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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/30/2011 in all areas

  1. Hmmm....actually yes, the quote is from the "Advanced Class" part of the series, and as you probably remember VPW stated "everything" was in the PFAL Foundational class itself, the Intermediate and Advanced just expounded on the basics which were all in the Foundational Class. If you have the "old" 65 page syllabus you'll get close enough to what he was talking about with that statement. The challenge to you johniam would be to simply take all of the doctrinal statements in PFAL and the "basic principles" we'll call them and, using the exact statements he makes throughout, form an integrated whole from the parts so that everything "fits" with everything else, hand in glove style. The question would then be - does it? and if it does, fine. If it doesn't, what falls out, what or where are the gaps? Doing that you'll move quickly past the "believe" part of PFAL - at this stage of my life I'd say that any idiot knows that to do anything they have to well, do it - and that's what VPW teaches - "believing action" to attain a result stated/promised in the Bible. Basically - treat the Bible and what it says with the same functional approach a person would with anything else in life. Believe it and there will be a result. This can in no way imply that nothing "happens" until a person "believes". Remember - everything essential and vital to Christianity has happened without any believing, effort, foresight or forethought on man's part at all. Nada. Zip. It's all God and Christ. VPW cut a fine line on this, if you're interested in fitting all of PFAL together and this is one part where it gets squishy - "not by works" - right there in the Bible. No effort on man's part constructs, achieves or earns his redemption, it's a "gift". A gift requires a giver - man is the recipient. If it's not by works, then believing can't accomplish anything towards it. It can't be defined as taught in PFAL or else it would be disqualified as a "work". First with the new birth (which VPW describes as "regenerate man" - what's that really mean? - and further with the life that comes from it. Pistis is in the bible, "believe" is - but it's been somewhat warped to imply and ultimately mean that man is doing something to make something happen. He's not. Acceptance is a much more passive term but describes man's role better. And it gets closer to the true relationship that man has to have with Christ than "pistis" being believing and that being an effort. The Way focuses on a single english word. Trust and confidence in the thing believed in, is the core meaning. There's no push that comes from man's part in that, it's the relinquishing of pushing that forms real faith. To quote VPW, I didn't write the book - and I'm not rewriting it either. Romans 8:9 might be an appropriate close to this.
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