Sunesis, that is the only thing that makes any sense to me :(
There is a scripture saying something to the effect of *how can you say that you love God whom you cannot see when you do not love these whom you can?
Top leaders in twi were many times quite cruel in their treatment of us...some of their actions life altering devistating to innocent souls....
These are not the actions of people working for God.....
I think that we thought we were....but I begin to feel as if rather than getting closer, we were being drawn away.....thinking that our knowledge was going to make us spiritual.
Rascal, I think that sums it up in a nut shell. Now hear me out. :)
I have a hard time believing that twi was based on God. I have stated in the past it may have started with a pure heart but the more I think about it. I am inclined it never was.
I think they used the scripture to entrap us. Hell yeah they knew it inside and out and so did we as they taught it. They taught us how to live the "Christian life". Why do you (I don't mean just you Rascal) think we saw so many Godly things happen in twi? It was us the "low lifers" of twi that saw the great things of God work. We believed Gods Word and acted upon it. That is why some where delivered from some things. Gods Word changed lives not twi.
"Devistating souls" as you put it. Could there be any more than the truth? Rape, suicide and as some people have said murder. That is hung on the top leaderships heads and IMO they will pay for that in the end. They slanderd people in the name of God when actually it was done to protect their sorry arses in twi. It was not "written" in the Word but it was written in twi's rule book so that twi could survive.
As far as being drawn away from God and his Word. You bet we were. It was all for them and not God.
Twi was and probably never was in the buisness to show people how to be saved but to coin the phrase "It is all about twi" Top leadership knew a great scam when they saw it.
Damn...I was just struck by an unbelievable thought.....
What IF....our suspicions are correct? ....Gosh would that then explain the complete and utter contempt that vpw and top twi leaders held fellow Christians and other churches?
Could it be that in teaching us to have such contempt and lack of respect ....that they were in fact able to effectively draw us away from God?
What if we are condemned to a life time *outside* of the body of Christ because we cannot overcome our conditioned lack of respect with which we were taught to view churches and fellow Christians pov`s ?
Why do you (I don't mean just you Rascal) think we saw so many Godly things happen in twi? It was us the "low lifers" of twi that saw the great things of God work. We believed Gods Word and acted upon it. That is why some where delivered from some things. Gods Word changed lives not twi.
I think that this could be an extremely important point in understanding why there were such marked contradictions in our experiences in twi.
Rascal, read the book of Jude, then go to I and II Peter. Jude first.
I rarely ever used to read those books until recently, when after reading them a light bulb went off in my head - those books are for us now, today, in this specific age, right before the Book of Revelations kicks in.
Read what it has to say about who is really leading the church, and much of Christianity.
That's why I ask, where is your Pastor leading you?
Also, the men who grew TWI, Heefner, Doop, Fugit, et al., there is no doubt in my mind these were true Christian men, who's ministry was literally grabbed from them. Once it grew, VP told Doop and Heefner - the money goes to me know boys - they were smart enough to see they had been conned and said, see ya later.
Us "regular" Joe believers, I believe most of us were born again. Most people did not want to go corps, wow, or hang with VP.
Top leadership, those who seemed to have no problem kissing VP's butt, zooming to the top - well, it takes one to know one. I always think of CG and VP, when he was privately ordained, both laughing through the "ceremony" like it was a big joke. To them it was - sadly, the joke was on us.
Coolness, I was on staff at H.Q. when CG was ordained. I think it was done after a SNS, before he was getting ready to leave for Europe. It was a small, private ceremony. Someone who was there told me he and VP were giggling together during the whole ceremony. I thought that was weird. I felt surely, something that great (as we were taught to believe), would have been a serious, solemn, dignified occassion.
Rascal, it will be interesting to hear your thoughts.
I found it interesting I Peter starts off with, well, I was going to speak to you about something, but its urgent for me to now speak to you about this... and he goes on.
As I said, it just struck me as to what specific time period these books were for.
The question of to what specific time period these books were for. is sort of a funny subject.
Dispensationalism is something that is a relatively recent innovation that has, imho, really screwed up Biblical exegesis for the past 150 years or so. Most folks are not even aware of the history of dispensationalism:
Born out of the restless religious environment in England and Ireland in the 1820s, dispensationalism is rooted in the Plymouth Brethren movement, especially the teachings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882). While Darby is the father of dispensationalism, Dave MacPherson, in his 1975 book Incredible Cover Up, stated that the beginning of the movement could be rooted in Glasgow, Scotland. There in 1830 a fifteen-year-old girl named Margaret McDonald claimed to have the gift of prophecy and visions of the end of the world. McDonald would often go into "prophecy trances" and write down her visions soon after. MacPherson claimed that Darby learned of McDonald's visions during a visit to Scotland in the 1830s. Whether this was the origin of Darby's ideas on the subject is a hotly disputed topic.
The Plymouth Brethren movement, essentially a reaction against the established church and its ecclesiology, became known for its anti-denominational, anti-clerical, and anti-credal stance. While theologically orthodoxal, the Plymouth Brethren, Darby in particular, developed some unique ideas regarding the interpretation of Scripture while emphasizing prophecy and the second coming of Christ. The theology of this movement became dispensationalism.
This new teaching first spread in America through prophecy conferences such as the Niagara Bible Conferences (1883–1897). Most importantly, Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) was sympathetic to the broad outlines of dispensationalism and had, as his closest lieutenants, dispensationalist leaders such as Reuben Archer Torrey (1856–1928), James M. Gray (1851–1925), Cyrus I. Scofield (1843–1921]]), William J. Eerdman (1833–1923), A. C. Dixon (1854–1925),A. J. Gordon (1836–1895) and William Blackstone, author of the bestseller of the 1800s "Jesus is Coming" (Endorsed by Torrey and Erdman). These men were activist evangelists who promoted a host of Bible conferences and other missionary and evangelistic efforts. They also gave the dispensationalist movement institutional permanence by assuming leadership of the new independent Bible institutes such as the Moody Bible Institute (1886), the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (1907), and the Philadelphia College of the Bible—now the Philadelphia Biblical University (1914). The network of related institutes that soon sprang up became the nucleus for the spread of American dispensationalism.
The energetic efforts of C. I. Scofield and his associates introduced dispensationalism to a wider audience in America and bestowed a measure of respectability through his Scofield Reference Bible. The publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 by the Oxford University Press was something of an innovative literary coup for the movement, since for the first time, overtly dispensationalist notes were added to the pages of the biblical text. The Scofield Reference Bible became the leading bible used by independent Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in the U.S. for the next sixty years. Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871–1952), strongly influenced by C. I. Scofield, founded Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924, which has become the flagship of dispensationalism in America. Dispensationalism has come to dominate the American Evangelical scene, especially among nondenominational Bible churches, many Baptists, and most Pentecostal and Charismatic groups.
Prior to dispensationalism, Covenant Theology was the prominent Protestant view regarding redemptive history and is still the view of the Reformed churches. A relatively recent view, which is seen as a third alternative, especially among conservative Baptists, is called New Covenant Theology. Outside of Protestantism, however, all of the Christian churches (e.g., Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox) reject dispensationalism.
The question of <i>to what specific time period these books were for.</i> is sort of a funny subject.
Dispensationalism is something that is a relatively recent innovation that has, imho, really screwed up Biblical exegesis for the past 150 years or so. Most folks are not even aware of the history of dispensationalism:
<hr width=75%>
<font face='garamond' size=2>Born out of the restless religious environment in England and Ireland in the 1820s, dispensationalism is rooted in the Plymouth Brethren movement, especially the teachings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882). While Darby is the father of dispensationalism,
Dave MacPherson, in his 1975 book Incredible Cover Up, stated that the beginning of the movement could be rooted in Glasgow, Scotland. There in 1830 a fifteen-year-old girl named Margaret McDonald claimed to have the gift of prophecy and visions of the end of the world. McDonald would often go into "prophecy trances" and write down her visions soon after. MacPherson claimed that Darby learned of McDonald's visions during a visit to Scotland in the 1830s. Whether this was the origin of Darby's ideas on the subject is a hotly disputed topic.
The upshot of it-and tell me if you see it differently-
is that Mc Donald was expecting the church to live thru the tribulation
(she was NOT a pre-tribulationist as Dave invented),
and that she was scared the church was not READY.
At most, she was a "partial rapturist".
You read it. Me and Dave have now made opposing claims.
Read it for yourself and see how you translate it.
I don't buy dispensationalism. To provide a little information backing up what I already knew about it (that it was a recent innovation), I found a convenient "non-Catholic" and "secular" source to cite...but am more than happy to locate plenty of other sources. Frankly, I am not up on the latest dispensationalist vs nondispensationalist debate within Protestantism (for fairly obvious reasons).
Fact remains:
- dispensationalism is a relatively recent innovation (Darby popularized it...now where he got his information is an interesting, but not particularly relevant discussion)
- dispensationalism distorts how one understands the scriptures (and is a cause for many of the horrible misinterpretations that were pushed on folk by the leadership of TWI btw)
You want a couple of "Catholic" articles on the subject?
As far as Dave McPherson is concerned, I have no idea who that is. As to Margaret MacDonald, until this came up, I'd never heard of her (nor for that matter have I ever heard of a group called the "Catholic Apostolic Church"). So I'll take your word for whatever you claim she said...it's really not that important to the point I was trying to make one way or the other.
I wasn't thinking of dispensationalism at all reading Peter and Jude. I've come to the conclusion the Bible is not divided into dispensations or administrations.
My point is, sometimes, it seems the world is going to pot and we get to watch its end coming in the comfort of our easy chairs as we watch the news in the evening.
It was just a thought that struck me as I read, and for me, the books seemed to open up much more. Also, if you've read the book of Enoch, which Jude quotes, it makes even more sense.
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justloafing
Rascal, I think that sums it up in a nut shell. Now hear me out. :)
I have a hard time believing that twi was based on God. I have stated in the past it may have started with a pure heart but the more I think about it. I am inclined it never was.
I think they used the scripture to entrap us. Hell yeah they knew it inside and out and so did we as they taught it. They taught us how to live the "Christian life". Why do you (I don't mean just you Rascal) think we saw so many Godly things happen in twi? It was us the "low lifers" of twi that saw the great things of God work. We believed Gods Word and acted upon it. That is why some where delivered from some things. Gods Word changed lives not twi.
"Devistating souls" as you put it. Could there be any more than the truth? Rape, suicide and as some people have said murder. That is hung on the top leaderships heads and IMO they will pay for that in the end. They slanderd people in the name of God when actually it was done to protect their sorry arses in twi. It was not "written" in the Word but it was written in twi's rule book so that twi could survive.
As far as being drawn away from God and his Word. You bet we were. It was all for them and not God.
Twi was and probably never was in the buisness to show people how to be saved but to coin the phrase "It is all about twi" Top leadership knew a great scam when they saw it.
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rascal
Damn...I was just struck by an unbelievable thought.....
What IF....our suspicions are correct? ....Gosh would that then explain the complete and utter contempt that vpw and top twi leaders held fellow Christians and other churches?
Could it be that in teaching us to have such contempt and lack of respect ....that they were in fact able to effectively draw us away from God?
What if we are condemned to a life time *outside* of the body of Christ because we cannot overcome our conditioned lack of respect with which we were taught to view churches and fellow Christians pov`s ?
I think that this could be an extremely important point in understanding why there were such marked contradictions in our experiences in twi.
Thank you for the scripture David.
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rascal
I am just stunned by the implications ....
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Sunesis
Rascal, read the book of Jude, then go to I and II Peter. Jude first.
I rarely ever used to read those books until recently, when after reading them a light bulb went off in my head - those books are for us now, today, in this specific age, right before the Book of Revelations kicks in.
Read what it has to say about who is really leading the church, and much of Christianity.
That's why I ask, where is your Pastor leading you?
Also, the men who grew TWI, Heefner, Doop, Fugit, et al., there is no doubt in my mind these were true Christian men, who's ministry was literally grabbed from them. Once it grew, VP told Doop and Heefner - the money goes to me know boys - they were smart enough to see they had been conned and said, see ya later.
Us "regular" Joe believers, I believe most of us were born again. Most people did not want to go corps, wow, or hang with VP.
Top leadership, those who seemed to have no problem kissing VP's butt, zooming to the top - well, it takes one to know one. I always think of CG and VP, when he was privately ordained, both laughing through the "ceremony" like it was a big joke. To them it was - sadly, the joke was on us.
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coolchef1248 @adelphia.net
sunny i have never heard about this! i was out long b4
please expound
thanks
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Sunesis
Coolness, I was on staff at H.Q. when CG was ordained. I think it was done after a SNS, before he was getting ready to leave for Europe. It was a small, private ceremony. Someone who was there told me he and VP were giggling together during the whole ceremony. I thought that was weird. I felt surely, something that great (as we were taught to believe), would have been a serious, solemn, dignified occassion.
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Shellon
This one is an oldie but a goodie that I thought rascal especially might appreciate. Dunno where it came from, but showed up in my email again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday's sermon was---Forgive Your Enemies. Toward the end of the
service, the Minister asked, "How many of you have forgiven your
enemies?"
80% held up their hands.
The Minister then repeated his question. All responded this time,
except one small elderly lady.
Mrs. Jones?"; "Are you not willing to forgive your
enemies?"
"I don't have any." She replied, smiling sweetly.
"Mrs. Jones, that is very unusual. How old are you?"
"Ninety-eight." she replied.
"Oh Mrs. Jones, would you please come down in front & tell us all how
a person can live ninety-eight years & not have an enemy in the world?"
The little sweetheart of a lady tottered down the aisle, faced the
congregation, and said:
"I outlived the bitches."
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jardinero
Shell
J.
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topoftheworld
Sums up my goal in life.
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justloafing
ROTFLMAO
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rascal
TOO funnt Shell :lol:
SUnesis... I am in the process of reading those recomended passages.
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Sunesis
Rascal, it will be interesting to hear your thoughts.
I found it interesting I Peter starts off with, well, I was going to speak to you about something, but its urgent for me to now speak to you about this... and he goes on.
As I said, it just struck me as to what specific time period these books were for.
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markomalley
The question of to what specific time period these books were for. is sort of a funny subject.
Dispensationalism is something that is a relatively recent innovation that has, imho, really screwed up Biblical exegesis for the past 150 years or so. Most folks are not even aware of the history of dispensationalism:
Born out of the restless religious environment in England and Ireland in the 1820s, dispensationalism is rooted in the Plymouth Brethren movement, especially the teachings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882). While Darby is the father of dispensationalism, Dave MacPherson, in his 1975 book Incredible Cover Up, stated that the beginning of the movement could be rooted in Glasgow, Scotland. There in 1830 a fifteen-year-old girl named Margaret McDonald claimed to have the gift of prophecy and visions of the end of the world. McDonald would often go into "prophecy trances" and write down her visions soon after. MacPherson claimed that Darby learned of McDonald's visions during a visit to Scotland in the 1830s. Whether this was the origin of Darby's ideas on the subject is a hotly disputed topic.
The Plymouth Brethren movement, essentially a reaction against the established church and its ecclesiology, became known for its anti-denominational, anti-clerical, and anti-credal stance. While theologically orthodoxal, the Plymouth Brethren, Darby in particular, developed some unique ideas regarding the interpretation of Scripture while emphasizing prophecy and the second coming of Christ. The theology of this movement became dispensationalism.
This new teaching first spread in America through prophecy conferences such as the Niagara Bible Conferences (1883–1897). Most importantly, Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) was sympathetic to the broad outlines of dispensationalism and had, as his closest lieutenants, dispensationalist leaders such as Reuben Archer Torrey (1856–1928), James M. Gray (1851–1925), Cyrus I. Scofield (1843–1921]]), William J. Eerdman (1833–1923), A. C. Dixon (1854–1925),A. J. Gordon (1836–1895) and William Blackstone, author of the bestseller of the 1800s "Jesus is Coming" (Endorsed by Torrey and Erdman). These men were activist evangelists who promoted a host of Bible conferences and other missionary and evangelistic efforts. They also gave the dispensationalist movement institutional permanence by assuming leadership of the new independent Bible institutes such as the Moody Bible Institute (1886), the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (1907), and the Philadelphia College of the Bible—now the Philadelphia Biblical University (1914). The network of related institutes that soon sprang up became the nucleus for the spread of American dispensationalism.
The energetic efforts of C. I. Scofield and his associates introduced dispensationalism to a wider audience in America and bestowed a measure of respectability through his Scofield Reference Bible. The publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 by the Oxford University Press was something of an innovative literary coup for the movement, since for the first time, overtly dispensationalist notes were added to the pages of the biblical text. The Scofield Reference Bible became the leading bible used by independent Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in the U.S. for the next sixty years. Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871–1952), strongly influenced by C. I. Scofield, founded Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924, which has become the flagship of dispensationalism in America. Dispensationalism has come to dominate the American Evangelical scene, especially among nondenominational Bible churches, many Baptists, and most Pentecostal and Charismatic groups.
Prior to dispensationalism, Covenant Theology was the prominent Protestant view regarding redemptive history and is still the view of the Reformed churches. A relatively recent view, which is seen as a third alternative, especially among conservative Baptists, is called New Covenant Theology. Outside of Protestantism, however, all of the Christian churches (e.g., Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox) reject dispensationalism.
For more, see the Wikipedia article.
Something to keep in mind when considering, to whom written...
Article extracted per "Fair Use" doctrine for educational purposes. 17 U.S.C. 107
Source URLs: www.wikipedia.org
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WordWolf
Basing ANY part of your argument on ANY utterance of Dave McPherson
largely WEAKENS and TAINTS your argument.
Dave has a personal axe to grind against dispensationalism and
the Rapture doctrine, and credits them to various misfortunes in the
life of his father. Dave has shown an eagerness to make any kind of
claim to undercut them-whether or not there is even the slimmest
evidence to justify such a claim.
Here's the text of her vison. (That's VISION, SINGULAR.)
http://www.bibleprophesy.org/vision.htm
The upshot of it-and tell me if you see it differently-
is that Mc Donald was expecting the church to live thru the tribulation
(she was NOT a pre-tribulationist as Dave invented),
and that she was scared the church was not READY.
At most, she was a "partial rapturist".
You read it. Me and Dave have now made opposing claims.
Read it for yourself and see how you translate it.
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markomalley
I don't buy dispensationalism. To provide a little information backing up what I already knew about it (that it was a recent innovation), I found a convenient "non-Catholic" and "secular" source to cite...but am more than happy to locate plenty of other sources. Frankly, I am not up on the latest dispensationalist vs nondispensationalist debate within Protestantism (for fairly obvious reasons).
Fact remains:
- dispensationalism is a relatively recent innovation (Darby popularized it...now where he got his information is an interesting, but not particularly relevant discussion)
- dispensationalism distorts how one understands the scriptures (and is a cause for many of the horrible misinterpretations that were pushed on folk by the leadership of TWI btw)
You want a couple of "Catholic" articles on the subject?
Are we living in the last days, Carl E. Olson.
False Profit, by Jimmy Akin
Left Behind: Any Link With The Early Church, Dwight Longenecker
As far as Dave McPherson is concerned, I have no idea who that is. As to Margaret MacDonald, until this came up, I'd never heard of her (nor for that matter have I ever heard of a group called the "Catholic Apostolic Church"). So I'll take your word for whatever you claim she said...it's really not that important to the point I was trying to make one way or the other.
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Sunesis
I wasn't thinking of dispensationalism at all reading Peter and Jude. I've come to the conclusion the Bible is not divided into dispensations or administrations.
My point is, sometimes, it seems the world is going to pot and we get to watch its end coming in the comfort of our easy chairs as we watch the news in the evening.
It was just a thought that struck me as I read, and for me, the books seemed to open up much more. Also, if you've read the book of Enoch, which Jude quotes, it makes even more sense.
Just my thoughts.
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