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Almost thou persuadest me to be an atheist

Just be glad you didn't see it in the original.

I have a first hand recollection of him teaching that masturbation was the original sin. That's not an event you casually forget.

This opens up a whole lot of other questions for me like, does God work with unbelievers as well. Maybe the whole rap of "the fruit of the spirit comes from the manifestations" is bogus. QUESTION for the group: did VPW make that up or did he copy it from elsewhere... Stiles, Leonard, or somebody else?

After watching many episodes of "The Practice" and enjoying it immensely, I have to admit, "It's Possible".

This is getting obnoxious

You should care DEEPLY about the plagiarism. Not only is it illegal, unethical and slothful, large portions of what he plagiarized have been shown to be inaccurate.

Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.

There are first hand accounts here. There is also a published personal memoir by a victim that details the sexual abuse.

Nothing lasts forever 'cept, well, you know, the earth and sky.

Do you know enough atheists to come to a statistically valid conclusion that they are without joy? But extremely without joy...

WW kind of sideswiped a theory I've been working under for the past few years. I've brought it up before but it bears repeating. I have a suspicion (not enough evidence to call it a theory) that VPW was an unbeliever at heart. In tribute to Mike's thesis about how Wierwille hid great truths in plain sight and we all missed it: He declared himself to be all but atheist after studying the Bible. He no longer believed the words Holy or Bible on the cover (which is grammatically and rhetorically stupid, but you get his point). Being educated about the Bible, its history and authorship caused him to all but lose his faith. He said so! What if he never regained it? Bear with me: what if, from that moment forward, it was never about getting God and His Word right, but getting while the getting was good? He got money. He got adoration, He got fame (relative to most of us). He got attention. He got sex. He got power. How much of what he did makes more sense if he didn't believe a word of it but knew how to manipulate people to get what he wanted from them? Every time he discovered a niche, he exploited it. "This book is not some kind of Johnny come lately idea just to be iconoclastic..." [if someone has the correct wording, please let me know. I'll be happy to fix]. Oh it WASN'T? Because it was so shoddy I would think that you were selling a title rather than a book. You have a doctorate. You know how to present and defend a thesis (stop laughing, you in the back row. @#$%ing Snowball Pete). But he was an unbeliever. He KNEW the scholarship about the Bible that people like Bart Ehrman and Dan McClellan are popularizing today. He knew and he stopped believing. And THAT is when the bulls hit started. The funny thing is, it doesn't negate anything he taught. Just his motives. If McClellan and Ehrman are right, the first Christians really weren't Trinitarians. They weren't what Wierwille espoused either, though some were. Jehovah's Witnesses actually got it right, if McClellan and Ehrman are correct. But even that conclusion presupposes a unified message from the New Testament writers. And they weren't unified. Here's the problem Wierwille exposed that a lot of Christianity still gets wrong. There WAS NO FIRST CENTURY CHURCH. There were first century churches. Tons of them. And they disagreed with each other about EVERYTHING. Another topic for another time. Bottom line, I'm increasingly coming to believe that Wierwille's rise and ministry can best be explained by the hypothesis that he was an unbeliever from the moment before he became relevant.

Never thought about how wierd it is. You are not emotionally scarred are you? :)

Whoops-that is correct, sir! To be specific, he also said Leonard was good with experiences (and vpw derided experience often) but not with The Word. And H1ggins supposedly gave him his Bullinger stuff: "he writes like you teach."