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I'm not aware of any such allegation.

Does anyone know if vpw plagiarized someone's work for the Jesus Christ if Not God book?

This is some of the opening dialog from the movie "Pulp Fiction" in the coffee diner between Pumpkin and Honey Bunny before they pull off the robbery. "Garcon, coffee". Remember it? FREE POST

Awesome Book! JCING pales in comparison.

By the way, if you're interested in that kind of thing, Dan McClellan has a number of videos where he tears the Trinity to shreds as a Biblical concept. McClellan is a Mormon and a Bible scholar who appears to be quite honest about history (for example, he dismisses a lot of the claims the LDS church makes about Joseph Smith and the witnesses to the golden plates, etc. He has repeatedly called the story of Mormonism's founding "ahistorical" and admitted the data do not support the Book of Mormon's history of the Western hemisphere. I bring all this up to say just because he's a Mormon doesn't mean he's being dishonest with the history of the church).

Outside of TWI, I would recommend Anthony Buzzard's book "The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound." While my overall mindset has changed and I no longer believe scripture speaks with one voice on this issue, I think Buzzard presented a strong case for the view Wierwille tried to espouse.

That's how I feel about a lot of songs on this thread. George

Some of THE best teachings I've heard on these subjects were by men after they had left twi...Wayne Clapp's 'Hell is not a place of eternal torment' and John Nessles 'Who is this Jesus Christ' were/are absolutely skillful' brilliant, impactful....

I'm kinda fuzzy on the loss of rewards part, or else I wasn't paying much attention to Craig when he said all that. When in TWI, I believed that once you earned a reward it was yours forever. I believed that God doesn't retract them. You "walked on the word" for a certain period of time and space, therefore, this is the scorecard God kept and he is perfect love and truth. On the other hand, one's sinning makes one forfeit rewards. Not ones already earned but ones that could have been earned by walking faithfully on the word with TWI.

Born again believers.

I can only vaguely recognize it George.

Please remind me where in this schema the Family is placed relative to the Body and the Household.

The reason we're having trouble getting a bead on what twi teaches is that both of the posts above mine are correct. ON PAPER, twi acknowledges all Christians as saved, and part of the body of Christ. In practice, only twi was/is in "the household", and you have to jump through many hoops to maintain that, and your rewards and all sorts of things were/are attached to that. Any deficiency in complete lockstep with twi, and "God won't even spit in your direction." If you leave twi, and ANYTHING in your life is less than perfect, or anything bad happens, it's because you left God's Protection because you left The Household. You were warned your children could drop dead if you leave twi and stay out. Which of your children do you want to kill? No, I'm not exaggerating, those were all told to different posters here at different times.

I'm listening to the audio tape about William Barlow again and around the 19:00 mark, he talks about vpw's book "Jesus Christ is Not God" and how bad the explanation of John 1:1 was. He went on to list others who had researched both for and against the trinity doctrine and ended up writing a manuscript called "The Only True God." This was before he went into the corps. (Barlow tried to submit the ms through twi's process of doing research but it was rejected; sent it a year later to a former fellowship coordinator that he was still friends with who sent it off to the Ohio State coordinator who reproved Barlow for not following proper procedure [which he had actually done the year before] and yelled at him for an hour, calling him arrogant for thinking he knew more than "dr." w. The SC also said he wanted to talk about the ms with Barlow's branch coordinator first before discussing it with him. What eventually happened with the ms wasn't mentioned at this part of the tape.) Anyway, I'm wondering if there was ever an update done to JCING to improve vp's book. I know John Lynn, John Schoenheit and Mark H. Graeser wrote their own book called "One God and One Lord " which is 650 pages and is FAR better than JCING. I doubt very much twi is making that book available in their bookstore. So if twi is still sticking with this one original book on the topic of the trinity, it shows either laziness on their part to improve/update it and/or some need to keep vpw front and centre. Either way, way followers are missing out on what others have learned on this topic - so much for them being a research ministry.

Luther wasn't the only reformer although I imagine that's not what Catholics call them. Heretics? Idk. Of course, before that were the Anabaptists and I don't know who else. I don't personally feel a need for all Christians to be gathered together in this way. My personal pursuit is Acts-type Christianity with miracles and "revival"...outreach...conversions... I want to be a part of the body of Christ really getting it right and welcoming anyone who wants to come along. There is much I could say along these lines but the potential to experience Jesus in our day, in this day...I won't try to say anymore about all Ive seen and heard. I've talked about it some already. Real, living, powerful(!?), supernatural, Azusa Street Christianity... Yeah, that's where it's going.

You and George Carlin! I still laugh hysterically while listening to "Class Clown".

The importance of not losing one’s rewards is one of the hooks TWI uses to trap people into remaining in the group. You will always be in the body of Christ when you believe Romans 10: 9&10, but then also apart of the household of God. And from this point you will be accumulating spiritual rewards based on your actions within the household of God. At the final judgement these earned rewards will be given to you to enjoy for eternity. However, there is one caveat to receiving your reward, and that is you must remain active in the household od God your entire life. This is interpreted as remaining in TWI until you die, and if not your rewards will be jerked from you. Unfortunately, not only will you lose your hard earned rewards, but as Craig so elegantly proclaims, “you will be a grease spot by midnight” because God will withdraw his hedge of protection from you. You can count on being dead real soon. As you can see God puts plenty of restrictions on how you live your life.

saved by water baptism ? What if there's no water ?...saved by confession ? What if there's no priest ? The thief on the cross was perhaps a 'shadow' of what was imminent ? Thank God, Jesus came to SIMPLIFY SALVATION !!!! Thank God the Apostle Paul received the 'new' revelation in it's entirety....

Yes, Vatican 2 made some changes to RC doctrine, and one change in particular, drove me away from the church. Prior to Vatican 2, a Catholic had to abstain from eating meat on Fridays under penalty of hell if they did not find a priest to absolve them of their mortal sin. After they die, just imagine all the folks suffering in hell over eating a bologna sandwich, if they didn’t confess to a priest. Then Vatican 2 decrees it is no longer a mortal sin to chomp down on a ham and cheese grilled sandwich. A Catholic can now eat their rare steak Friday evening for supper and not go to hell. But what about those terrible meat eating sinners who weren’t fortunate enough to live in the post Vatican 2 era? Apparently they get to watch from hell with envy, as their family and friends enjoy a hamburger and hot dog bbq on a sunny Friday afternoon. And unless their family or friends commit any number of other mortal sins that will result in them being cast into the fires of hell, they will never see each other again. This decree made by a man just hasn’t set right with me and got me thinking that religion is man made. Thank goodness I finally realized there is no god and all these religious beliefs have been lifted from me.

Joe, I think you expressed yourself fine. I think we're struggling with the idea that what TWI did is somehow distinguishable from what most groups do. IE, we're talking about ourselves primarily when we're talking about the body of Christ, though we recognize others are part of the body too. We're special because we're the household, the only part of the boy of Christ getting it right. The official doctrine of TWI is that the body is all believers, from the 12 to the last convert before the trumpet.

VPW wrote that in "Christians Should Be Prosperous" or as we've said disparagingly "Christians Believe the Preposterous". https://www.amazon.com/Christians-Should-Prosperous-Victor-Wierwille/dp/0910068658/ref=sr_1_1_so_ABIS_BOOK?crid=CN3UK5C7WKOH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jFnxUBdjkeazYzesIel6tw.gOBghEwUDzIzQki4iW1RzHbXO943zbOEsQjo5_TcUWI&dib_tag=se&keywords=christians+should+be+prosperous+victor+paul+wierwille&qid=1748866500&sprefix=christians+should+be+prosperous+victor+paul+wierwille%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-1

I get what you're saying. I ask myself why all these christian denominations? Perhaps because of man's ego ultimately? I remember when my friend (a humble young lady) encouraged me to take the RCIA class (the Rite of Christian Initiation for adults in the Roman Catholic Church) as sort of a 'beginning my journey back to the RC church', she told me in passing that she wished Luther had stayed in the RC church. I've been thinking about that for years and agree with that. As the story goes, he couldn't because he was very focused and dogmatic on what he perceived as RC errors in doctrine and practice that he believed cost people time, money and maybe even their own salvation. He could have stayed and ministered to his flock and encourage change privately and individually, and eat some crow in the process. Had he done that, I certainly do not think it would have cost him his eternal salvation. What do you think?

God's wonderful, matchless word. The word! The word! The word! I wasn't in too deep. I never got to see anyone challenge his understanding of the word. If they don't follow a unity, liberty, charity model like the one I mentioned then it isn't a place for me regardless of what anyone said or did when they were alive 40 years ago.