I think a good 40 to 60 percent of the GSC rules were written to stop me from being less than hospitable to Mike. If they sometimes seem like, "really? that's a rule?" I may be to blame for it.
We may not be as intense as we were in the olden days, but I do think we're a more polite place than we used to be, and I kind of appreciate that. I hope everyone else does, too.
Welcome back (again), Mike. Hope you enjoy your stay and enjoy some good conversation. Even if I think you're mmmmphhhmpphpmphhphphmhmmhmmmhmhhppphphhhphph!!!!!
[content removed for violation of GSC rules: STOP THAT, RAF!!!]
Rocky, if you really don't know what I mean by acting him out I feel sorry for you. I hope you actually DO know the answer to this, and that you can do it also.
That's a droll mind game.
Take what I say to you at face value. Rather than projecting onto me either what you're doing or what you want me to think.
When I ask for clarification, that's exactly and only what I'm doing. Asking you to clarify what you mean by it.
There is nothing tangible in my comment on which or by which you can reasonably suppose my question has anything to do with me. But then again, there's no question you are playing the same mind f**k games you've done in prior years.
So, again, what do you mean? When you say you "act him out."
Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. That is bothstealingand lying.
There are numerous passages throughout the Bible that indicatebothstealingandlyingare wrong. Obviously copyrights and judicial law concur with the Bible on this matter.
Are you going for an Alan-Desrshowitz-for-the-defense-of-unabashed-plagiarism-and-other-con-jobs move? you might want to consider a different strategy to defend your admiration of wierwille…
...And actually you don’t need to defend your admiration for wierwille. You can admire whoever you want for whatever reasons you want to admire the person. But don’t kid yourself into thinking you can sell others on “the greatness of wierwille”. ...Been there done that…I escaped that nonsense years ago.
But don’t be dismayed...
There is hope! there is a way out of the rabbit hole, Mike!
Maybe it’s time to suck it up and deal with self-deception.
some food for thought:
We deceive ourselves because we don’t have enough psychological strength to admit the truth and deal with the consequences that will follow. ..by Courtney Warren
Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception….from Wikipedia
I think a good 40 to 60 percent of the GSC rules were written to stop me from being less than hospitable to Mike. If they sometimes seem like, "really? that's a rule?" I may be to blame for it.
We may not be as intense as we were in the olden days, but I do think we're a more polite place than we used to be, and I kind of appreciate that. I hope everyone else does, too.
Welcome back (again), Mike. Hope you enjoy your stay and enjoy some good conversation. Even if I think you're mmmmphhhmpphpmphhphphmhmmhmmmhmhhppphphhhphph!!!!!
[content removed for violation of GSC rules: STOP THAT, RAF!!!]
Thanks, Raf. :) LoL
It's things like this that I peeked back in for.
If it's any consolation, the archive we generated was not a waste if you look at it, the entire GSC record, as a major historical document in itself.
It is a VERY thorough airing of hundreds of intense TWI issues, thousands of unrelated issues, and the mirror riddle. Scholars who find such an archive several generations from now will have a data rich resource.
Take what I say to you at face value. Rather than projecting onto me either what you're doing or what you want me to think.
When I ask for clarification, that's exactly and only what I'm doing. Asking you to clarify what you mean by it.
There is nothing tangible in my comment on which or by which you can reasonably suppose my question has anything to do with me. But then again, there's no question you are playing the same mind f**k games you've done in prior years.
So, again, what do you mean? When you say you "act him out."
Rocky,
I genuinely meant it, that I have a reasonable expectation in imagining you being able, at this date, to "act him out."
It’s because you were a grad.
Doing this "acting out" was supposed to be what we DO with our dose of "Christ in you the hope of glory."
I’ll try to prove it to you, and then submit my proof to the judges.
All thru my history with TWI (1971-88) I looked for and found mentors who seemed to be “acting out” the Christ in them. They were people who HELPED me with various things.
I learned to always be on the lookout, as I moved about the ministry, for the more articulate leaders, who could explain things well. This is how I avoided the corrupting spots in the ministry as things brewed.
Spotting leaders like this on the field was easy in the 1970s because there were so many of them. There were some intense bright spots here and there, like Rye NY, where I grew up in the Word. This has been discussed here to general agreement of almost all.
But in later years, mentor-like leaders became less abundant, and hard to find. Many of them were tasked with too many management duties, some got tired and burned out, and by the mid 80s it got very hard for me to find MENTORS of PFAL, people who were acting out the Christ in them.
The “acting out” was operating the manifestations effectively, prayer, renewed mind LOVE, wisdom, knowledge.
When things started radically falling apart in 1987 (I was late in noticing), I started calling up all my old mentors and any others I could get try and get a hold of. They were not helpful at all. They were in retreat. It even seemed many had an actual lowering of IQ. Their enthusiasm was shot, and many were bitter.
I went thru a ten year period where there were none of these mentors in my life. I couldn’t trust any of the leaders of any of the ministry factions. But then, in 1998 one finally popped up, from the lower ranks of the Family Corps. He helped me with what was troubling me in PFAL and the ministry. He did it by having his orange book open while I had my orange book open. We did this a lot, for over 10 years.
When I claimed here at GSC that I “saw” Jesus Christ at the Return with an orange book in his hand, it was in the way this grad was “acting out” the Christ in him. It was like he was a walking-talking PFAL book. He helped me. He opened the book and class for me in a bigger way than I had known before.
Where ALL of the other leaders and former leaders of TWI had utterly failed me for 11 years, THIS grad was answering all my questions and opening up PFAL like I had not seen it in years. I saw the Christ in him, and this taught me in a big way a tiny glimpse of what the Return of Christ was going to be like.
AND it inspired me to “act out” the Christ in me (via the manifestations and renewed mind…best of my ability) for others around me. It still energizes me, now including dance and fun social things.
I think I used an odd verb tense when I first posted this. Maybe the “acting out” part was missing or unclear. Whatever happened, Tom Strange mis-understood my claim to “what I saw” in my original post on this, and I tried to correct him several times, over many months of time, but he was more interested in the Gotchya Game, thinking he had caught me painting myself in a corner.
So, I let him.
He was constantly trying to catch me on it, and it became a big cat and mouse game (or Road Runner game) and I used it as a vehicle for intensifying discussions, and then I’d dodge my way out of answering it.
I tried weakly a few times over the years to come clean, but no one would hear it, or it seemed un-important, so I gave up. So it stayed buried all this time.
So, Rocky, I finally answered Tom Strange’s challenge NOW, because it so neatly and simultaneously answered your challenge to explain the “act out.”
I genuinely meant it, that I have a reasonable expectation in imagining you being able, at this date, to "act him out."
No, your expectation was actually a false supposition. I asked YOU what you meant. I didn't ask you to decide that I knew the meaning of your statement.
Because I didn't visit to debate, my ducks are not all in a row.
I had an after thought; an augmentation.
This also answers my comments on that other thread with J.Juedes video.
*****
Another aspect of "acting out the Christ within" is service.
I remember how VPW presented a mind-picture of Jesus' personality at the 1975 AC that I attended with a tape by Elizabeth Burns who wrote a very popular autobiography in 1957 titled "The Late Liz."
In that tape Liz describes the thing that turned her attention toward Jesus Christ. Somehow she was given a mind-picture of Jesus being a Porter, ready to carry her bags at the train station.
I was taught that Jesus' attitude was the greatest leader is a servant of all. Acting out the Christ in us means looking for ways to help others. There are so many ways we can still learn to do this.
All thru my history with TWI (1971-88) I looked for and found mentors who seemed to be “acting out” the Christ in them. They were people who HELPED me with various things.
Mike, I really thought you were going somewhere with this. Because then, and now, we should all be looking for people who are demonstrating the love ofG od (if you like, "the Christ in them") . I thought perhaps you were being honest in seeking mentors.
But then you say:
6 hours ago, Mike said:
it got very hard for me to find MENTORS of PFAL
Please, Mike. Understand that Christ is bigger than PFAL. To find a mentor to "act out" Christ, widen your search. Look at lives of others: Here's Phil 2:3 in Amplified:
Amplified Bible Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit [through factional motives, or strife], but with [an attitude of] humility [being neither arrogant nor self-righteous], regard others as more important than yourselves.
If you are only looking at one group of people, one faction - are you not in direct contradiction to what this verse says? In every translation, we are urged to ESTEEM/ REGARD/ CONSIDER (etc) OTHERS as MORE IMPORTANT than ourselves.
You can take that as an individual context, or in a group context. Who should you esteem more important? Who should TWI esteem more important?
Seek mentors from other backgrounds. Look at how, say, Mother Teresa "acted out" Christ; Martin Luther King in his calls for social justice; Jon Bon Jovi, or Bono, if you like. Look at churches in other countries; the persecuted Christian church in Syria, China, most Muslim-dominated countries, elsewhere; how do the people there live? What can you learn from their examples?
Go to an outgoing church near where you live, and see how they practice what they preach. Talk to people there. You are more than welcome, should you ever come to the UK, to come to my church to see what we do. For a little congregation of maybe a solid 40 members, my church cooks about 50 meals a week and gives out to vulnerable people in the community; also gives them food parcels. This weekend we are having a StACCtion day: our little church hires 3 skips for the local community to dump old junk, so as to keep the neighbourhood looking nice. We show the area that we love them and want the best for the people. They are drawn by the love we show; many now are interested in our offering. In lockdown - our congregation has grown! After the StACCtion day, I am going to volunteer at a mass vaccination centre in this city. I am not scheduled for this, but my fellow church member has to go to help his father who will be recovering from an operation (helping his dad is great Christian practice) so he asked me to sub for him (that's some of my great Christian practice).
Are we as individuals and as a congregation "acting out" Christ enough for you? Or would you like more information about the many other things we do?
Probably the best mentors are actually those who have risen above the traditional teaching of their churches, throwing off doctrinal shackles, and living more purely according to the great heart of the teachings of the bible and in particular the NT.
In the same way that "it takes a village to raise a child," it takes a whole congregation to raise - each other!
We are to have the humility to consider others more worthy, and to learn from them; to let them mentor us. In the same way, we also are examples and mentors to others; always bear that in mind.
A Prayer Coordinator in a Christian group talked to us about the "smorgasbord of ways to pray" - some like to sit or stand, some like corporate and some private prayer; some sing, doodle, draw, etc.
What about the smorgasbord of "acting out" Christ? You know Jesus on this earth had lots of different ways to interact with people, to match "where they were coming from" - so watch, and learn from other people.
GSC's Great Mike Debates? No one will care. Actual Errors? Forgotten.
Victor Paul Wierwille's delusions of grandeur became TWI's delusions of significance in the history of Christianity.
It's a pissant cult that barely touched 100,000 people in a world of 4 Billion. The world population has increased, but the cult's influence has not kept pace.
A few years after the life of Christ, the world was turned upside down. The same time since snow fell on the gas pumps, and The Way remains a footnote not even deserving of its own chapter in the book of forgotten cults.
If you want to socialize, we have game threads still going in the Games forum, and you are still welcome to join.
"From 2002-2008 I was an advocate here that we return to PFAL to see how much we missed the first time(s), and to see how much we forgot or drifted from. I am convinced that 99% of all the woes reported here are due to us all NOT GETTING IT RIGHT the first times."
You also outright contradicted the Orange Book in a few major issues- like vpw claiming we could get to the originals and how we could do that, and you saying we could NOT, and vpw saying something like 90% of Scripture means just what it says, and you saying the meanings are hidden, and vpw saying the class (book, once edited) was a class of KEYS and was to UNDERSTAND Genesis to Revelation but not to replace them, and you said it DID replace Genesis to Revelation. You said a lot of things, and usually switched to vague, uninformative wordings in order to obscure either a lack of substance or outright contradicting pfal while explaining pfal. Most of us here were around to see all of that, but a few new people may have missed it. For those people, I'd like to add that I in no way exaggerated what he said nor misrepresented it.
Most people who have passed through these metaphorical doors are convinced that the problems were due to vpw violating the Bible and fair moral and legal codes while claiming he was our spiritual leader, and teaching his disciples to be two-fold the child of hell that he was- although, frankly, few matched in in that respect. Most actually cared about people, and only a tiny handful were that sociopathic or that fanatical to match him. You reluctantly agreed he wasn't perfect, but credited that to him being "OVERgifted" probably due to him being "born with an overabundance of brains and brawn" and "where he walked, the earth shook." (Seriously, those were his words, not mine.)
You said the keys to getting it right were the hidden keys to pfal you knew and none of us did, and that the failure to get it right wasn't due primarily to pfal being a flawed product.
"In those years I was only able to get a very small few of the GreaseSpotters to view things this way. The few of us came back to PFAL, this first wave of us, found it to be better than when we originally enjoyed it. "
There were fewer people in your new group than in the "Heavens Gate" comet watchers, or so many other groups convinced they were there primarily due to some secret they know. The US is loaded with people who think they know "the secret" to what's really going on. Thousands of people believe that. The great obscurity of your product, and the requirement that one have fond, nostalgic twi memories seriously limits the target audience of the public.
" I predicted back here at GreaseSpot then that I was only dealing with the "First Wave" of those returning to PFAL. "
Nostalgia arrives in waves with decades. That's true regardless of content. And calling a handful of people a "first wave" shows a disregard for the term "wave." [To be followed with claims he did not, then later claims he was metaphorical in some way and that I failed to understand him, then later claims it was deliberate so someone could "spring his trap." Some of these posts follow VERY predictable patterns- like Mike returning after being refuted completely and claiming that his last visit showed him coming up with answers to everything and coming off unscathed.]
"About 2 or 3 years ago I started seeing lots of Facebook Groups being started by lots of pro-PFAL people, and many comments by other pro-PFAL people. "
Defining "pro-pfal" can change who is meant by a lot. By some definitions, that would include ME. Also, "many" is a remarkably vague term. "The number of Facebook Groups" is a lot like when twi defined a 5-person graduating class ENTIRELY by which percentage was going on to do what- 20% to do this, 20% to do that, which was 1 person each time. Facebook groups can be of a single person and a tiny, occasional audience. They also OVERLAP a lot- so 10 Facebook groups on this probably include 80% overlap- or more- of their audiences.
"Every now and then a nay-sayer chimes in, but it's obvious how ineffective they are."
Isn't it amazing how ineffective a naysayer can be, when they show up at a venue with a purpose to which they are diametrically opposed?
""After 35+ years now, lots of people are done comparing the flurry of clone classes that cropped up after 1986, and have found they fall way short of the original."
That's not what they themselves are saying- that's your opinion of what they are doing. Their own answers would be quite different, and NOT rely on vpw, pfal, or anything involving a farm outside New Knoxville, in most cases. BTW, out of the supposed 100,000 people who took pfal, there are perhaps a few HUNDRED, at most, who are doing the splinter thing, with another few hundred if you include twi and SOWERS and so on, the groups with the authoritarian leaders and so on. In nearly every case, the audiences are all aging out- and in the other, the soil doesn't have depth.
"The reason I left was to APPLY the class to my life more, as opposed to just debating about it. I wanted to see people thrilled by the PFAL info again, and was very tired of trying to debate it all the time with people who did not want to apply it (again)."
The reason you showed up was to advertise your paradigm. The reason you left was that A) you were getting nearly no nibbles on the bait; and B) you kept getting refuted, which made the bait look more like bait and less like substance. I say that, knowing you were asked to discuss substance lots of times, and you used every excuse to avoid it- changing the subject, accusing everyone else of being dishonest, etc. (Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated thread, I ended up reversing my position on something as the result of an honest discussion, so it's not like it was impossible to change my mind, if you had substance.) What was really tiresome was all the dancing around, and page after page after page of someone saying they didn't have time to devote to giving a substantial answer to ANYTHING even though they had time to fill pages.
If you actually wanted people to "apply the class" (which wasn't your thrust then, that was to adopt your position for no reason in order to get results months later), you would have needed to address the question "WHY should I apply this class?" Without a respectable answer to that one, you were advertising and virtually nobody was buying.
"Guess what? Plagiarized material, which is accurate with the Word, CAN BE just as effective as original material that is accurate with the Word."
Guess what? We all knew that! Long before you ever posted your very first post here, Raf himself pointed out that plagiarism does not affect the SUBSTANCE of what is plagiarized. "Truth from the pen of a plagiarist is still truth." The problem with the plagiarism was never that "the material is useless if it is plagiarized" (a claim not adopted by anyone, but often propped up as a strawman for those seeking to accuse a certain plagiarizing rapist). The problem was that the plagiarism reveals a lack of character by the plagiarist. A serial plagiarist lacks a LOT of character. A serial plagiarist who copyrights his plagiarism shows he understand plagiarism full well, but is fine with it as long as he gets away with it..
Committing a crime is fine for him as long as he doesn't get caught? That's not a position for any supposed "man of God", and demonstrates both unsuitability to lead, and that there's more flaws we don't see. And we didn't see them- he was fine embezzling "church" funds, drugging women and raping them, and so on. But this is all glossed over with a veneer of "nobody's perfect" so long as the pfal fan gets his pfal. They don't say that's fine for ANYONE else- just that vpw gets a free pass, and they trust that his class was accurate despite coming from someone so utterly deficient in Christian morality and Christian character that he shouldn't be trusted to reliably tell you the name of Jesus' mom.
"The problem is there are no original writers out there who could do the job, so it got done without academic approval. That's ok, because I don't approve of them."
"The problem" is that your position begins by saying that pfal was not only of God, but was THE vehicle that God Almighty endorsed, authorized, and approved of (which is FAR from what any evidence shows, so is purely a leap-of-faith position), and that, SINCE pfal was THE God-endorsed class, that anything is worth overlooking because we got pfal in the end (another leap-of-faith position that is NOT in accord with the Bible.)
BTW, for those wondering, vpw rarely made any comments about other sources. If you went by the written pfal stuff, you'd find ZERO references to other writers. In fact, you'd have to either stumble across some teaching tape where he said something to a limited crowd, or dig over 100 pages into "The Way-Living in Love". There, there's no admission either. There's a single comment about nothing he did being original. pfal apologists blow that up into a full confession that he plagiarized leonard's class, Stiles' book, Bullinger's books, and so on. It's absolutely nothing of the kind, and his intent to fool everyone is rather transparent- especially if you read the openings of the Orange Book and the White Book. In fact, an early version of the Orange Book makes mention of an anonymous man who helped vpw learn (it was Stiles), and all the editions afterwards edit the paragraph so the man drops out of the picture as if ne never existed.
So, it's backwards. You don't approve of academic approval- and legal ways of using material- because they expose vpw as a liar, a thief, a plagiarist and a conman. The work OF the "original writers" , the actual plagiarized work- that gets deprecated because otherwise there's no excuse for the con job that was pfal.
We've been through all of this, lots of times. However, since you do not WISH to see any of these points, you've never learned any of them, and to you it's as if we never wrote them. That's fine, I'm writing this for those who come along later and wonder what happened.
Thing about a "class" (any class) is that it should ultimately become invisible. It should become a basic instruction - about anything - and one builds upon it, with experience.
For instance: I know where I did my legal studies. I know what classes I took: land law, constitutional law, tort, etc etc. I studied law for three years for my Bachelor's degree, then did my Law Society finals (a really intense year) then did my legal apprenticeship ("articles") for another two years. Then, I was admitted to the Roll as a lawyer. And I practised and got better at applying the law, and finding new law to fit different situations.
But what I learned, in which class, well, sometimes I can say and most often I can't. The real learning isn't in whatever classes I took, of varying levels of depth and complexity, but it's in the application. Mrs Smith, getting a divorce, doesn't care where I learned matrimonial law, but she does care about custody of the kids, whether she gets a good settlement, my being able to read her husband's company's accounts (and discern less-than-legit entries therein); what to do when husband assaults her or steals property or badmouths her; and so on. Which is lotsa different classes, and not necessarily interlinked in the teaching.
That's lifelong learning, basics plus updates plus a lot of experience, understanding, thoughtfulness.
And learning scripture is about that. No good unless applied, and no-one cares where you learned it as long as you apply it, and then learn to apply it better next time.
There is so much more to learn as set out in the Biblethan is ever covered in PFAL. Of course!!
No, Twinky. I haven't left the building. Just bored with all the same-old-thing that seems to be on everyone's mind.
cman, thanks for taking the mirror bait.
I have learned SO much from the mirror riddle these past 15 years. First, I wrote a short book about it, then had a one-page summary of my solution published in an "Encyclopedia of Science," and then saw my solution morph out to be useful in solving some of the mysteries in human free will.
Here is a quick summary:
The riddle becomes nearly insolvable as people unconsciously drift between two possible definitions of what is meant by “reverse.” Not everyone suffers from this tendency to drift, but enough do to make the mirror riddle survive thousands of years.
The first definition is what I call the Sherlock Holmes approach. This says “Don’t move anything” before comparing the object with its image in a mirror.
You just did this first definition, cman, and you came up with the observation that the mirror does NOT reverse left and right.
The other definition is quite the opposite approach. It says “DO MOVE things” before comparing the object with its image in a mirror. This approach wants the image and the object to be facing the same direction BEFORE comparing them.
When you perform this second definition it results in the observation that the mirror DOES reverse left and right.
I have noted that humans have a strong tendency to do this second definition’s action when the two objects to be compared are nearly identical.
As I examined how confusing this drift from definition to definition, it inspired me to search to see it this same kind of thing was happening in the age-old riddle of how can we have free will in the light of microscopic determinism ruling all of our “parts.”
Mike, this is a Physics 101 level problem. (Real image vs. Virtual image.) You spent all this time pondering a Physics 101 problem? Well, to each his own. Carry on.
Mike, this is a Physics 101 level problem. (Real image vs. Virtual image.) You spent all this time pondering a Physics 101 problem? Well, to each his own. Carry on.
I'm a little curious about him writing an entire (short) book about it, and an "Encyclopedia of Science" finding his grasp of science and of explanation of science sufficient to include in their book.
Any chance we can get the publishing information on either book? This is 2021, we might be able to find copies of them with a little information. Or do we have to take it on faith that this book was written AND that it was quoted in an encyclopedia of science?
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Twinky
Hello Mike. I've kinda missed you round here. Could always rely on you to make a point that would stir up Cafe denizens. Was wondering what had happened to you. You went away to study PFAL more de
Raf
Am I the only one who thinks Bullinger's Figures of Speech sound a WHOLE LOT like Harry Potter spells? Condescensio! Hypocatastasis! Asyndeton! Polysyndeton! Expecto-Runaroundem!
cman
So the idea is that if specific things come together than things happen. And these things that contribute to the outcome, and the outcome itself, are, or can be known. Some kind of scientific or philo
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modcat5
Raf, speaking with the modhat on:
I think a good 40 to 60 percent of the GSC rules were written to stop me from being less than hospitable to Mike. If they sometimes seem like, "really? that's a rule?" I may be to blame for it.
We may not be as intense as we were in the olden days, but I do think we're a more polite place than we used to be, and I kind of appreciate that. I hope everyone else does, too.
Welcome back (again), Mike. Hope you enjoy your stay and enjoy some good conversation. Even if I think you're mmmmphhhmpphpmphhphphmhmmhmmmhmhhppphphhhphph!!!!!
[content removed for violation of GSC rules: STOP THAT, RAF!!!]
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Rocky
That's a droll mind game.
Take what I say to you at face value. Rather than projecting onto me either what you're doing or what you want me to think.
When I ask for clarification, that's exactly and only what I'm doing. Asking you to clarify what you mean by it.
There is nothing tangible in my comment on which or by which you can reasonably suppose my question has anything to do with me. But then again, there's no question you are playing the same mind f**k games you've done in prior years.
So, again, what do you mean? When you say you "act him out."
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Rocky
Face it, T-, he's just messing with us, with you.
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Rocky
#Bullspit, Mike. See you in another three years?
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T-Bone
Oh I’m always aware of that, Rocky ... and I figure I’ll have some fun too by poking holes in ridiculous arguments and pseudo-spiritual nonsense.
Edited by T-BoneRevision
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Mike
Thanks, Raf. :) LoL
It's things like this that I peeked back in for.
If it's any consolation, the archive we generated was not a waste if you look at it, the entire GSC record, as a major historical document in itself.
It is a VERY thorough airing of hundreds of intense TWI issues, thousands of unrelated issues, and the mirror riddle. Scholars who find such an archive several generations from now will have a data rich resource.
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Mike
Rocky,
I genuinely meant it, that I have a reasonable expectation in imagining you being able, at this date, to "act him out."
It’s because you were a grad.
Doing this "acting out" was supposed to be what we DO with our dose of "Christ in you the hope of glory."
I’ll try to prove it to you, and then submit my proof to the judges.
All thru my history with TWI (1971-88) I looked for and found mentors who seemed to be “acting out” the Christ in them. They were people who HELPED me with various things.
I learned to always be on the lookout, as I moved about the ministry, for the more articulate leaders, who could explain things well. This is how I avoided the corrupting spots in the ministry as things brewed.
Spotting leaders like this on the field was easy in the 1970s because there were so many of them. There were some intense bright spots here and there, like Rye NY, where I grew up in the Word. This has been discussed here to general agreement of almost all.
But in later years, mentor-like leaders became less abundant, and hard to find. Many of them were tasked with too many management duties, some got tired and burned out, and by the mid 80s it got very hard for me to find MENTORS of PFAL, people who were acting out the Christ in them.
The “acting out” was operating the manifestations effectively, prayer, renewed mind LOVE, wisdom, knowledge.
When things started radically falling apart in 1987 (I was late in noticing), I started calling up all my old mentors and any others I could get try and get a hold of. They were not helpful at all. They were in retreat. It even seemed many had an actual lowering of IQ. Their enthusiasm was shot, and many were bitter.
I went thru a ten year period where there were none of these mentors in my life. I couldn’t trust any of the leaders of any of the ministry factions. But then, in 1998 one finally popped up, from the lower ranks of the Family Corps. He helped me with what was troubling me in PFAL and the ministry. He did it by having his orange book open while I had my orange book open. We did this a lot, for over 10 years.
When I claimed here at GSC that I “saw” Jesus Christ at the Return with an orange book in his hand, it was in the way this grad was “acting out” the Christ in him. It was like he was a walking-talking PFAL book. He helped me. He opened the book and class for me in a bigger way than I had known before.
Where ALL of the other leaders and former leaders of TWI had utterly failed me for 11 years, THIS grad was answering all my questions and opening up PFAL like I had not seen it in years. I saw the Christ in him, and this taught me in a big way a tiny glimpse of what the Return of Christ was going to be like.
AND it inspired me to “act out” the Christ in me (via the manifestations and renewed mind…best of my ability) for others around me. It still energizes me, now including dance and fun social things.
I think I used an odd verb tense when I first posted this. Maybe the “acting out” part was missing or unclear. Whatever happened, Tom Strange mis-understood my claim to “what I saw” in my original post on this, and I tried to correct him several times, over many months of time, but he was more interested in the Gotchya Game, thinking he had caught me painting myself in a corner.
So, I let him.
He was constantly trying to catch me on it, and it became a big cat and mouse game (or Road Runner game) and I used it as a vehicle for intensifying discussions, and then I’d dodge my way out of answering it.
I tried weakly a few times over the years to come clean, but no one would hear it, or it seemed un-important, so I gave up. So it stayed buried all this time.
So, Rocky, I finally answered Tom Strange’s challenge NOW, because it so neatly and simultaneously answered your challenge to explain the “act out.”
I submit my proof to the judges.
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Rocky
No, your expectation was actually a false supposition. I asked YOU what you meant. I didn't ask you to decide that I knew the meaning of your statement.
That's awfully pompous and pretentious of you.
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Mike
Rocky et all,
Because I didn't visit to debate, my ducks are not all in a row.
I had an after thought; an augmentation.
This also answers my comments on that other thread with J.Juedes video.
*****
Edited by MikeAnother aspect of "acting out the Christ within" is service.
I remember how VPW presented a mind-picture of Jesus' personality at the 1975 AC that I attended with a tape by Elizabeth Burns who wrote a very popular autobiography in 1957 titled "The Late Liz."
In that tape Liz describes the thing that turned her attention toward Jesus Christ. Somehow she was given a mind-picture of Jesus being a Porter, ready to carry her bags at the train station.
I was taught that Jesus' attitude was the greatest leader is a servant of all. Acting out the Christ in us means looking for ways to help others. There are so many ways we can still learn to do this.
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Twinky
Mike, I really thought you were going somewhere with this. Because then, and now, we should all be looking for people who are demonstrating the love ofG od (if you like, "the Christ in them") . I thought perhaps you were being honest in seeking mentors.
But then you say:
Please, Mike. Understand that Christ is bigger than PFAL. To find a mentor to "act out" Christ, widen your search. Look at lives of others: Here's Phil 2:3 in Amplified:
Amplified Bible
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit [through factional motives, or strife], but with [an attitude of] humility [being neither arrogant nor self-righteous], regard others as more important than yourselves.
If you are only looking at one group of people, one faction - are you not in direct contradiction to what this verse says? In every translation, we are urged to ESTEEM/ REGARD/ CONSIDER (etc) OTHERS as MORE IMPORTANT than ourselves.
You can take that as an individual context, or in a group context. Who should you esteem more important? Who should TWI esteem more important?
Seek mentors from other backgrounds. Look at how, say, Mother Teresa "acted out" Christ; Martin Luther King in his calls for social justice; Jon Bon Jovi, or Bono, if you like. Look at churches in other countries; the persecuted Christian church in Syria, China, most Muslim-dominated countries, elsewhere; how do the people there live? What can you learn from their examples?
Go to an outgoing church near where you live, and see how they practice what they preach. Talk to people there. You are more than welcome, should you ever come to the UK, to come to my church to see what we do. For a little congregation of maybe a solid 40 members, my church cooks about 50 meals a week and gives out to vulnerable people in the community; also gives them food parcels. This weekend we are having a StACCtion day: our little church hires 3 skips for the local community to dump old junk, so as to keep the neighbourhood looking nice. We show the area that we love them and want the best for the people. They are drawn by the love we show; many now are interested in our offering. In lockdown - our congregation has grown! After the StACCtion day, I am going to volunteer at a mass vaccination centre in this city. I am not scheduled for this, but my fellow church member has to go to help his father who will be recovering from an operation (helping his dad is great Christian practice) so he asked me to sub for him (that's some of my great Christian practice).
Are we as individuals and as a congregation "acting out" Christ enough for you? Or would you like more information about the many other things we do?
Probably the best mentors are actually those who have risen above the traditional teaching of their churches, throwing off doctrinal shackles, and living more purely according to the great heart of the teachings of the bible and in particular the NT.
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Twinky
In the same way that "it takes a village to raise a child," it takes a whole congregation to raise - each other!
We are to have the humility to consider others more worthy, and to learn from them; to let them mentor us. In the same way, we also are examples and mentors to others; always bear that in mind.
A Prayer Coordinator in a Christian group talked to us about the "smorgasbord of ways to pray" - some like to sit or stand, some like corporate and some private prayer; some sing, doodle, draw, etc.
What about the smorgasbord of "acting out" Christ? You know Jesus on this earth had lots of different ways to interact with people, to match "where they were coming from" - so watch, and learn from other people.
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Raf
Wierwille will be forgotten.
PFAL will be forgotten.
GSC's Great Mike Debates? No one will care. Actual Errors? Forgotten.
Victor Paul Wierwille's delusions of grandeur became TWI's delusions of significance in the history of Christianity.
It's a pissant cult that barely touched 100,000 people in a world of 4 Billion. The world population has increased, but the cult's influence has not kept pace.
A few years after the life of Christ, the world was turned upside down. The same time since snow fell on the gas pumps, and The Way remains a footnote not even deserving of its own chapter in the book of forgotten cults.
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waysider
"Mentors of PFAL"
This gave me a chuckle.
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WordWolf
Hello.
If you want to socialize, we have game threads still going in the Games forum, and you are still welcome to join.
"From 2002-2008 I was an advocate here that we return to PFAL to see how much we missed the first time(s), and to see how much we forgot or drifted from. I am convinced that 99% of all the woes reported here are due to us all NOT GETTING IT RIGHT the first times."
You also outright contradicted the Orange Book in a few major issues- like vpw claiming we could get to the originals and how we could do that, and you saying we could NOT, and vpw saying something like 90% of Scripture means just what it says, and you saying the meanings are hidden, and vpw saying the class (book, once edited) was a class of KEYS and was to UNDERSTAND Genesis to Revelation but not to replace them, and you said it DID replace Genesis to Revelation. You said a lot of things, and usually switched to vague, uninformative wordings in order to obscure either a lack of substance or outright contradicting pfal while explaining pfal. Most of us here were around to see all of that, but a few new people may have missed it. For those people, I'd like to add that I in no way exaggerated what he said nor misrepresented it.
Most people who have passed through these metaphorical doors are convinced that the problems were due to vpw violating the Bible and fair moral and legal codes while claiming he was our spiritual leader, and teaching his disciples to be two-fold the child of hell that he was- although, frankly, few matched in in that respect. Most actually cared about people, and only a tiny handful were that sociopathic or that fanatical to match him. You reluctantly agreed he wasn't perfect, but credited that to him being "OVERgifted" probably due to him being "born with an overabundance of brains and brawn" and "where he walked, the earth shook." (Seriously, those were his words, not mine.)
You said the keys to getting it right were the hidden keys to pfal you knew and none of us did, and that the failure to get it right wasn't due primarily to pfal being a flawed product.
"In those years I was only able to get a very small few of the GreaseSpotters to view things this way. The few of us came back to PFAL, this first wave of us, found it to be better than when we originally enjoyed it. "
There were fewer people in your new group than in the "Heavens Gate" comet watchers, or so many other groups convinced they were there primarily due to some secret they know. The US is loaded with people who think they know "the secret" to what's really going on. Thousands of people believe that. The great obscurity of your product, and the requirement that one have fond, nostalgic twi memories seriously limits the target audience of the public.
" I predicted back here at GreaseSpot then that I was only dealing with the "First Wave" of those returning to PFAL. "
Nostalgia arrives in waves with decades. That's true regardless of content. And calling a handful of people a "first wave" shows a disregard for the term "wave." [To be followed with claims he did not, then later claims he was metaphorical in some way and that I failed to understand him, then later claims it was deliberate so someone could "spring his trap." Some of these posts follow VERY predictable patterns- like Mike returning after being refuted completely and claiming that his last visit showed him coming up with answers to everything and coming off unscathed.]
"About 2 or 3 years ago I started seeing lots of Facebook Groups being started by lots of pro-PFAL people, and many comments by other pro-PFAL people. "
Defining "pro-pfal" can change who is meant by a lot. By some definitions, that would include ME. Also, "many" is a remarkably vague term. "The number of Facebook Groups" is a lot like when twi defined a 5-person graduating class ENTIRELY by which percentage was going on to do what- 20% to do this, 20% to do that, which was 1 person each time. Facebook groups can be of a single person and a tiny, occasional audience. They also OVERLAP a lot- so 10 Facebook groups on this probably include 80% overlap- or more- of their audiences.
"Every now and then a nay-sayer chimes in, but it's obvious how ineffective they are."
Isn't it amazing how ineffective a naysayer can be, when they show up at a venue with a purpose to which they are diametrically opposed?
""After 35+ years now, lots of people are done comparing the flurry of clone classes that cropped up after 1986, and have found they fall way short of the original."
That's not what they themselves are saying- that's your opinion of what they are doing. Their own answers would be quite different, and NOT rely on vpw, pfal, or anything involving a farm outside New Knoxville, in most cases. BTW, out of the supposed 100,000 people who took pfal, there are perhaps a few HUNDRED, at most, who are doing the splinter thing, with another few hundred if you include twi and SOWERS and so on, the groups with the authoritarian leaders and so on. In nearly every case, the audiences are all aging out- and in the other, the soil doesn't have depth.
"
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T-Bone
excellent post, WordWolf !!!!
it checks all the boxes !!!!
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Raf
Psst.
It's not the soil.
It's the seeds.
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T-Bone
“seeds” from an Ohio "farm" of a very seedy “teacher”
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WordWolf
"The reason I left was to APPLY the class to my life more, as opposed to just debating about it. I wanted to see people thrilled by the PFAL info again, and was very tired of trying to debate it all the time with people who did not want to apply it (again)."
The reason you showed up was to advertise your paradigm. The reason you left was that A) you were getting nearly no nibbles on the bait; and B) you kept getting refuted, which made the bait look more like bait and less like substance. I say that, knowing you were asked to discuss substance lots of times, and you used every excuse to avoid it- changing the subject, accusing everyone else of being dishonest, etc. (Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated thread, I ended up reversing my position on something as the result of an honest discussion, so it's not like it was impossible to change my mind, if you had substance.) What was really tiresome was all the dancing around, and page after page after page of someone saying they didn't have time to devote to giving a substantial answer to ANYTHING even though they had time to fill pages.
If you actually wanted people to "apply the class" (which wasn't your thrust then, that was to adopt your position for no reason in order to get results months later), you would have needed to address the question "WHY should I apply this class?" Without a respectable answer to that one, you were advertising and virtually nobody was buying.
"Guess what? Plagiarized material, which is accurate with the Word, CAN BE just as effective as original material that is accurate with the Word."
Guess what? We all knew that! Long before you ever posted your very first post here, Raf himself pointed out that plagiarism does not affect the SUBSTANCE of what is plagiarized. "Truth from the pen of a plagiarist is still truth." The problem with the plagiarism was never that "the material is useless if it is plagiarized" (a claim not adopted by anyone, but often propped up as a strawman for those seeking to accuse a certain plagiarizing rapist). The problem was that the plagiarism reveals a lack of character by the plagiarist. A serial plagiarist lacks a LOT of character. A serial plagiarist who copyrights his plagiarism shows he understand plagiarism full well, but is fine with it as long as he gets away with it..
Committing a crime is fine for him as long as he doesn't get caught? That's not a position for any supposed "man of God", and demonstrates both unsuitability to lead, and that there's more flaws we don't see. And we didn't see them- he was fine embezzling "church" funds, drugging women and raping them, and so on. But this is all glossed over with a veneer of "nobody's perfect" so long as the pfal fan gets his pfal. They don't say that's fine for ANYONE else- just that vpw gets a free pass, and they trust that his class was accurate despite coming from someone so utterly deficient in Christian morality and Christian character that he shouldn't be trusted to reliably tell you the name of Jesus' mom.
"The problem is there are no original writers out there who could do the job, so it got done without academic approval. That's ok, because I don't approve of them."
"The problem" is that your position begins by saying that pfal was not only of God, but was THE vehicle that God Almighty endorsed, authorized, and approved of (which is FAR from what any evidence shows, so is purely a leap-of-faith position), and that, SINCE pfal was THE God-endorsed class, that anything is worth overlooking because we got pfal in the end (another leap-of-faith position that is NOT in accord with the Bible.)
BTW, for those wondering, vpw rarely made any comments about other sources. If you went by the written pfal stuff, you'd find ZERO references to other writers. In fact, you'd have to either stumble across some teaching tape where he said something to a limited crowd, or dig over 100 pages into "The Way-Living in Love". There, there's no admission either. There's a single comment about nothing he did being original. pfal apologists blow that up into a full confession that he plagiarized leonard's class, Stiles' book, Bullinger's books, and so on. It's absolutely nothing of the kind, and his intent to fool everyone is rather transparent- especially if you read the openings of the Orange Book and the White Book. In fact, an early version of the Orange Book makes mention of an anonymous man who helped vpw learn (it was Stiles), and all the editions afterwards edit the paragraph so the man drops out of the picture as if ne never existed.
So, it's backwards. You don't approve of academic approval- and legal ways of using material- because they expose vpw as a liar, a thief, a plagiarist and a conman. The work OF the "original writers" , the actual plagiarized work- that gets deprecated because otherwise there's no excuse for the con job that was pfal.
We've been through all of this, lots of times. However, since you do not WISH to see any of these points, you've never learned any of them, and to you it's as if we never wrote them. That's fine, I'm writing this for those who come along later and wonder what happened.
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Twinky
I think Mike has left the building (again).
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Twinky
Thing about a "class" (any class) is that it should ultimately become invisible. It should become a basic instruction - about anything - and one builds upon it, with experience.
For instance: I know where I did my legal studies. I know what classes I took: land law, constitutional law, tort, etc etc. I studied law for three years for my Bachelor's degree, then did my Law Society finals (a really intense year) then did my legal apprenticeship ("articles") for another two years. Then, I was admitted to the Roll as a lawyer. And I practised and got better at applying the law, and finding new law to fit different situations.
But what I learned, in which class, well, sometimes I can say and most often I can't. The real learning isn't in whatever classes I took, of varying levels of depth and complexity, but it's in the application. Mrs Smith, getting a divorce, doesn't care where I learned matrimonial law, but she does care about custody of the kids, whether she gets a good settlement, my being able to read her husband's company's accounts (and discern less-than-legit entries therein); what to do when husband assaults her or steals property or badmouths her; and so on. Which is lotsa different classes, and not necessarily interlinked in the teaching.
That's lifelong learning, basics plus updates plus a lot of experience, understanding, thoughtfulness.
And learning scripture is about that. No good unless applied, and no-one cares where you learned it as long as you apply it, and then learn to apply it better next time.
There is so much more to learn as set out in the Bible than is ever covered in PFAL. Of course!!
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cman
Well hey mike, I see you are developing? Still the talk twisted walk riddle.
If you look in the mirror, left is still left and right is still right. Up is up and down is down.
I do hope you could keep a premise for more than a moment.
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Mike
No, Twinky. I haven't left the building. Just bored with all the same-old-thing that seems to be on everyone's mind.
cman, thanks for taking the mirror bait.
I have learned SO much from the mirror riddle these past 15 years. First, I wrote a short book about it, then had a one-page summary of my solution published in an "Encyclopedia of Science," and then saw my solution morph out to be useful in solving some of the mysteries in human free will.
Here is a quick summary:
The riddle becomes nearly insolvable as people unconsciously drift between two possible definitions of what is meant by “reverse.” Not everyone suffers from this tendency to drift, but enough do to make the mirror riddle survive thousands of years.
The first definition is what I call the Sherlock Holmes approach. This says “Don’t move anything” before comparing the object with its image in a mirror.
You just did this first definition, cman, and you came up with the observation that the mirror does NOT reverse left and right.
The other definition is quite the opposite approach. It says “DO MOVE things” before comparing the object with its image in a mirror. This approach wants the image and the object to be facing the same direction BEFORE comparing them.
When you perform this second definition it results in the observation that the mirror DOES reverse left and right.
I have noted that humans have a strong tendency to do this second definition’s action when the two objects to be compared are nearly identical.
As I examined how confusing this drift from definition to definition, it inspired me to search to see it this same kind of thing was happening in the age-old riddle of how can we have free will in the light of microscopic determinism ruling all of our “parts.”
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waysider
Mike, this is a Physics 101 level problem. (Real image vs. Virtual image.) You spent all this time pondering a Physics 101 problem? Well, to each his own. Carry on.
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WordWolf
I'm a little curious about him writing an entire (short) book about it, and an "Encyclopedia of Science" finding his grasp of science and of explanation of science sufficient to include in their book.
Any chance we can get the publishing information on either book? This is 2021, we might be able to find copies of them with a little information. Or do we have to take it on faith that this book was written AND that it was quoted in an encyclopedia of science?
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