Jeaniam

Well, at the time that God designed the mind of man the whole Word of God consisted of Genesis 1:28-30 and Genesis 2:16-18. Gen. 1:28-30- And God blessed them; and God said unto them, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." And God said "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air,l and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat", and it was so. Gen. 2:16-18- And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a help meet for him." Loving God was probably pretty automatic and man didn't have any neighbors to love at that time.

I needed both change and help and I was fortunate enough to have a BC who supplied me with both. I am sorry that the only things that you received from PFAL were some minor head-knowledge things about figures of speech, etc; but what that indicates to me is that you really missed the point of PFAL because I really believe that taking PFAL saved my life on at least two separate occasions (the first time I took it and another time when my life was falling apart). As I have said before in other places I think there were a lot of people who took PFAL only for the knowledge involved instead of from any heart-felt desire to know God, and knowing God was the real point of PFAL. I don't believe the doctrine of no condemnation or exposure to the Word dulled my 'conscience', in my experience it sharpened it. I became more and more aware of mistakes that I was making over the years but I learned to deal with them in a Godly manner by apologising to God (and other people if appropriate) immediately and then moving on without obsessing about the mistake (whatever it was) but also making every effort to avoid making the same mistake in the future. I never bought into (or was taught by my leadership) the attitude that anything I did was okay because I was righteous and therefore I didn't really commit sin or do anything wrong. However, condemning my self was just adding another sin to the one I had already committed. But, as I have said before, I was privileged to be around some very good men and women of integrity whose only interest was in doing the Word and loving people. I regret that not all of you shared my experience.

Though I still value much of what I learned in TWI and PFAL, and I found that TWI taught me a lot about how to pray effectively (reference my first post on this thread), I think that one thing that some people really emphasized was a gross error i.e. that people in churches didn't get prayers answered because they didn't have as much knowledge as we did. John and I went to a church for a while after we left TWI and there were people there that had a pefectly good (in fact GREAT) prayer life, and even people that (choke, gasp) received revelation. I think that there were some people in TWI that missed the point of PFAL and began to worship knowledge instead of seeing that the point was to know God. And it does seem to me that prayer is just a conversation between the individual believer and his heavenly Father and that therefore there is no real RIGHT way to pray but rather just as many right ways to pray as there are individual believers, and that God is capable of hearing, understanding perfectly, and responding to all of them. You should dare because Jesus Christ died to give you access to God's throne of grace, and that hasn't ended because anyone left any particular ministry.

It is a Biblical statement. It's found in Psalm 138:2- "I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." I vaguely recall some analogy about the way we in this day and time sign a check or a contract, but I could be making that up, as it sounds remarkably like private interpretation.

I finished Idiot Test 2 (on the sixth try) but I had to write it down. My daughter did pretty well on the Genius Test.

I made it through the idiot test one, but it took me five tries. I made it up to average on the second one.

It changed my prayer life for the better because I was raised in a very condemnatory church that didn't present me with a picture of God as a loving Father who had any real interest in me or my needs, but on the other hand made people sick to 'keep them humble', and killed people whenever He felt like it. When I was very young I was so afraid of God that I was afraid to go to sleep at night lest God should decide to kill me in my sleep, and I wouldn't be good enough to go to Heaven. My own father didn't help much either because he was a very cold, critical person. So the teachings of TWI were very liberating for me. It seems to me that prayer is a form of believing (or faith) and that the two are linked i.e. Mark 11:22-26, James 4:2&3. In Mark prayer & believing are also linked to forgiveness; and in James it says 'you have not, because you ask not' and there is no reference to believing at all. All that said there were times in the later days of TWI when I was nervous about praying publicly be cause I felt as if my prayers (and manifestations) were under a microscope, which was later proved to be true. This same attitude has prevailed in some of the offshoots that we have been affiliated with. There have been times when a "leader' saw fit to critique my prayers or manifestations in front of the whole assembled body of believers without coming to me in private first. I think that both prayer (with the understanding and tongues) and believing are necessary in that in order to receive anything from God you have to ask Him for it. I wouldn't be so worried about the form of your prayers and so critical of them, just continue to pray and little by little you'll get better at it, and continue to pray perfectly in tongues. I hope this helped at least a little bit. And what TrustAndObey said works too.

Good post. Many times God is more than willing to meet the REAL need but we are the ones to frustrate Him because we weren't 'believing' for what God was sending us. I remember once that I needed a pair of winter boots and I thought that I needed to 'believe' for the money to buy them, but God had a complete stranger walk up to me on the street and give me a brand new pair. Also, it sometimes seems to me that we are limiting God by restricting Him to financial prosperity. I once had a situation in which I gave a believer a picking of beans out of my garden, which resulted in my not having enough for my family for the winter. I left the plants in the ground and waited, and in about two weeks the plants began to produce again, and the second bearing was not only enough for my needs; I gave them away to my mother, my sister, some of my aunts, and ended up putting them out by the street in bushel baskets with a sign saying 'free beans'. Talk about a literal fulfillment of the promise in Malachi. Yes, very exciting living!

We have always continued to tithe, but over the years since we left TWI, we were forced to be pretty creative with it. Some-times we gave it to a church; sometimes we just set it aside and gave it to people in need; sometimes we gave it in other ways. I'm not so sure that God cares WHERE you give as much as He cares THAT you give.

Well, yes, sometimes I struggled with the question 'Am I believing in this situation or do I have fear?' In those situations I tried to draw close to God and His love for me (perfect love casts out fear), and sometimes in my prayers I would use the cry of the man with the possessed son (Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief!). I still sometimes use that prayer today because I continue to believe that 'believing equals receiving'.

Someone once taught me that when you have your mind well furnished with the written Word (line upon line, verse upon verse, horizontally and vertically, like a brick wall) genuine revelation is that which comes in diagonally or across the grain. I don't really believe it's possible to receive revelation 24/7. I don't think God cares that much about when you do your grocery shopping or when you do your laundry.

That's very true. There was a time late in our involvement when we were held in contempt as a couple because I knew what size tires were on the car, and John was capable of changing a diaper. I had friends who were afraid to leave their children with their own husbands at the ROA lest they should be accused of being ungodly. WordWolf, you and I agreeing on something!!! Say it ain't so.

A related story: Three years ago Missouri passed a law allowing average citizens to have conceal carry permits. One local radio guy I listen to a lot said recently that when the law was first passed, he was thinking that Missouri would be like that movie 'High noon' and somebody would bump into somebody else in a bar and a gunfight would break out and it would be like the old west. Well, to date nothing even remotely like that has happened. This radio guy is a liberal democrat leaning guy, but he admitted he was wrong about this.

I have heard it taught that those people who constantly claim that God is giving them moment by moment revelation on how to live life are people who are getting it wrong. As you say, Lone Wolf, direct revelation comes rarely. But God has given us a 'rule book', the Bible, which is in itself revelation from God that has been written down. Thanks, Bolshevik, for your post. I really don't think God cares very much in this day and time what anyone has for breakfast.

I know there were many followers of TWI who tried to be a carbon copy of VPW (copied his jokes about thin India paper in the Bible, drank Drambouie, etc.). I always thought the gift of holy spirit was at least in part to enable me to be more myself than a carbon copy of VPW. I mean that the unique 'Christ in me' was designed specifically for me, jeaniam, and wouldn't fit any other believer; and was designed to magnify and enhance the good things about my personality to the end that I was fully equipped for my unique role in the Body of Christ, which no one else (not even VPW) could do as well as I could. BTW I do drink Drambouie, but I started drinking it pre-TWI. BTW, Mark, in recent years when Charles and Diana wanted a divorce, one of the obstacles was that the official position of the Church of England is that divorce is a sin; a position of remarkable hypocrisy considering its origin.

I know I am late to the thread but those two books mentioned in the first post sound like very interesting reading. Thanks for mentioning them, Abigail.

In reference to the authority that Christ claimed to have, there is one explanation in 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, where it refers to the authority of Christ being given to him by God; and only for a finite length of time, as there will come a time in the future when ' the Son shall also himself be subject unto Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all'. It seems to me possible that Jesus understood himself as possessing the right to do things which only God has the right to do because God gave him that right as a result of that distinct relationship with the Father. I would agree that the personal relationship with God is the big deal and that those in TWI who were only interested in researching the Bible without grasping the point that the real goal of the research is to know God certainly missed the boat.

Great post. Nice after Easter insight. Thanks for sharing.

A valid point, but right now I am not just an individual who wants to worship God; I am also a member of a family, having taken on the role of wife and mother.

Yes, the basic unit of worship is the family, but right now my family and I are involved with Rev. Geer and his ministry and I enjoy the way he has things set up; no 'root' locale, just many small groups of people that are completely independant. The abundant sharing stays in each area rather than being sent to 'headquarters', and is used to address needs in each area as they arise (i.e. one family has an unexpected medical expense, another family has a fire in their home, etc. etc.). It seems to me that was the way TWI first started out but later turned into a big corporation.

I think TWI taught me the keys I needed to be able to research the scriptures (PFAL was a class on keys, if I remember correctly), but I certainly do not claim to understand the whole Bible (or anything close to it). The 'manifold wisdom of God' is such that I can look at a verse once and see one thing, and come back to the same verse a year or two later and see more depth that I missed the first time. I think that TWI taught a great deal of practical information about how to live life, at least I remember learning a lot about how to live love (although I fall short a great deal of the time). I didn't have the privilege of waysider; my parents were very harsh, bitter people, and I had to unlearn most of what they taught me while in TWI, but I agree that the practical side is what matters most to me rather than the head knowledge.

quote: geometric spiritual design. That's got to be right up there with "reasonable spiritual suspicion".

I would agree that there seems to be a huge double standard at work here.

Interesting parallel to some of you live and VPW. Not pointing fingers...just making an observation.

And I responded to your response, Tag, you're it.