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Yes. I agree with Raf in the sense that it's better to not believe in God at all then believe in a god that is absent and does not care. On the founders, I have a book called "In God We Trust: the Religious Beliefs and Ideals of the Founding Fathers: Cousins, Norman: 9780764709562: Amazon.com: Books" that gives many quotes and illustrates that some "deists" may not be the deists some think.

Deism from the Latin term deus, meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God (often, but not necessarily, a God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it), solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology—that is, God's existence is revealed through nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism Any thoughts on this?

OldSkool posted his website in his OP. Here is a more updated one as well as one for his videos of the prophesies. He's up to over 1300 views now. https://www.eyesupandopen.org/index.php/prophecies-from-jesus-christ https://www.youtube.com/@spiritofprophecy777 Sorry, you'll have to copy and paste to see them.

Thomas Jefferson (yeah, THAT one) did a cut and paste of the gospels that eliminated supernatural references, including the resurrection. This is not surprising, as he was a bit of what we might call a deist.

What a horrible thing to have experienced Waysider. It sounds like you were in twi when this happened because you wrote about feeling guilty over not trying to raise your roommate from the dead. You also mentioned about not having the believing to do so which sounds like twi's teaching of the law of believing. We believed in such spiritual abilities as taught by twi, but how many were actually performed by vpw or lcm? Did we even think to wonder about that, or were we too caught up in our own personal call to do them? As you know, I have come to accept that the bible, OT and NT, was written by men, possibly for political reasons (not completely sure of this). So I'm curious to know why the four gospel writers included the miracles that the person named Jesus did like walking on water (along with Peter doing so too), feeding over 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, raising the dead, etc. if the truth was they never happened. Was it to make the miracles of this son of a god greater than the works claimed to have been done by other gods believed in at the time? Perhaps John hints at this in chapter 9:32 Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. 33 If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. All the earlier gospels recorded Jesus healing the blind, but only in John, which was the last gospel written, was there this record of healing a man born blind.

I've never in my life experienced a more intense feeling of depression and hopelessness than I did those 2 weeks at the AC. Hearing about suicide supposedly being caused by a devil spirit certainly didn't help the situation. I had one of those confrontations with death, also, though it happened before I took the AC. My roommate had talked of committing suicide. When I found him he was already dead. I felt guilt and shame for years for not trying to muster the believing to raise him from the dead. I can't erase the pain it caused me then, but I can live my life now without feeling guilt about it.

A drop in the bucket compared to your number and all of the others . It's totally insignificant that the first time I've noticed my number in I don't know how long, it was at 666, or is it ? Have a great day Rocky!

Now it's 667. Has to do with the number of posts/comments you make, I think.

I just noticed I have "666" under my "C." Mmmph Good thing I've deconverted

For decades, I've only had this one disturbing memory of my entire time at the AC, and the posts above have finally put it into context. (Thank you both for writing them.) That context being the focus on the adversary and devil spirits. My memory is vague but I do know I was feeling very bad about myself and so I went into hiding. I don't remember for how long or where I went but I do know it was an intense feeling. I needed to get away from everyone. I no longer believe in devil spirits but at that time I obviously did, and I think now I may have believed I had one. I don't remember finishing the class but when I did and returned home, a lot of activity was going on in my life. I learned right away about a man I had signed up for the class had just died suddenly, and my first reaction was to go and raise him from the dead. Seriously! I was so sure I could do this, I had to be talked out of it by a believer who was with me at the time. She had been my WOW coordinator and was then in the way corps. I also told my fiance that I wanted to go wow - a decision I made during those 2 weeks - and he agreed (reluctantly he later told me). Soon afterward we got married and within a week left for the ROA and went into the wow program. Within the first month of being on the wow field, I had a total breakdown. That intense feeling of self-condemnation that I had at the AC returned, I think because I was finding my wow commitment to be so overwhelming. But quitting the assignment meant we'd be outside of god's protection and therefore open for terrible things to happen to us which included my innocent one-year-old son. My husband and I did leave both the wow program and twi and eventually things settled down in my mind. But all this manic-depressive-like behavior started with that AC - the need to hide from others, deciding to go wow, the conviction I could raise someone from the dead, the rush of the ROA and wow training and finally the crash on the wow field. What insanity! But it didn't stop me from returning to twi a couple of years later.

Significantly, there's a signed photo of Berenger in this role in the bar of the Menger Hotel in San Antonio. Tom Berenger Paul Giamatti Richard Dreyfuss Brian Keith Robin Williams Robert Vaughn Edward G. Robinson Jake Busey Aidan Quinn George

I honestly don't know WHEN it was first used, though it probably preceded the Titanic. I'm really asking about the origin of the term. George

In the foundational class, you're told you have unlimited power to do whatever you can imagine. By the time you get to the advanced class, you're walking on eggshells, looking over your shoulder, making sure the adversary doesn't creep up on you and snuff you out for moving the word. Power for abundant living indeed. Don't leave, though, unless you want to end up a greasespot in the road by midnight.

That's it.

Glad you found medical answers and have enjoyed a rich interaction with your grandson. The JWs are real bad about the medical stuff and superstition with how they refuse any blood transfusions due to some strange scripture interpretation. I blame the Adv Class for all the stuff about devil spirits. It was like Harry Potter crossed with conspiracy theory with some OT reading to lull the hearers to sleep. It is interesting to see the end result of all of that is driving people away from faith.

Titanic?

Good something, good guys, good melons, no something else. Good squad or Good mob, no, not quite it. Good to Be King. Oops wrong thread. Good gangsters? HOW ABOUT "GOODFELLAS" then.

The part I found most off-putting to the story I shared was the idea that the 16 year old believed the Lord put on his heart that his mother, who appeared to be having a heart attack, actually had devil spirits and so he asked God to take the demons off of her. As I mentioned, she was instantly healed of her symptoms. So while my friend shared this experience to encourage me not to give up on such a faithful and powerful God, it actually made me not want to have anything to do with a god who allows devil spirits to roam freely around to cause such fear and suffering in this woman so he could then be called upon to deliver her from them. I don’t believe my friend thought for a moment that god wouldn’t do a miracle for my grandson’s healing as well. I replied, however, that I had lost my trust in this god who hadn’t showed up for us in quite some time. .

I was thinking of this a couple of days ago when I realized how in the past 2 weeks, quite a few good things had happened. After the latest change to my grandson’s meds by his neurologist, his seizures have become less severe and not as frequent so he was able to return to school part time. Because of his principal’s advocacy, the school board had approved one-to-one support for him. This is a very difficult thing to get. After graduating from college a year ago and many of his job applications being rejected (as well as a few unsuccessful interviews), my oldest grandson who lives with us got a full-time entry job in his field. I finally received a replacement for a medical device I need that was recalled two years ago due to a risk of causing liver damage. As a Christian, I would have believed and been thankful that all these blessings were from God. Since deconverting, I'm now simply thankful for the good things life brings our way, sometimes with the help of other people. And when I learned a couple of days ago I owed over $600.00 in income tax because something I thought I had corrected online apparently didn't go through, once I calmed down, I let it go as .... simply happens in life as well. The point is that it was great not having to concern myself with whether a god was or wasn't looking out for me based on whether I was or wasn't trusting enough in him.

Mmmph

I think what believers don't realize about stories like this is how capricious, whimsical and arbitrary it makes God look. "See, he did it for so and so!" And all it makes us realize is the number of times he did NOT see fit to intervene. He has his reasons. Who are we to question? Yeah, we have every right to question. We are the recipients of failed promise after failed promise. He's lucky we think he doesn't exist: it's literally his only redeeming quality. Once you've eliminated his existence from consideration, it's impossible to be angry at him. It's impossible to hate him. Suddenly it's just ... the world looks exactly like you would expect the world to look if there were no God. "I survived a crash that killed three people! Praise God!" Do people who say such things even hear themselves?

Thanks cman and chockfull, WW for the topic thread and opening up so many aspects to it all. PFAL's teaching on this attempts to off an answer to the question of how we came to be, how the earth and the universe we see around us came to be to the end it produced us today, and account for all the fossil records and prehistoric evidence of the past. But what if I take that question away, what if I'm not trying to have a Bible, "faith based" response to evolution or the age of the earth or prehistoric fossils or where this all came from that fits with anything else....? What if I'm just reading the Bible and taking what it says at face value? I have a record that isn't all that hard to understand, with a little study, and on face value. I don't know what it all means, by any means, but I know what I'm reading to a great extent. One thing PFAL did point out of course is that the English translations of all those ancient Hebrew and Greek scrolls and scriptures are subject to interpretation - which is what VPW did with PFAL. There is no effort to translate one language into another that doesn't require interpretation - of words, grammar, history, culture, usage and on and on. VPW posited a process that's fairly conservative, in my opinion but then I wasn't and still aren't trying to attack or defend anything. If it was recipes for Chili it might not be a big deal but sure, anything of such importance is going to be a challenging effort, to say the least. So here we are. I can read and learn today, without the artificial impetus of supporting anything other than a God who creates with purpose, loves like a Father and Who has shared Jesus Christ with me to bring me to the place I need to be in this life to live it as He would have it and I am privileged to work out. But I don't need an answer to evolution - if the Bible is to be taken at "it's Word", at face value, then I believe the best approach is to just read it, study it, do my best to learn it and from it, and let it speak for itself. It doesn't need to "fit like a hand in a glove", it doesn't need to harmonize or organize by my standards or any I put on it. It will, it does, but that was NEVER the intention of the Bible, the "Word of God". Men organize, God creates. Men wear gloves that fit, God doesn't, He is the fit. Men lie, God doesn't. The written Word is a human effort. I do believe I benefit from the efforts of men and women in the past to write and pass on what they lived and learned. I expect a level of integrity to it. I also understand that doing something by "inspiration" of God doesn't guarantee literary perfection, using an imperfect tool to build a perfect outcome. This is "Treasure in earthen vessels" at best, indeed. Any perfection or higher standards of accomplishment I see in the Bible and learn from it have to be the product of God's divine interaction over thousands of years. To be celebrated yes, taught yes. So I have no problem with people putting forth teaching and guidance with intention and passion, myself included. Peace and love and music and stuff!

Isn't sociological narrative both powerful and incredibly tricky? I again rejoice with you for the (mental and emotional) work you do to process what you've been learning. I suspect that processing has shown you that what we learned from Wierwille's "ministry/cult had obvious limitations. Your life experience, notably with your precious grandson showed you some of those limitations. My view is that God (or one's imagination of what God is or may be) are FAR bigger than what twi could imagine or bring into manifestation. I also rejoice in what you've shared about while researching compassion and fear. Though my challenges aren't the same as your challenges, I remain curious and each day wanting to learn and expand what I can know. I have an 11-year old grandson who recently shared with me that he attends school online. And that he doesn't miss in-person school. My heart goes out to him and to my daughter's family even though they are reluctant to share the details of my grandson's challenges. I have, over the course of the last decade, observed my grandson exhibiting intense curiosity about various aspects of life. I have no doubt that my grandson's curiosity is a great gift regardless of the social difficulties he endures. Anyway, I am so thankful for what you've shared with us on GSC, dear Charity.