"Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit -- that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then I worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn't, I dropped."
I don't think there's a theology out there, either ancient or modern - that doesn't attempt to steer everything toward "fitting" in one respect or another. This goes as well for the ancient compilers who put together the actual scriptures of the NT canons - whether heretical or proto-orthodox.
In regard to the latter - of ancient Christians editing their scriptures according to their diverse beliefs - is an area which Wierwille hardly touched, outside the relatively late (3rd century) controversy relating to the Trinity. But there were other controversies prior to the 3rd century of which Wierwille was apparently completely unaware, which significantly shaped the NT scriptures in respects he never considered.
Wierwille demonstrated his own expression quite aptly, to the effect "One cannot go beyond what one is taught" - and he certainly didn't. In order to zealously accept Wierwille's teachings and system as the final, "God-breathed" word on all things "biblical", necessitates ignoring everything we may learn of the first two centuries of Christian history, and all the material and studies relating that period. And sadly, many here do for no good reason, which is a shame.
Thanks OM, I had forgotten about that in 'Way..living in love' . I never had the idea that VPW discovered all this 'new light' himself the whole time I was in TWI, but rather that he had 'brought it all together' in an understandable fashion.
And lets be honest, how many of us would ever have heard of Stiles, Kenyon, Bullinger without VPW.
Most plagiarists are more famous than their sources. That's how they get away with it. You steal from Mozart, people say you stole from Mozart. You steal from Salieri, people applaud your genius.
Who sues the big musical artists for plagiarism? Right, unknown artists and writers.
I never would have heard of "The African" had Alex Haley not plagiarized portions of it in "Roots." Now I own a copy of The African, but I do not own a copy of Roots. Nonetheless, Haley was still wrong to commit the plagiarism.
Jayson Blair didn't plagiarize the work of his fellow New York Times reporters, or the Washington Post. He plagiarized a newspaper in San Antonio, figuring no one would know. Now that victim of Blair's plagiarism is fairly well-known, better known perhaps than she would have been had Blair not plagiarized her. But that doesn't justify Blair's wicked act.
Perhaps this doesn't matter too much, but I sure am glad I only have to stand in my shoes before God and not someone else's. I often wondered how some of these so-called "leadership" of TWI looked at themselves in the mirror. I no longer wonder because I no longer care. I am only responsible for what I do and did. I could get real petty here, but I don't think that's too cool either. We often learn by example and sometimes that example is wrong. Therefore, we learn what not to do. If ANYONE thinks ANYONE has "rightly-divided" the Word 100%, they should have their head examined. Get real, people. If we can't understand how nature works, how our small minds work, how an eagle flies, how can we possibly expect to understand the Word God MAGNIFIED above all these things????
Well said Iriseyes. I am not of a mind to limit God to one little man in Ohio. Like I say often: I feel like all of us will be surprised in some manner when we see Jesus face to face.
No matter what we think - God thinks bigger and better. All we can do is try to make our next decision the best we can according to what we know and understand.
And keep trying to know and understand more. I am still amazed when I glean even a little bit more light into what is written. Sometimes I actually wonder if God is working in me! Can you believe that? I had gotten to the point of wondering if I was even saved!
Thanks for that quote. I seem to remember reading or hearing that statement someplace but couldn't recall where.
Having said that, yes, he should have sourced his quotes. Yes it is plagarism if data is not sourced properly. But, when asked about it, I am glad that he didn't say that it was all his original material. In that case, I'd say that it's more of a matter that he should have been more forthcoming and accurate in his writing than he was...
He deserves credit for not passing it off as his own, but rather saying "lots of the stuff I teach is not original."
If he was trying to hide something, and pass off all of this as his own, he would not have made the previous statement, nor have other authors' books, from whence he learned, selling in the Way Bookstore for all to read.
The previous statement also would disprove that PFAL is God-Breathed, since he received the content from other sources ... and not by revelation.
There are times, Oldies, that I agree with you, and your last sentence is one of those times.
or trying to pass this off as his own
He was ---
Or trying to say he did all the work
(With A Little Help From My Friends),
He did
And (yea -- I know the name) -- but who was Elena Whiteside?
Is a book with her name as author become *God-breathed* suddenly??
Oh --- wait. If Hartcourt/Brace/Javonovich publishers had done her book --- it might be more believable than one printed by American Christian Press.
To me.
However -- she (being a wafer) (she was, wasn't she?), talking to docvic (as a commentary), doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Had Dr quoted his sources it wouldn't have changed my believing or commitment at the time one iota. On the other hand, there are others out there that it would have made a difference to. The big question is not whether or not it would have affected me or the next guy. The question(s) are:
Wasn't quoting sources the RIGHT thing to do? -especially given that TWI touted itself as a Biblical RESEARCH and teaching ministry?
For VPW's sake - wouldn't honesty have made his life just that much simpler?
For the ministy's sake - weren't we always told to avoid even the appearance of evil?
I often wonder what dilemmas his children (Don and Wanda) faced as they had to tell their dad that he was doing things wrong - or did they even try? I was taught about the multitude of counselors -Did VPW adhere to this Godly advice?
So when Don Weirwille was going through school and becoming more and more engulfed in academia it surely hit him that things were awry. Wanda actually helped with the editing - I can't imagine that she didn't know about citing sources. IF (and I know it is just speculation) even one person went to VPW and told him that he had to cite his sources he couldn't claim ignorance. IF he told them not to do it no matter what, then things were really rotten in Denmark (or St Mary's) early on. That would indicate what I could only describe as a systematizing of error.
There is at least one other scenario here and that is that perhaps no one dared to tell VPW about citing sources. They just kept it hidden and went with the flow. Maybe out of fear or laziness. Fear of VPW, fear of having to pay royalties, laziness because that would be a LOT of work.
I realize that there is a LOT of conjecture here. Probably more questions than answers. I am not saying that just because I said it that it is true. But if any of it is true it would be a major indicator as to why things went wrong in TWI. It would expose the foundation of sand. It might indicate that TWI was not built on the Word of God as was always touted, but rather on a lie that could EASILY have been amended by simply citing sources.
There is at least one other scenario here and that is that perhaps no one dared to tell VPW about citing sources. They just kept it hidden and went with the flow. Maybe out of fear or laziness. Fear of VPW, fear of having to pay royalties, laziness because that would be a LOT of work.
Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit -- that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then I worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn't, I dropped.
That might be something on which to excuse him if that was what he did.
What the above quote is describing is someone studying various authors' works, checking their premises and conclusions with the bible, and building his own theory based on bits and pieces of what he learned along the way.
What Wierwille did was not what he described in the above quote, in many cases he recopied whole sections of other peoples' books and claimed that they were his own. He claimed that he came up with many things that are also found in Bullinger independent of Bullinger. He claimed that Leonard had great practical knowledge of the manifestations, but did not back it up with 'the Word'. He claimed that he took all of his books out to the city dump and used only his bible. These are what we call "contradictions".
Just a little clarification here. Don was a Wierwille. Wanda was Don's wife. There were five Wierwille children altogether. Don and two other girls and Sara and JP. Don had a doctorate in education. Education! You can bet your salary he knew about footnotes.
Personally, I think VPW intimidated them too. Don wasn't even part of the ministry for a long time and then all of a sudden he was on the Board. We are talking farmers here. For a guy from a farming family to get a doctorate in ANYTHING was a big deal. Don's doctorate was legit. VPW's was not. Ever here what VPW's thesis was on? I never did.
I thought I knew Don pretty well (I even liked the man), but it just dawned on me after all these years that of course he knew what his father was up to! One of the main reasons I left the ministry was that Passing of the Patriach cut Don down soooo badly, I just couldn't justify VPW leaving a legacy like that to his own son. Where was the love of God in that? I smelled a r a t.
Anyway, it didn't sound like you had the kid-stuff right. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!
We are talking farmers here. For a guy from a farming family to get a doctorate in ANYTHING was a big deal. Don's doctorate was legit. VPW's was not. Ever here what VPW's thesis was on? I never did.
Um, I grew up in a farming community. I have a degree. In fact, most of the kids that I knew that grew up on the farms around me went to college and got degrees...3 that I know of that have PhD's, one who is now a surgeon. I have only a lowly BA in computer science. And my GPA was only a lowly 3.7. :(
Sorry, but that comment just had to be addressed. Carry on! :)
Finally, after much delay, I’m getting the time to respond to you on this thread. Just to refresh you and readers I’ll repeat most of that post of yours that got my attention. Please allow me to use bold fonts to highlight the passages I am planning most of my response to. Your post #216 was the following:
Mike,
Here is the most cogent point I can think of.
You really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed. You have a better argument in saying that God led VPW to the various elements of PFAL.
If PFAL is to be treated as scripture there must be proof. t is not enough to simply quote the class and the words of VPW, or the collaterals. That is like defining a word by using the same word in the definition. (Just because I tell you that I am holy doesn’t make me holy - neither does me telling you that God told me to tell you that I am holy.) So here is a question:
What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself? (The answer "how to work the word just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.)
Doctrine? Reproof? Correction? Instruction in righteousness? Praise?
I see no new doctrine for the generation. No new light. At most there might be a repetition of old light that is new to the generation...
Please be specific...
If working the Word includes comparing scripture with scripture how can you go about doing so with PFAL and the collaterals?
Now God gives lots of revelation to lots of people so even if we will take the "Evil Kneival-sized" leap of faith that God gave VPW revelation regarding PFAL, that doesn't make it scripture. ( BTW I do not subscribe to this belief.) Nor does it require that I work it as if it were scripture. If that is so then I also had better get busy checking the words, teachings and writings of every Christian thinker and teacher. Eventually the job would be so colossal that no Christian would ever get down to the business of loving God and serving His people. We are to fear God and keep His commandments - I just don’t' believe that God wants us caught up in the web of chasing down just what those commandments are.
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Let’s take this one section at a time.
You wrote: “You really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed. You have a better argument in saying that God led VPW to the various elements of PFAL.”
Thank you for the second portion of this passage. Few here have ever thrown me a bone of concession like that. Ever since my first days of posting here I have proclaimed that IF PFAL is God-breathed, then all of the plagiarism charges evaporate. Thank you for acknowledging this simple idea.
And thank you also for repeating this concession in a later post on this same thread when you wrote: “You know--- Mike's contention that since God gave the rev to VPW exempts the good ‘Dr’ from the responsibility to cite his source - since the info was God's to give - got me thinking....”
And you were even so kind as to include the detail where IF PFAL were God-breathed then some of the revelation to Dr could have been in the form of WHO to go to to get taught. This showed up later in the same post later with: “I know that this horse is quite dead, but I still maintain that even if we want to concede that God led VPW to the info that eventually became PFAL, he did not endorse plagiarism. Besides, the leading to the info - THAT could have been the heavy-revvy.”
I wish other posters could be this up-front with me.
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As for the first portion of this passage of yours, I admit that I have not proved to you that PFAL is God-breathed. You may not have seen it, but I have admitted the same thing several times here. I cannot prove it and I don’t even try.
You may want to ask yourself, though, just how many proofs you’ve ever seen typed on a computer screen. I’ve seen a few very simple Geometry proofs typed out, but never anything deep. Things never get proved by typing a few words, not deep important things anyway.
Referring to the partial concession you gave me regarding my refuting the plagiarism charges, strong or weak arguments may be offered, but not really proved. Heavier or lighter evidence may be considered and successful or failing persuasion may take place, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think we decide the course of our lives based on proofs residing in a relatively small presentation of typed words.
We believe what we want to believe, and then we generally compile supporting evidence for ourselves, while suppressing the evidence to the contrary. We’re not the beings of logic and reason we want to think of ourselves as, but beings who are all too easily swayed by fears and lusts, peer pressures and official sounding proclamations, habit patterns and repetitions, tradition and mass movements.
I know you believe that the original manuscripts of the Bible, in the original understanding of the original languages, is the written Word of God, but in order to believe that did you have it proved to you on a computer screen or a few sheets of paper? I doubt it. That proof took a lot more time than that.
Have you ever tried to prove the Bible to someone else? Have you seen how impossible it is? It’s hard enough to even back-track well enough to see why WE believe such a thing, let alone proving it to another.
What we can do is say to someone that it IS God’s Word, and we can speak some of His promises to them, as well as act in love toward that person. We can say “Come and see” and invite them to a loving fellowship where they can hear a lot of God’s Word. We can show them how to deal with the apparent contradictions, and do all sorts of things we’re all familiar with, but we cannot prove it to them. We can help them over doubts IF they want to believe, but we can’t force them to believe with an indisputable proof. It’s GOD Who confirms to His people that they are on the right track; we are incapable of doing that ourselves. We can only assist the process for ourselves and for others.
THAT SAID, let’s turn our attention to my relatively weaker persuasion of PFAL being God-breathed compared to my plagiarism refutation.
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I arrived at my surety on PFAL being God-breathed by the same means that I came to believe that the original Bible was God-breathed. Some 35 years ago VPW taught me the original Bible was God-breathed in the class, and that’s what convinced me to open the Bible a lot and read it. After spending a lot of time with my KJV God worked with me and I got to the place where I was willing to bet my life on it.
How does anything like the Bible get accepted? People try it out and like it. It’s never proved beyond a shadow of a doubt and then accepted. Life doesn’t work that way. We only have solid proofs in mathematics. In physics less surety in the proofs is enjoyed, and in biology even still less. By the time we get to spiritual matters there is no such thing as a proof. It's “try it you'll like it” or “come and see” and that’s all we got if we want to persuade. The real persuasion is in the book as it’s rightly divided.
Ditto for PFAL.
I had closed my PFAL books for many years when, in 1998, after years of frustration and defeat and seeing the decimation of my spiritual family, someone told me that those books were more special than I had ever dreamed. He invited me to a fellowship where Dr’s books were studied carefully. I opened the books and read them again, a lot. I saw many things in them that I had forgotten or that had slipped past me unawares years ago. I saw things that I knew OTHER grads were totally unaware of. I saw light again like I hadn’t seen since the early 70’s when I first took the class. I was persuaded by the books.
God’s Word always speaks for itself better than anyone else can.
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Proofs are elusive. If you lived in Jesus’ time would you ask him for a mathematical-like proof that he was God’s Son? If you would he would surely decline. He might answer you by inviting you to work God’s word with him, and in the process you’d see how he lived. It would take time for his “proof” to get through to you. If you asked for a miracle as proof he’d likely decline, as he did much of the time. Thomas got his proof, but he put a lot of time into it prior to the crucifixion. Thomas was accommodated, but then he was scolded for missing the greater blessing of believing first and then seeing.
Where and when are YOU willing to make that leap and believe first and then see as per Jesus’ advice?
Leap we must, but to where? I see nothing but PFAL for such a leap on my part. I see it as THE unturned stone, one that every single member of the clergy and top leadership ignored from as early as 1979 and continuing to 1985. PFAL has good credentials for us who saw it work well. I feel very excited about doing something (mastering PFAL) that ALL the top leadership was seduced into NOT doing, and it should look like a hot tip to you!
I mentioned 1979 because it was in that year Dr scolded all the AC grads for not mastering RHST, and 1985 because that year he told all his top leadership to master all the PFAL materials. That 1985 teaching, his very last, was utterly lost and never dealt with by leadership. The loss of this teaching is THE smoking gun as to what was wrong in all of top leadership and why the ministry failed. I do not subscribe to the single villain theories that abound here.
The best way I know to counter the two crucial moves of all the top leadership of TWI in how they handled the meltdown of the late 1980’s is to do the opposite of what they did. (1) None of the top leadership in 1985 paid much regard toward Dr’s last teaching, and (2)they all failed to transmit Dr’s final instructions to us underlings in those years, as well as to this day. All the splinter group leaders continue to ignore Dr’s final instructions as well as current TWI leaders.
I choose to do the opposite: (1) obey Dr’s final instructions AND (2) tell as many grads about them as possible.
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It’s good to keep things straight here: I am still not proving that PFAL is God-breathed, but I am arguing that mastering written PFAL should be a good thing and a hot tip for eager searchers with a proPFAL background and attitude.
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Please let me return to a previous section of this response and ask you this: why do you believe that the Bible (the original) is the Word of God?
Is it the gold edges? The leather binding? It's age? It's heavy use in denominations? Is it being found in most hotel rooms? The gushy feelings you get from reading it?
What's the real reason you accept (without absolute proof) this book? Or the more detailed question, why do you accept the original manuscripts to be God’s pure Word, which you've never seen, and even if you DID have some in your hands you couldn't even read them? It’s a step in the more abstract direction to accept a set of writings that you can never get your hands on.
Want to know my answer to this question? It was listening to Dr. Wierwille in film class that convinced me to believe that the original Bible was the best bet I could base my life on at that time.
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So why DO you believe that the Bible is the Word of God? Really, have you pondered this very much? In all your reasoning, logic and research you ASSUME the Bible is rock bottom truth, but WHY? What proof do you have that that's a safe assumption?
As I’ve stated, the reason I believe in the Bible is because Dr convinced me in PFAL. Sure he used the KJV in the class because he had to approach us where we were at and with something in which we had already placed at least a little trust, even though our proof for that trust was flimsy.
Some of us felt the gold edges were nice. Some of us were born into a Bible culture. Some of us were impressed that it was in every hotel room. So Dr started with us where we could have some trust, and then he built the bigger thing to trust: the revelations God gave him to fix and augment the tattered remnants of what used to be the Bible.
Even those born into a Bible based family and culture and church were still on shaky ground: no power, lots of contradictions, lots of temptations to lure away from the Bible. If you were born into believing the Bible, and hadn't had the PFAL class you probably would not have it in your life now... not LIKE you do now. You wouldn't have the drive, the logic, the SIT. You'd have most likely been totally been talked out of it by now, or you'd be knee deep in three equaling one, and Jesus being an unreachable god.
PFAL made the KJV Bible alive for you.
I believe that PFAL and that Bible go hand in hand, and you cannot rely on one without the other. As
you need PFAL to find accuracy in the Bible, so do you need the Bible to support PFAL. The existing Bible's integrity without PFAL is vague. It's PFAL that proves the Bible.
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No, I can’t prove any of this on a computer screen. What I’m doing is seeking those grads who are ready for a change, and who have retained a healthy respect for PFAL, and who see that the final instructions of Dr’s to master it are important instructions. Anyone who attempts to master PFAL as per Dr’s instructions will have first have to have gotten to the place that they really trust him. The ONLY people who can get to that place are those of us who not only took the class, but studied it to the best of our ability, and who applied it in life, saw it work well, and who have already spent MUCH time (albeit long ago) verifying it worthy of mastery.
We who fit this category have been given a wealth of solid things to move with by Dr, and now a clear cut command fro him to master the collaterals. As far as proving that PFAL is of God enough to be worth such effort, we who fit this category are supposed to have done all that by now.
We can come up with all of the logical reasons and physical evidence we want, but it's not the reason and the evidence that are going to bring us to the point of believing. It is through our faith wherewith we are saved. The physical evidence may attract our attention, but we cannot prove God to ourselves. He has to prove himself to us. He has to draw us to Him.
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Deciding to open up the collaterals and begin to master them is doing different from the doings all of the leadership who were in place in 1985. Those grads who once DID SEE and CAN STILL SEE that PFAL was of God should have no qualms in returning to written PFAL to master it SIMPLY because Dr said it was important to master the written materials. I’ve often cited his last teaching on this and his ’79 AC quote on it, but there are many other places where Dr urged us to get it right from the written record.
The Advanced Class urging to master the material was spurned by leadership so badly that Dr had to repeat his urgings for them just before his death, giving them maximum priority. Here’s that AC’79 quote:
“I have set for our people, and it’s set in the book on ‘Receiving the Holy Spirit Today,’ and people, when you reach the Advanced Class, you ought to be able almost to quote this line for line. You should have mastered this book by the time you get to the Advanced Class. If you haven’t, you better get busy and do it - work it to where you understand the Word of God in every facet, in every way of it’s utilization regarding the holy spirit field - all of them, you must know this book, in and out. But I’ve discovered as I’ve worked among my people, and even all the grads of the Advanced Class, there still are areas where we got to push ourselves.”
The fact that all of upper leadership refused to obey Dr on this should be a further incentive for us to obey Dr’s advice.
Obeying Dr’s advice and mastering PFAL is NOT the same as believing it is God-breathed.
Obeying Dr’s advice and mastering PFAL does not require a belief that it is God-breathed, only that it is good and that it was neglected.
Obeying Dr’s advice and mastering PFAL will lead to believing it is God-breathed as God works with each student.
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For me it was an easy thing to decide to obey Dr’s advice. On the spiritual level I perceived that since the adversary had been so totally successful in suppressing Dr's last teaching, then there must be something very powerful in it that we needed and he didn't want us to see. That's on the flesh and blood level. Since they all had so totally rejected Dr's final instructions to master PFAL, well by golly, I was going to do the exact opposite.
So I had a very STRONG HINT (not proof) that if I wanted to find the solution to the big problem the meltdown of the ministry, etc, then I ought to take another look at the PFAL writings, and do it very carefully. That's when I started finding many, many "Thus saith the Lord" statements, and that’s when I started embracing PFAL as from God.
I figured that if Dr was lying, then it would all fall apart as I mastered the material. If he told the truth then it would all start coming together. I saw the later happen in a relatively short time, with some guidance from someone who had traced the same steps years earlier than me.
I have MANY, many statements in print and on tape that will fit into this picture of WHY we should be mastering the PFAL writings. Regardless if I succeed in proving to you this reason WHY we should master the PFAL writings, it's STILL THE CASE that Dr told us all to do it, and we all disobeyed or were asleep and didn’t see that last teaching. It was a little of both for me.
You wrote: “It is not enough to simply quote the class and the words of VPW, or the collaterals. That is like defining a word by using the same word in the definition. (Just because I tell you that I am holy doesn’t make me holy - neither does me telling you that God told me to tell you that I am holy.)”
I agree.
I have never asserted that PFAL is God-breathed because Dr said it is. I know that just because Dr said so, that doesn't make it true. Whether his many claims are accurate is one subject worthy of much discussion, but besides that, just seeing these many statements is convincing proof that (1) we didn't catch all that taught to us, and (2) Dr went way out on a limb.
Many posters here at GSC have complained to me that Dr never claimed that he was producing God-breathed writings. The same posters also tend to claim that PFAL didn’t work for them; that it was defective. They blame Dr for all the ills of the ministry, including the lack of power in their lives after they took the class. They don’t want to believe that THEY themselves were responsible for PFAL not working in their lives due to their lack of CAREFUL CLOSE study of the written portions of the class. They ignored Dr’s repeated assertions that they needed to master that written material, often thinking that they had mastered it enough.
I point out Dr’s many claims of “Thus saith the lord” in PFAL to prove (or strongly argue) that they did NOT adequately study PFAL because they obviously missed seeing the many “Thus saith the lord” statements. Those of us who saw the earlier stages of the ministry’s outreach in the 70’s were exposed to many spoken claims of Dr’s to have been given revelation on the class. As the 70’s progressed Dr made fewer such claims, but the printed ones still were still in the books. We older grads got talked out of respecting the authority from which he taught.
We didn't pay good attention to Dr's teaching, especially as he got older. We didn't study, and especially we didn't MASTER the material we were given. If we had studied, we'd have seen and remembered these many times when Dr asserted that he was teaching authoritatively. Our assignment to master the material that Dr gave us with his dying last words was a NEEDED assignment, even for leadership.
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What I mean by "out on a limb" is that if he claimed authority as God's spokesman many times and wasn't, then that rules out all the gray areas of how we should regard Dr and his teachings.
These statements give us a challenge whether to believe or not that Dr was working for the True God. Even more, they force us to decide "yes" or "no" to Dr's teaching authority because they leave no gray area between. We can either accept his assertion of being God's appointed spokesman or reject it, but we can't logically and honestly seek out any gray area in between.
I was struck by this same stark-option challenge to accept or reject Dr when I first sat through the class in Session One. When Dr got to the section about healing that man's withered arm in India I realized that there were no gray areas about Dr and his message: either he lied or told the truth about that healing. I was electrified when last year HCW recounted here at GSC his memory of Mrs. Wierwille's commentary to him personally as they both looked through old photos of that healed man and the train station.
So, my collection of Dr’s “Thus saith the lord” statements, which I may post on a separate thread someday soon, proves that those who THINK he made no such statements need to do a little more studying of the material and are far from having mastered it.
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Some of us were there, in the good old days, when Dr’s many verbal claims and hints of being God’s spokesman were still in the air. Dr’s authority to teach us what God taught him (his “thus saith the lord” attitude) was in the air EVERYWHERE in those earlier 70’s. It’s just that nobody ever flashed on the idea that, in addition to the God-given ability to speak by revelation to us, Dr could also write by revelation exactly what God wanted us to read. The reason we never flashed on it is Dr kept us too busy moving the Word and he wanted to keep the idea of his writing of revelation RELATIVELY under wraps. I’ll explain some other time what I mean by “relatively” here.
(And all you plagiarism freaks can note that my use of “write” here is complex and includes not only original and divinely dictated revelation, but the discussion type of revelation I’ve reported here, as well as the doojabble-recognized type of revelation as “from whom” he should learn, even if it’s exact text.)
On this same thread of yours, doojable, Oakspear wrote: “Vic Wierwille clearly believed that his interpretation of the bible was superior to anyone else's. __ He also believed that if the existing texts did not support what he taught, then the text was a forgery, or that there was another text out there that supported his position.”
Oakspear also wrote: “...his word was still elevated above anything that was written in the bible.”
Here, I assume Oakspear, when he uses the phrase “the bible,” again means the commonly accepted ancient texts and modern versions of said Bible, not the originals.
Oak goes on with: “Although Wierwille was careful to always elevate the written 'Word', in practice, no text, no verse was as elevated as his own opinion. So, in a sense, Wierwille did believe that his doctrine was superior to the bible in any of it's translations or versions. So, of course he wanted us to ‘master’, not only the bible, but his spin on the bible, PFAL, and all of his other books.”
I think Oak, with his advantage of having seen the earlier days, and with his advantage of being a more detached observer as a self-proclaimed atheist, is able to see that Dr claimed to be THE authority, and I’ll add “because he was appointed such by God.”
**********
Now, on this same thread we see Raf, who was a relative late comer, after Dr’s death, never having known Dr or his ministry (only Craig’s) arguing the opposite of Oakspear.
Just the opposite of the “air” I described above that enveloped Oakspear and all us OLGs, Raf was surrounded by fallen corrupted TWI leaders (and later by similar Geer and CES leaders) who had all long rejected Dr’s authority, and were busying themselves with re-inventing the wheel God and Dr had already perfected.
Raf wasn’t exposed to the same atmosphere of absolute respect for Dr that Oak had and I and other OLGs (Older Leader-type Grads) had experienced. The written “thus saith the lord statements” of Dr’s sailed right past Raf when he got in, as they continue to do to this day. But those of us who knew Dr’s attitude of “Thus saith” can see them plain as day if we’re not spiritually suffocated in churchianity tradition or something else.
**********
Raf wrote in agreement with your statement, doojable, that I “really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed,” with the following:
“In fact, it has been disproven by the very standards of PFAL! But it didn't need to be, because Wierwille himself discredited this specific, ridiculous notion both within and outside the pages of PFAL. __ Wierwille denied it personally. __ Everyone who knew Wierwille denies it. __ Everyone who worked on the books denies it.”
I don’t doubt that everyone who worked with Dr and on the books has BY NOW been talked out of believing the writings are God-breathed. I don’t doubt that some of these people have anecdotal memory of what they THINK was Dr’s denial of PFAL being God-breathed. But I do doubt the accuracy of their memory on this because of what Dr did put into writing, as well as on tape.
Plus, I have discussed this personally by phone for many hours with several (more than 5) of the people who worked closely with Dr on his writings and their denial of my thesis AT TIMES wore very thin, even to the point of partial and temporary acceptance, but with no follow through. Their reaction to my proposal was far, far from the simple denial Raf reports.
I know that Dr did admit that when he merely spoke or wrote from his own flesh understanding (which he did do at times) then THAT would be void of authority, just like any other man’s as he points out on page 83 of the PFAL book. But when Dr wrote to us students of his, to his class, he claimed that every word he wrote TO US was true and that it was not from him but from God. See TNDC pages 34 and 116.
By his statements, Raf places himself in the category of one who has not mastered what is written. His statement that PFAL “has been disproven by the very standards of PFAL!” falls because how can he know those very standards if he can’t see the many “Thus saith the lord” statements in there, like TNDC p.34 and 116. His handling, along with others here, of the “Thus saith the lord” statement on PFAL page 83 is an exercise in denial. When I get to that thread focusing on these statements I’ll show more of what I mean here.
Repeating my main assertion here, the many claims of “Thus saith the lord” that Dr made prove do not prove themselves as accurate (other things will do that) but they DO prove that many grads, even OLGs, have not studied the material very well, or don’t remember it very well. This means they can’t blame Dr for the lack of results they may have gotten, but only themselves for not having fully received the details of Dr’s teaching. This means that Dr’s repeated urging to come back to the written forms of PFAL and master them has merit and that our (OLGs) ignoring of that urging for a ten year span (1975 to 1985) was the REAL cause of the ministry’s downfall.
**********
Raf’s assertion that PFAL “has been disproven by the very standards of PFAL!” fails to account for the fact that many different approaches to the PFAL material can be taken. He has chosen the method of skeptical inquiry rather than meek acceptance. Having not been an eye witness of PFAL working well in the 1970’s, he is not able to take the meek acceptance approach to it. Hence his logic and reason spells out a rejection of it being God-breathed. He uses that rejection in his mode of inquiry as he reads a PFAL text.
Like I said before, in life situations strict reason is very limited in how far it can go. In simple Geometry it's wonderful and very powerful. In simple Physics situations, like the hydrogen atom reason can produce beauty and power to predict. But as the physical systems get more complex, reason and logic can only be applied in short spurts, with giant leaps in between. When we get to human life and beliefs, hardly anything can be really proved. People who demand proofs and strict logical reason to counter arguments of others, overlook the sad fact that they can't really prove much of anything themselves if they want to attain to their own standards.
When reasoning, the fundamental assumptions that one starts out with, the un-provable postulates the reason is based on, become crucial. I chose to place as one of my fundamental postulates the written form of PFAL being God-breathed. When I use that postulate, everything lines up to my satisfaction. People's demands that I drop that as a postulate and prove it to them are refused by me as a matter of policy. When people "prove" some contradiction in PFAL, I look at their reasoning and see my postulate missing at the beginning and back off. I have already chosen to not approach apparent contradictions with their set of tools. We get differing conclusions in our reasoning because we start out with fundamentally different approaches.
When I read PFAL with my postulate in place, it yields differing results than when a skeptic (like Raf) reads it without my postulate.
Doojable, I invite you to alter your approach, try the meek obedient approach to see what new evidence will be presented to you. If you refuse, I will not berate you.
I refuse to do it the skeptic’s way because I've already shopped at that store, and decided to return the goods. I invite you to shop and compare. Come back to PFAL and try the meekness postulate and see what God proves to you.
**********
The noble Bereans didn't believe overnight. It took time for them to get to that place, based on their working of the scriptures. They didn’t believe Paul on his first teaching. Paul didn’t prove it to them, he strongly argued for it, but they had to go to God for the “go ahead” to believe.
People generally are not really clear on what constitutes real proof. And very few people want to gamble with their believing. They willing to settle for the safe crumbs, and don't want to risk those crumbs or risk their egos with my proposal. Many are rather asleep and want trumpets blasting them in their ears as 5-senses proof. Few have thought through the problem of false 5-senses proofs.
We all have to place our bets somewhere, but it's so scary few are even willing to reexamine where they originally did bet their life, and few are willing to see if their bet has accidentally evolved to something they didn't actually choose. Thinking through these kinds of matters is very disturbing, and the status quo is the usually preferred option.
Few want to think through why they believe the Bible is THE Word of God. They let other people do that thinking for them. The reason I believed the Bible was PFAL convinced me to. Most are comfortable with the fact that tradition supports the KJV or other newer versions, yet tradition supports a lot of errors too.
The Bereans had a truly interesting problem: Paul was coming to them with new stuff that wasn't in the OT: The Mystery, and the resurrection. They could see hints only, but as they worked what was available to them (OT scriptures and Paul's preaching) with that openness of mind THEN they were able to believe as God worked with them.
After we do our BEST with what we have 5-senses wise, THEN God can get into the picture and confirm our 5-senses understanding with spiritual understanding. When we do our best to master PFAL God can then show us what proofs we really need.
Your proofs will come when you take obedient action on what Dr told us so clearly to do in those MOST important final instructions of his. Those final instructions were SO important and SO powerful that the adversary talked ALL the ministry leaders out of them (to their doom) and hid those instructions from the rest of us for years. God has dug them up and they’ve been broadcasted on the Internet for several years now. We all have a second chance to obey what all of upper leadership ignored in 1985, just prior to the ministry meltdown.
“What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself? (The answer ‘how to work the word’ just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.) ___ Doctrine? Reproof? Correction? Instruction in righteousness? Praise? ___ I see no new doctrine for the generation. No new light. At most there might be a repetition of old light that is new to the generation... Please be specific...”
Let’s work with this passage a little at a time.
Your phrase “...that you could not learn from the Word itself...” is very telling.
You assume that we HAVE the Word itself to go to and learn, but we don’t. It was lost in the first century. We have man-made attempts to reconstruct that Word, to translate it into our language, and to make it plane and understandable, but we don’t have an ultimate authority to go to and learn. This problem is the whole reason for God intervening in 1942. The Word was buried in hopeless confusion and opinions. There was nothing authoritative from which to learn.
Without PFAL revelation teaching us we cannot wade through all the 5-senses research and opinions and error. We have nothing to tell us how to extract solid information from the theological world of manuscripts, critical texts, translations and versions.
Now it is a logical possibility that the problem of the authoritative written Word being lost 2000 years ago is not solved and PFAL too is a mere set of opinions. But I have eliminated that possibility from consideration after many years of holding on to it. I don’t see any other contenders out there to solve this problem. There are no viable Biblical researchers out there who claim to have authority for God. Most of them don’t even believe such authority can even exist, or certainly not in modern times. I see PFAL as the only solution to the lack of authoritative Word of God available to us this day.
**********
You wrote: “What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself?”
For this part of my response I’m going assume that you ARE ABLE to go to the existing manuscripts, texts, translations and versions to ACCURATELY “learn from the Word itself.” I just argued (and have often here) that this is a fantasy when it comes to the accuracy needed to do all the things that Jesus Christ did and greater, but for discussion purposes I’ll ignore that.
What is not in your KJV Bible are your instructions as to exactly what to do when the return of Christ occurs. You may have all sorts of assumptions as to how your perfectly renewed mind is going to be given to you at the Gathering Together, but you can’t point to any of that in your KJV or any other version or manuscript. In those documents the Return off somewhere in the secret future, and we’re not told there how behave when it does happen. We can only guess.
What we have found in coming back to PFAL is abundant. We not only have learned that PFAL is God-breathed, but we have learned the REASON WHY God made such HUGE move as to again send His pure written Word back into the world.
This reason God gave us PFAL is NOT to settle all the 5-senses disputes between all of the world’s 5-senses theologians and Biblical researchers, equally brilliant men with diametrically opposing ideas on many points.
This reason God gave us PFAL is NOT to settle all the doubts of students of said theologians and researchers who have to pick and choose among these warring scholars as to which person to believe, and then once that difficult choice is made, which passages of said chosen scholar’s should be accepted and which rejected.
However the giving of the PFAL revelations DOES settle these two things, but that’s not the reason it was given NOW.
(added in late edition: )
Why didn't God settle theological debates centuries ago? Why 1942? Because it's TIME and He has the necessary members of the body of Christ willing to believe that it's time.
The reason God chose 1942 to initiate all these things is because NOW is the time of the Return. The timing is no longer a secret. What is still a secret is THAT it’s happening. Just like Christ’s first coming did not conform to the expectations of those who had drifted from the heart and accuracy of God’s Word, so it is now with his second coming.
This reason WHY to send us His pure written Word is to prepare us for His seeing His Son again, the pure Word made flesh. The two go hand in hand, the Word made flesh and the written Word.
Mastering PFAL will mean a revamping of how we are to view the Return. We drifted from the unique revelation God gave us concerning the preparation to see the Return.
Doojable, this is the grand answer to your question of what does PFAL have that KV does not have.
**********
Now here’s a lesser answer, but it’s still grand, when you look at it right. Actually it’s a set of answers to your question.
Where do you find in your KJV any mention of the mechanics of speech? That whole section where Dr leads us into tongues can hardly be extracted from your KJV.
Where do you find in your KJV an explanation of God’s complete and total detailed foreknowledge? You can find it in PFAL easy.
Where do you find in your KJV an explanation of our free will? I mean how can you prove with your KJV that we are not automatons who respond to present stimuli and previous stored experiences like a computer or robot?
Doojable, in your current passage your parenthesis reads: “(The answer "how to work the word just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.)”
I ask you, though it were available, who would have found it without PFAL? How would even a thorough researcher who did find it distinguish it from all the other warring factions’ opposing material and methods? Without PFAL the vast majority of us would never have seen it all put together for us like Dr did it.
I think you are taking PFAL for granted. We were extremely blessed to have it all researched and placed before us. None of us would have been able to wade through they muddied waters to know what we know now about God, just none!
**********
Back to the Return: just when and how do we get the perfectly renewed mind in this new administration we find ourselves in?
This is precisely WHY Dr told us to master the books God gave him by revelation. It’s because the perfectly renewed mind is available now. This topic can be another whole thread, since I have found over 50 page references within PFAL on it.
I used to think that in the Gathering God would sort of suspend the rules, and He'd sort of take over my mind and zap it with perfection. I've stopped that way of looking at it. I've found almost 50 places in Dr's books that indicates the perfectly renewed mind is what we need and should be working on NOW! Want to see them?
I used to think a lot of things about the Gathering of which mastering PFAL has inspired a complete re-modeling. I now see our rising from the earth as spiritual and figurative and not physical. We rise from the earth bound 5-senses perspective inflicted on us by Adam and we see better spiritually than physically instead of the other way around. I see now that we need to completely re-work the phrase “dead in Christ.” I see now that the instantaneous changes, in a moment of time, in the twinkling of an eye, come at the end of the end, and only with the new body acquisition. I see the perfectly renewed mind comes slowly, it’s TAUGHT not zapped and with free will respected, and it’s at the very early stages of this new administration we are in now. It’s with that mind we get to see Jesus!
Can you see that IF it were the case that Dr's books were pure and from God, AND IF it were the case that the change of administrations is upon us, THEN it would be logical that his books would minister to us in making that change??? This information is not in your KJV. It was a secret then, back in that administration.
These are pretty big “IFs” I’ll admit, and they both will take separate threads to even make more clear here what I mean by them, but it will take delving deep into a PFAL mastery project for anyone to believe them.
Do you have access to the "Tape of the Month" series from the Way back in the eighties? Dr's THIRD to the last taped teaching is one of those tapes in that series. It was done in Atlanta on Easter Sunday 1985, and is titled "The Moment of a New Age" and if you listen to it VERY carefully you'll hear him say something three times that will be most unbelievable, yet it's there on the tape in three separate places. He says three times that we are now living in a new Age, and he doesn’t mean of Aquarius.
There are MANY other such tapes, and spots in the books, that he planted things like little "Easter Eggs" for us to find when we got meek. Getting EXTREMELY sure of Dr's books is one necessary step to seeing that the administration has changed, so I expect to persuade none here. Those who obey Dr’s urgings are in for some great surprises within those writings.
Moving along in your post discussion you wrote: “If working the Word includes comparing scripture with scripture how can you go about doing so with PFAL and the collaterals?”
There are many such ways. We compare passages of Dr’s where he teaches on one specific verse. For instance, with the Bookstore issued Scripture Indexes we can look up all the passages in PFAL where Dr teaches Romans 10:9 and compare them for added learning.
Another way is to do a PFAL word study. We have no concordances (yet) to thoroughly do this, but by being sharp as we read and comparing notes with each other we can compile MANY places where Dr uses a specific word. Using this method is hard right now, but we are slowly accumulating a body of data the best we can without the instant thoroughness a concordance would permit.
There are other ways to study, and I’ve discussed them here at GSC before and maybe someday even do a thread on them.
**********
You then wrote: “Now God gives lots of revelation to lots of people so even if we will take the "Evil Kneival-sized" leap of faith that God gave VPW revelation regarding PFAL, that doesn't make it scripture.”
I’m not nearly as sure as you that lots of revelation gets given. Leaving that aside, though, it is an interesting point that you bring up here. I’ve hardly addressed this myself.
So what do you think the essential qualitative difference is between the ancient scriptures and something written today by revelation? Most of us (I think) believe that revelation can be given in modern times, so what if God not only honors a believer’s operation of the revelation manifestations with a cookie, but He also tells the recipient to write it down? Is that any different than what He did to get the ancient scriptures written? Is God forbidden to commission modern written revelation? If He is allowed, is it any different than the ancient scriptures in their original manuscript, language, and understanding?
The best I can see they differ is TO WHOM they are addressed. I can see that PFAL is addressed TO GRADS ONLY (and to students before they graduate), while the ancient scriptures were addressed to “...Jew, Gentile, and the Church of God.”
Ooh! Ooh!
LATE EDIT ADDITION
(Attention, those who have e-mail notification of my posts.
Your early edition does not contain the following:)
THIS POINT OF PFAL POSSIBLY BEING GOD-BREATHED WORD ADDRESSED ONLY TO A NEW GROUP OF PEOPLE (GRADS) IS A POINT THAT SOME OF DR'S EDITOR'S DEEPLY CONSIDERED AND EVEN PARTIALLY, TEMPORARILY MENTALLY ASSENTED TO IN MY MANY HOURS OF PHONE AND E-MAIL DISCUSSIONS AS I REPORTED IN MY ADDRESSING RAF'S SECOND MAIN POINT ABOVE, RIGHT AFTER THE GREEN FONTS OF OAKSPEAR'S COUNTER-POINT WITH RAF.
You wrote: “We are to fear God and keep His commandments - I just don’t' believe that God wants us caught up in the web of chasing down just what those commandments are.”
His main commandment is love and we always cherish the words of whom we love. Look at Deut. 6, where Jesus quoted the greatest commandment. Right after the commandment is given the people were told HOW to love Him. I urge you to read it. God wants us not to be caught up in the web of winging it and making broken cisterns that can hold no water. He wants us to IMMERSE ourselves in His Word. It’s the only way to love God, to love His Word and to seek it with all our hearts.
You wrote in a later post: “What I tried to say a few posts ago was that I believe that even if VPW had not compiled all the writings of Bullinger, Leonard, et al, that GOD would have led you and I to these. He handled the birth of Jesus - I think He could have handled this -if it were what He truly wanted.”
Not so! God has to respect His own laws. He wanted to redeem man right at the fall so He gave His promise, but he had to wait 4000 years for a person to literally believe that promise. God is limited in some contexts and He tells us so. He must wait for belief on our part. Dr claims in a very early tape (# 214) that the essence of the 1942 promise was that God was not able to share for 2000 years what was to come in PFAL. God had to wait for Dr’s believing and for OUR believing before he could re-issue his written Word. There’s something about THIS time where He had enough believing (Dr’s and ours) to pull it off.
You and irisheyes concurred on something I take issue with.
Irisheyes wrote in Post #256: “If ANYONE thinks ANYONE has "rightly-divided" the Word 100%, they should have their head examined. Get real, people. If we can't understand how nature works, how our small minds work, how an eagle flies, how can we possibly expect to understand the Word God MAGNIFIED above all these things????”
You then concurred with: “Well said Irisheyes. I am not of a mind to limit God to one little man in Ohio. Like I say often: I feel like all of us will be surprised in some manner when we see Jesus face to face.”
Well I’ve already given some of those surprises in earlier paragraphs here.
But as to God being limited to just one man, it happened often in ancient times, why not now? I think this is similar to that abundance of revelation you believe happens, mentioned earlier. I think not, though. It’s the normal state of affairs that the whole world is off the Word and God finds one man who can set it straight for a very small number of students willing to carefully master it. That’s the whole story in your Bible, repeating over and over.
Irisheyes, I agree that by the working of our 5-senses NO ONE can rightly divide the Word 100%. However, by working the manifestations, and with God willing, that 100% rightly divided picture CAN BE given by revelation and written down on paper for that small number of students willing to carefully master it. Without God willing and giving this revelation there are absolutely no answers, and life is a joke.
Doojable, the exchange between you and Oldiesman was fascinating. I loved what oldiesman posted SO MUCH i want to see it repeated.
First dmiller wrote:
“Docvic (plain and simple) took from other's works, and passed it off as his own. Some of us understand that, some don't, and some think he had a direct line to God, and got pfal from Him.”
Then oldiesman wrote:
dmiller, sorry but I am going to have to disagree in part with you, and I base my belief on the following: __ QUOTE__ ‘Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit -- that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then I worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn't, I dropped.’ __ Victor Paul Wierwille, 1972 __ The Way Living In Love __ Elena Whiteside __ page 209 __ The previous statement by VP disproves that he ‘passed it off as his own.’ __ In 1972 he said it wasn't original; ... if you don't believe he said that, there it is, right before your eyes. __ He deserves credit for not passing it off as his own, but rather saying ‘lots of the stuff I teach is not original.’ __ If he was trying to hide something, and pass off all of this as his own, he would not have made the previous statement, nor have other authors' books, from whence he learned, selling in the Way Bookstore for all to read. __ The previous statement also would disprove that PFAL is God-Breathed, since he received the content from other sources ... and not by revelation.”
OUCH! Oldiesman, you were doing so well there until the last sentence. Doojable, you conceded to the point that addresses this last line of oldiesman’s. Could you please convince oldiesman that the revelation to learn from what another man has already written by revelation is as good as getting the original revelation itself? The “other sources” that Dr went to was by revelation and those other sources got it from God too.
Other than that last sentence, oldiesman, your post refuting plagiarism charges based on what Dr plainly admitted to is very well done. But it continues even further. Doojable responded and then oldiesman’s last words on this were:
“dooj, __ QUOTE __ Why didn't he add THAT very selfsame statement to a forward in subsequent editions of the Orange Book - or any of the collaterals for that matter? __ I cannot say why and I cannot ask him or speak for him, he's dead. __ All I know is, from the evidence we have, I believe he communicated that his stuff was not original and he didn't try to palm this stuff off as ‘his own.’ __ It was stated in the collaterals that VP ‘learned from men of God scattered across the continent’ __ He said himself that his stuff wasn't original, in 1972. __ And please honestly ask yourself something: even if he had directly listed all of his sources in all his books; ... would that have changed anything? your believing or commitment at the time? __ It wouldn't have mattered one iota to me whether others were listed as sources. __ I probably would have thanked them as well.”
Oakspear, when I quoted you here I omitted part of your post I’d like to deal with now.
You wrote: “He sold us biblical research, but he delivered blind obedience.”
Actually, there are several different kinds of research to keep straight.
One kind of research was for Dr (with God’s revelation help) to OBTAIN the Word out from the damage of the ages and translations and theologies. There was a time when some small few of us actually participated in this project and helped Dr in this obtaining process. Most of us focused on this type of research.
The year 1982 was when Dr said that the research was basically all done from 40 years of God teaching him (and teaching him WHERE to go to learn) and him writing it. He said this at Craig’s installation and it’s on that week’s SNS tape. This OBTAINING of the Word type of research was totally finished by the time Dr died a few years later.
The second kind of research was where we would re-trace some of Dr’s steps and VERIFY that his teaching tracked with the known ancient scriptures. This kind of research too, was limited in how long it was to last. By 1982 most of us mature grads should had already accomplished this kind of research verification that Dr was God’s man and that he taught accurately.
Around 1982 a third type of research became available as the books and magazine articles were being completed. Starting around then we were supposed to take all the research tools we learned for the KJV and ancient texts and apply them to PFAL. The very difficult ancient texts and versions were where we were to learn our research skills and then when the books were nearly done, IF WE HAD LISTENED TO DR’S ADVICE, our research into the much easier to deal with PFAL texts would have taken off unhindered.
Here's exactly what Dr said about his research in October of that year on that SNS tape:
“I don’t know if our men will ever have to rise, sir, to do the years of research that I’ve done to get to the Word, but I don’t think that’s necessary any longer, Craig, I think all we need to do is move on from where we are to where God would have us to go. SNS #1141 10-3-82 (Craig's Installation)
This is a very crucial utterance of Dr’s. It’s either his last as President, or his first with Craig as President of the ministry. I can’t tell from the audio tape which comes first, but it comes right at the same time as the mantle passing. The first bold fonted passage is the first type of research I mentioned above. The second bold font passage is the third type of research. None of us were ready to hear these things at that time, but they’re in the record for those of us who know it’s important to re-trace our steps very carefully... mastering PFAL.
[Mind you, this is the guy who complains about the length of MY
replies to HIM. Courtesy would call for separate posts addressing
each person.
Typical.]
Hi doojable,
Finally, after much delay, I’m getting the time to respond to you on this thread. Just to refresh you and readers I’ll repeat most of that post of yours that got my attention. Please allow me to use bold fonts to highlight the passages I am planning most of my response to. Your post #216 was the following:
Mike,
Here is the most cogent point I can think of.
You really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed. You have a better argument in saying that God led VPW to the various elements of PFAL.
If PFAL is to be treated as scripture there must be proof. t is not enough to simply quote the class and the words of VPW, or the collaterals. That is like defining a word by using the same word in the definition. (Just because I tell you that I am holy doesn’t make me holy - neither does me telling you that God told me to tell you that I am holy.) So here is a question:
What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself? (The answer "how to work the word just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.)
Doctrine? Reproof? Correction? Instruction in righteousness? Praise?
I see no new doctrine for the generation. No new light. At most there might be a repetition of old light that is new to the generation...
Please be specific...
If working the Word includes comparing scripture with scripture how can you go about doing so with PFAL and the collaterals?
Now God gives lots of revelation to lots of people so even if we will take the "Evil Kneival-sized" leap of faith that God gave VPW revelation regarding PFAL, that doesn't make it scripture. ( BTW I do not subscribe to this belief.) Nor does it require that I work it as if it were scripture. If that is so then I also had better get busy checking the words, teachings and writings of every Christian thinker and teacher. Eventually the job would be so colossal that no Christian would ever get down to the business of loving God and serving His people. We are to fear God and keep His commandments - I just don’t' believe that God wants us caught up in the web of chasing down just what those commandments are.
**********
Let’s take this one section at a time.
You wrote: “You really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed. You have a better argument in saying that God led VPW to the various elements of PFAL.”
Thank you for the second portion of this passage. Few here have ever thrown me a bone of concession like that. Ever since my first days of posting here I have proclaimed that IF PFAL is God-breathed, then all of the plagiarism charges evaporate. Thank you for acknowledging this simple idea.
[ Also typical.
Someone posts "you would have a better chance of trying to prove vpw was a
teletubbie" and Mike reads that as "vpw was a teletubbie",
and responds "thank you for conceding that vpw was a teletubbie."
Same old Mike, with the same low reading comprehension rate.
And thank you also for repeating this concession in a later post on this same thread when you wrote: “You know--- Mike's contention that since God gave the rev to VPW exempts the good ‘Dr’ from the responsibility to cite his source - since the info was God's to give - got me thinking....”
[ And discussing something in the abstract becomes another concession
that the discussed subject is true. Is this intentional, or accident borne of
desperation and frustration, or is something interfering with Mike's ability
to read simple posts? Or some or all of the above?
With this hatchet job on simple posts-
adding words, changing words-Mike no longer has the words of the poster.
If we can't trust Mike with that which is lesser-the word of the poster-
why the heck would we trust him on that which is greater-
the Word of God, or anything SUPPOSEDLY the Word of God?
(For the sake of Mike, I shall clarify:
by "the Word of God", I meant "the Bible",
and by "anything SUPPOSEDLY the Word of God", I mean "the
pfal texts, magazine articles and tapes, as interpreted by Mike."
If Mike STILL misunderstands that after my clarification,
that will just be sad.]
And you were even so kind as to include the detail where IF PFAL were God-breathed then some of the revelation to Dr could have been in the form of WHO to go to to get taught. This showed up later in the same post later with: “I know that this horse is quite dead, but I still maintain that even if we want to concede that God led VPW to the info that eventually became PFAL, he did not endorse plagiarism. Besides, the leading to the info - THAT could have been the heavy-revvy.”
I wish other posters could be this up-front with me.
[Actually, we've been that "up-front" with you.
What we haven't been is posting things that can be rewritten as
agreeing with you, which, apparently, is the only way to be
seen as "fair" by you.
BTW,
you missed "I know that this horse is quite dead.."
which meant
"God did NOT lead vpw the the info that eventually became pfal".
I know you missed it, even though you included it.
But I expect everyone else caught it.
**********
As for the first portion of this passage of yours, I admit that I have not proved to you that PFAL is God-breathed. You may not have seen it, but I have admitted the same thing several times here. I cannot prove it and I don’t even try.
You may want to ask yourself, though, just how many proofs you’ve ever seen typed on a computer screen. I’ve seen a few very simple Geometry proofs typed out, but never anything deep. Things never get proved by typing a few words, not deep important things anyway.
[ In other words,
"nothing CAN be proven, so my inability to support my claims that pfal
is Holy Scripture is typical of anything." Is that really the best you can
hope for? Hide your inability by pretending everyone else is similarly
deficient?
Referring to the partial concession you gave me
[I already addressed this.]
regarding my refuting the plagiarism charges, strong or weak arguments may be offered, but not really proved. Heavier or lighter evidence may be considered and successful or failing persuasion may take place, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think we decide the course of our lives based on proofs residing in a relatively small presentation of typed words.
[HOWEVER, evidence and a strong argument support a position.
The truth can be supported thusly, and it's one way we can tell the
difference from truth and error or hallucinations. Giving up as easily
as Mike recommends is a license for all manner of foolish doctrines
like the Branch Davidians held.]
We believe what we want to believe, and then we generally compile supporting evidence for ourselves, while suppressing the evidence to the contrary. We’re not the beings of logic and reason we want to think of ourselves as, but beings who are all too easily swayed by fears and lusts, peer pressures and official sounding proclamations, habit patterns and repetitions, tradition and mass movements.
[Some of us have a more exacting standard than this,
but I believe few of us will argue that this is not representative
of Mike, which is why he's so familiar with the position and thinks
EVERYONE holds it. I often forget that cold logic often is USELESS
in convincing people of things because it's so foundational to
MY thinking.]
I know you believe that the original manuscripts of the Bible, in the original understanding of the original languages, is the written Word of God, but in order to believe that did you have it proved to you on a computer screen or a few sheets of paper? I doubt it. That proof took a lot more time than that.
[But all proof starts SOMEWHERE. "The journey of a thousand miles begins
with a single step." That's no excuse to hide from presenting ANY case
or argument.]
Have you ever tried to prove the Bible to someone else? Have you seen how impossible it is? It’s hard enough to even back-track well enough to see why WE believe such a thing, let alone proving it to another.
[Up until now, it never occurred to me that Mike ever had this kind
of problem supporting belief in the Bible-even back in his twi days.
Me, I've had a mixed bag in that department-
and I've had a questioning atheist convert to Christianity sometime
after I convinced him his understanding of a Scriptural subject
was incorrect. He had enough integrity to admit outright that he'd
"lost" that "debate". I thought everyone had experienced things
like that, in varying degrees. Apparently, Mike has not.]
What we can do is say to someone that it IS God’s Word, and we can speak some of His promises to them, as well as act in love toward that person. We can say “Come and see” and invite them to a loving fellowship where they can hear a lot of God’s Word. We can show them how to deal with the apparent contradictions, and do all sorts of things we’re all familiar with, but we cannot prove it to them. We can help them over doubts IF they want to believe, but we can’t force them to believe with an indisputable proof. It’s GOD Who confirms to His people that they are on the right track; we are incapable of doing that ourselves. We can only assist the process for ourselves and for others.
[In other words, we can present a case, which can rise or fall
on its own merits.]
THAT SAID, let’s turn our attention to my relatively weaker persuasion of PFAL being God-breathed compared to my plagiarism refutation.
[ SUPPOSED plagiarism refutation.
Mike refuted NOTHING, but he periodically announces
that he's successfully refuted stuff in the past.
Mike makes many claims.]
**********
I arrived at my surety on PFAL being God-breathed by the same means that I came to believe that the original Bible was God-breathed. Some 35 years ago VPW taught me the original Bible was God-breathed in the class, and that’s what convinced me to open the Bible a lot and read it. After spending a lot of time with my KJV God worked with me and I got to the place where I was willing to bet my life on it.
How does anything like the Bible get accepted? People try it out and like it. It’s never proved beyond a shadow of a doubt and then accepted. Life doesn’t work that way. We only have solid proofs in mathematics. In physics less surety in the proofs is enjoyed, and in biology even still less. By the time we get to spiritual matters there is no such thing as a proof. It's “try it you'll like it” or “come and see” and that’s all we got if we want to persuade. The real persuasion is in the book as it’s rightly divided.
[ If that was ALL that you thought of the Bible, you had a low threshold
for truth, which makes it less shocking that another book or set of
books or agglomeration of magazine articles, tapes, and individual lines
selectively taken from books might potentially pass that low standard.]
Ditto for PFAL.
[Here comes the big details-don't miss them.]
I had closed my PFAL books for many years when, in 1998, after years of frustration and defeat and seeing the decimation of my spiritual family,
[Mike was spiritually desperate and at a low point in his life.
These points come to people-when they are discouraged, and need
to reconnect to God, and understand His mercy. This is also the
type of time that people get recruited into cults.]
someone told me that those books were more special than I had ever dreamed. He invited me to a fellowship where Dr’s books were studied carefully. I opened the books and read them again, a lot. I saw many things in them that I had forgotten or that had slipped past me unawares years ago. I saw things that I knew OTHER grads were totally unaware of.
He saw things that no other grad had ever seen, even those who knew
the books to the level of memorization.]
I saw light again like I hadn’t seen since the early 70’s when I first took the class. I was persuaded by the books.
[He was desperate and looking for answers. He found A set of answers.
He became convinced that they were THE Set of Answers.
If Mike had lived in Waco, Texas, he might have found a different set
of answers, with a very different outcome.]
God’s Word always speaks for itself better than anyone else can.
[And so do many sales pitches-especially when the pigeon
is in the net and ready to be plucked.
When the person is desperate to believe, they will find AN answer
that SEEMS perfect.]
**********
Proofs are elusive. If you lived in Jesus’ time would you ask him for a mathematical-like proof that he was God’s Son? If you would he would surely decline. He might answer you by inviting you to work God’s word with him, and in the process you’d see how he lived. It would take time for his “proof” to get through to you. If you asked for a miracle as proof he’d likely decline, as he did much of the time. Thomas got his proof, but he put a lot of time into it prior to the crucifixion. Thomas was accommodated, but then he was scolded for missing the greater blessing of believing first and then seeing.
[Evidence comes in increments smaller than Major Miracles,
most of the time. If I lived in Jesus' time and got to interact
with him, I'm confident that I'd see a wealth of evidence outstripping
any set of claims I've seen nowadays.]
Where and when are YOU willing to make that leap and believe first and then see as per Jesus’ advice?
Leap we must, but to where? I see nothing but PFAL for such a leap on my part.
[And yet, Mike's say-so is far SHORT of what most of us accept for
evidence at this time-especially after having been hoodwinked and
bamboozled by twi the FIRST time. "The burned hand teaches best."
(Gandalf the Grey.) ]
I see it as THE unturned stone, one that every single member of the clergy and top leadership ignored from as early as 1979 and continuing to 1985.
[Because you have concluded-all by yourself-that this is the case,
although posters here have contrary testimony, putting the lie to
that. However, since it's vital to your doctrine, their testimony MUST
be discarded because-although it is true, it is NOT what Mike wants
to see. Therefore, it must be buried. ]
PFAL has good credentials for us who saw it work well.
[To a point, and has also failed MISERABLY on many counts.
That's why the very introduction of the Orange Book sets financial
prosperity as a viable goal and the purpose of the class,
but this class miserably failed to produce material wealth for
anyone but the man getting the tuition money.
It also spoke of believing and health-and the supposed
greatest Christian on the earth was unable to accomplish
the simple believing to save his own life. There are people
who live into their HUNDREDS who don't take especial care
of themselves, and they are NOT superior believers.
Mike's also said that mastering pfal can defeat death,
but it's supposed original master failed that test. ]
I feel very excited about doing something (mastering PFAL) that ALL the top leadership was seduced into NOT doing, and it should look like a hot tip to you!
[i have a secret trick for who wins when two football teams
play a game.
Their helmets.
Whoever has the fancier helmets wins.
Almost no one knows of this.
It's a hot tip.
Why aren't you interested?]
I mentioned 1979 because it was in that year Dr scolded all the AC grads for not mastering RHST, and 1985 because that year he told all his top leadership to master all the PFAL materials. That 1985 teaching, his very last, was utterly lost and never dealt with by leadership.
[We've read it here several times.
It says 2 things.
A) Christians outside twi don't have the truth.
B) The greatest thing you can give them is pfal, so learn it and teach it
to them, so then they'll know something.
It was one of the last public commercials of vpw's life,
possibly THE last commercial.]
The loss of this teaching is THE smoking gun as to what was wrong in all of top leadership and why the ministry failed. I do not subscribe to the single villain theories that abound here.
[As opposed to the ministry being based on the inadequate integrity
of a man who put forth that he had special revelation-
composed of books that others hadn't heard of and supposedly
originating from his own L337 skillz,
who concentrated money and power into his own hands and
went out of his way to get respect and the chief seats from
other Christians,
who put programs into place he had no training, experience
nor background in assembling, and placed even LESS qualified
people in charge of them,
who placed people as leadership based on how loyal they were
to him, and no other criteria,
who carefully arranged to have women on hand when at home
and when travelling, to do things to them that men of God ought
not to do-as clearly outlined in God's REAL Word,
who then placed his most knee-jerk fanatical follower, and-
despite his otherwise vacant skills-placed him as his successor,
despite the wise counsel of everyone else, as the result of
his fanatical devotion,
then died, having ruined the lives of some Christians because
they questioned him, or because they were women who refused
to be raped AND managed to get away (or were drugged
and raped, then went to tell someone),
and having never even TRIED to offer restitution for his many
evil deeds,
leaving an organization with NO system for accountability,
filled with leaders with no capacity to lead wisely,
and presided over by a madman,
And THAT being the ultimate downfall of the "ministry".
That's not technically a "single" villain theory, but one
villain DOES bear most of the blame.
This is a viable theory-mainly because it fits ALL the facts,
and not just the ones we WANT to look at.]
The best way I know to counter the two crucial moves of all the top leadership of TWI in how they handled the meltdown of the late 1980’s is to do the opposite of what they did. (1) None of the top leadership in 1985 paid much regard toward Dr’s last teaching, and (2)they all failed to transmit Dr’s final instructions to us underlings in those years, as well as to this day. All the splinter group leaders continue to ignore Dr’s final instructions as well as current TWI leaders.
[Counteracting the censure of HONEST Christians acting in good faith
and halting the practice of orchestrated rape by leaders,
and the great hubris inculcated into the cadre,
is NOT done by memorizing a teaching or rereading a book.
Nor is it done by listening to a tape again.
It's done by right action, the actions of just men,
and NOT men catering to their sinful natures.]
I choose to do the opposite: (1) obey Dr’s final instructions AND (2) tell as many grads about them as possible.
**********
[And, of course, deny all the REAL reasons twi fell.]
It’s good to keep things straight here: I am still not proving that PFAL is God-breathed, but I am arguing that mastering written PFAL should be a good thing and a hot tip for eager searchers with a proPFAL background and attitude.
**********
[Actually, you're ASSERTING it.
You'd be 'arguing' it if you were actually MAKING A CASE FOR IT.
adding words, changing words-Mike no longer has the words of the poster.
If we can't trust Mike with that which is lesser-the word of the poster-
why the heck would we trust him on that which is greater-
What amazes me is how one can accuse somebody else of what they will never recognize in themselves. That has got to be the proof of spiritual blindness - if one were truly seeking spiritual proof for anything. Matthew 15:14.
I did extend you the courtesy of starting to read your post. However, I see right from the start that you want to quibble over trivialities like “one lengthy post” versus “many small posts.”
That kinda kills my motivation to slog deeper into your post. So:
IF ANYONE SEES ANY INTERESTING NON-TRIVIAL POINTS WORDWOLF MAKES
IN HIS POSTS ANALYZING MY POSTS, PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THAT INTERESTING
POINT INTO A BITE SIZED POST AND POLITELY ADDRESS IT TO ME, ok?
***
Anyway I did threaten to have a private conversation in public or in PMs if you and your ilk didn’t behave, and you didn’t, so I HAD my private conversation with her in public, inviting in a few guests at times.
So, since STYLE is so much on your mind as to open your post with it, WW, what did you think of how I wove all those multi-responses into one dialog with doojable?
Hmmmmmm?
Doncha think I should get an English Comp award for my efforts there?
***
Oh, and since you opened with trivialities, I’ll call you bluff and raise you ten.
I’ll bet that the bandwidth load for my choice of one lengthy post is lower than the load for many small posts, that is ifs I knows me komputers good like I thinks I does. ...lower overhead bytes.
And if I remember my quibbles history, you were the one who brought up me hogging bandwidth with long posts, or ONE of the ones who brought it up.
Isn’t it fun to quibble when such immensely important matters, LIKE GOD'S WORD, to discuss in my lengthy post are being neglected? Oh well, you selected the priorities with your opening tone.
Back to the quibbling, what broke my heart most is how you didn’t notice the way I so courteously DID break up the topics into colored sections, and also big bands of asterisks to help our dear readers.
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TheInvisibleDan
OM's quote from "Living in Love" -
"Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit -- that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then I worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn't, I dropped."
I don't think there's a theology out there, either ancient or modern - that doesn't attempt to steer everything toward "fitting" in one respect or another. This goes as well for the ancient compilers who put together the actual scriptures of the NT canons - whether heretical or proto-orthodox.
In regard to the latter - of ancient Christians editing their scriptures according to their diverse beliefs - is an area which Wierwille hardly touched, outside the relatively late (3rd century) controversy relating to the Trinity. But there were other controversies prior to the 3rd century of which Wierwille was apparently completely unaware, which significantly shaped the NT scriptures in respects he never considered.
Wierwille demonstrated his own expression quite aptly, to the effect "One cannot go beyond what one is taught" - and he certainly didn't. In order to zealously accept Wierwille's teachings and system as the final, "God-breathed" word on all things "biblical", necessitates ignoring everything we may learn of the first two centuries of Christian history, and all the material and studies relating that period. And sadly, many here do for no good reason, which is a shame.
Danny
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Allan
Thanks OM, I had forgotten about that in 'Way..living in love' . I never had the idea that VPW discovered all this 'new light' himself the whole time I was in TWI, but rather that he had 'brought it all together' in an understandable fashion.
And lets be honest, how many of us would ever have heard of Stiles, Kenyon, Bullinger without VPW.
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Raf
That doesn't justify plagiarism.
Most plagiarists are more famous than their sources. That's how they get away with it. You steal from Mozart, people say you stole from Mozart. You steal from Salieri, people applaud your genius.
Who sues the big musical artists for plagiarism? Right, unknown artists and writers.
I never would have heard of "The African" had Alex Haley not plagiarized portions of it in "Roots." Now I own a copy of The African, but I do not own a copy of Roots. Nonetheless, Haley was still wrong to commit the plagiarism.
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Raf
Jayson Blair didn't plagiarize the work of his fellow New York Times reporters, or the Washington Post. He plagiarized a newspaper in San Antonio, figuring no one would know. Now that victim of Blair's plagiarism is fairly well-known, better known perhaps than she would have been had Blair not plagiarized her. But that doesn't justify Blair's wicked act.
Get it?
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irisheyes
Perhaps this doesn't matter too much, but I sure am glad I only have to stand in my shoes before God and not someone else's. I often wondered how some of these so-called "leadership" of TWI looked at themselves in the mirror. I no longer wonder because I no longer care. I am only responsible for what I do and did. I could get real petty here, but I don't think that's too cool either. We often learn by example and sometimes that example is wrong. Therefore, we learn what not to do. If ANYONE thinks ANYONE has "rightly-divided" the Word 100%, they should have their head examined. Get real, people. If we can't understand how nature works, how our small minds work, how an eagle flies, how can we possibly expect to understand the Word God MAGNIFIED above all these things????
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doojable
Well said Iriseyes. I am not of a mind to limit God to one little man in Ohio. Like I say often: I feel like all of us will be surprised in some manner when we see Jesus face to face.
No matter what we think - God thinks bigger and better. All we can do is try to make our next decision the best we can according to what we know and understand.
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irisheyes
And keep trying to know and understand more. I am still amazed when I glean even a little bit more light into what is written. Sometimes I actually wonder if God is working in me! Can you believe that? I had gotten to the point of wondering if I was even saved!
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markomalley
Oldies:
Thanks for that quote. I seem to remember reading or hearing that statement someplace but couldn't recall where.
Having said that, yes, he should have sourced his quotes. Yes it is plagarism if data is not sourced properly. But, when asked about it, I am glad that he didn't say that it was all his original material. In that case, I'd say that it's more of a matter that he should have been more forthcoming and accurate in his writing than he was...
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dmiller
There are times, Oldies, that I agree with you, and your last sentence is one of those times.
or trying to pass this off as his own
He was ---
Or trying to say he did all the work
(With A Little Help From My Friends),
He did
And (yea -- I know the name) -- but who was Elena Whiteside?
Is a book with her name as author become *God-breathed* suddenly??
Oh --- wait. If Hartcourt/Brace/Javonovich publishers had done her book --- it might be more believable than one printed by American Christian Press.
To me.
However -- she (being a wafer) (she was, wasn't she?), talking to docvic (as a commentary), doesn't quite cut the mustard.
Kinda like the cart interviewing the horse.
Just (again) my IMO.
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doojable
Om,
Had Dr quoted his sources it wouldn't have changed my believing or commitment at the time one iota. On the other hand, there are others out there that it would have made a difference to. The big question is not whether or not it would have affected me or the next guy. The question(s) are:
Wasn't quoting sources the RIGHT thing to do? -especially given that TWI touted itself as a Biblical RESEARCH and teaching ministry?
For VPW's sake - wouldn't honesty have made his life just that much simpler?
For the ministy's sake - weren't we always told to avoid even the appearance of evil?
I often wonder what dilemmas his children (Don and Wanda) faced as they had to tell their dad that he was doing things wrong - or did they even try? I was taught about the multitude of counselors -Did VPW adhere to this Godly advice?
So when Don Weirwille was going through school and becoming more and more engulfed in academia it surely hit him that things were awry. Wanda actually helped with the editing - I can't imagine that she didn't know about citing sources. IF (and I know it is just speculation) even one person went to VPW and told him that he had to cite his sources he couldn't claim ignorance. IF he told them not to do it no matter what, then things were really rotten in Denmark (or St Mary's) early on. That would indicate what I could only describe as a systematizing of error.
There is at least one other scenario here and that is that perhaps no one dared to tell VPW about citing sources. They just kept it hidden and went with the flow. Maybe out of fear or laziness. Fear of VPW, fear of having to pay royalties, laziness because that would be a LOT of work.
I realize that there is a LOT of conjecture here. Probably more questions than answers. I am not saying that just because I said it that it is true. But if any of it is true it would be a major indicator as to why things went wrong in TWI. It would expose the foundation of sand. It might indicate that TWI was not built on the Word of God as was always touted, but rather on a lie that could EASILY have been amended by simply citing sources.
Oh what a tangled web we weave.......
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WordWolf
There are some things we know for a fact.
We DO know that there were several people who
took BG Leonard's CTC class the FIRST time
when vpw took it the SECOND time.
We know that THREE MONTHS LATER,
vpw taught what he told the new students
was "his" "pfal" class which was 100%
composed of Leonard's CTC class.
The people who attended the CTC class
HAD to know it was EXACTLY the same
class they had just attended,
being taught now.
They HAD to know it was wrong for him
to tell them it was "his" class.
They HAD to know it was wrong for him
to omit ALL references to Leonard and
the REAL class.
They didn't stop him.
=====
That much, we KNOW.
WHY did they not stop him?
Was it fear? Greed? Pride?
We can only speculate.
If I were to speculate,
I would say it was MISPLACED LOYALTY.
They felt that, somehow, he was
EXEMPT from the rules of Christian
conduct, exempt from the laws of the US.
They felt that he was ABOVE the law,
that he was too important for the law
to apply to him,
that the stakes were high enough to
justify criminal actions if he said so.
========
Further speculation-
WHY would they have such misplaced
loyalty to him?
I would speculate that he used the SAME
techniques THEN that he used LATER on a
larger scale.
vpw pretended that all the content of
pfal, version 1.0 was his, when it was
entirely Leonard's.
Before THIS,
vpw had encountered JE Stiles,
who spent a few HOURS with him,
preparing vpw to speak in tongues,
and directing him through it.
Stiles did a GREAT job.
vpw's description, 20 years LATER,
was very detailed and contained all
the same elements vpw used later
in sessions 10-12 of pfal.
Stiles taught this no-strings-attached,
then left. vpw's style was to attach
this to pfal, thus charging money
for it AND connecting pfal with it,
and thus himself,
whom HE called THE Teacher.
Between the taped class and the
CTC class, people gave him
loyalty.
Based on his techniques, and based
on what we know of his character,
and-based on the fact that he
could recite the details of the Stiles
incident in GREAT detail later-
I'd say that he went thru this with
each of THEM,
and told EACH of them that this was
from HIM, and not a transliteration
of what he was told by STILES.
I don't have PROOF-neither eyewitnesses
nor a confession.
However, it is a theory that does fit the
facts AND his established behaviour.
That's the best I can do short of one or
the other.
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Oakspear
What the above quote is describing is someone studying various authors' works, checking their premises and conclusions with the bible, and building his own theory based on bits and pieces of what he learned along the way.
What Wierwille did was not what he described in the above quote, in many cases he recopied whole sections of other peoples' books and claimed that they were his own. He claimed that he came up with many things that are also found in Bullinger independent of Bullinger. He claimed that Leonard had great practical knowledge of the manifestations, but did not back it up with 'the Word'. He claimed that he took all of his books out to the city dump and used only his bible. These are what we call "contradictions".
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CM
counting on men to give interpretation
a waste of time
one gives and does not take away
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irisheyes
Hey Doojable,
Just a little clarification here. Don was a Wierwille. Wanda was Don's wife. There were five Wierwille children altogether. Don and two other girls and Sara and JP. Don had a doctorate in education. Education! You can bet your salary he knew about footnotes.
Personally, I think VPW intimidated them too. Don wasn't even part of the ministry for a long time and then all of a sudden he was on the Board. We are talking farmers here. For a guy from a farming family to get a doctorate in ANYTHING was a big deal. Don's doctorate was legit. VPW's was not. Ever here what VPW's thesis was on? I never did.
I thought I knew Don pretty well (I even liked the man), but it just dawned on me after all these years that of course he knew what his father was up to! One of the main reasons I left the ministry was that Passing of the Patriach cut Don down soooo badly, I just couldn't justify VPW leaving a legacy like that to his own son. Where was the love of God in that? I smelled a r a t.
Anyway, it didn't sound like you had the kid-stuff right. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!
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CM
a bunch of bull$*@!t
people is all they were
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Bluzeman
Um, I grew up in a farming community. I have a degree. In fact, most of the kids that I knew that grew up on the farms around me went to college and got degrees...3 that I know of that have PhD's, one who is now a surgeon. I have only a lowly BA in computer science. And my GPA was only a lowly 3.7. :(
Sorry, but that comment just had to be addressed. Carry on! :)
Rick
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Mike
Hi doojable,
Finally, after much delay, I’m getting the time to respond to you on this thread. Just to refresh you and readers I’ll repeat most of that post of yours that got my attention. Please allow me to use bold fonts to highlight the passages I am planning most of my response to. Your post #216 was the following:
Mike,
Here is the most cogent point I can think of.
You really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed. You have a better argument in saying that God led VPW to the various elements of PFAL.
If PFAL is to be treated as scripture there must be proof. t is not enough to simply quote the class and the words of VPW, or the collaterals. That is like defining a word by using the same word in the definition. (Just because I tell you that I am holy doesn’t make me holy - neither does me telling you that God told me to tell you that I am holy.) So here is a question:
What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself? (The answer "how to work the word just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.)
Doctrine? Reproof? Correction? Instruction in righteousness? Praise?
I see no new doctrine for the generation. No new light. At most there might be a repetition of old light that is new to the generation...
Please be specific...
If working the Word includes comparing scripture with scripture how can you go about doing so with PFAL and the collaterals?
Now God gives lots of revelation to lots of people so even if we will take the "Evil Kneival-sized" leap of faith that God gave VPW revelation regarding PFAL, that doesn't make it scripture. ( BTW I do not subscribe to this belief.) Nor does it require that I work it as if it were scripture. If that is so then I also had better get busy checking the words, teachings and writings of every Christian thinker and teacher. Eventually the job would be so colossal that no Christian would ever get down to the business of loving God and serving His people. We are to fear God and keep His commandments - I just don’t' believe that God wants us caught up in the web of chasing down just what those commandments are.
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Let’s take this one section at a time.
You wrote: “You really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed. You have a better argument in saying that God led VPW to the various elements of PFAL.”
Thank you for the second portion of this passage. Few here have ever thrown me a bone of concession like that. Ever since my first days of posting here I have proclaimed that IF PFAL is God-breathed, then all of the plagiarism charges evaporate. Thank you for acknowledging this simple idea.
And thank you also for repeating this concession in a later post on this same thread when you wrote: “You know--- Mike's contention that since God gave the rev to VPW exempts the good ‘Dr’ from the responsibility to cite his source - since the info was God's to give - got me thinking....”
And you were even so kind as to include the detail where IF PFAL were God-breathed then some of the revelation to Dr could have been in the form of WHO to go to to get taught. This showed up later in the same post later with: “I know that this horse is quite dead, but I still maintain that even if we want to concede that God led VPW to the info that eventually became PFAL, he did not endorse plagiarism. Besides, the leading to the info - THAT could have been the heavy-revvy.”
I wish other posters could be this up-front with me.
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As for the first portion of this passage of yours, I admit that I have not proved to you that PFAL is God-breathed. You may not have seen it, but I have admitted the same thing several times here. I cannot prove it and I don’t even try.
You may want to ask yourself, though, just how many proofs you’ve ever seen typed on a computer screen. I’ve seen a few very simple Geometry proofs typed out, but never anything deep. Things never get proved by typing a few words, not deep important things anyway.
Referring to the partial concession you gave me regarding my refuting the plagiarism charges, strong or weak arguments may be offered, but not really proved. Heavier or lighter evidence may be considered and successful or failing persuasion may take place, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think we decide the course of our lives based on proofs residing in a relatively small presentation of typed words.
We believe what we want to believe, and then we generally compile supporting evidence for ourselves, while suppressing the evidence to the contrary. We’re not the beings of logic and reason we want to think of ourselves as, but beings who are all too easily swayed by fears and lusts, peer pressures and official sounding proclamations, habit patterns and repetitions, tradition and mass movements.
I know you believe that the original manuscripts of the Bible, in the original understanding of the original languages, is the written Word of God, but in order to believe that did you have it proved to you on a computer screen or a few sheets of paper? I doubt it. That proof took a lot more time than that.
Have you ever tried to prove the Bible to someone else? Have you seen how impossible it is? It’s hard enough to even back-track well enough to see why WE believe such a thing, let alone proving it to another.
What we can do is say to someone that it IS God’s Word, and we can speak some of His promises to them, as well as act in love toward that person. We can say “Come and see” and invite them to a loving fellowship where they can hear a lot of God’s Word. We can show them how to deal with the apparent contradictions, and do all sorts of things we’re all familiar with, but we cannot prove it to them. We can help them over doubts IF they want to believe, but we can’t force them to believe with an indisputable proof. It’s GOD Who confirms to His people that they are on the right track; we are incapable of doing that ourselves. We can only assist the process for ourselves and for others.
THAT SAID, let’s turn our attention to my relatively weaker persuasion of PFAL being God-breathed compared to my plagiarism refutation.
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I arrived at my surety on PFAL being God-breathed by the same means that I came to believe that the original Bible was God-breathed. Some 35 years ago VPW taught me the original Bible was God-breathed in the class, and that’s what convinced me to open the Bible a lot and read it. After spending a lot of time with my KJV God worked with me and I got to the place where I was willing to bet my life on it.
How does anything like the Bible get accepted? People try it out and like it. It’s never proved beyond a shadow of a doubt and then accepted. Life doesn’t work that way. We only have solid proofs in mathematics. In physics less surety in the proofs is enjoyed, and in biology even still less. By the time we get to spiritual matters there is no such thing as a proof. It's “try it you'll like it” or “come and see” and that’s all we got if we want to persuade. The real persuasion is in the book as it’s rightly divided.
Ditto for PFAL.
I had closed my PFAL books for many years when, in 1998, after years of frustration and defeat and seeing the decimation of my spiritual family, someone told me that those books were more special than I had ever dreamed. He invited me to a fellowship where Dr’s books were studied carefully. I opened the books and read them again, a lot. I saw many things in them that I had forgotten or that had slipped past me unawares years ago. I saw things that I knew OTHER grads were totally unaware of. I saw light again like I hadn’t seen since the early 70’s when I first took the class. I was persuaded by the books.
God’s Word always speaks for itself better than anyone else can.
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Proofs are elusive. If you lived in Jesus’ time would you ask him for a mathematical-like proof that he was God’s Son? If you would he would surely decline. He might answer you by inviting you to work God’s word with him, and in the process you’d see how he lived. It would take time for his “proof” to get through to you. If you asked for a miracle as proof he’d likely decline, as he did much of the time. Thomas got his proof, but he put a lot of time into it prior to the crucifixion. Thomas was accommodated, but then he was scolded for missing the greater blessing of believing first and then seeing.
Where and when are YOU willing to make that leap and believe first and then see as per Jesus’ advice?
Leap we must, but to where? I see nothing but PFAL for such a leap on my part. I see it as THE unturned stone, one that every single member of the clergy and top leadership ignored from as early as 1979 and continuing to 1985. PFAL has good credentials for us who saw it work well. I feel very excited about doing something (mastering PFAL) that ALL the top leadership was seduced into NOT doing, and it should look like a hot tip to you!
I mentioned 1979 because it was in that year Dr scolded all the AC grads for not mastering RHST, and 1985 because that year he told all his top leadership to master all the PFAL materials. That 1985 teaching, his very last, was utterly lost and never dealt with by leadership. The loss of this teaching is THE smoking gun as to what was wrong in all of top leadership and why the ministry failed. I do not subscribe to the single villain theories that abound here.
The best way I know to counter the two crucial moves of all the top leadership of TWI in how they handled the meltdown of the late 1980’s is to do the opposite of what they did. (1) None of the top leadership in 1985 paid much regard toward Dr’s last teaching, and (2)they all failed to transmit Dr’s final instructions to us underlings in those years, as well as to this day. All the splinter group leaders continue to ignore Dr’s final instructions as well as current TWI leaders.
I choose to do the opposite: (1) obey Dr’s final instructions AND (2) tell as many grads about them as possible.
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It’s good to keep things straight here: I am still not proving that PFAL is God-breathed, but I am arguing that mastering written PFAL should be a good thing and a hot tip for eager searchers with a proPFAL background and attitude.
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Please let me return to a previous section of this response and ask you this: why do you believe that the Bible (the original) is the Word of God?
Is it the gold edges? The leather binding? It's age? It's heavy use in denominations? Is it being found in most hotel rooms? The gushy feelings you get from reading it?
What's the real reason you accept (without absolute proof) this book? Or the more detailed question, why do you accept the original manuscripts to be God’s pure Word, which you've never seen, and even if you DID have some in your hands you couldn't even read them? It’s a step in the more abstract direction to accept a set of writings that you can never get your hands on.
Want to know my answer to this question? It was listening to Dr. Wierwille in film class that convinced me to believe that the original Bible was the best bet I could base my life on at that time.
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So why DO you believe that the Bible is the Word of God? Really, have you pondered this very much? In all your reasoning, logic and research you ASSUME the Bible is rock bottom truth, but WHY? What proof do you have that that's a safe assumption?
As I’ve stated, the reason I believe in the Bible is because Dr convinced me in PFAL. Sure he used the KJV in the class because he had to approach us where we were at and with something in which we had already placed at least a little trust, even though our proof for that trust was flimsy.
Some of us felt the gold edges were nice. Some of us were born into a Bible culture. Some of us were impressed that it was in every hotel room. So Dr started with us where we could have some trust, and then he built the bigger thing to trust: the revelations God gave him to fix and augment the tattered remnants of what used to be the Bible.
Even those born into a Bible based family and culture and church were still on shaky ground: no power, lots of contradictions, lots of temptations to lure away from the Bible. If you were born into believing the Bible, and hadn't had the PFAL class you probably would not have it in your life now... not LIKE you do now. You wouldn't have the drive, the logic, the SIT. You'd have most likely been totally been talked out of it by now, or you'd be knee deep in three equaling one, and Jesus being an unreachable god.
PFAL made the KJV Bible alive for you.
I believe that PFAL and that Bible go hand in hand, and you cannot rely on one without the other. As
you need PFAL to find accuracy in the Bible, so do you need the Bible to support PFAL. The existing Bible's integrity without PFAL is vague. It's PFAL that proves the Bible.
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No, I can’t prove any of this on a computer screen. What I’m doing is seeking those grads who are ready for a change, and who have retained a healthy respect for PFAL, and who see that the final instructions of Dr’s to master it are important instructions. Anyone who attempts to master PFAL as per Dr’s instructions will have first have to have gotten to the place that they really trust him. The ONLY people who can get to that place are those of us who not only took the class, but studied it to the best of our ability, and who applied it in life, saw it work well, and who have already spent MUCH time (albeit long ago) verifying it worthy of mastery.
We who fit this category have been given a wealth of solid things to move with by Dr, and now a clear cut command fro him to master the collaterals. As far as proving that PFAL is of God enough to be worth such effort, we who fit this category are supposed to have done all that by now.
We can come up with all of the logical reasons and physical evidence we want, but it's not the reason and the evidence that are going to bring us to the point of believing. It is through our faith wherewith we are saved. The physical evidence may attract our attention, but we cannot prove God to ourselves. He has to prove himself to us. He has to draw us to Him.
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Deciding to open up the collaterals and begin to master them is doing different from the doings all of the leadership who were in place in 1985. Those grads who once DID SEE and CAN STILL SEE that PFAL was of God should have no qualms in returning to written PFAL to master it SIMPLY because Dr said it was important to master the written materials. I’ve often cited his last teaching on this and his ’79 AC quote on it, but there are many other places where Dr urged us to get it right from the written record.
The Advanced Class urging to master the material was spurned by leadership so badly that Dr had to repeat his urgings for them just before his death, giving them maximum priority. Here’s that AC’79 quote:
“I have set for our people, and it’s set in the book on ‘Receiving the Holy Spirit Today,’ and people, when you reach the Advanced Class, you ought to be able almost to quote this line for line. You should have mastered this book by the time you get to the Advanced Class. If you haven’t, you better get busy and do it - work it to where you understand the Word of God in every facet, in every way of it’s utilization regarding the holy spirit field - all of them, you must know this book, in and out. But I’ve discovered as I’ve worked among my people, and even all the grads of the Advanced Class, there still are areas where we got to push ourselves.”
The fact that all of upper leadership refused to obey Dr on this should be a further incentive for us to obey Dr’s advice.
Obeying Dr’s advice and mastering PFAL is NOT the same as believing it is God-breathed.
Obeying Dr’s advice and mastering PFAL does not require a belief that it is God-breathed, only that it is good and that it was neglected.
Obeying Dr’s advice and mastering PFAL will lead to believing it is God-breathed as God works with each student.
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For me it was an easy thing to decide to obey Dr’s advice. On the spiritual level I perceived that since the adversary had been so totally successful in suppressing Dr's last teaching, then there must be something very powerful in it that we needed and he didn't want us to see. That's on the flesh and blood level. Since they all had so totally rejected Dr's final instructions to master PFAL, well by golly, I was going to do the exact opposite.
So I had a very STRONG HINT (not proof) that if I wanted to find the solution to the big problem the meltdown of the ministry, etc, then I ought to take another look at the PFAL writings, and do it very carefully. That's when I started finding many, many "Thus saith the Lord" statements, and that’s when I started embracing PFAL as from God.
I figured that if Dr was lying, then it would all fall apart as I mastered the material. If he told the truth then it would all start coming together. I saw the later happen in a relatively short time, with some guidance from someone who had traced the same steps years earlier than me.
I have MANY, many statements in print and on tape that will fit into this picture of WHY we should be mastering the PFAL writings. Regardless if I succeed in proving to you this reason WHY we should master the PFAL writings, it's STILL THE CASE that Dr told us all to do it, and we all disobeyed or were asleep and didn’t see that last teaching. It was a little of both for me.
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Ok, doojable, let’s get back to your post.
You wrote: “It is not enough to simply quote the class and the words of VPW, or the collaterals. That is like defining a word by using the same word in the definition. (Just because I tell you that I am holy doesn’t make me holy - neither does me telling you that God told me to tell you that I am holy.)”
I agree.
I have never asserted that PFAL is God-breathed because Dr said it is. I know that just because Dr said so, that doesn't make it true. Whether his many claims are accurate is one subject worthy of much discussion, but besides that, just seeing these many statements is convincing proof that (1) we didn't catch all that taught to us, and (2) Dr went way out on a limb.
Many posters here at GSC have complained to me that Dr never claimed that he was producing God-breathed writings. The same posters also tend to claim that PFAL didn’t work for them; that it was defective. They blame Dr for all the ills of the ministry, including the lack of power in their lives after they took the class. They don’t want to believe that THEY themselves were responsible for PFAL not working in their lives due to their lack of CAREFUL CLOSE study of the written portions of the class. They ignored Dr’s repeated assertions that they needed to master that written material, often thinking that they had mastered it enough.
I point out Dr’s many claims of “Thus saith the lord” in PFAL to prove (or strongly argue) that they did NOT adequately study PFAL because they obviously missed seeing the many “Thus saith the lord” statements. Those of us who saw the earlier stages of the ministry’s outreach in the 70’s were exposed to many spoken claims of Dr’s to have been given revelation on the class. As the 70’s progressed Dr made fewer such claims, but the printed ones still were still in the books. We older grads got talked out of respecting the authority from which he taught.
We didn't pay good attention to Dr's teaching, especially as he got older. We didn't study, and especially we didn't MASTER the material we were given. If we had studied, we'd have seen and remembered these many times when Dr asserted that he was teaching authoritatively. Our assignment to master the material that Dr gave us with his dying last words was a NEEDED assignment, even for leadership.
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What I mean by "out on a limb" is that if he claimed authority as God's spokesman many times and wasn't, then that rules out all the gray areas of how we should regard Dr and his teachings.
These statements give us a challenge whether to believe or not that Dr was working for the True God. Even more, they force us to decide "yes" or "no" to Dr's teaching authority because they leave no gray area between. We can either accept his assertion of being God's appointed spokesman or reject it, but we can't logically and honestly seek out any gray area in between.
I was struck by this same stark-option challenge to accept or reject Dr when I first sat through the class in Session One. When Dr got to the section about healing that man's withered arm in India I realized that there were no gray areas about Dr and his message: either he lied or told the truth about that healing. I was electrified when last year HCW recounted here at GSC his memory of Mrs. Wierwille's commentary to him personally as they both looked through old photos of that healed man and the train station.
So, my collection of Dr’s “Thus saith the lord” statements, which I may post on a separate thread someday soon, proves that those who THINK he made no such statements need to do a little more studying of the material and are far from having mastered it.
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Some of us were there, in the good old days, when Dr’s many verbal claims and hints of being God’s spokesman were still in the air. Dr’s authority to teach us what God taught him (his “thus saith the lord” attitude) was in the air EVERYWHERE in those earlier 70’s. It’s just that nobody ever flashed on the idea that, in addition to the God-given ability to speak by revelation to us, Dr could also write by revelation exactly what God wanted us to read. The reason we never flashed on it is Dr kept us too busy moving the Word and he wanted to keep the idea of his writing of revelation RELATIVELY under wraps. I’ll explain some other time what I mean by “relatively” here.
(And all you plagiarism freaks can note that my use of “write” here is complex and includes not only original and divinely dictated revelation, but the discussion type of revelation I’ve reported here, as well as the doojabble-recognized type of revelation as “from whom” he should learn, even if it’s exact text.)
On this same thread of yours, doojable, Oakspear wrote: “Vic Wierwille clearly believed that his interpretation of the bible was superior to anyone else's. __ He also believed that if the existing texts did not support what he taught, then the text was a forgery, or that there was another text out there that supported his position.”
Oakspear also wrote: “...his word was still elevated above anything that was written in the bible.”
Here, I assume Oakspear, when he uses the phrase “the bible,” again means the commonly accepted ancient texts and modern versions of said Bible, not the originals.
Oak goes on with: “Although Wierwille was careful to always elevate the written 'Word', in practice, no text, no verse was as elevated as his own opinion. So, in a sense, Wierwille did believe that his doctrine was superior to the bible in any of it's translations or versions. So, of course he wanted us to ‘master’, not only the bible, but his spin on the bible, PFAL, and all of his other books.”
I think Oak, with his advantage of having seen the earlier days, and with his advantage of being a more detached observer as a self-proclaimed atheist, is able to see that Dr claimed to be THE authority, and I’ll add “because he was appointed such by God.”
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Now, on this same thread we see Raf, who was a relative late comer, after Dr’s death, never having known Dr or his ministry (only Craig’s) arguing the opposite of Oakspear.
Just the opposite of the “air” I described above that enveloped Oakspear and all us OLGs, Raf was surrounded by fallen corrupted TWI leaders (and later by similar Geer and CES leaders) who had all long rejected Dr’s authority, and were busying themselves with re-inventing the wheel God and Dr had already perfected.
Raf wasn’t exposed to the same atmosphere of absolute respect for Dr that Oak had and I and other OLGs (Older Leader-type Grads) had experienced. The written “thus saith the lord statements” of Dr’s sailed right past Raf when he got in, as they continue to do to this day. But those of us who knew Dr’s attitude of “Thus saith” can see them plain as day if we’re not spiritually suffocated in churchianity tradition or something else.
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Raf wrote in agreement with your statement, doojable, that I “really have failed to prove that PFAL is God-breathed,” with the following:
“In fact, it has been disproven by the very standards of PFAL! But it didn't need to be, because Wierwille himself discredited this specific, ridiculous notion both within and outside the pages of PFAL. __ Wierwille denied it personally. __ Everyone who knew Wierwille denies it. __ Everyone who worked on the books denies it.”
I don’t doubt that everyone who worked with Dr and on the books has BY NOW been talked out of believing the writings are God-breathed. I don’t doubt that some of these people have anecdotal memory of what they THINK was Dr’s denial of PFAL being God-breathed. But I do doubt the accuracy of their memory on this because of what Dr did put into writing, as well as on tape.
Plus, I have discussed this personally by phone for many hours with several (more than 5) of the people who worked closely with Dr on his writings and their denial of my thesis AT TIMES wore very thin, even to the point of partial and temporary acceptance, but with no follow through. Their reaction to my proposal was far, far from the simple denial Raf reports.
I know that Dr did admit that when he merely spoke or wrote from his own flesh understanding (which he did do at times) then THAT would be void of authority, just like any other man’s as he points out on page 83 of the PFAL book. But when Dr wrote to us students of his, to his class, he claimed that every word he wrote TO US was true and that it was not from him but from God. See TNDC pages 34 and 116.
By his statements, Raf places himself in the category of one who has not mastered what is written. His statement that PFAL “has been disproven by the very standards of PFAL!” falls because how can he know those very standards if he can’t see the many “Thus saith the lord” statements in there, like TNDC p.34 and 116. His handling, along with others here, of the “Thus saith the lord” statement on PFAL page 83 is an exercise in denial. When I get to that thread focusing on these statements I’ll show more of what I mean here.
Repeating my main assertion here, the many claims of “Thus saith the lord” that Dr made prove do not prove themselves as accurate (other things will do that) but they DO prove that many grads, even OLGs, have not studied the material very well, or don’t remember it very well. This means they can’t blame Dr for the lack of results they may have gotten, but only themselves for not having fully received the details of Dr’s teaching. This means that Dr’s repeated urging to come back to the written forms of PFAL and master them has merit and that our (OLGs) ignoring of that urging for a ten year span (1975 to 1985) was the REAL cause of the ministry’s downfall.
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Raf’s assertion that PFAL “has been disproven by the very standards of PFAL!” fails to account for the fact that many different approaches to the PFAL material can be taken. He has chosen the method of skeptical inquiry rather than meek acceptance. Having not been an eye witness of PFAL working well in the 1970’s, he is not able to take the meek acceptance approach to it. Hence his logic and reason spells out a rejection of it being God-breathed. He uses that rejection in his mode of inquiry as he reads a PFAL text.
Like I said before, in life situations strict reason is very limited in how far it can go. In simple Geometry it's wonderful and very powerful. In simple Physics situations, like the hydrogen atom reason can produce beauty and power to predict. But as the physical systems get more complex, reason and logic can only be applied in short spurts, with giant leaps in between. When we get to human life and beliefs, hardly anything can be really proved. People who demand proofs and strict logical reason to counter arguments of others, overlook the sad fact that they can't really prove much of anything themselves if they want to attain to their own standards.
When reasoning, the fundamental assumptions that one starts out with, the un-provable postulates the reason is based on, become crucial. I chose to place as one of my fundamental postulates the written form of PFAL being God-breathed. When I use that postulate, everything lines up to my satisfaction. People's demands that I drop that as a postulate and prove it to them are refused by me as a matter of policy. When people "prove" some contradiction in PFAL, I look at their reasoning and see my postulate missing at the beginning and back off. I have already chosen to not approach apparent contradictions with their set of tools. We get differing conclusions in our reasoning because we start out with fundamentally different approaches.
When I read PFAL with my postulate in place, it yields differing results than when a skeptic (like Raf) reads it without my postulate.
Doojable, I invite you to alter your approach, try the meek obedient approach to see what new evidence will be presented to you. If you refuse, I will not berate you.
I refuse to do it the skeptic’s way because I've already shopped at that store, and decided to return the goods. I invite you to shop and compare. Come back to PFAL and try the meekness postulate and see what God proves to you.
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The noble Bereans didn't believe overnight. It took time for them to get to that place, based on their working of the scriptures. They didn’t believe Paul on his first teaching. Paul didn’t prove it to them, he strongly argued for it, but they had to go to God for the “go ahead” to believe.
People generally are not really clear on what constitutes real proof. And very few people want to gamble with their believing. They willing to settle for the safe crumbs, and don't want to risk those crumbs or risk their egos with my proposal. Many are rather asleep and want trumpets blasting them in their ears as 5-senses proof. Few have thought through the problem of false 5-senses proofs.
We all have to place our bets somewhere, but it's so scary few are even willing to reexamine where they originally did bet their life, and few are willing to see if their bet has accidentally evolved to something they didn't actually choose. Thinking through these kinds of matters is very disturbing, and the status quo is the usually preferred option.
Few want to think through why they believe the Bible is THE Word of God. They let other people do that thinking for them. The reason I believed the Bible was PFAL convinced me to. Most are comfortable with the fact that tradition supports the KJV or other newer versions, yet tradition supports a lot of errors too.
The Bereans had a truly interesting problem: Paul was coming to them with new stuff that wasn't in the OT: The Mystery, and the resurrection. They could see hints only, but as they worked what was available to them (OT scriptures and Paul's preaching) with that openness of mind THEN they were able to believe as God worked with them.
After we do our BEST with what we have 5-senses wise, THEN God can get into the picture and confirm our 5-senses understanding with spiritual understanding. When we do our best to master PFAL God can then show us what proofs we really need.
Your proofs will come when you take obedient action on what Dr told us so clearly to do in those MOST important final instructions of his. Those final instructions were SO important and SO powerful that the adversary talked ALL the ministry leaders out of them (to their doom) and hid those instructions from the rest of us for years. God has dug them up and they’ve been broadcasted on the Internet for several years now. We all have a second chance to obey what all of upper leadership ignored in 1985, just prior to the ministry meltdown.
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Doojable, your post also contained:
“What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself? (The answer ‘how to work the word’ just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.) ___ Doctrine? Reproof? Correction? Instruction in righteousness? Praise? ___ I see no new doctrine for the generation. No new light. At most there might be a repetition of old light that is new to the generation... Please be specific...”
Let’s work with this passage a little at a time.
Your phrase “...that you could not learn from the Word itself...” is very telling.
You assume that we HAVE the Word itself to go to and learn, but we don’t. It was lost in the first century. We have man-made attempts to reconstruct that Word, to translate it into our language, and to make it plane and understandable, but we don’t have an ultimate authority to go to and learn. This problem is the whole reason for God intervening in 1942. The Word was buried in hopeless confusion and opinions. There was nothing authoritative from which to learn.
Without PFAL revelation teaching us we cannot wade through all the 5-senses research and opinions and error. We have nothing to tell us how to extract solid information from the theological world of manuscripts, critical texts, translations and versions.
Now it is a logical possibility that the problem of the authoritative written Word being lost 2000 years ago is not solved and PFAL too is a mere set of opinions. But I have eliminated that possibility from consideration after many years of holding on to it. I don’t see any other contenders out there to solve this problem. There are no viable Biblical researchers out there who claim to have authority for God. Most of them don’t even believe such authority can even exist, or certainly not in modern times. I see PFAL as the only solution to the lack of authoritative Word of God available to us this day.
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You wrote: “What have you learned from PFAL that you could not learn from the Word itself?”
For this part of my response I’m going assume that you ARE ABLE to go to the existing manuscripts, texts, translations and versions to ACCURATELY “learn from the Word itself.” I just argued (and have often here) that this is a fantasy when it comes to the accuracy needed to do all the things that Jesus Christ did and greater, but for discussion purposes I’ll ignore that.
What is not in your KJV Bible are your instructions as to exactly what to do when the return of Christ occurs. You may have all sorts of assumptions as to how your perfectly renewed mind is going to be given to you at the Gathering Together, but you can’t point to any of that in your KJV or any other version or manuscript. In those documents the Return off somewhere in the secret future, and we’re not told there how behave when it does happen. We can only guess.
What we have found in coming back to PFAL is abundant. We not only have learned that PFAL is God-breathed, but we have learned the REASON WHY God made such HUGE move as to again send His pure written Word back into the world.
This reason God gave us PFAL is NOT to settle all the 5-senses disputes between all of the world’s 5-senses theologians and Biblical researchers, equally brilliant men with diametrically opposing ideas on many points.
This reason God gave us PFAL is NOT to settle all the doubts of students of said theologians and researchers who have to pick and choose among these warring scholars as to which person to believe, and then once that difficult choice is made, which passages of said chosen scholar’s should be accepted and which rejected.
However the giving of the PFAL revelations DOES settle these two things, but that’s not the reason it was given NOW.
(added in late edition: )
Why didn't God settle theological debates centuries ago? Why 1942? Because it's TIME and He has the necessary members of the body of Christ willing to believe that it's time.
The reason God chose 1942 to initiate all these things is because NOW is the time of the Return. The timing is no longer a secret. What is still a secret is THAT it’s happening. Just like Christ’s first coming did not conform to the expectations of those who had drifted from the heart and accuracy of God’s Word, so it is now with his second coming.
This reason WHY to send us His pure written Word is to prepare us for His seeing His Son again, the pure Word made flesh. The two go hand in hand, the Word made flesh and the written Word.
Mastering PFAL will mean a revamping of how we are to view the Return. We drifted from the unique revelation God gave us concerning the preparation to see the Return.
Doojable, this is the grand answer to your question of what does PFAL have that KV does not have.
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Now here’s a lesser answer, but it’s still grand, when you look at it right. Actually it’s a set of answers to your question.
Where do you find in your KJV any mention of the mechanics of speech? That whole section where Dr leads us into tongues can hardly be extracted from your KJV.
Where do you find in your KJV an explanation of God’s complete and total detailed foreknowledge? You can find it in PFAL easy.
Where do you find in your KJV an explanation of our free will? I mean how can you prove with your KJV that we are not automatons who respond to present stimuli and previous stored experiences like a computer or robot?
Doojable, in your current passage your parenthesis reads: “(The answer "how to work the word just isn't good enough - because that information was available long before the class.)”
I ask you, though it were available, who would have found it without PFAL? How would even a thorough researcher who did find it distinguish it from all the other warring factions’ opposing material and methods? Without PFAL the vast majority of us would never have seen it all put together for us like Dr did it.
I think you are taking PFAL for granted. We were extremely blessed to have it all researched and placed before us. None of us would have been able to wade through they muddied waters to know what we know now about God, just none!
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Back to the Return: just when and how do we get the perfectly renewed mind in this new administration we find ourselves in?
This is precisely WHY Dr told us to master the books God gave him by revelation. It’s because the perfectly renewed mind is available now. This topic can be another whole thread, since I have found over 50 page references within PFAL on it.
I used to think that in the Gathering God would sort of suspend the rules, and He'd sort of take over my mind and zap it with perfection. I've stopped that way of looking at it. I've found almost 50 places in Dr's books that indicates the perfectly renewed mind is what we need and should be working on NOW! Want to see them?
I used to think a lot of things about the Gathering of which mastering PFAL has inspired a complete re-modeling. I now see our rising from the earth as spiritual and figurative and not physical. We rise from the earth bound 5-senses perspective inflicted on us by Adam and we see better spiritually than physically instead of the other way around. I see now that we need to completely re-work the phrase “dead in Christ.” I see now that the instantaneous changes, in a moment of time, in the twinkling of an eye, come at the end of the end, and only with the new body acquisition. I see the perfectly renewed mind comes slowly, it’s TAUGHT not zapped and with free will respected, and it’s at the very early stages of this new administration we are in now. It’s with that mind we get to see Jesus!
Can you see that IF it were the case that Dr's books were pure and from God, AND IF it were the case that the change of administrations is upon us, THEN it would be logical that his books would minister to us in making that change??? This information is not in your KJV. It was a secret then, back in that administration.
These are pretty big “IFs” I’ll admit, and they both will take separate threads to even make more clear here what I mean by them, but it will take delving deep into a PFAL mastery project for anyone to believe them.
Do you have access to the "Tape of the Month" series from the Way back in the eighties? Dr's THIRD to the last taped teaching is one of those tapes in that series. It was done in Atlanta on Easter Sunday 1985, and is titled "The Moment of a New Age" and if you listen to it VERY carefully you'll hear him say something three times that will be most unbelievable, yet it's there on the tape in three separate places. He says three times that we are now living in a new Age, and he doesn’t mean of Aquarius.
There are MANY other such tapes, and spots in the books, that he planted things like little "Easter Eggs" for us to find when we got meek. Getting EXTREMELY sure of Dr's books is one necessary step to seeing that the administration has changed, so I expect to persuade none here. Those who obey Dr’s urgings are in for some great surprises within those writings.
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Moving along in your post discussion you wrote: “If working the Word includes comparing scripture with scripture how can you go about doing so with PFAL and the collaterals?”
There are many such ways. We compare passages of Dr’s where he teaches on one specific verse. For instance, with the Bookstore issued Scripture Indexes we can look up all the passages in PFAL where Dr teaches Romans 10:9 and compare them for added learning.
Another way is to do a PFAL word study. We have no concordances (yet) to thoroughly do this, but by being sharp as we read and comparing notes with each other we can compile MANY places where Dr uses a specific word. Using this method is hard right now, but we are slowly accumulating a body of data the best we can without the instant thoroughness a concordance would permit.
There are other ways to study, and I’ve discussed them here at GSC before and maybe someday even do a thread on them.
**********
You then wrote: “Now God gives lots of revelation to lots of people so even if we will take the "Evil Kneival-sized" leap of faith that God gave VPW revelation regarding PFAL, that doesn't make it scripture.”
I’m not nearly as sure as you that lots of revelation gets given. Leaving that aside, though, it is an interesting point that you bring up here. I’ve hardly addressed this myself.
So what do you think the essential qualitative difference is between the ancient scriptures and something written today by revelation? Most of us (I think) believe that revelation can be given in modern times, so what if God not only honors a believer’s operation of the revelation manifestations with a cookie, but He also tells the recipient to write it down? Is that any different than what He did to get the ancient scriptures written? Is God forbidden to commission modern written revelation? If He is allowed, is it any different than the ancient scriptures in their original manuscript, language, and understanding?
The best I can see they differ is TO WHOM they are addressed. I can see that PFAL is addressed TO GRADS ONLY (and to students before they graduate), while the ancient scriptures were addressed to “...Jew, Gentile, and the Church of God.”
Ooh! Ooh!
LATE EDIT ADDITION
(Attention, those who have e-mail notification of my posts.
Your early edition does not contain the following:)
THIS POINT OF PFAL POSSIBLY BEING GOD-BREATHED WORD ADDRESSED ONLY TO A NEW GROUP OF PEOPLE (GRADS) IS A POINT THAT SOME OF DR'S EDITOR'S DEEPLY CONSIDERED AND EVEN PARTIALLY, TEMPORARILY MENTALLY ASSENTED TO IN MY MANY HOURS OF PHONE AND E-MAIL DISCUSSIONS AS I REPORTED IN MY ADDRESSING RAF'S SECOND MAIN POINT ABOVE, RIGHT AFTER THE GREEN FONTS OF OAKSPEAR'S COUNTER-POINT WITH RAF.
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You wrote: “We are to fear God and keep His commandments - I just don’t' believe that God wants us caught up in the web of chasing down just what those commandments are.”
His main commandment is love and we always cherish the words of whom we love. Look at Deut. 6, where Jesus quoted the greatest commandment. Right after the commandment is given the people were told HOW to love Him. I urge you to read it. God wants us not to be caught up in the web of winging it and making broken cisterns that can hold no water. He wants us to IMMERSE ourselves in His Word. It’s the only way to love God, to love His Word and to seek it with all our hearts.
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You wrote in a later post: “What I tried to say a few posts ago was that I believe that even if VPW had not compiled all the writings of Bullinger, Leonard, et al, that GOD would have led you and I to these. He handled the birth of Jesus - I think He could have handled this -if it were what He truly wanted.”
Not so! God has to respect His own laws. He wanted to redeem man right at the fall so He gave His promise, but he had to wait 4000 years for a person to literally believe that promise. God is limited in some contexts and He tells us so. He must wait for belief on our part. Dr claims in a very early tape (# 214) that the essence of the 1942 promise was that God was not able to share for 2000 years what was to come in PFAL. God had to wait for Dr’s believing and for OUR believing before he could re-issue his written Word. There’s something about THIS time where He had enough believing (Dr’s and ours) to pull it off.
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You and irisheyes concurred on something I take issue with.
Irisheyes wrote in Post #256: “If ANYONE thinks ANYONE has "rightly-divided" the Word 100%, they should have their head examined. Get real, people. If we can't understand how nature works, how our small minds work, how an eagle flies, how can we possibly expect to understand the Word God MAGNIFIED above all these things????”
You then concurred with: “Well said Irisheyes. I am not of a mind to limit God to one little man in Ohio. Like I say often: I feel like all of us will be surprised in some manner when we see Jesus face to face.”
Well I’ve already given some of those surprises in earlier paragraphs here.
But as to God being limited to just one man, it happened often in ancient times, why not now? I think this is similar to that abundance of revelation you believe happens, mentioned earlier. I think not, though. It’s the normal state of affairs that the whole world is off the Word and God finds one man who can set it straight for a very small number of students willing to carefully master it. That’s the whole story in your Bible, repeating over and over.
Irisheyes, I agree that by the working of our 5-senses NO ONE can rightly divide the Word 100%. However, by working the manifestations, and with God willing, that 100% rightly divided picture CAN BE given by revelation and written down on paper for that small number of students willing to carefully master it. Without God willing and giving this revelation there are absolutely no answers, and life is a joke.
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Doojable, the exchange between you and Oldiesman was fascinating. I loved what oldiesman posted SO MUCH i want to see it repeated.
First dmiller wrote:
“Docvic (plain and simple) took from other's works, and passed it off as his own. Some of us understand that, some don't, and some think he had a direct line to God, and got pfal from Him.”
Then oldiesman wrote:
dmiller, sorry but I am going to have to disagree in part with you, and I base my belief on the following: __ QUOTE__ ‘Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit -- that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then I worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn't, I dropped.’ __ Victor Paul Wierwille, 1972 __ The Way Living In Love __ Elena Whiteside __ page 209 __ The previous statement by VP disproves that he ‘passed it off as his own.’ __ In 1972 he said it wasn't original; ... if you don't believe he said that, there it is, right before your eyes. __ He deserves credit for not passing it off as his own, but rather saying ‘lots of the stuff I teach is not original.’ __ If he was trying to hide something, and pass off all of this as his own, he would not have made the previous statement, nor have other authors' books, from whence he learned, selling in the Way Bookstore for all to read. __ The previous statement also would disprove that PFAL is God-Breathed, since he received the content from other sources ... and not by revelation.”
OUCH! Oldiesman, you were doing so well there until the last sentence. Doojable, you conceded to the point that addresses this last line of oldiesman’s. Could you please convince oldiesman that the revelation to learn from what another man has already written by revelation is as good as getting the original revelation itself? The “other sources” that Dr went to was by revelation and those other sources got it from God too.
Other than that last sentence, oldiesman, your post refuting plagiarism charges based on what Dr plainly admitted to is very well done. But it continues even further. Doojable responded and then oldiesman’s last words on this were:
“dooj, __ QUOTE __ Why didn't he add THAT very selfsame statement to a forward in subsequent editions of the Orange Book - or any of the collaterals for that matter? __ I cannot say why and I cannot ask him or speak for him, he's dead. __ All I know is, from the evidence we have, I believe he communicated that his stuff was not original and he didn't try to palm this stuff off as ‘his own.’ __ It was stated in the collaterals that VP ‘learned from men of God scattered across the continent’ __ He said himself that his stuff wasn't original, in 1972. __ And please honestly ask yourself something: even if he had directly listed all of his sources in all his books; ... would that have changed anything? your believing or commitment at the time? __ It wouldn't have mattered one iota to me whether others were listed as sources. __ I probably would have thanked them as well.”
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Oakspear, when I quoted you here I omitted part of your post I’d like to deal with now.
You wrote: “He sold us biblical research, but he delivered blind obedience.”
Actually, there are several different kinds of research to keep straight.
One kind of research was for Dr (with God’s revelation help) to OBTAIN the Word out from the damage of the ages and translations and theologies. There was a time when some small few of us actually participated in this project and helped Dr in this obtaining process. Most of us focused on this type of research.
The year 1982 was when Dr said that the research was basically all done from 40 years of God teaching him (and teaching him WHERE to go to learn) and him writing it. He said this at Craig’s installation and it’s on that week’s SNS tape. This OBTAINING of the Word type of research was totally finished by the time Dr died a few years later.
The second kind of research was where we would re-trace some of Dr’s steps and VERIFY that his teaching tracked with the known ancient scriptures. This kind of research too, was limited in how long it was to last. By 1982 most of us mature grads should had already accomplished this kind of research verification that Dr was God’s man and that he taught accurately.
Around 1982 a third type of research became available as the books and magazine articles were being completed. Starting around then we were supposed to take all the research tools we learned for the KJV and ancient texts and apply them to PFAL. The very difficult ancient texts and versions were where we were to learn our research skills and then when the books were nearly done, IF WE HAD LISTENED TO DR’S ADVICE, our research into the much easier to deal with PFAL texts would have taken off unhindered.
Here's exactly what Dr said about his research in October of that year on that SNS tape:
“I don’t know if our men will ever have to rise, sir, to do the years of research that I’ve done to get to the Word, but I don’t think that’s necessary any longer, Craig, I think all we need to do is move on from where we are to where God would have us to go. SNS #1141 10-3-82 (Craig's Installation)
This is a very crucial utterance of Dr’s. It’s either his last as President, or his first with Craig as President of the ministry. I can’t tell from the audio tape which comes first, but it comes right at the same time as the mantle passing. The first bold fonted passage is the first type of research I mentioned above. The second bold font passage is the third type of research. None of us were ready to hear these things at that time, but they’re in the record for those of us who know it’s important to re-trace our steps very carefully... mastering PFAL.
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A simple guy
Do you now have a perfectly renewed mind, Mike?
Do you now know him as even you are known?
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Mike
No, as a matter of fact, I don't have that perfectly renewed mind yet, but I do know where to find it...IN PRINT!.
I AM progressing towards that goal, though, and not away from it... any more.
How about you?
Are you progressing towards it or away from it?
Are you satisfied with the speed of your progress (assuming it's in the right direction, which is a HUGE assumption if you are a PFAL rejector)?
Do you have any expectation of doing all the things that Jesus Christ did and greater with the course you are on?
Have you learned ANYTHING more about operating the "other" six manifestations since 1985?
I can say I know him better now than ever before.
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A simple guy
How about me? No way!
I am learning every day what it means and how to have the mind of Christ.
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WordWolf
[Mind you, this is the guy who complains about the length of MY
replies to HIM. Courtesy would call for separate posts addressing
each person.
Typical.]
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What The Hey
What amazes me is how one can accuse somebody else of what they will never recognize in themselves. That has got to be the proof of spiritual blindness - if one were truly seeking spiritual proof for anything. Matthew 15:14.
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Mike
Two Shey.
What the Hey.
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Mike
WordWolf,
I did extend you the courtesy of starting to read your post. However, I see right from the start that you want to quibble over trivialities like “one lengthy post” versus “many small posts.”
That kinda kills my motivation to slog deeper into your post. So:
IF ANYONE SEES ANY INTERESTING NON-TRIVIAL POINTS WORDWOLF MAKES
IN HIS POSTS ANALYZING MY POSTS, PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THAT INTERESTING
POINT INTO A BITE SIZED POST AND POLITELY ADDRESS IT TO ME, ok?
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Anyway I did threaten to have a private conversation in public or in PMs if you and your ilk didn’t behave, and you didn’t, so I HAD my private conversation with her in public, inviting in a few guests at times.
So, since STYLE is so much on your mind as to open your post with it, WW, what did you think of how I wove all those multi-responses into one dialog with doojable?
Hmmmmmm?
Doncha think I should get an English Comp award for my efforts there?
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Oh, and since you opened with trivialities, I’ll call you bluff and raise you ten.
I’ll bet that the bandwidth load for my choice of one lengthy post is lower than the load for many small posts, that is ifs I knows me komputers good like I thinks I does. ...lower overhead bytes.
And if I remember my quibbles history, you were the one who brought up me hogging bandwidth with long posts, or ONE of the ones who brought it up.
Isn’t it fun to quibble when such immensely important matters, LIKE GOD'S WORD, to discuss in my lengthy post are being neglected? Oh well, you selected the priorities with your opening tone.
Back to the quibbling, what broke my heart most is how you didn’t notice the way I so courteously DID break up the topics into colored sections, and also big bands of asterisks to help our dear readers.
Gosh, I hope THEY appreciated the color scheme...
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