Soon after the two events I mentioned I stopped ABS. My twig leaders wife asked what was going on. Her answer: she handed me the Christians Should Be Prosperous booklet.
Years after the event I stated, I was a regular in the local Wendy's. One day, a woman that worked there approached some friends and I and started witnessing to us. I come to find out she was a Corps person assigned to the town.
I told her the ABS failure account. Her response: "You'll have to ask my husband about that." Needless to say, I didn't ask her husband, because I never saw her again, as she left her job at Wendy's.
It seems the Way is very good about promising this is the truth, but very bad on what to do when it's proven false by someone doing a faceplant.
Again, I sympathize for the bone head responses you got from so many leaders. I will try to do better than them for your mis-addressed check.
As to your twig and branch leaders, it looked to me that both were covering their but by not answering you. But at least the twig leader admitted he did not know.
*/*/*
I too have to admit I don't know the answers to your questions following this post of yours. Not every scripture has clues to double doors or budgets, so I am not going to invent any. But some scriptures do, albeit subtle.
If this hunch of mine seems to pan out, then lots of time can be invested in answering your questions. Right now I am just trying to find some verification to the base idea.
You and I briefly discussed this idea of counterfeit tongues, and I said I had no more to offer, and was too busy to continue it. But then I remembered where a certain old post was located, so I am rekindling this little fire.
I am still working on a response to a few of So_crates posts, but I noticed this excerpt from an old post by Ralph D had several ties into this whole thread, as well as our mini discussion on SIT.
I slightly re-formatted Ralph’s post, and bold-fonted some selected excerpts, but you can find the entire original post here:
These excerpts were originally in a thread titled “How did the ordination of clergy thing work in TWI?” on page 4.
Look below for the genuineness of T.I.P.and also for a verification of what I said earlier in this thread about the way the Word moved in the early 1970s on Long Island, just across the bridge from Rye.
… i too experienced similar "niceties" from vic when he thought i had something in my life and background he could use......
my mother took the class, foundational, intermediate, after i left for the in-rez corps training, and was a "vocal" and active believer in the area i left behind for the corps "training".
..........however, my father, a professor of linguistics at ccny, and nyc high school foreign language department chairman and teacher, who was fluent in 13 different languages, was never "converted", despite vic's best efforts.
........my dad attended a sunday night fellowship at the rye presbyterian church once, in the fall of 1971, where steve heefner taught
.........as per twi "liturgy", there were "worship manifestations" at the beginning of that service, which included 2 "interpretation of tongues" which my father recognized as "known languages"
..........one, according to him, "portugese with a 'noticeable castillian spanish accent', and, the other a northern syriac dialect he recognized..
........his comment to me later that night when we got home............"neither of those people accurately translated what they spoke in those languages.........it was more of a 'rough paraphrase' (his words") in the english"
............of course, to me, this was a "miracle", and i recounted this for the believers to share with them how frustrating my father's "unbelief" was to me, despite this "miracle" god had performed for him!!
...........it was an incident which made the rounds among the fellowships back then........a great "witnessing tool" in spite of my father's refusal to "believe"!
my parents attended the roa '75, in lima,,,,,,,,,having spent the week previous visiting my wife and i at hq upon our return from our interim year of the corps............during that time, my mom cooked a sauerbraten which she prepared for us, in the kitchen of the wierwille home, and we ate the dinner she cooked, in the dining room of the "president's home" with vic, dotsie, uncle harry and naomi, my parents and my wife and i.........had a great time, 'cuz my mom was a german native, and we spent a couple of hours laughing and joking in german with the wierwille brothers and their wives.
......the next night, vic and dotsie took my parents and my wife and i out for dinner, at the wooden shoe in in minster, in order to "witness" to my father and "get him in the class"!
..........vic brought up the incident from the rye meeting i recounted above, which had occurred 4 years previously, as "proof" to my dad, that christ's resurrection and the "gift of holy spirit" were indeed true.
........and then he said to my dad, "i'm convinced you'd love the intellectual logic and mathematical exactness of what i teach in my class..........why not take it and see for yourself?"..........my father's reply......."until you can put holy spirit under a microscope for me, so that i can analyze it, i prefer to remain the agnostic that i am".
........LOL!...............my mouth must've dropped to the floor as i gasped out that good wooden shoe inn chicken when i heard that resaponse!!!
........i was expecting the worst, but vic just chuckled, and ordered another pitcher of beer for our table, and said, "well sir, that's just something i am not able to do"...........
during the rock, just several days later, vic called me backstage, where gary curtis was with him, and asked if i would introduce gary, who was the "head" of the twi translations department, to my father, because vic and gary wanted to ask my dad to translate the pfal book and class into french, which was my father's favorite of the 13 languages he was fluent in.
.......so, i took gary over to meet my dad, and they talked for about 25 minutes, with the discussion ending with my father "respectfully declining" to participate until that microscope of his had holy spirit under its lenses!
.............i still have that microscope of his!!............point being, that, all those nice, friendly things vic did for me, and my parents, were simply designed to get my dad to do the first french translation of vic's class!!
........pure and simple.............at the time, i was so disappointed that the mog himself could not win my dad for his "ministry", but today, looking back, i just laugh to myself, and whisper a little "way to go pops!" in loving memory and respect for my father's "unbelief"!
as i've stated previously on this thread, it was'nt vic who "fooled me" into the new birth.........it was my hippie, musician friends who first "witnessed" to me.......and dragged me to my first fellowships, where i met steve heefner and others in the early days of the way east "revival".
........as socks posted above, "I would like to say ditto to many of the things that have been said of Jim and Steve. I met them both way long ago, in 1968 and am glad I did.
There were a few years there when the amazing and the unusual were the pattern of the day. It'sbecause of those things I came to know beyond any doubt that Jesus Christ is living today and that God is my Father."...........amen, bro!
..........the miracles, signs, and wonders which "followed" all those friends of mine, and which were present in palpable abundance during that way east revival, throughout the many fellowhips sprouting up all over ny...........that was what "fooled" me into the outstretched arms of the risen christ!
.............vic's conspicuous "absence" from those early fellowhips had a lot more to do with that revival than did his later "conspicuous presence", imho!!
.............that "conspicuous presence" is what choked the true life out of that revival, as it did to the one in the way west, and the one in the old "northern ohio branch" mentioned in several posts on this thread!............it was wanting to see that kind of genuine, christian revival repeated again and again around the globe, which hooked me!.......and vic, ever the master manipulator and showman that he was, deftly transferred that desire to see the "resurrection power of christianity" with it's attendant miracles, signs and wonders, to his "ministry", in the stead of the ministry of jesus christ............that's where i got "fooled", and yes, that cult deception was indeed "poignant" for me, and thousands of others who experienced it!.................fool me once, shame on you.......fool me twice, shame on me!
Edited June 7, 2008 by Don'tWorryBeHappy
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I was there too. Things really happened big on Long Island in the 1970’s, before the Corps over-organization (dare I call it Wierwille’s Folly) ruined it.I was forever hooked, just like Ralph, on ever wanting to see that kind of Church on fire happen again.It absolutely can!
They MAY be related. Lots of godly ideas in the Bible appear elsewhere, but usually in distorted forms.
The similarity of this double doors hunch to yin/yang does not cast aspersions on it. In fact, it can be seen as a weak confirmation, when other parameters are right.
Likewise, for VPW to label the topic of believing in the Bible with the name "The Law of Believing." The fact that lots of hookie pookers use the same title, "The Law of Believing," to describe something similar does not cast aspersions on PFAL.
So mental assent is to intellectually accept something as true.
If I ACT on that, it’s called believing.
wierwille taught me how to fake speaking in tongues in PFAL - just like he relates how he did it in “The Way: Living in Love”.
I accepted what he said as true - so in session 12 of PFAL , I stood up , licked my lips and was real natural - and performed the same comedic schtick I did in high school - faking a foreign language - usually Russian and Asian .
This is what I was referring to.
You didn't say much in our "conversation" but this one thing about SIT. I responded a couple of times, I think.
They MAY be related. Lots of godly ideas in the Bible appear elsewhere, but usually in distorted forms.
The similarity of this double doors hunch to yin/yang does not cast aspersions on it. In fact, it can be seen as a weak confirmation, when other parameters are right.
Likewise, for VPW to label the topic of believing in the Bible with the name "The Law of Believing." The fact that lots of hookie pookers use the same title, "The Law of Believing," to describe something similar does not cast aspersions on PFAL.
No that was VPs version of the law especially dedicated to victim blaming. Which is way more hocus pocus send me your tithe than his contemporary Norman Vincent Peale and his bestseller “The Power of Positive Thinking”
Oh and mimicking the non pronunciation of a German is kinda creepy sorry. Put your left foot in…. Do the hookie pookie…. Etc.
too have to admit I don't know the answers to your questions following this post of yours. Not every scripture has clues to double doors or budgets, so I am not going to invent any. But some scriptures do, albeit subtle.
If this hunch of mine seems to pan out, then lots of time can be invested in answering your questions. Right now I am just trying to find some verification to the base idea.
Sounds like your mind is already made up and, despite your claims of this being a hunch, you're not looking for is it true or is it false, you want everyone to say, "Yah, we buy it."
Sounds like your mind is already made up and, despite your claims of this being a hunch, you're not looking for is it true or is it false, you want everyone to say, "Yah, we buy it."
I would not post it here if that was what I wanted.
It was the opposition to the hunch (not opposition to me personally) that I was seeking here.
My mind is not made up enough to teach this. I didn't even want to put in the About the Way forum for that reason. So I came here to the Doctrinal Dungeon to bat it about a bit in near privacy.
Next, I will be processing the verses I have collected on the “budget analogy” where God limits the amount of interactions allowed when the double doors are opened.
Are you saying for God to heal he has to let the devil attack?
I'm just trying to get you prepared for my response.
Sounds like a twig coordinator..... preparing people to be spoon fed the pfal class.
Or, sounds like wierwille trying to teach dispensation administrations to keep us from receiving the FULLNESS of the gospels that Jesus Christ brought to light.
Sounds like a twig coordinator..... preparing people to be spoon fed the pfal class.
Or, sounds like wierwille trying to teach dispensation administrations to keep us from receiving the FULLNESS of the gospels that Jesus Christ brought to light.
Ya, fake dispensations are great for ignoring entire relevant sections of scripture, like the Gospels and the book of Revelation.
Sounds like your mind is already made up and, despite your claims of this being a hunch, you're not looking for is it true or is it false, you want everyone to say, "Yah, we buy it."
It's on SALE now, so buy while you can !
This offer will soon expire, so act now!
*/*/*/*/*/*
Socrates,
Please pardon me for repeating everything. That is for my benefit some, and for yours if your memory is 74 years old like mine, and also for the others passing by to be able to understand what we are talking about.
But before that, I do now remember how, when I was a twig leader, I would answer a question like the one your TL had no answer for.I was lucky, in that I heard someone else answer that earlier much in my life.
The key to making more money is to do jobs that no one else wants to do.I actually did that, going from high tech industry to window cleaning. I tripled my income within a month or two, after learning the ropes. Then I had much more time to research and witness.
I could go on and on about how finding the hardest jobs is the key. That’s what doctors and lawyers do, except they put in the drudgery at school, preparing with boring memorization and long hours and stiff competition. What I do is clean fly$dang off of windows.
*/*/*
Mike is in blue fonts. So_crates is in gold.
So_crates posted: On 3/2/2023 at 10:59 AM, Mike said: What VPW taught us was that mental assent lacks action. When there is risk, and something to lose by acting, but the action is taken anyway, then that is an indicator that believing is happening. But don't forget, genuine believing with action, but lacking a written promise that is the object of the believing, is bogus and believing amiss. It's genuine believing-action, but it is aimed wrong. This part about linking believing with a promise of God often slips out of our speech, and later out of our awareness. It is equally critical that all operation of the power manifestations must be linked to a direct revelation.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Oh, really?!
Just before I left the ministry in 1986, I was about to give ABS. At the time I was recently between job and I had given ABS faithfully for a year.
I quickly calculated my finance and found I would come up short of food on Saturday (I believe it was Wednesday or Thursday). I remembered Saint Vic said when you ABS God protects your money and I was expecting a check Saturday from a temporary job I had done.
So I wrote the check and placed it in the horn of plenty.
Saturday rolled around and no check.
Nothing to eat Sunday.
Monday I went to the business and found out the sent the check to an address I lived at 10 years prior. (I later found out the new residents took the check and cashed it.) I had to argue with the business manager to even get half the money owed me.
Now, you have believing and action and I had skin on the game, so what happened.
(I have many more examples, as I'm sure other posters here do.)
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Mike posted:
On 3/2/2023 at 12:20 PM, So_crates said:
… Another example. Same period of time.
As you can see by my previous example, things weren't exactly champagne and caviar for me.
So I went to the branch leader and asked him what I was doing wrong.
"You need a job making $20 an hour," he told me.
"Where do you find those?" I asked.
"I'm going to send you to your twig leader for an answer."
So I approached my twig leader. His answer:"I don't know."
Nevermind if you obey the MOG God will bless you all the same. Again, believing+action=landing flat on my face.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
YIKES! …
I've been there and done that myself; sometimes spectacularly.
When I was going out WoW in 1982 my car had an aluminum head that had cracked, but I got if fixed “semi-miraculously” and was off in running a cross country trip from San Diego to Ohio.
LATE EDIT: I was joking about "semi-miraculous"
But my new head cracked in the Colorado Rockies!
I could tell, because I had to limp on a blown head for weeks prior to its fixing in San Diego, and I was now limping again.
But I was answering a call from God!
I had resisted acting on the WoW challenge for 11 years, but now finally I am giving God a year of my time and heart. I had put my business in the hands of 5 grads, with verbal promises they would give it all back to me on my return.
No cracked aluminum head was not going to stop this Ambassador for Christ! No sirree!
I started picturing in my mind the aluminum poles that hold up the huge Rock of Ages tents, and how strong that metallic bond was. I was a Physics major, and it was easy to imagine my cracked head “healing” up by God’s power. It would be so easy to work those atoms around, bring in a few needed neutrons or protons, or scoop up aluminum from the road dust…. I was into “the believing images of victory” that we all were galloping with in those days.
As I limped up each hill I’d make these mental images stronger to defy the wobbles in the my car engine’s strength. As I coasted down the next hill I’d be thanking God for that head to he healed on climbing the next hill…. and the next… and the next…
Arrrrggghhhh!! It was mentally exhausting.
It was a miracle I made it to Ohio in time, though !!!
LATE EDIT: I was joking about that miracle arrival.
My diagnosis was right; cracked head. I had a sick feeling when I saw the aluminum poles and how strong they looked at the big tent.
It took another 6 years before I could figure out what went wrong.
Can you see it?
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Ok, that is the setup.
What I will do now is repeat my story with a commentary on what went wrong. If I have time I can then tell the story of how I figured out my error 6 years later, in 1988.
When I was going out WoW in 1982 my car had an aluminum head that had cracked, but I got if fixed “semi-miraculously” and was off in running a cross country trip from San Diego to Ohio.
LATE EDIT: I was joking about "semi-miraculous"
But my new head cracked in the Colorado Rockies!
I could tell, because I had to limp on a blown head for weeks prior to its fixing in San Diego, and I was now limping again.
Here I was distracted by the evidence from my 5 senses. It took my mind off the written Word and even the joy of fellowship with the Father.
But I was answering a call from God!
I had resisted acting on the WoW challenge for 11 years, but now finally I am giving God a year of my time and heart. I had put my business in the hands of 5 grads, with verbal promises they would give it all back to me on my return.
Here I was leaning on my feeling self-sufficient. I felt very much in control when I took off in my car, and then I hit the Rocky Mountains.
No cracked aluminum head was not going to stop this Ambassador for Christ! No sirree!
I started picturing in my mind the aluminum poles that hold up the huge Rock of Ages tents, and how strong that metallic bond was. I was a Physics major, and it was easy to imagine my cracked head “healing” up by God’s power. It would be so easy to work those atoms around, bring in a few needed neutrons or protons, or scoop up aluminum from the road dust…. I was into “the believing images of victory” that we all were galloping with in those days.
This was my BIG error; the preceding ones were minor sloppiness, spiritually, while being pretty sharp in the 5-senses.Here I was doing what that book, the “Seduction of Christianity” talks about and is akin to witchcraft.I did not have a written promise from the Bible being burned into brain’s believing.I didn’t have a direct revelation from the Father, nor the manifestation of believing in operation.
What I had going was what LOTS of grads were doing, and that the TVTs were promoting.
(by the way, some of the TVTs could come from Way Magazine articles and from SNT tapes)
Many people in the ministry were cutting out pictures of red sports cars and making refrigerator magnets out of them to bolster their “Believing Images of Victory.”
I know I did things like that. I saw many others do it too.
I was doing it as my car was wobbling up each hill. And then I’d give God the credit on the way down each hill, but it was too late.God had nothing to do with my believing here.
I had good believing going, not mental assent, but it was WHAT was being believed, precisely, that was amiss. It was like the Book of James says about asking amiss and not receiving.
I manufactured a revelation from God to do a miracle on my car engine, and it BACKFIRED !
Please pardon the intended pun; I couldn’t resist.
As I limped up each hill I’d make these mental images stronger to defy the wobbles in the my car engine’s strength. As I coasted down the next hill I’d be thanking God for that head to he healed on climbing the next hill…. and the next… and the next… Arrrrggghhhh!! It was mentally exhausting. Yup!There is peace when we operate the manifestations like Jesus did. This was not peaceful.
It was a miracle I made it to Ohio in time, though !!!
LATE EDIT: I was joking about that miracle arrival. God did meet my need!…on 3 cylinders.
I went out WoW without the car. I had to face a bigger challenge than I had calculated, and from that I grew.It was an adventure, that is for sure!
My diagnosis was right; cracked head. I had a sick feeling when I saw the aluminum poles and how strong they looked at the big tent.
It took another 6 years before I could figure out what went wrong.
Can you see it?
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
Now, So_crates, I’m not saying your situation was as extreme an error as mine, but I think it was very similar in quality of error, if not quantity of error.
You did not have a written promise from the Bible that you were believing for the Saturday arrival of the check.You did not have a direct revelation from God either.And your need still got met; you survived to tell us about it. On those points our stories are similar.
It doesn’t say WHEN God is going to bless us for all the money AND SERVICE that we gave, and that now looks like a waste.God remembers all that we did with the right heart. It was NOT a waste!
And there is no guarantee we will understand everything, just when we want it. It took me 6 years to see my mistakes there.Here is how it happened:
*/*/*/*/*
In Sept 1988 John Lynn came to San Diego to continue what Ralph D had started the year before, which was a live, face-to-face, Road Show version of the Grease Spot Café.
I had been shocked silly the year before by Ralph for lots of reasons, but most prominent was I first saw the John Schoenheit Paper there, and got a copy for myself.
I was shocked that it was not about the Trinity, as I had been told.I was double shocked that the ministry had banned it!I was triple shocked because I had come up with almost identical findings to Schoenheit’s with my twig in 1980, which was 6 years before Schoenheit.
This was 1987, a whole decade before I took my special stance with regards to the collaterals.I was up and down and both sides ways in those days. But the Schoenheit Paper gave me nausea for two days afterwards. Literally.I was in very silent solo grieving.
The next year, when John Lynn did the same Road Show, I was braced for more shocks, but not enough.John brought with him and promoted, even sold a bunch of, “The Seduction of Christianity” that I mentioned earlier.I had never heard of it.
John had a hot teaching on how VPW misled us with the law of believing and how it was witchcraft.He used all kinds of examples of how PFAL had ruined us to this counterfeit way of doing what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels about believing. (hope you liked my list posted earlier today)He reminded us of all the refrigerator magnets for believing we had made, and things like that.
I went home from that teaching, and was wise to abstain from food, that time.
But another thing happened that same month. I had received my first bootleg copy of the class. As I pondered deeply all that Ralph and John had showed me, it was evident that we were not told everything and that the ministry meltdown two years prior to this was inevitable, instead of ironic and mysterious.
But something was nagging at the back of my mind from running all those PFAL classes, where I was the AV guy and could not leave my seat for a second, unlike the class instructor, who often went out for a smoke or phone calls.
I decided to “take the class” again by listening on a Walkman cassette player while I cleaned windows.As I did that I had pen and paper on me to jot down quick notes.
What I discovered was about 19 places in the class where VPW very plainly taught us how crucial the link was between us doing the believing and having a SPECIFIC promise to focus that believing on.In other words, nineteen times in the class he told us to remember to do it right. This directly contradicted what John Lynn had reported.
But HOW did I believe John so hook-line-and-sinker, when he explained the book he was selling and our matching TWI activities.I believed his report because it was TRUE!…true as long as John’s words applied to the TVTs and the refrigerator magnets that had been raging by 1988.But when John said we were taught that way in the class he was dead wrong.
This was how I learned about the TVTs, and how contrary to PFAL they often were by 1988.This was how I learned that we grads had slowly forgotten a lot of what we were taught in the class in just a few years.It was an eye opener to me.I was ashamed I did not accurately remember the class when John was telling us how it ruined us and seduced us into witchcraft. I had forgotten those 19 times we were told to link our believing to a promise in God’s Word.
This should have been a bigger wake-up call for me.Listening to the whole class definitely helped, but I would need another huge wake-up call several years later to see ANOTHER area of my life where I had forgotten and drifted from what I was taught, unknowingly.I have reported on this in the “Determinism versus Free Will” thread.I had drifted“soul”from the natural category over to the spiritual category, and it was the brain scientists at UCSD that alerted me to this.
*/*/*/*
Sometimes we weren’t believing.Jesus would tell people when this was where they were blowing it. It’s natural, and nothing surprising that we would mental assent sometimes, and it would feel like believing, and then we get tricked.
Sometimes we WERE believing, but believing not quite on the right things, or maybe even the wrong things.
Yes, TWI was rotten about condemning people all the time about them failing in their believing.
But Jesus wasn’t rotten when he did it. He was right on.
We all need tuning-up in believing and in believing for the best things.
It was a miracle I made it to Ohio in time, though !!!
Please find one miracle in scripture where anyone was mentally exhausted. We do not bring miracles to pass. You drove a busted car across the country while pretending you were making it go with magickal thinking. You have been deceived.
But Jesus wasn’t rotten when he did it. He was right on.
Jesus Christ NEVER got on anyone about their believing PERIOD. He reproved countless people for having a lack of faith in God, who brings the impossible to pass. You are reading a lie into scripture. You are deceived.
Please find one miracle in scripture where anyone was mentally exhausted. We do not bring miracles to pass. You drove a busted car across the country while pretending you were making it go with magickal thinking. You have been deceived.
Jesus Christ NEVER got on anyone about their believing PERIOD. He reproved countless people for having a lack of faith in God, who brings the impossible to pass. You are reading a lie into scripture. You are deceived.
Did you read the list of Gospel verses where Jesus is teaching on believing that I posted earlier today?
Jesus definitely, and more than once, said someone's believing was insufficient or wrong some way.
I think there are 3 of them in the list, if not 4.
No cracked aluminum head was not going to stop this Ambassador for Christ! No sirree!
Do tell? Did your magickal thinking actually repair the head gasket?
I have s tory of my own with a failed transmission on a car I purchased from a believer in Louisiana. I had the car for a few weeks and the transmission went bad when I was pulling out of a car wash. I called my friend who had it towed to his mechanic. He told me on the way to the mechanic that we could just believe that the transmission was not bad. So we did. Then we got to the mechanic and he told us the transmission was bad. He fixed it and passed on a discounted cost that he gave my car dealer friend. I was cool with that. Our believing did not fix the transmission and your believing did not fix the cracked head gasket.
Did you read the list of Gospel verses where Jesus is teaching on believing that I posted earlier today?
Jesus definitely, and more than once, said someone's believing was insufficient or wrong some way.
I think there are 3 of them in the list, if not 4.
I remeber you quoting some scriptures, I did ask a question that went unanswered. Im not about to go floating through afew pages of this goofy @$$ discourse looking for a couple verses. Please quote them at me and I will check them out in light of what you are saying. BTW - I have worked the law of believing to death, to the point that I have repudiated this false, occultic, doctrine out of my life and asked forgiveness for EVER having taught it.
Do tell? Did your magickal thinking actually repair the head gasket?
I have s tory of my own with a failed transmission on a car I purchased from a believer in Louisiana. I had the car for a few weeks and the transmission went bad when I was pulling out of a car wash. I called my friend who had it towed to his mechanic. He told me on the way to the mechanic that we could just believe that the transmission was not bad. So we did. Then we got to the mechanic and he told us the transmission was bad. He fixed it and passed on a discounted cost that he gave my car dealer friend. I was cool with that. Our believing did not fix the transmission and your believing did not fix the cracked head gasket.
The evidence is in that you only skim read my post. You missed the major points and the details. Please read it again, carefully.
Everyone else who DOES read that carefully will know you really dropped the ball there.
I can give you a link to the Gospel link. You were the one who inspired me to do that.
The evidence is in that you only skim read my post. You missed the major points and the details. Please read it again, carefully.
Dude...no matter how carefully I read it you did not fix your head gasket by the law of believing. Its hocus pocus BS. Im not re-reading anything. The law of believing is trash and a false doctrine. If you are complaining about my comprehension of your posts please start writing more succint, to the point posts. Its not the responsibility of the audience to decipher an author's content, but on the author to explain themselves where comprehension is readily attainable by the audience.
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The Corps is a necessary cult element providing free labor at the expense of volunteers lives. Any imagery like the Marines promotes extremist behavior. No other Christian seminary or school use
Nathan_Jr
"Teaching" Romans to the Corps, Q&A: LCM: How much does your behavior that people do not see influence your example to them? VPW: It doesn't, unless you believe it will. LCM: You u
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Mike
Again, I sympathize for the bone head responses you got from so many leaders. I will try to do better than them for your mis-addressed check.
As to your twig and branch leaders, it looked to me that both were covering their but by not answering you. But at least the twig leader admitted he did not know.
*/*/*
I too have to admit I don't know the answers to your questions following this post of yours. Not every scripture has clues to double doors or budgets, so I am not going to invent any. But some scriptures do, albeit subtle.
If this hunch of mine seems to pan out, then lots of time can be invested in answering your questions. Right now I am just trying to find some verification to the base idea.
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T-Bone
I’ve never had those experiences.
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Mike
They MAY be related. Lots of godly ideas in the Bible appear elsewhere, but usually in distorted forms.
The similarity of this double doors hunch to yin/yang does not cast aspersions on it. In fact, it can be seen as a weak confirmation, when other parameters are right.
Likewise, for VPW to label the topic of believing in the Bible with the name "The Law of Believing." The fact that lots of hookie pookers use the same title, "The Law of Believing," to describe something similar does not cast aspersions on PFAL.
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Mike
Oops. Mistaken identity?
I'll check.
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Mike
This is what I was referring to.
You didn't say much in our "conversation" but this one thing about SIT. I responded a couple of times, I think.
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chockfull
No that was VPs version of the law especially dedicated to victim blaming. Which is way more hocus pocus send me your tithe than his contemporary Norman Vincent Peale and his bestseller “The Power of Positive Thinking”
Oh and mimicking the non pronunciation of a German is kinda creepy sorry. Put your left foot in…. Do the hookie pookie…. Etc.
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So_crates
Sounds like your mind is already made up and, despite your claims of this being a hunch, you're not looking for is it true or is it false, you want everyone to say, "Yah, we buy it."
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Mike
Oops! I think I misread this to say you "never had that conversation" in my response to you above. So soggy.
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Mike
I would not post it here if that was what I wanted.
It was the opposition to the hunch (not opposition to me personally) that I was seeking here.
My mind is not made up enough to teach this. I didn't even want to put in the About the Way forum for that reason. So I came here to the Doctrinal Dungeon to bat it about a bit in near privacy.
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Mike
I vaguely remember it being Moses' rod turned to a snake, and then the Pharaoh's magicians did the same, that got me going on this hunch.
Then seeing Paul getting blinded at the same time he talks to Jesus was another.
Similarly with John the Baptist's father.
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OldSkool
Are you saying for God to heal he has to let the devil attack?
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skyrider
Sounds like a twig coordinator..... preparing people to be spoon fed the pfal class.
Or, sounds like wierwille trying to teach dispensation administrations to keep us from receiving the FULLNESS of the gospels that Jesus Christ brought to light.
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OldSkool
Ya, fake dispensations are great for ignoring entire relevant sections of scripture, like the Gospels and the book of Revelation.
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T-Bone
“Soggy”? Boys, we need to get to the bottom of that!
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Rocky
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Mike
It's on SALE now, so buy while you can !
This offer will soon expire, so act now!
*/*/*/*/*/*
Socrates,
Please pardon me for repeating everything. That is for my benefit some, and for yours if your memory is 74 years old like mine, and also for the others passing by to be able to understand what we are talking about.
But before that, I do now remember how, when I was a twig leader, I would answer a question like the one your TL had no answer for. I was lucky, in that I heard someone else answer that earlier much in my life.
The key to making more money is to do jobs that no one else wants to do. I actually did that, going from high tech industry to window cleaning. I tripled my income within a month or two, after learning the ropes. Then I had much more time to research and witness.
I could go on and on about how finding the hardest jobs is the key. That’s what doctors and lawyers do, except they put in the drudgery at school, preparing with boring memorization and long hours and stiff competition. What I do is clean fly$dang off of windows.
*/*/*
Mike is in blue fonts.
So_crates is in gold.
So_crates posted:
On 3/2/2023 at 10:59 AM, Mike said:
What VPW taught us was that mental assent lacks action. When there is risk, and something to lose by acting, but the action is taken anyway, then that is an indicator that believing is happening.
But don't forget, genuine believing with action, but lacking a written promise that is the object of the believing, is bogus and believing amiss. It's genuine believing-action, but it is aimed wrong.
This part about linking believing with a promise of God often slips out of our speech, and later out of our awareness. It is equally critical that all operation of the power manifestations must be linked to a direct revelation.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Oh, really?!
Just before I left the ministry in 1986, I was about to give ABS. At the time I was recently between job and I had given ABS faithfully for a year.
I quickly calculated my finance and found I would come up short of food on Saturday (I believe it was Wednesday or Thursday). I remembered Saint Vic said when you ABS God protects your money and I was expecting a check Saturday from a temporary job I had done.
So I wrote the check and placed it in the horn of plenty.
Saturday rolled around and no check.
Nothing to eat Sunday.
Monday I went to the business and found out the sent the check to an address I lived at 10 years prior. (I later found out the new residents took the check and cashed it.) I had to argue with the business manager to even get half the money owed me.
Now, you have believing and action and I had skin on the game, so what happened.
(I have many more examples, as I'm sure other posters here do.)
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Mike posted:
On 3/2/2023 at 12:20 PM, So_crates said:
… Another example. Same period of time.
As you can see by my previous example, things weren't exactly champagne and caviar for me.
So I went to the branch leader and asked him what I was doing wrong.
"You need a job making $20 an hour," he told me.
"Where do you find those?" I asked.
"I'm going to send you to your twig leader for an answer."
So I approached my twig leader. His answer:"I don't know."
Nevermind if you obey the MOG God will bless you all the same. Again, believing+action=landing flat on my face.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
YIKES! …
I've been there and done that myself; sometimes spectacularly.
When I was going out WoW in 1982 my car had an aluminum head that had cracked, but I got if fixed “semi-miraculously” and was off in running a cross country trip from San Diego to Ohio.
LATE EDIT: I was joking about "semi-miraculous"
But my new head cracked in the Colorado Rockies!
I could tell, because I had to limp on a blown head for weeks prior to its fixing in San Diego, and I was now limping again.
But I was answering a call from God!
I had resisted acting on the WoW challenge for 11 years, but now finally I am giving God a year of my time and heart. I had put my business in the hands of 5 grads, with verbal promises they would give it all back to me on my return.
No cracked aluminum head was not going to stop this Ambassador for Christ! No sirree!
I started picturing in my mind the aluminum poles that hold up the huge Rock of Ages tents, and how strong that metallic bond was. I was a Physics major, and it was easy to imagine my cracked head “healing” up by God’s power. It would be so easy to work those atoms around, bring in a few needed neutrons or protons, or scoop up aluminum from the road dust…. I was into “the believing images of victory” that we all were galloping with in those days.
As I limped up each hill I’d make these mental images stronger to defy the wobbles in the my car engine’s strength. As I coasted down the next hill I’d be thanking God for that head to he healed on climbing the next hill…. and the next… and the next…
Arrrrggghhhh!! It was mentally exhausting.
It was a miracle I made it to Ohio in time, though !!!
LATE EDIT: I was joking about that miracle arrival.
My diagnosis was right; cracked head. I had a sick feeling when I saw the aluminum poles and how strong they looked at the big tent.
It took another 6 years before I could figure out what went wrong.
Can you see it?
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Ok, that is the setup.
What I will do now is repeat my story with a commentary on what went wrong. If I have time I can then tell the story of how I figured out my error 6 years later, in 1988.
When I was going out WoW in 1982 my car had an aluminum head that had cracked, but I got if fixed “semi-miraculously” and was off in running a cross country trip from San Diego to Ohio.
LATE EDIT: I was joking about "semi-miraculous"
But my new head cracked in the Colorado Rockies!
I could tell, because I had to limp on a blown head for weeks prior to its fixing in San Diego, and I was now limping again.
Here I was distracted by the evidence from my 5 senses. It took my mind off the written Word and even the joy of fellowship with the Father.
But I was answering a call from God!
I had resisted acting on the WoW challenge for 11 years, but now finally I am giving God a year of my time and heart. I had put my business in the hands of 5 grads, with verbal promises they would give it all back to me on my return.
Here I was leaning on my feeling self-sufficient. I felt very much in control when I took off in my car, and then I hit the Rocky Mountains.
No cracked aluminum head was not going to stop this Ambassador for Christ! No sirree!
I started picturing in my mind the aluminum poles that hold up the huge Rock of Ages tents, and how strong that metallic bond was. I was a Physics major, and it was easy to imagine my cracked head “healing” up by God’s power. It would be so easy to work those atoms around, bring in a few needed neutrons or protons, or scoop up aluminum from the road dust…. I was into “the believing images of victory” that we all were galloping with in those days.
This was my BIG error; the preceding ones were minor sloppiness, spiritually, while being pretty sharp in the 5-senses. Here I was doing what that book, the “Seduction of Christianity” talks about and is akin to witchcraft. I did not have a written promise from the Bible being burned into brain’s believing. I didn’t have a direct revelation from the Father, nor the manifestation of believing in operation.
What I had going was what LOTS of grads were doing, and that the TVTs were promoting.
(by the way, some of the TVTs could come from Way Magazine articles and from SNT tapes)
Many people in the ministry were cutting out pictures of red sports cars and making refrigerator magnets out of them to bolster their “Believing Images of Victory.”
I know I did things like that. I saw many others do it too.
I was doing it as my car was wobbling up each hill. And then I’d give God the credit on the way down each hill, but it was too late. God had nothing to do with my believing here.
I had good believing going, not mental assent, but it was WHAT was being believed, precisely, that was amiss. It was like the Book of James says about asking amiss and not receiving.
I manufactured a revelation from God to do a miracle on my car engine, and it BACKFIRED !
Please pardon the intended pun; I couldn’t resist.
As I limped up each hill I’d make these mental images stronger to defy the wobbles in the my car engine’s strength. As I coasted down the next hill I’d be thanking God for that head to he healed on climbing the next hill…. and the next… and the next… Arrrrggghhhh!! It was mentally exhausting.
Yup! There is peace when we operate the manifestations like Jesus did. This was not peaceful.
It was a miracle I made it to Ohio in time, though !!!
LATE EDIT: I was joking about that miracle arrival.
God did meet my need! …on 3 cylinders.
I went out WoW without the car. I had to face a bigger challenge than I had calculated, and from that I grew. It was an adventure, that is for sure!
My diagnosis was right; cracked head. I had a sick feeling when I saw the aluminum poles and how strong they looked at the big tent.
It took another 6 years before I could figure out what went wrong.
Can you see it?
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
Now, So_crates, I’m not saying your situation was as extreme an error as mine, but I think it was very similar in quality of error, if not quantity of error.
You did not have a written promise from the Bible that you were believing for the Saturday arrival of the check. You did not have a direct revelation from God either. And your need still got met; you survived to tell us about it. On those points our stories are similar.
It doesn’t say WHEN God is going to bless us for all the money AND SERVICE that we gave, and that now looks like a waste. God remembers all that we did with the right heart. It was NOT a waste!
And there is no guarantee we will understand everything, just when we want it. It took me 6 years to see my mistakes there. Here is how it happened:
*/*/*/*/*
In Sept 1988 John Lynn came to San Diego to continue what Ralph D had started the year before, which was a live, face-to-face, Road Show version of the Grease Spot Café.
I had been shocked silly the year before by Ralph for lots of reasons, but most prominent was I first saw the John Schoenheit Paper there, and got a copy for myself.
I was shocked that it was not about the Trinity, as I had been told. I was double shocked that the ministry had banned it! I was triple shocked because I had come up with almost identical findings to Schoenheit’s with my twig in 1980, which was 6 years before Schoenheit.
This was 1987, a whole decade before I took my special stance with regards to the collaterals. I was up and down and both sides ways in those days. But the Schoenheit Paper gave me nausea for two days afterwards. Literally. I was in very silent solo grieving.
The next year, when John Lynn did the same Road Show, I was braced for more shocks, but not enough. John brought with him and promoted, even sold a bunch of, “The Seduction of Christianity” that I mentioned earlier. I had never heard of it.
John had a hot teaching on how VPW misled us with the law of believing and how it was witchcraft. He used all kinds of examples of how PFAL had ruined us to this counterfeit way of doing what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels about believing. (hope you liked my list posted earlier today) He reminded us of all the refrigerator magnets for believing we had made, and things like that.
I went home from that teaching, and was wise to abstain from food, that time.
But another thing happened that same month. I had received my first bootleg copy of the class. As I pondered deeply all that Ralph and John had showed me, it was evident that we were not told everything and that the ministry meltdown two years prior to this was inevitable, instead of ironic and mysterious.
But something was nagging at the back of my mind from running all those PFAL classes, where I was the AV guy and could not leave my seat for a second, unlike the class instructor, who often went out for a smoke or phone calls.
I decided to “take the class” again by listening on a Walkman cassette player while I cleaned windows. As I did that I had pen and paper on me to jot down quick notes.
What I discovered was about 19 places in the class where VPW very plainly taught us how crucial the link was between us doing the believing and having a SPECIFIC promise to focus that believing on. In other words, nineteen times in the class he told us to remember to do it right. This directly contradicted what John Lynn had reported.
But HOW did I believe John so hook-line-and-sinker, when he explained the book he was selling and our matching TWI activities. I believed his report because it was TRUE! …true as long as John’s words applied to the TVTs and the refrigerator magnets that had been raging by 1988. But when John said we were taught that way in the class he was dead wrong.
This was how I learned about the TVTs, and how contrary to PFAL they often were by 1988. This was how I learned that we grads had slowly forgotten a lot of what we were taught in the class in just a few years. It was an eye opener to me. I was ashamed I did not accurately remember the class when John was telling us how it ruined us and seduced us into witchcraft. I had forgotten those 19 times we were told to link our believing to a promise in God’s Word.
This should have been a bigger wake-up call for me. Listening to the whole class definitely helped, but I would need another huge wake-up call several years later to see ANOTHER area of my life where I had forgotten and drifted from what I was taught, unknowingly. I have reported on this in the “Determinism versus Free Will” thread. I had drifted “soul” from the natural category over to the spiritual category, and it was the brain scientists at UCSD that alerted me to this.
*/*/*/*
Sometimes we weren’t believing. Jesus would tell people when this was where they were blowing it. It’s natural, and nothing surprising that we would mental assent sometimes, and it would feel like believing, and then we get tricked.
Sometimes we WERE believing, but believing not quite on the right things, or maybe even the wrong things.
Yes, TWI was rotten about condemning people all the time about them failing in their believing.
But Jesus wasn’t rotten when he did it. He was right on.
We all need tuning-up in believing and in believing for the best things.
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OldSkool
Please find one miracle in scripture where anyone was mentally exhausted. We do not bring miracles to pass. You drove a busted car across the country while pretending you were making it go with magickal thinking. You have been deceived.
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OldSkool
Jesus Christ NEVER got on anyone about their believing PERIOD. He reproved countless people for having a lack of faith in God, who brings the impossible to pass. You are reading a lie into scripture. You are deceived.
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Mike
Right. I agree with you.
That is what I posted. I was in error.
I should NOT have been exhausted.
Please re-read.
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Mike
Did you read the list of Gospel verses where Jesus is teaching on believing that I posted earlier today?
Jesus definitely, and more than once, said someone's believing was insufficient or wrong some way.
I think there are 3 of them in the list, if not 4.
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OldSkool
Do tell? Did your magickal thinking actually repair the head gasket?
I have s tory of my own with a failed transmission on a car I purchased from a believer in Louisiana. I had the car for a few weeks and the transmission went bad when I was pulling out of a car wash. I called my friend who had it towed to his mechanic. He told me on the way to the mechanic that we could just believe that the transmission was not bad. So we did. Then we got to the mechanic and he told us the transmission was bad. He fixed it and passed on a discounted cost that he gave my car dealer friend. I was cool with that. Our believing did not fix the transmission and your believing did not fix the cracked head gasket.
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OldSkool
I remeber you quoting some scriptures, I did ask a question that went unanswered. Im not about to go floating through afew pages of this goofy @$$ discourse looking for a couple verses. Please quote them at me and I will check them out in light of what you are saying. BTW - I have worked the law of believing to death, to the point that I have repudiated this false, occultic, doctrine out of my life and asked forgiveness for EVER having taught it.
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Mike
The evidence is in that you only skim read my post. You missed the major points and the details. Please read it again, carefully.
Everyone else who DOES read that carefully will know you really dropped the ball there.
I can give you a link to the Gospel link. You were the one who inspired me to do that.
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OldSkool
Dude...no matter how carefully I read it you did not fix your head gasket by the law of believing. Its hocus pocus BS. Im not re-reading anything. The law of believing is trash and a false doctrine. If you are complaining about my comprehension of your posts please start writing more succint, to the point posts. Its not the responsibility of the audience to decipher an author's content, but on the author to explain themselves where comprehension is readily attainable by the audience.
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