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More Blatant PFAL Errors


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Yet another spinoff from the Snow Job Storm thread. I wanted to respond to Mike but not derail the other thread.

Mark,

I still want to answer a long post you did the other day, but havn't gotten to it yet. It might be the moved post, and if so, I'll have to chase it down there.

But here you ask a question many ask, and I've tried to answer it before, but I will again.

You wrote: If PFAL is the new God-breathed Word, Mike, how do you explain the glaring errors in it?

Now, really, what do you expect my answer is? Do you want me to say: "Sure there are errors, but I close my eyes to them."???

I didn't expect any particular answer. I was really curious how you would respond.

If I were to try to explain why there are errors in God-breathed PFAL I'd be an idiot or sorts.

Why? It seems like a valid question.

Of course, my real answer (you expect this, right?) is that I disagree with the notion that there are errors!

That's why I posted a specific example.

Why do you think there are errors in there? It's because you apply a set of inquiry principles that I do not think valid.

You mean, like reading? What invalid inquiry principles am I using?

You, and many others here, seem to think that's a done deal, that PFAL errors are a proved thing. I don't. I see a lot of prejudice that goes into the "research" to find PFAL errors.

I didn't start off trying to find errors in PFAL. I wanted it to be right, since I had dedicated almost 30 years of my life to it. But when I saw blatant errors, I could not ignore them.

I see a lot of assumptions that I don't make. But most of all, I see a profound lack of understand and awareness of what is actually in those writings. Most people shoot from the hip and don't even have the books from which to work their theories of PFAL errors, and even fewer have the magazine articles.

Why do you continue to make these blanket assumptions about people you don't know? It's actually very condescending. I still have those books and I know what's in them. I examined them and found these errors.

As for an extended debate on something like "kingdom" I'm very disinclined to do so. Have you searched ALL of PFAL (book and magazine) to gather together ALL that is written on that subject, or are you satisfied with taking pot shots at one passage of text, or worse yet, at one fading memory of what is written?

How much in-depth examining of them do you have to do to see these simple things that VP claimed?

I just don't have the time to "work the Word" in detail with antagonists who don't want to get to know the whole thing first. I prefer to work it in detail with meek and humble students of PFAL who recognize that there are a vast number of unturned stones to discover.

I got to know the whole thing. Forget unturned stones - can you explain the ones that are turned over already? There are a number of more in-depth errors that would take more time to discuss, but I'm just focusing on blatant, surface-level things. All within the framework of the overall problem - if PFAL is "God-breathed" how can there be such errors.

Besides the Kingdom of God issue, which was given its own thread, I wonder how you explain some of the other obvious errors:

  • Throughly vs. thoroughly
  • lambano vs. dechomai
  • holy spirit UPON vs. holy spirit IN (look it up - there are OT refs to spirit IN, and NT refs to spirit UPON).

Let's just start with those for now.

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For clarification:

The definitions VP gave 'throughly' and 'thoroughly' are incorrect. 'Throughly' is simply an archaic form of 'thoroughly' and means the same thing. It does not mean an 'inside job'. From Merriam Webster dictionary:

Main Entry: through·ly

Pronunciation: \ˈthrü-lē\

Function: adverb

Date: 15th century

archaic : in a thorough manner

***

The definitions he gave for lambano and dechomai are not found in ANY Greek lexicon. It was said that dechomai meant to receive subjectively, while lambano meant to receive to the end of manifesting. However, after checking several Bible dictionaries and lexicons, I find that there is no basis for making such a distinction between these two words. Not even Bullinger makes this distinction in his lexicon. Dechomai is defined as receiving passively that which is offered, while lambano is a more forceful receiving, rather like “taking to oneself.” Even with that, there is nothing on which to base the notion that one form of receiving becomes the other when manifesting comes into play.

***

VP taught that Old Testament believers only had the holy spirit "upon" them, while believers after Pentecost had holy spirit "in" them. But this does not hold true upon closer examination. Joseph was called "a man in whom the spirit of God is" in Genesis 41:38, and Joshua was called that in Numbers 27:18. God's ministers were said to be filled with God's spirit in Exodus 28:3; 31:3; and 35:31. Isaiah 63:11 reads, "Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? where is he that put his holy Spirit within him?" On the other hand, Acts 2:17 implies that the outpouring of the holy spirit on Pentecost was a partial fulfilling (or foreshadowing) of God's promise to "pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh." And Peter specifically states in I Peter 4:14 that, "the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you."

(There are some other things that I think are discrepancies in how the holy spirit field was handled too. If anyone is interested, they can read about it on my website.)

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imo, some of the more blatant (than the usual arguments) biblical errors in pfal are:

- the dead are dead until the future

- the book of revelation is not for us

- claiming interpretative authority over an ancient jewish book

- avoiding the vast majority of the entire 2 millenia record of christian experience, doctrine and practice involving the same book

and re: biblical scriptural lineage and heritage

vpw's being very german may not be an error, biblical or otherwise

but it sure seems quite blatantly disconnected and ironic to me

now i can assume from experience (including mine)

that for fresh ex-believers who have only taken a step or two outside the pfal corner of christianity

some or all of these errors are probably not so blatant or biblical

and perhaps even highly debatable as errors

thats fine with me

i may or may not be the one who can have all those vast debates here

but the good news is that the more and more steps one takes outside of the pfal corner

...it seems the more and more chances one will have to debate those things

godspeed

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Mark,

You are about to embark on an endless journey, a journey that will get you nowhere fast, ... and yet take an almost endless time to realize this. ... A journey where no matter what argument/question/challenge/conclusion you set forth (and no matter how successful, logically/biblically speaking) to Mike, he will always, ... _always_ find a way to argue around it, and a lot of his arguments will be totally out to lunch. And this journey will show no signs of him giving up, ... at all. (For further verification of this, just ask Raf. He tried this same approach too. And failed. :asdf: )

And this journey is called ... The Smikeol Zone.

smikeol.jpg

Mike's and his precioouussss!

:spy:

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now i can assume from experience (including mine)

that for fresh ex-believers who have only taken a step or two outside the pfal corner of christianity

some or all of these errors are probably not so blatant or biblical

and perhaps even highly debatable as errors

thats fine with me

i may or may not be the one who can have all those vast debates here

but the good news is that the more and more steps one takes outside of the pfal corner

...it seems the more and more chances one will have to debate those things

godspeed

I agree - it's good to look at other views and see what's out there. This gives you a fighting chance, as opposed to thinking there is only one way to understand something.

As for your specific topics:

- the dead are dead until the future - Actually, this is not as blatant an error as you might think. Scriptural evidence aside, many others besides VPW hold and have held this belief, even back to early Church Fathers.

- the book of revelation is not for us - I agree with you here. The mess that is Dispensationalism fragments the Bible and separates Jesus from his words. Although, it's not quite as easy to see the errors of it as some of the things I mentioned.

- claiming interpretative authority over an ancient jewish book - It's precisely because most people don't recognize that is a Jewish book that it is so misunderstood!

- avoiding the vast majority of the entire 2 millenia record of christian experience, doctrine and practice involving the same book - I agree with you here too. The history of the Christian church, and specifically the development of various doctrines, helps you to see where various ideas originated. Again, sadly, it's not as easy to see, because most people don't know much about history.

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Garth,

Thanks! Now I understand the reference to Smikeol I've seen in a couple of other posts!

I realize it's an endless journey. As I said somewhere else, I don't expect Mike to change his mind. I see it as an exercise for me to apply logic to the twisted ideas that I held for so many years, even if he doesn't see it. And anybody else that might read this and has wondered about things may benefit as well. Besides, the Doctrinal Forum has been too quiet lately.

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As I've mentioned several times in the past, I think the most OBVIOUS of errors that Mr. Wierwille made in "The Class" is stating that the Council of Nicea was in FRANCE!

Nice, Nicea, I guess anybody could make that mistake...

Didn't they fix that one in later editions of JCNG?

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Didn't they fix that one in later editions of JCNG?

Oh boy, ya got me. Next month will make 20 years since I LEFT WayWorld. I've long since forgotten more than I can remember re:The Vicster and His Class.

I haven't gotten over REGRETTING it yet, but the contents of it are pretty dim about now...

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Mike, if you're reading this, I am actually curious as to how you explain these simple points. We agree to disagree on methodology, since I see no reason to start with the assumption that VPW's writings are God-breathed in the same way that you do. And I understand you not wanting to get into lengthy examinations of deeper doctrinal issues.

However, while there may be varying opinions about a lot of the doctrines in PFAL, the points I referred to involve demonstrable facts:

  • 'Throughly' is an archaic form of 'thoroughly'.
  • VP's definitions of lambano vs. dechomai are wrong according to virtually all Greek lexicons.
  • There are OT refs to 'spirit IN', and NT refs to 'spirit UPON', in contradiction to VP's distinction of those terms.

I am wondering how you, in your quest for a single rule of faith and practice, dealt with these obvious errors (or you might call them 'apparent contradictions') in VP's God-breathed writings.

Edited by Mark Clarke
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I made my big decision a little over ten years ago, and the kind of discusion you seem to want to have I engaged in for many of the years prior to 1998. I went back and forth on the validity of many points in PFAL during those earlier years, but it was all finally settled for me by ’98.

Now I want to put the bulk of my time absorbing the material, workig WITHIN it, which means using a completely different set of tools than working OUTSIDE it like you want to do. One of the tools I use is I assume it’s valid (my only rule for faith and practice) and proceed from there. You generally assume it’s invalid (or at least one point is) and work on it with set(s) of material you do think is valid, what I would call your somewhat unsettled, unspecified rule(s) for faith and practice.

Even if you were to adopt a neutral stance toward PFAL’s validity (unlikely considering your posting against it), and even it you were to adopt and disclose one sole rule for faith and practice, I’d have to decline the opportunity to spend beaucoup hours debating PFAL. Our rules would still clash and we’d never convince each other of anything.

How long would it take to explain how you handle these three simple contradictions (four, counting the Kingdom of God question)?

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Maybe this one isn't blatant, but here goes:

Wierwille taught in The Word's Way (not sure if it made it into PFAL itself) chapter "The Lord's Brethren" that the brothers of Jesus specifically named in the gospels could not have been Joseph's sons from a previous marriage. His reasoning was that an older brother would have invalidated Jesus' claim to the throne of David. The only problem with that was that in another collateral chapter "The Geneology of Jesus" Wierwille teaches that the geneology in Matthew, the "royal" geneology is Mary's, while the geneology in Luke is Joseph's. Therefore, the existance of any of Joseph's older sons would be irrelevant to any claim to the throne of David.

If one looks through Bullinger's appendixes and come to the one regarding the Lord's Brethren, one would see that Bullinger states the same thing that Wierwille did, dismissing the possibility that James, Joses, Simon and Judas were Jesus' older half-brothers by Joseph's first wife, since their existance would invalidate Jesus' claim to the Davidic throne. However, Bullinger wrote in his appendixes that he believed that the geneology in Matthew was Joseph's, and the one in Luke was Mary's, making his position consistant at least.

To me it looks like Wierwille simply parrotted what Bullinger said about the brethren, without fully understanding Bullinger's reasoning behind it, and subsequently making no sense. Just one of several examples where Wierwille apparently didn't understand what Bullinger was saying, but liked his conclusions.

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Mike said: "I see a lot of assumptions that I don't make. But most of all, I see a profound lack of understand and awareness of what is actually in those writings. Most people shoot from the hip and don't even have the books from which to work their theories of PFAL errors, and even fewer have the magazine articles."

Mike,

Some of us can pretty much quote that class to you. . . . nearly verbatim. . . and it has been alot of years since I had to sleep through it. Did you know you can sleep with your eyes open?

Here let me start. . . . "In this first session of this biblical research class I would like for you to take your bibles and turn to the gospel of John. . . John chapter 10. . . and in verse 10 the latter half of verse 10 it says the following. . . . this is Jesus speaking now. . . I am come that might have life and they might have it more abundantly. . . .so I began to wonder. . . . if Jesus promises a MORE than abundant life why is it that most Christians do not even enjoy an abundant life.. . . ." BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!!

Well, what are we ? 30 seconds in and already he started down the path of error. What is an abundant life?. . . . what did Jesus offer here?. . . it wasn't red drapes . . . fire engine red drapes. The whole premise from word one was faulty.

The abundant life He offers is Himself. . . . full, rich, meaningful, and eternal. These verses are a proverbial way of insisting that a belief IN Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God is the only way of being saved from sin and recieving eternal life. . . . what is the verse before this? Context. . . . He is the door. . . the one basis for spiritual security. . . Context. . . entering by the door??? It is about Jesus calling people. He was still in the presence of the Pharisees and the man who was born blind. . . He was speaking of the blindness of the pharisees and how they EXCLUDED people and Jesus was inviting them. Who has the power of the door?

The pharisees were asking Him if they were blind too. . . the pharisees thought they were the door. . . . Jesus further explained that the only way it was going to happen was if He laid down His life. . . . not set up a bunch of rules to follow. . . . they called Him a DEMON and said He was insane. . . .

It was deconstruction. . . to reconstruction. . . He was tearing down the whole system to reconstruct it.

Far from talking about red drapes. . . He concludes it by saying I and the father are one. . . . while they had stones in their hands!!

Edited by geisha779
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From the snowstorm thread:

Again, Mark, what is a factual error to you can be seen as not at all the case when you use differing methods to read the writings. This shouldn’t be too hard to see. We were shown how unbelieving scholars can read errors into the ancient scriptures by way of their methodology, right?

So please demonstrate what methods you use to determine that Wierwille was right when he said there was a difference between 'throughly' and 'thoroughly', when he gave definitions of lambano and dechomai that are found nowhere else, not even Bullinger, and when he said there was a distinction between holy spirit IN, in the NT, and holy spirit UPON, in the OT.

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Mark,

Let me caution you, having been on this road before, that if you absolutely nail an actual error, as I did more than 30, Mike will never, ever admit it. Ever. He says it outright: his response will be to dodge. That's his word, not mine. Dodge, distract, etc. but never admit an error is an error.

And he sees this as a virtue!

Against such, you may be wasting your time.

Nonetheless, should you succeed where I failed, let me know. I will immediately press for Obama to name you the U.S. envoy to Gaza to settle a minor land dispute there.

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Mark,

Let me caution you, having been on this road before, that if you absolutely nail an actual error, as I did more than 30, Mike will never, ever admit it. Ever. He says it outright: his response will be to dodge. That's his word, not mine. Dodge, distract, etc. but never admit an error is an error.

And he sees this as a virtue!

Against such, you may be wasting your time.

Nonetheless, should you succeed where I failed, let me know. I will immediately press for Obama to name you the U.S. envoy to Gaza to settle a minor land dispute there.

I disagree.

The key point is in the phrase "absolutely nail" and how that comes about.

Absolute is a pretty strong word. Since I didn't agree with the methods by which previous "absolute nailings" were achieved by Raf, I dodged wasting my time by allowing myself to be dragged through a retracing of the sequencing by which those methods did their faulty nailing.

I do have the right to dodge being hauled into a kangaroo court, just like I can dodge being hit by a car. Such dodgings, like in the game of dodgeball, reflect virtuous agility and I do it well.

Edited by Mike
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From the snowstorm thread:

So please demonstrate what methods you use to determine that Wierwille was right when he said there was a difference between 'throughly' and 'thoroughly', when he gave definitions of lambano and dechomai that are found nowhere else, not even Bullinger, and when he said there was a distinction between holy spirit IN, in the NT, and holy spirit UPON, in the OT.

I told you in the snowstorm thread (why did you not quote it. hmmmm?) that a large amount of time would be involved on your part and you're not willing to invest in it. I choose not to invest my time in your kangaroo courts.

Do you want me to drag those conspicuously missing quotes of mine here, or will I have to do it?

Edited by Mike
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I didn't ask you. :)

I didn't address you. It was addressed to Mark.

I quoted you, but spoke of you in the third person.

Mark is the one conducting this kangaroo court.

And he did it in a way that violates net etiquette.

Edited by Mike
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Mike,

I honestly don't think that Mark's motivation or any one else for that matter . . . is to harm or to show anyone up. The bible is not a weapon. It is sharper than any two edge sword. . . . but that is God's work. . . a roadmap if you will. . . into the human heart. Often the bible reads us instead of the other way around.

Seems people were a bit surprized by your revelation, and if you really stop and think about it. . . it is quite a statement. . . . PFAL being the revealed word of God. Forgive the paraphrase.

Having a conversation with someone who is also working through the fog can often be beneficial. . . . who else understands?

I believe there is real empathy for your position and a real heart to offer another side to the coin.

Out of adages, but I choose to assume there is more than a bible gotcha game proposed here.

I for one am curious to hear more. . . . I already read that other thread. . . that was good!

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