TheInvisibleDan

Searcher -

Get yer arse back here!

We haven't finished "love-bombing" you

yet.

Danny

quote:

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Originally posted by excathedra:

hey why was my post moderated ?

i just said mary cate's brain damage belonged on the prayer forum

and now i'd like to add danny's cracked wooden leg

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No prayers for me necessary.

Nothing a little duct tape won't fix.

Danny

quote:

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Originally posted by Mary Cate:

I am laughing so hard, I am wheezing like that cartoon dog. I wheeze because I have asthma. One of my neurologists told me that my asthma was caused by my brain disorder. He also said my brain disorder would never allow me to understand shark jumping analogies and that I would be incapable of being religiously offended.

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MC,

ROFLOL! I was slapping my knee so hard while laughing that I thought I might have cracked my wooden leg.

Danny

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Originally posted by searcher:

A JW who leaves 'Gods Visible Organisation' (JW's name for their org) will be treated as 'dead' by all JW's friends, and family alike.

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This form of JW ostracization rings remarkably like the Way's policy of "Mark and Avoid".

I leave it to other, more recent ex-ways to fill you in ( I left prior to the intensification of this M&A thing).

Danny

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Originally posted by Refiner:

Dan. Well that is news to me, so VPW espoused British Israel and holocaust revisionism? "

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I don't recall vpw specifically promoting the British Israel theory, but rather, Koestler's theory ("The Thirteenth Tribe") along with a couple volumes of holocaust revisionism.

Danny

In twi, the work promoted to justify a certain degree of anti-semiticism was "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler. A different way around the barn, but the same result: the Jews of today were said not be to be descendants of those in the Bible, but descendants of a (10th century?) Russian tribe known as the Kazars.

Add to that "Myth of the Six Million" which was also apparently sold in their bookstore at one time.

Danny

Refiner -

Yes, I read that book quite a few years ago -

"The United States and Britain in Prophecy".

It seems quite common in the used bookstores I visited. There were a couple of other books by Raymond Capt setting forth the same theory, which titles escape me at the moment.

Danny

I thought it interesting, after leaving the twi back in '87, encountering quite a number of former Worldwide Church of God members (formerly headed by Herbert Armstrong) during a phase when I was requesting literature from different groups.

Apparently that group had also undergone a splintering.

Perhaps some ex-members from that group will drop in here as well.

Danny

Now I'm wondering how much of Uncle Harry's influence might have contributed to that weird "commitment-charge" for the class.

What a bizarre selling scheme used for PFAL (at least in '78): the charge for the class was said not to have been a charge for the class per se -the class was supposedly "free"(!) -but the hundred bucks you were required to fork over was supposedly representative of your "commitment" to sit through the class (!) -well shoot, why didn't we get that hundred dollars back when the class was over? So in short -I paid somebody else for something I already possessed or exercised ...damn, what a helluva slick scheme!

And I got suckered into it.

quote:

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Originally posted by CKnapp3:

Hey guess what???? 2000 years from now people will believe in the resurrection of Elvis, while other's will say it was caca. They will also argue who really shot JFK. Jesus may just actually take a back seat at that point.

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Riding in the same convertible as JFK?

Where will we seat Jackie O?

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Originally posted by MountainTopCO:

I spoke in tounges like a house of fire (to coin a phrase). I first SIT about the 9th session of VP’s PFAL class. However, interpretation was a different story. My first intermediate class was Earl Burton’s class when it first came out. There were so many dos and don’ts that I was unable to do it.

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I absolutely hated Earl Burton's "Intermediate" class. I thought it was completely needless, boring and long-winded. What he take -15 to 20 hours or so - to drag on about what vp presented in 3? (when the old intermediate class was appended to the end of PFAL, at least when I took it back in '78)

What a waste.

Danny

Hi Roy.

:)-->

Exy and TS -

(lol)I already have a few old "Uncle Burl" albums.

All I need do now is drive to KFC and pick up a greasy bucket of fried chicken...

Belle - Until last night I also had never seriously considered UH day and how selfish it actually seems now. The stuff about tithing starting up when UH got on board certainly does give one pause to wonder.

Danny

This casino, this day, I will build, unto you, verily.

quote:

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Originally posted by UncleHairy:

A lot of old timers split with Veepee when that happened. He then printed "Christians should be preposterous" and the rest is history.

Was Harry in on the scam?...you betcha. ;)-->

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Very insightful "Uncle Hairy".

Danny

I didn't know "Uncle Harry" at all - only through his image which appeared as a cross between Burl Ives and Colonal Sanders, upon whose life and legend we were exhorted to burn our books and records.

Why burn and trash our cherished (but apparently devilish) mementos in memory of this celebrated, brother War-bucks goober? he helped build the ministry, was a big giver and was pretty good with money- therefore we should trash our stuff (and torch our devilish influences) in his honor?

Weird.

Very weird.

Now it may have been more appropriate and understandable if we were encouraged to give stuff away to those in need, rather than trash it. That would have been more "Christian" it seems.

Danny

I too likewise was always quite grateful to get through the manifestations part of the fellowship without getting picked out to speak with tongues and interpret. The styrofoam cup of coffee and raw brocolli and open conversations following all the formal jang-a-lang became all the more welcome.

Just hanging out and shooting the breeze.

When I tried to speak in tongues during a practice session during my first class someone said that I sounded like an American Indian.

Thinking back, it was probably the spirit of a Mohegan foretelling of the casinos to come to my state, as opposed to whatever improvisational "interpretation" I provided at the time.

:)-->

Danny

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Originally posted by Refiner:

By the way. If I had known that this thread would generate the aggravation that it has generated I would never have posted it.

In retropect I was in error calling the thread "Why I reject Christ".

Anyone who cares to read it will notice that I havent breathed a WORD about Christ. I should have called it "Why I reject the OT God".

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As Lindy and Sunesis mentioned earlier in this thread, a good many folks in the earliest centuries of Christian history, such as those of the Marcionites and various gnostic movements, did reject the Old Testament God, believing that Christ (or "Krestus" = the Kind, the Benevolent One) was an alien to this world who had revealed a new, higher God of goodness, in contrast to the harsh, wordly God of justice and judgment in the OT.

Interestingly, for some of the same reasons athiests and agnostics reject the OT deity today on account of his cruelties, a number of early Christians also did for the same reasons, prior to the suppression of these movements.

Incidently the Arch-heretic Marcion (circ.70 -150 CE) compiled and circulated the earliest known NT canon, around 130 CE, along with a treatise entitled "Antithesis" which drew a comparison of OT and NT passages to demonstrate the character differences between deities.

Marcion's canon comprised of one gospel ( of which the orthodox "Luke" is a gaudy, almost laughable expansion) and 10 letters attributed to Paul in shorter form.

Marcion's canon served as the catalyst which compelled his proto-orthodox rivals to come up with their own canon, to which they added the deutero-Pauline "Pastoral Epistles" which depicts this "Paul" even attacking Marcion's treatise by name. The Apostle's Creed also contains much distinctly anti-marcionite, almost refuting their rival's ideas point by point.

The Marcionites were at one time Catholicism's most formidible rival, and the texts which have come down to us reflect this fact in the polemical touches throughout.

No Marcionite literature has survived, outside of citations of the Marcionite text and reported beliefs found in the dissertations leveled against them by Tertullian, Epiphanius, Adamantius (Pseudo-Origin), and a few others.

Danny

Chuck,

I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your brother.

I hope you and everyone in your tribe are holding up well.

Danny

quote:

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Originally posted by Refiner:

How many of you actually _cracked open_ a Greek /Hebrew Biblical lexicon and checked to see if Doctor Wierwilles interpretations of Greek/Hebrew words were correct?

Or did you just accept that he was right?

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Upon our first exposure of twi, some of us (myself included) might not have even known what a concordance or lexicon was at the time, much less know how to use those things.

A good many of us were fairly young when we first got involved. I was introduced to concordances and lexicons and interlinears through twi, which was actually a good thing. And for anyone starting out opening such reference volumes, they may take a bit of time and practice getting used to, before gaining enough confidence in one's own abilities to look up things to verify their own conclusions.

How does a 17 year old fool unschooled in the field of religion go about disagreeing with a seemingly seasoned and knowlegable fifty-something year old "Doctor"?

And who does not promote his theology as "theology" but as something of a hip

"un-theology"? (e.g., "true Christianity is not a religion"..compared to those other stodgey religious groups -bound to appeal to kids) - with the premise being emphasized that we would be taught and enabled to look stuff up in the amazing, supposed self-interpreting Bible for ourselves?

Sure you and I and everyone else are smarter and more experienced now, and can pose such questions. But the fact of our youth and inexperience when many of us were first exposed to W's teachings can't be overlooked.

I'll be damned, there it is -

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/belize_rel_03.jpg

if you blink you'll miss it.

:)-->

My gosh, I hadn't even so much heard of a nation called "Belize", let alone the existance of this apparent religious-educational commune thingy - are you sure this country called "Belize " even exists?

I don't recall hearing the name "Belize" (sounds like the name of a beer or an acne cream) mentioned in my 6th grade social studies class when we were studying South America - no sir, but that was back in '73 (lol).

:D-->

Twi's sharp line of distinction between "household" and "family"

(which I first heard from "the Way Tree" seminar taught by J. Townsend) was always among those doctrines which caused me to go, "huh?"

Especially when one starts inquiring as to what particular Greek word or words lay behind the word "family" -as opposed to "household".

with the KJV, it's patria (strongs # 3965) -

translated only once as "family" in Eph.3:15 - and in 2 other places as "lineage" and "kindreds".

"household" is of course translated from the "oik-" Greek words (e.g., Strongs # 3609, and numerous others I'm too lazy to list here at the moment).

But what contrasting Greek words would twi have us assign for "family" to distinguish from "household"?

There really are none.

At the risk of overstatement for the sake of brevity here, "family" and "household" are essentially synonyms. Some translators use "family" in place of "household" and vice-versa when handling the "oik-" words, and I think rightly so.

Did anyone else catch this newer version of Stephen King's "Salem Lot" on TNT the past couple nights, starring Rob Lowe, Rutger Hauer, and Donald Sutherland?

I thought it was very well done. A lot more deeper and creepier than the older version.

I think it's going to be on again throughout the week. Highly recommended! I'm going to tape it this time around.

Perhaps Mike's commune of flies-on-the-wheel forbids the internet. ;)-->