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No problem Annio. Grieving such a loss over what you missed out on in your relationship with Christ because of twi will be according to your own personal timetable. Check back in if and when you want - the best thing I learned from being on GSC was that I'm not alone and neither are you.

Yes more details! It is interesting for sure. I’m pretty sure the RNE book is treated with the cone of silence by TWI lol. Meaning no quoting in Wag mag articles or teachings. It is an example of research which they have released no other research books since I’m aware of which is probably why they still sell it. Yes Acts is pretty much the only canonical history of the Christian church so it’s easy to see why some would get all caught up in it. I think some of those “figures of speech” are just ways people can make scripture say something it really doesn’t. I can appreciate things in native languages but they use it to twist and shoehorn scripture into places it is not naturally. It should be just an enhancer like cinnamon on rice pudding as opposed to changing rice pudding to banana pudding like they do with it. Peter and Paul. Very different lives and callings. Jerusalem and traveling the world by wooden ship. And letters. Then the conflict at the end with Paul over the legalistic Jerusalem crowd. The problem with the great statements is they basically just extracted sales numbers out of “growing and prevailing” and put them down for field assignment quotas. That’s where you see it today - the Way Tree and all the Pharisee responsibility lists. “Run classes while quoting the BOD” or something. Actually “carry the heart of the BOD to the field” is more the nonsense. The problem is the Pharisee heart just leaves people wanting to run for the hills. I think the Word prevails more here than under the “dull Way traditions where believers are controlled and censored”. Here we have a rich input of scripture, psychology, and many other fields blending together to help people escape the grasp of the legalists who would put you to work for free.

What a succinct little presentation — a glove tailor made for Mike’s hand. And Mike readily admits as much. This guy had Mike in mind Though, I might push back a bit on the data silo. The silo from which Mike draws his feed is not filled with data or information, rather, it’s filled with beleeef, bullsh-it, misinformation.

Siloed information sources. That's an exquisitely reasonable characterization of what MIKE brings to GSC. In fact, cultism is ALL about siloed information.

Under my own personal definition of an athlete, with a dash/heap of anecdotal experience, I think athletes of the spirit is a very apt description of at least Christians, but most definitely wafers. Dictionary.com states that an athlete is a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill. In today's world I operationalize it as someone who is not only participating in a physical sport, but their master status and life is oriented around the notion of being an athlete. Generally speaking, but not in all cases, said person would have to be actively participating/training in a sport as well (and perhaps even at the highest level of competition that they can). AAU, the high school team, college, military, and so on. I have been an athlete for my entire life up until about 5 years go through team sports, my job in the military, racing motorcycles and cars, and surfing competitions. As an athlete and a teacher at a very large Division 1 University who has literally had entire basketball, football, baseball, softball, and soccer teams in my classroom at the same time - athletes are not something that anyone should look up to. Athletes in this world are children. They are dumb, they are ignorant, and they do not care about things that do not affect their sport, team, or own physical abilities. They have no respect for those not in their circle. Those I taught in my classes were all Division 1 athletes and some have gone onto being professional athletes as children. I would never look up to any of them and I never have told anyone about my being an athlete because of how I see them and because I can unequivocally say that I was just as bad as anyone I am referring to. They are too narrow-minded and only care about their physical abilities in so much that it elevates them above others. They believe they are better than others because they can do X or Y better than the next person, or you. Also, these teams would only be in my 300 person classrooms, not the 75 person ones, and they would sit in the back corners with their backs to me and their headphones on. They would have a chaperone follow them to my class to make sure they made it and then would come back after to make sure they were still there. EVEN THE UNIVERSITY KNEW THESE KIDS DIDN'T HAVE THERE SH!T TOGETHER. But all of the money that Universities get is basically through sport. All Division 1 schools shut down the campus for game days, fyi. Learning does not matter when millions of dollars are about to pour in. I am generalizing. I understand not all athletes are like this. But I would say that over 50% definitely are. Based on GPA's of said athletes I am being very generous in my opinion. I remember when my favorite Kansas University point guard back in the day graduated with a 4.0 and went on to the NBA, it was such a big deal lol. Anywhooo, I see no difference between athletes in college/professional level and those in TWI. Their way or the highway. Listen to what I have to say I'm better than you. I don't talk to people like you because you are not at the same level as me. I see athletes as young and dumb and willing to do whatever they are told to be on the team, much like TWI. Once on said team they will take almost any type of mental or physical abuse to stay or the team, or to be ranked higher within their own team, let alone their sport. I see coaches, trainers, and any other type of leadership as the same as in TWI/Christianity. Utilizing their position for their own status and egos at the cost of those beneath them. Yet those involved will defend the leadership because it is "making them stronger, better, more disciplined," et cetera. Leaders will control the athlete (read ignorant child still figuring out him/herself through the only lens they know, competition). Athletes have huge mental problems today, huge. The higher up you go in competition the more you will see how these athletes are not well-rounded and have little to no social and cognitive thinking skills. As long as they "strive to be #1 in everything they do" no one cares, let alone themselves, how skewed these kids' mental capacities really are. (And yes, I am including myself here. For the record, I decided I no longer wanted to be one of these people and literally threw my surfboard down at a competition as a symbol to myself and decided to go back to college. I thought I was better than everyone around me and I had no basis to think that. I told myself I had to prove it. So I stopped being an athlete and instead took a new path and outlook on how to approach life.) Everything I have said gets compounded 10 fold when said athletes participate in non-team sports, any type of racing, and especially any Olympic sport. Sociology, the discipline I have studied for a fortnite or two *wink*, lays out how they are basically slaves in the modern era. I would agree. But we look the other way because we have created a society in which only having one physical skill is supposedly better than having a hundred cognitive/social skills, and we put the highest dollar amount to this physical skill. If you are a man anyway... So when I see the term "athletes of the spirit" I think wafers definitely are an Christians are but not as badly. I smile inside when I see the term and I don't think it should stopped being used. Their viewpoint of the spiritual is just as skewed as athletes' viewpoints and reasoning are in the physical. They both believe they are better than you because...of this one thing they have that you don't. Just an alternative perspective from someone who has had some of the same spiritual experiences as you.

I'm on my way out the door, but I was exactly in the place you are speaking of now. It all opened up to me when I started reading the Absent Christ thread at the end of November of last year and it was definitely a grieving process that many of the posters helped me get through. Here's the link to where I began on GSC - and another link for the beginning of the thread. You'll find posts begin to stray off topic but keep scrolling through when that happens. This is a very long thread (93 pages). That thread is now closed but if you wanted to start a new one with a slightly different name, you can get a lot of support from others. Please keep in touch. This is where OldSkool began the thread