Steve Lortz

Once, when I was pre-school age back in the early '50s, I saw a bloated dead mule on my great-grandmother's farm. I don't think I would have liked trying to hit it :-) The pig-ride... now that was something else indeed! Love, Steve

Refiner - You'll be able to recognize "Mike's" Table of Chowlenges, when you find it, by a pair of triple-X jockey briefs I left on it. Love, Steve

Despite our indoctrination, it isn't biblically accurate to say the Church began on the Day of Pentecost. The Church consists of the believing remnant of Israel (Romans 11:5) under the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34 (II Corinthians 3:6; Hebrews 8:6-13), with believing Gentiles grafted in (Romans 11:17) on the same basis as believing Isreal (Ephesians 3:6), by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8). The spirit first shed forth on the Day of Pentecost is the earnest of the spirit of resurrection promised to Israel in Ezekiel 37. Pentecost was not the beginning of ANY wholely new thing. John N. Darby invented dispensationalism as we know it in the early- to mid-1800s. He invented dispensationalism to support his contention that God was forming two separate groups of people to inhabit eternity: Israel, a physical people to inhabit a physical earth; and the Church, a spiritual people to inhabit a spiritual heaven. A basic premise of dispensationalism is that the Church began on the Day of Pentecost. The scriptures are "rightly divided" to tell us that the Church began on the Day of Pentecost. VOILA! The BIBLE tells us that the Church began on the Day of Pentecost. But it doesn't really say that. Darby used his dispensationalism to divide the Word of God into meaning-tight compartments, enabling him to make it say whatever he wanted it to say. Wierwille did the same thing. The division of the Word of God into dispensations is just as man-made as its division into chapters and verses, and just as void of authority for interpretation. Love, Steve

Refiner - It's impossible for those of us who committed to the TWI experience to view the PFAL material completely objectively. Some have gone back through and tried to separate the wheat from the chaff, but still, it's not the same thing as someone reading PFAL without having sat through the class. Ordinarily,new people would be allowed to read the Blue Book only before sitting through a class, almost never the PFAL book itself. So I'm VERY interested in reading your impressions! Love, Steve

muy interesante!

Thanks for the info, Danny! I know what you mean about "Larkin's charming, entertaining charts and artwork". In some ways, they remind me of Lt. Dick Calkin's drawing style. He was the guy who originally drew the "Buck Rogers" comic strip back in the '30s. Sort of naive. I have a copy of another book entitled "An Atlas of Fantasy" published back in the '70s. It has copies of some of Burrough's working maps for his various worlds, Oz, Narnia, Middle Earth, Earthsea and a zillion others. I usually keep the two volumes shelved together. Love, Steve

I dug out my copy of Larkin. As it proclaims on the cover, "The Greatest Book on Dispensational Truth in the World". That's the title... not a promo blurb. Typical dispensationalist modesty. By Clarence Larkin, published by Rev. Clarence Larkin Est., Glenside PA, copyright 1918. Larkin devotes 5 1/2 pages (164-169) to the Great Pyramid. Two of those pages contain some of his ubiquitous diagrams. He mentions four names, "Prof. Piazzi Smyth", "Sir John Herschel", "Professor H. Mitchell" and a "Dr. Seiss", without citing any of their works. In the second column of the article, Larkin states, "The cubit of measurement is the Hebrew cubit of 25.025 inches." Two paragraphs later, he refers to "Pyramid inches" without defining what that means. Throughout the rest of the article, all measurements are in what appears to be standard English feet and inches. Larkin equates each inch with one year, and uses the measurements of the passageways and chambers to draw all sorts of conclusions about the timings of the "dispensations". Larkin "anchors" his speculation regarding the Great Pyramid on Isaiah 19:19-20, All for now. Love, Steve

Thanks, Zix. You say it so well! Love, Steve

I haven't seen this one yet, but I'm thinking about it. When I saw the first few trailers on TV, I was struck by a line where they said something like, "it's been 10,000 years since something like this happened." I thought, "Cool, it's about the true power of nature, and not about global warming. I'll go see it." But then I heard that it IS about global warming, and decided against. Now, I'm thinking about watching it and drawing comparisons between "Day After Tomorrow" and first century Jewish apocalyses, analyzing the movie as a 21st century ecological apocalyptic. But it's not at the top of my priority list. Love, Steve

Not much time to post right now. More later during the week to come. There was an interest in prophecy in England in the early 1800s. Part of it crystalized to become the Plymouth Brethren movement, about 1835-1850. Darby rose to leadership and began promulgating what we generally recognize as dispensationalism. Similar, but not directly related events were occurring in the U.S. In the late 1820s Miller calculated the date of Christ's return as 1843, and began preaching it. By the time 1843 arrived, a movement had formed. When the set time in 1843 passed, and Christ had not returned, Miller recalculated the date, and figured he was off by a year. He set the new date for 1844. Christ's failure to adhere to Miller's prediction for 1844 is called the Great Disappointment, and took most of the steam out of the adventist (with a small "a") movement. The Seventh Day Adventists came out of the residue of the Great Disappointment. Later in the 1800s, Russell picked up where Miller left off. I defer to Refiner's expertise regarding developments along this line. Darby made several lecture tours of the U.S. in the mid-1800s, but dispensationalism didn't begin to take off in the States until Scofield discovered he could copyright the Bible if he included his own notes. The influence of his Reference Bible spread dispensationalism far afield, and continues to do so as anyone who has ever watched "Through the Bible with Les Feldick" can attest. Darby/Scofield dispensationalism became standard to fundamentalism in the U.S. when dispensationalists hi-jacked the speakers committees for the fundamentalist conferences early in the 1900s. Larkin has a page on the Great Pyramid and the dispensations. It's interesting to discover some cross-pollination between the Miller/Russell and the Darby/Scofield forms of dispensationalism. I'll dig out my copy of Larkin and report back sometime in the next few days. By the way, I received a mailing several years ago in which Dale Sides (leader of a TWI offshoot) quoted Larkin's material about the Great Pyramid. All for now. Love, Steve

Greetings, Refiner, and welcome! I've been away from Greasespot for the past few weeks. I teach part-time at an interdenominational Christian classical high school, and this past week was finals. As well as wrapping up my own class, I helped my brother do simulated hostile juries for the seniors, and then I sat as an observer during the actual hostile juries. This is the first year we've run a thesis program for the entire senior class, so we found a LOT of bugs that are going to need to be worked out next year. Usually I post here fairly frquently. I always find it instructive to discourse with people who have had similar experiences with other cults as we have had with TWI. I left TWI in '87. My wife left in '89 (we got married in '91). We left a TWI offshoot in '96. After that, we got together occassionally with a couple who had left the Worldwide Church of God, sometimes known as the Armstrong movement. Many former followers of Armstrong, despite the doctrinal differences of our previous cults, have much in common with former followers of Wierwille, and from your tone, Refiner, much in common with former JWs. Interesting talk of the next generation. I teach kids similar in age to those mentioned here, and I think they can be just priceless. Love, Steve

My wife and I went to see the 10 pm showing on Saturday night. The characters attributed things to the gods, but no gods actually appeared in the story, unlike Homer's "Iliad". But the screen writers/director still managed to keep it a story about people who were basicly decent (except perhaps for Agammenon) though flawed, doing the best they could in difficult situations, rather than painting one side good and the other side evil. The storyline was truncated, of course. Many incidents were conflated, but it was still enjoyable. The visuals had some archaeologically accurate motifs, just pumped up to epic proportions. The actual Troy would have struck our eyes as a podunk, one horse [pun intended :-) ] town. There were two kinds of fight scenes; regular mass combat, and heroic combat. Both were done very well. I watched the credits to see if they used the software Peter Jackson developed for LotR. I didn't see it listed. The battle scenes were just as impressive as those from LotR, if not as fantastic. But I liked it for that. Unfortunately, IMHO, "Troy" DOES have the giant flaming hairballs every movie portrayal of ancient combat seems to find mandatory. It was interesting watching Boromir play Odysseus and Legolas play Paris. Bloom gets to shoot some arrows, just not so many.. or so quick... or so well. I particularly enjoyed the exchanges between Hector and Paris when Hector found out his brother had "abducted" Helen. I found Bloom's performance entertaining while Menelaus was beating the snot out of him. I liked what they did with Briseis' character. All for now. Love, Steve

Good tap dancing, Zix! I noticed the little puffs of exhaust steam coming off of the Frankenstein monster's knee when he used it. I thought it was cool, too, but I didn't think to mention it in my post. Thanks for refreshing my memory. Regarding the powers of the crossbow bolt thrower, I enjoyed the shot where the sidekick (or was it Anna?) peeked out from behind the horse trough or whatever it was, and the whole area was just bristling with bolts except for the character! It sure fired fast, but I don't think we can say too much for its accuracy :-) Love, Steve

Took the wife to see "Van Helsing" for Mother's Day. It was our daughter's idea. She saw it out in Maryland. She's pursuing Korean sword-fighting-type martial arts right now, and she was impressed with the heroine. I'm looking forward to watching our daughter go through HER lightning swords of doom routine sometime. I've got to say, when the "wolfman" (not to give away secrets to those who haven't yet seen), silhouetted against the huge full moon with the babe in his arms, tilted his head back and howled, it stirred a thrill in me that movies rarely stir these days. Maybe it was a residual thrill from all the Saturday matinees I watched back in the sixties. The Van Helsing character reminded me also of a cross between Vampire Hunter D and Wolverine. I pictured the original from Bram Stoker's novel as being someone more like E.W. Bullinger. I think the monsters' personalities were pretty true to their Universal prototypes, and that was a good thing. Dracula was no Bela Lugosi, but I think some of the things that pictures like this have gained in CGI comic-book-style action, they have lost in atmospherics. I like the way the brides of Dracula were used for vampire action through the movie to save the Count himself for the big confrontation at the end. What was with crossbow arms on a gas powered repeating bolt shooter? Apart from that, I liked the psuedo late 19th, early 20th century technology. I kept expecting to see Frau Blucher show up. And speaking of "Young Frankenstein, Van Helsing's sidekick, the guy who used to be Faramir, kept reminding me of Marty Feldman's "Eye"gor in YF. In all, I enjoyed the movie. Fortunately, no thoughtless parents brought their sprats to the viewing we were at. Love, Steve

I watched "Cleopatra" on AMC last night. The version with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Last night was the first time it's been on TV (that we get) since I gave my lecture on Actium earlier this year. I was blown away by the resemblence between this movie and Star Trek Classic. They must have used the identical same screenwriters. Give Burton a phaser instead of a gladius, and he would be just like Captain Kirk. The same swaggering. The same bathos. The same line delivery. Give Taylor a green skin and she would fit in seamlessly among the dozens of alien princesses, slave girls, etc. who always fell into hopeless love with Shatner's starfarer. The battle of Actium protrayed in the film could just as easily have been a starfleet battle. Martin Landau played Antony's sidekick, Ruffio. He was certainly Nemoy-like, except for Spock's implacable logic and pointed ears. Am I hallucinating? Love, Steve

I have never been officially pronounced possessed, but I did allow a demon to influence me for several years. That... AND the deliverance by God through Jesus Christ... came years before I ever heard of TWI. Do these things qualify me to join the club? Truly, S. Lortz, OLG Extraordinaire of the United States by Popular Acclaim P.S. Did I just pronounce myself "possessed"? Can that count? Is it official enough?

Steve! - Here's something socks recently posted over on "Mike's" "Masters" thread, Your comment, "I thought it was just gas." gives a whole new dimension of meaning to socks' observation "Sort of a rip in reality" :-) Love, Steve

Thanks, Raf! I was laughing so hard, I thought I felt the earth shake. Then I realized... maybe it was just "Mike" posting :-) Love, Steve

They didn't mind taking just Arneson's money. They were taking D&D money! Love, Steve Hypocrites... that's all :-(

We need to start some kind of game or other on the "Music, Movies, Humor" forum. I heard from one of the other teachers at our school that, while Thomas More was composing "Utopia", he was corresponding with a number of other people, who were also making contributions in much the same way we might in a game-master-moderated, play-by-mail game. I know this isn't a Way myth. But I just thought I'd mention it. Now I'm gonna hafta go see if my fellow pedagogue was talking through her hat. Love, Steve

Dave Arneson and some of his buddies played historical miniatures games (mostly Napoleonic)in the Arneson family basement from about 1968 on. It was Minnesota... long winters... not much else to do back then. No computers. Probably not even any cable. They came up with some rules to tell what their generals were doing between battles in campaign games. David Wesley took some of those rules and ran a miniatures game with a "James Bond" theme. This was the first recreational role-playing game. It was set on a fictional island named Brownstein, so Wesley, Arneson, et al., called the games "Brownsteins". Arneson took Wesley's "Brownstein" concept and put it into a fantasy setting he called "Blackmoor". By this time, it was the early '70s. There was a little publishing company in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, called Tactical Studies Rules, later to become known as TSR. One of the major shareholders was Gary Gygax. Tactical Studies Rules published a set of medieval/fantasy miniatures rules called "Chainmail", and supported a club called "The Castle and Crusade Society" which had members throughout the upper Midwest, including Arneson and his friends. Arneson had adopted the "Chainmail" rules to cover combat in his Blackmoor campaign. Sometime in 1974 (probably early), Arneson showed "Blackmoor" to Gygax, who decided Tactical Studies Rules should publish it. "Dungeons & Dragons", a collaborative effort between Arneson and Gygax, was published late in '74. Sometime in the middle of that year, Arneson took PFAL. Over the following years, Arneson "abundantly shared" tens of thousands of dollars annually to TWI from his royalties off of "D&D". The Trustees knew him, and were very friendly to his face. But we all know how they stabbed his product behind his back. Arneson never went into the Corps, but he was one of my spiritual partners during my brief stint. He did go WOW one year. We're still in touch, and still fiddling with games.

That last sentence from the review of "The Alamo" is still rankling me. Sounds like something "Mike" would write. How could such a sentence ever possibly fit in with a *movie* review? It's not about the movie, it's a statement (made in the form of a rhetorical question) about the supposed attitude of the audience. It actually tells more about the shallow, supercilious attitude of the reviewer than about anything else. Where was the editor? My Pop would never have let that kind of thing stand in a story one of his reporters had turned in! Love, Steve

ex10 - God knew! Enjoy! Love, Steve

Raf - I think the reviewer (Phil Hall?) got some of the surface impressions right, but his own biases really spoil everything. The spurious connections he draws between the Alamo and the war in Iraq, and his final sentence, "But then again, when did the general population ever have the courage to accept truth when it was laid in front of them?" reveal more about his own biases than about the movie. The reviewer considers himself to be superior to the "general population" in his "courage" to "accept truth" when it is laid in front of *him*! Never mind that his perception of "truth" may not actually accord with reality. How wearisomely democratic to have people decide for themselves what they will regard as truth! How uncourageous of them not to accept the truth when I lay it out in front of them. Love, Steve

ex10 and Mister P-Mosh - I have a book in my library titled "The Alamo and the Texas War for Independence", by Albert A. Nofi (Combined Books, Inc., Conshohocken, PA, 1992, ISBN 0938289101). While the book is primarily about the whole war, during which the Alamo featured prominently, it has a 17 page chapter about San Jacinto. That may not sound like much, but the whole book is packed with information in the form of tables, charts, sidebars and maps. Page 153 has the best map I've seen locating the action at San Jacinto on that fateful day. While the book is jammed with scholarly information, the narrative itself is written in a popular style, very easy to follow and digest. More later. I'm exhausted today. Love, Steve