'm getting older I'm seeing that folks , especially Christians, should not think evil about those who do not believe. Walk in love as Jesus did, love can replace this easily if folks will just do it.
While I agree that more love and compassion is needed, I disagree as to how it arrived.
You're saying it "crept in." I say a lot of it was part and parcel of the framework.
For example:
PFAL pg 43-44.
“About a year later the woman’s only son was coming home from school early. Mother had not met him at the street corner. As the boy walked out into the strret, he was hit by an automobile and killed. I went to the funeral service of that boy, and guess what the minister preached? “God now has another rose petal in heaven.” Imagine that! That the God who created the heavens and the earth should want to kill a little boy because God needed another rose petal in heaven. Do you know what killed that little boy? The fear in the heart and life of that mother. She was so desperately afraid something was going to happen to her little boy that she finally reaped the results of her believing.”
Of course saying “God has a rose petal in heaven” is NOT the same as saying God killed the boy.
So here we have a grieving mother and family, vp shows up for the funeral, is blaming the mother for the death, and internally criticizing the “accuracy” of the minister’s remarks.
What does he choose to emphasize?
vpw HIMSELF takes shots at this minister and mother who may not have even existed.
I think oldiesman is dedicated to thinking evil of anyone who criticizes vpw to the smallest degree ...
I am here to express my opinions; no more, no less.
You are entitled to believe what you will, but at least one difference I can tell you, is that I am not under any allusions that what I post is part of some righteous mission to expose evil and help people get out of bondage.
As opposed to some posters, who portray themselves in this manner thereby making justification for their own continued hatred of VP and TWI.
“The Devil now has the rulership, the dominion, the authority, the power which Adam originally possessed over God’s creation. Whenever the Devil wants to flood a territory, he floods it out. When he wants to kill people, he kills them.”
It isn’t possible to reconcile that statement with the law of believing.
I am here to express my opinions; no more, no less.
You are entitled to believe what you will, but at least one difference I can tell you, is that I am not under any allusions that what I post is part of some righteous mission to expose evil and help people get out of bondage.
No, it's a righteous mission to salvage an idyllic memory of twi, pfal and your own past there,
getting your own memories out of bondage.
Part and parcel of that is to attempt to crucify people like Juedes-
whether that means ignoring almost everything he says, distorting what he says,
or even distorting what vpw said.
As opposed to some posters, who portray themselves in this manner thereby making justification for their own continued hatred of VP and TWI.
Who said we HATED vpw and twi?
We all follow the dictates of our respective consciences- which respond as we have instructed them.
This "people who criticize vpw are deeply emotional" thing isn't based on us,
but, again,
part and parcel of trying to discredit any criticism of vpw.
Cold logic demonstrating his doctrinal error can't be countenanced,
so it must be relabelled as emotional outbursts one way or another.
Subtle? Perhaps but, let's see how well you can spot the contradiction in his post. Shall I give you a clue? I think not.
I'm all ears. Enlighten me --- please! ;)
(P.S. -- post if you wish, or not as you wish.)
I won't be back here until (perhaps) 8 PM tomorrow evening.
A small thing called my *Day job*. ;)
Oh for you dmiller I'll give you a clue. What did you DO with the film strip after you received it?
Although your analogy wasn't all that bad you left out one important ingredient. The five keys taught in PFAL didn't pertain to receiving just anything -- it specifically addressed what we needed to know in order to receive anything FROM God. In other words -- it pertains to what's available FROM God -- not man or an organization.
Btw -- I have one of those "Afternoon" jobs. So I won't be here a 8 PM tomorrow evening. ;)
“The Devil now has the rulership, the dominion, the authority, the power which Adam originally possessed over God’s creation. Whenever the Devil wants to flood a territory, he floods it out. When he wants to kill people, he kills them.”
It isn’t possible to reconcile that statement with the law of believing.
There are contradictions and errors in PFAL. It isn't God Breathed, after all. :)
God is the one who makes things happen, not my believing. (VPW)
So in the case of that little boy, God "made it happen" when the mother's "believing" was reversed? Of course not, VP would reply. God doesn't need another rose petal in heaven. My God, man, that's BLASPHEMY!
It just doesn't work, Oldies. It's a broken cistern, a theological screwup. It was sincerely advanced, IMO, but you know, sincerety is no guarantee for truth. VP was a product of his times. Just as he reflected the religious writings of his times, he reflected the Think and Grow Rich boys.
The biblical teachings on faith, especially Jesus' teachings and the records of his acts in the Gospels, are badly skewed by this overlay. If you don't like JohnJ's take on it, how about mine? I haven't read the article.
So in the case of that little boy, God "made it happen" when the mother's "believing" was reversed? Of course not, VP would reply. God doesn't need another rose petal in heaven. My God, man, that's BLASPHEMY!
It just doesn't work, Oldies. It's a broken cistern, a theological screwup.
Dan, I don't understand what you're saying here. God made it happen when the mother's believing was reversed?
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WordWolf
For those who will pretend to not see that point, or who will be unable to bring themselves to see it,
I shall make it clearer.
A child dies. Nobody rejoices.
A minister performs the funeral, and MUST try to offer some comfort to the family.
What does he tell them?
He says their precious little child is in heaven, with God.
Whether or not one believes this is true, few would be so slow-witted to miss that this offers comfort to the family.
(Funerals, except for the most crass, are NOT places to correct someone's doctrine.)
vpw then finds something to complain about there-even if he has to manufacture it to show how awful
those wicked, nasty ministers can be.
He changes the minister's message from "God now has another rose petal in heaven"
to
"God KILLED that child IN ORDER TO have another rose petal in heaven."
Amazing how evil the minister's words were-once vpw changed them.
Amazing how vpw can take a FUNERAL and begin finding fault with comforting the bereaved, the hurting, the suffering.
Then again,
if certain people here are correct,
and vpw really DID say that every time one receives based on either believing or fear,
that God Almighty's the one that makes it happen,
the vpw HIMSELF said God killed the kid.
If, as vpw said
"Believing is a law. As one believes, he receives. On the negative side, fear is believing: fear is believing in reverse,
it produces ill results."
and
"If a person is afraid of not being able to hold his job, do you know what will happen? He will lose it. If one is afraid of a
disease, he will manifest that disease because the law is that which one believes (in this case, what one believes negatively),
he is going to receive. People have a fear of the future; they have a fear of death. Fear always encases, fear always enslaves,
fear always binds. This law of negative and positive believing works for both Christian and non-Christian.
When we believe, we receive the results of our believing regardless of who or what we are."
and, supposedly, he ALWAYS claimed that
"You say it, you believe it, and God will bring it to pass.",
then, yes, the mother feared, and God granted the results of her fear and killed her child.
Mind you, that's not what the minister said.
If vpw did say this, then I think it would be appropriate to reply to him
"Imagine that! That the God who created the heavens and the earth should kill a little boy!"
Then again, this whole "vpw said it was ALWAYS from God" thing is untrue, and misrepresents vpw's words
in order to make him sound more Biblical. He was inconsistent-sometimes it was of God, sometimes God was
powerless to prevent us from reaping the consequences of believing.
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oldiesman
Is this a hypothetical prophesy? I think this statement is crazy. Where VPW is concerned, I think Dr. Juedes is dedicated to thinking evil and now resorts to hypotheticals; a sure sign of being unreasonable. On every other issue of his life, Dr. Juedes is probably quite reasonable and admirable.
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oldiesman
John, thanks for sharing that. Yes I see that and have similar thoughts about why he wrote "Christians Should be Prosperous" in the sense that he observed the churches of his time begging. He looked upon his brethren acting poverty stricken and downtrodded, begging for this and that and thought it could be better, Christians shouldn't have to beg. Perhaps that was one of his motives; a desire to get folks out of the begging routine and into God's principles.
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WordWolf
Every morning, millions of parents send their kids off, worried that some terrible thing will befall their kids.
Every afternoon, millions of parents receive their children back, their DAILY fears having failed to come to pass.
One poster here has commented how his parents were FULL of fear each day, and nothing happened to him.
Another poster here has commented how his parents DID NOT fear, and a horrible thing befell him.
Johniam:
"..is absurd to think that VP feared that he would die of cancer."
vpw:
"We are what we are today because of our believing. We will be tomorrow where our believing takes us."
"Believing is a law. As one believes, he receives. On the negative side, fear is believing: fear is believing in reverse,
it produces ill results. "
"If one is afraid of a disease, he will manifest that disease because the law is that which one believes (in this case, what one believes negatively)."
Johniam, we agree.
The teachings of vpw would say that people who died of illness had 2 problems.
A) feared they would catch the disease
B) lack of believing that God would heal the disease
Johniam agrees with Juedes that this is error- that this is NOT what happens when people get sick, so when vpw got
sick, it wasn't due to fear, and when he didn't heal, it wasn't due to lack of believing,
NO MATTER WHAT VPW TAUGHT.
We're all in agreement that this was error.
Glad we're all on the same page.
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Ham
I dunno.. makes sense to me. Look at his track record.. he published the little are the dead alive now book.. that didn't get a whole heck of a lot of attention.. but it was enough at the time to foster an "us vs. them" mentality. Kept inquiring minds off of his preclivities..
Then JCING. That was VERY successful in giving da "faithful" yet another iconoclastic statement to circle the wagons around..
then the advanced classes. Oh yes.. noah castrated by his son.. the u.s. being taken over by "them"..
always something out there.. kept us so busy, that few slowed down enough to look what was in their midst..
loy took it even further. The "homo is da enemey, the homo is among us.."
then "debt is da enemy, debt is among us.."
even..
"da pet is our enemy, da pet is among us.."
one ridiculous doctrine and purge after another..
Oh yes. I think if vic lived on another twenty years, without too much dementia, we'd have seen one "extraordinary" biblical discovery after another..
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WordWolf
"If he had lived and stayed in power, he would have come up with more and more crazy stuff,"
I think it would have been more accurate to say that "every other so-called minister of God who placed themselves in the position
vpw had placed himself in has come up progressively more and more crazy stuff, and it is likely that vpw would only have been
just another one of them, hardly the greatest man of God in 2 millenia that he put forth that he was."
Funny how oldiesman can comb over lengthy articles refuting error from the mouth of wierwille, skip over all of that,
and find the one speculative sentence to object to.
I think oldiesman is dedicated to thinking evil of anyone who criticizes vpw to the smallest degree and now resorts to
ignoring 90% or more of someone's response and cherry-picking out only what he can object to.
On every issue of his life not related to vpw and twi, oldiesman is probably quite reasonable.
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oldiesman
He chose to emphasize that it was the fear in the heart and life of the mother.
He wasn't condemning the mother; he was emphasizing the fear she had, and taught it that way.
Her fear is what caused the accident.
Yes the driver may have had some responsibility; on the other hand, what if the child just didn't look and jumped in front of the car and the driver could not get out of the way?
Fear brings results. In this case, one of the results was the mother not teaching the child how properly to cross the street.
THAT is the point of the teaching; not that the mother was under blame or condemnation.
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oldiesman
I don't recall VP saying "the laws of the universe brought this to pass".
To the best of my recollection he said "God set the laws of the universe in place" so he was acknowledging God setting up the rules and design.
This is far from atheistic as Dr. Juedes has asserted.
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WordWolf
Whether or not the mother taught the child how properly to cross the street is incidental to what vpw taught.
Kindly quote-citing the page- where vpw said that in the Orange or the Blue Book.
That issue didn't come up until raised BY US on the messageboards.
vpw said his mother's fear killed him. Period.
Orange Book, pg 44.
"What one fears will surely come to pass. It is a law. Have you ever heard about people who set the time of their death?
When somebody says 'Well, this time next year I will not be here," if you are a betting man, bet your money;
you are going to win. If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would
have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accomodated."
Orange Book, pg-43-44.
"Do you know what killed that little boy? The fear in the heart and life of that mother. She was so desperately afraid
something was going to happen to her little boy that she finally reaped the results of her believing."
I would also like to point out that we have no documentation that this woman and her child EVER EXISTED.
We know the attitudes vpw claims towards such people, but we have no guarantee they were REAL and not just
made up to supposedly illustrate the so-called "LAW" of believing that fails to work as written,
so people desperate to prop it up have to add all sorts of codicils to handwave away all the times it DOESN'T work
or explain what happened.
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another spot
The only real way to make the thing work, WW, is to say God allowed the boy to die because of her negative believing, which was taught all the time. That is the same thing as saying God could have and would have stopped it, but chose not to because of a law. So God becomes responsible for the death indirectly through inaction, on purpose because He himself set it up that way.
Oh yeah, the devil is the author of death (no such Scripture). The devil actually killed the boy because he had access through the fear. So through inaction, God lets the devil be the agent.
Wait a minute, it was fear in the heart of the woman.
Let me get this straight. God sets up a universe on a law where He is only free to act when there is enough of the correct amount of believing (how much is enough?). Otherwise, his hands are tied. The devil is free to operate within the fear side. So both watch to see whose power will get to operate. Now God’s hands are tied by both believing and the devil.
So my son comes home from school. No you may not have supper today and you must sleep outside in the snow (where the wolves are free to eat you), because, dang, you didn’t follow the rules yesterday. This is how it works in this house. It’s either or. No exceptions, grace, or mercy.
I dunno. I thought we got a Savior because we couldn’t do everything just right.
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WordWolf
The system being in place, whether or not you receive something has nothing to do with any involvement from God.
The laws of the universe are in place, and your receiving will be based entirely on what and how you believe.
vpw:
"If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would
have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accomodated."
You're misrepresenting Juedes and ignoring when he explained your misrepresentation.
Juedes clarified, attempting to shore up your understanding.
Amazingly, you completely skipped this, although you quoted and criticized a few of his sentences following.
Juedes:
"It is striking to me how strongly people have responded to this article on the "law" of beleiving. Perhaps this response hints at how entrenched the idea was in TWI, and perhaps also at how much damage it has done to people (to themsevles or to people they know).
My article does not say that VPW promoted atheism. It does say that "the law of believing" is an atheistic system. In VP's view, Christians and non Christians "operate" it to do good or to do evil. While VP mentioned God's promises, they really don't make any difference to the "law." He told the story of the mother who caused her child to be killed by her negative believing. Does that mean that she knew the promises of God were "available" and used her believing in God's promises to kill her child? Certainly not!"
This IS what vpw said.
"If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would
have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accomodated."
God's involvement in this transaction is NONEXISTENT.
The person believed and was killed by the interaction of his believing and "the laws of the universe."
God set up these supposed laws millenia ago, and can merely watch in impotent fury if one of his precious children
has determined they could die. The only thing he CAN do is send a prophet to try to convince them to change
their believing, but if the person remains resolute, God MUST stand aside and watch them die.
No fair making sense here, another spot.
We're discussing how vpw's rules don't work- or attempting to rewrite them
so that they DO work, depending on who's posting.
Not that I don't agree wholeheartedly, but we're busy circling some nonsense.
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Larry N Moore
Hebrews 2:14 I don't recall it being taught that the Devil was the "author" of death but I do remember the teaching that he had the "power" of death.
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oldiesman
Oh please. Many folks thought about this years ago, way before the message boards.
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WordWolf
While I agree that more love and compassion is needed, I disagree as to how it arrived.
You're saying it "crept in." I say a lot of it was part and parcel of the framework.
For example:
vpw HIMSELF takes shots at this minister and mother who may not have even existed.
Compassion? At a FUNERAL?
Who would have that?
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oldiesman
Fear brings results.
In the case of the mother, it caused her to fail to teach her child how properly to cross the street.
That is the way I interpret it.
How do you interpret it that her fear was transmitted through the air and caused the accident?
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WordWolf
You added that to vpw's explanation.
vpw said that believing brings down death, illnesses and other things.
I disagree that vpw's explanation-without extensive rewriting- works.
Acting- or failing to act- bring results.
vpw claimed that CONFESSING illness (being a hypochondriac) will mean you will HAVE illness
(you will acquire the specific sicknesses you claimed). However, hypochondriacs exist all the time,
and most of the time, they are physically well but PRETENDING or CLAIMING/LYING that they are
physically ill but they're actually not.)
How do you interpret that their confession of specific illness gives them that illness?
Adding that completely to the Orange Book and Blue Book.
vpw HIMSELF didn't bring up PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS as to HOW his supposed "LAWS"
would work. He said that it happened, and for it NOT to happen would be a violation of
"THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE".
For those who saw they failed to happen, he left it to people like you to introduce all sorts
of outside considerations to attempt to legitimize his statements.
He'd be impressed to what degree he succeeded, in my opinion.
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oldiesman
I am here to express my opinions; no more, no less.
You are entitled to believe what you will, but at least one difference I can tell you, is that I am not under any allusions that what I post is part of some righteous mission to expose evil and help people get out of bondage.
As opposed to some posters, who portray themselves in this manner thereby making justification for their own continued hatred of VP and TWI.
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another spot
PFAL page 268
“The Devil now has the rulership, the dominion, the authority, the power which Adam originally possessed over God’s creation. Whenever the Devil wants to flood a territory, he floods it out. When he wants to kill people, he kills them.”
It isn’t possible to reconcile that statement with the law of believing.
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WordWolf
No, it's a righteous mission to salvage an idyllic memory of twi, pfal and your own past there,
getting your own memories out of bondage.
Part and parcel of that is to attempt to crucify people like Juedes-
whether that means ignoring almost everything he says, distorting what he says,
or even distorting what vpw said.
Who said we HATED vpw and twi?
We all follow the dictates of our respective consciences- which respond as we have instructed them.
This "people who criticize vpw are deeply emotional" thing isn't based on us,
but, again,
part and parcel of trying to discredit any criticism of vpw.
Cold logic demonstrating his doctrinal error can't be countenanced,
so it must be relabelled as emotional outbursts one way or another.
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Larry N Moore
Oh for you dmiller I'll give you a clue. What did you DO with the film strip after you received it?
Although your analogy wasn't all that bad you left out one important ingredient. The five keys taught in PFAL didn't pertain to receiving just anything -- it specifically addressed what we needed to know in order to receive anything FROM God. In other words -- it pertains to what's available FROM God -- not man or an organization.
Btw -- I have one of those "Afternoon" jobs. So I won't be here a 8 PM tomorrow evening. ;)
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oldiesman
There are contradictions and errors in PFAL. It isn't God Breathed, after all. :)
But it isn't atheistic either.
Edited by oldiesmanLink to comment
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oldiesman
I do not distort what VPW said and I am not crucifying Dr. Juedes.
But I do strongly critique some of his statements. That is what the forums are here for.
And if I were ignoring almost everything he writes, I wouldn't bother responding to some of his written comments because I'd be ignoring them.
Some of the stuff he writes is good. :)
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anotherDan
So in the case of that little boy, God "made it happen" when the mother's "believing" was reversed? Of course not, VP would reply. God doesn't need another rose petal in heaven. My God, man, that's BLASPHEMY!
It just doesn't work, Oldies. It's a broken cistern, a theological screwup. It was sincerely advanced, IMO, but you know, sincerety is no guarantee for truth. VP was a product of his times. Just as he reflected the religious writings of his times, he reflected the Think and Grow Rich boys.
The biblical teachings on faith, especially Jesus' teachings and the records of his acts in the Gospels, are badly skewed by this overlay. If you don't like JohnJ's take on it, how about mine? I haven't read the article.
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oldiesman
Dan, I don't understand what you're saying here. God made it happen when the mother's believing was reversed?
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