Hi Mike,
I addressed you because I was curious about what administration you think we’re in. You seem to be saying we’re not in the grace administration anymore.
My “shtick” is summed up in my name. I spent many years in TWI. All classes, WOW 2x, Corps, I left before finishing the Corps and was never really in any leadership position, praise God. I’ve continued to study the materials from my time with TWI. However I believe the scriptures are what the PFAL materials were directing us toward. If the materials had any validity it was in showing how the scriptures interpret themselves. And yes I’m aware of VPW’s last public teaching, which wasn’t the first time that material had been presented, as I’m sure you know. I left in the late 80’s when LCM started having his melt down.
I’ve simplified life since then and started enjoying a relation with my Lord Jesus Christ. That I fall short is a given, in fact since leaving TWI I’ve become aware of things we never thought much about in TWI. That we were sinners, that we couldn’t earn our salvation, that Romans 1-3 is as applicable to the spiritual walk as Romans 10:9-10, and that the real point of the Word of God is to reveal Jesus Christ. While all of this was taught in various contexts and materials, the sense of relegating our own identity to the grave and accepting the identity of Christ was rarely believed among those I saw in TWI. LCM was the epitome of this in my opinion. I’ve also learned things about VPW that I find… troubling.
Even today the arrogance I see among those people who have determined they know the truth, in and of themselves through their own effort and study, is disturbing to me. It seems a bit like the Pharisees, they think they have salvation through their study but they miss the subject of what they study, works versus grace thing. I am nothing of myself and everything in Christ. As a living lord and head of his body I trust him to reveal God’s Word to me. Where he is not the subject I do not believe we have the Word. I believe a man is known by his fruit and if the subject of God’s Word is Jesus Christ than the subject of what a man says with regard to God’s Word must be Jesus Christ, if it isn’t than that man isn’t speaking God’s Word. If A=B and B=C then C must =A.
Once again, I’m flawed, there are many wrong things I’ve done or haven’t done but fortunately I know the grace of God and I know the price that was paid to impart that grace to my life and the lives of my family. I no longer see my life in terms of spiritual levels to attain to, I couldn’t have attained to anything without Christ. I know there is a maturing process but that isn’t what determines our communion with God, or how “spiritual” a man is. I took off my nametags and I couldn’t be more thankful.
That’s my “schtick”, if the content and quality of a mans life can be summed up in a few paragraphs.
