Twinky

Heh, I think I might have been tempted to string them along and ask difficult questions. How many signs, miracles, healings have they seen - today? This week? How closely do they work with churches in their area in "churches together" type of events? What sort of help is their "church" giving to disaster relief funds for those left devastated by the Philippines typhoon? Or agreed with them, and invited them to my church, where they could enjoy these things. And then hit 'em with the whammie that I knew them of old and how had things changed? Did you ask them what had changed? Like a living wage with proper benefits and fair time off, for the staff? Like not being interrogated for every moment not spent in TWI activities? Like proper reporting and safeguarding procedures? Do they still rape young women? I doubt much has changed - changed for the better, anyway. Might have changed for the worse. Changed into even more boring and repetitive stuff. Gunnison is a "family camp" now, isn't it? Hmph, is it still mandatory attendance at all age-appropriate activities? I liked my time at Gunnison. More free than at HQ. Which is to say there were fewer eyes to constantly spy.

Now there's a possibility, Chocky. Has anyone found daily devotional readings helpful? Met their needs? Or failed to meet their needs? Does anyone follow such readings as a regular or semi-regular thing?

Was it in PFAL that it was stated that those scripture booklets that people read on a daily basis, section of scripture followed by someone’s exposition of that section – usually one person does a week or so in a series, then maybe someone else does another week – anyway, was it PFAL that put those down? Said people read them but “they’ll never meet your need. They’ll always let you down right when you need them” [=need the Word of God to be reach into some situation you’re suffering]. The real reason wasn’t that the daily devotionals would “let you down” – it was that readers might get a different perspective. Might have something that competed with the Word of God as taught by TWI. Might present a wider view, a different meaning – or (gasp!) something that contradicted what TWI said. Might allow some wiggle room, or even the strength to escape the clutches of TWI. And who is to say that “today’s” teaching from TWI is just what every single follower of the Way needs to hear today? Life’s situations are so very varied. It’s not “one size fits all, all day, every day” – God cares for us moment by moment and knows we’re not clones, machines or cardboard cut-outs. I don’t think that anything that induces genuine study of the Bible, thoughtful exposition of it, and an opportunity to investigate parts that wouldn’t otherwise come to one’s attention, can be bad, or “let one down.” Such study gives more to draw upon in times of adversity. And in times of joy. A daily devotional might not meet the need in full. But then again, it might. And at least it’s not force-fed and required to be regurgitated throughout the day, week or whatever. A daily devotional may indeed allow far more scope for God to work in one’s life by bringing other passages to mind (and heart) that are just what’s right to meet the need. And what of that broken reed, TWI, and its teachings? Boy, did they ever let one down! TWI used the scriptures as a weapon. A weapon of control. A weapon to keep followers down, in subjection, in condemnation. Dual meanings – head knowledge but no heart knowledge. Just manipulation. Give me the freedom to choose what to read each day! Give me the freedom to decide what “works” for me! Give God the opportunity to show new insights, understandings. Accept that God can work through humble writers of daily devotionals to keep His Word fresh and appropriate. Yay!

Good, Ham. Now take a bit of time for a breather. You've worked hard for what you're doing. How soon till you get the result?

The point about the scapegoat is that all the sins were notionally put on its head - but then it was released. It was cast out, but it wasn't vilified, stoned, publicly or ritually slaughtered or in any other way killed. It was released and left to find its own life in the desert, where it either thrived or died. Being a goat, it probably thrived until some wild animal, lion or whatever, decided the goat was breakfast. The scapegoat was symbolic that way. In contrast, you'll note that most of those who opposed or were blamed by VPW and his henchmen were not only cast out but prior to that were publicly humiliated, with their own "sins" and imaginary sins of everyone and for everything heaped upon them. Such human victims were humiliated, ritually slaughtered in front of the whole congregation or at least in front of the whole Way Corps, and then cast out. They were also told (and believed) that the roaring lion was out there looking for them in particular, so they lived in fear (not just watchfulness) constantly. Nobody was released without being terrorised beforehand. So not quite scapegoats, not in the Biblical sense.

Ain't that the truth!! He knew much better. He knew what was Godly behavior and what wasn't He knew what was appropriate and what definitely wasn't. And where he didn't know - he wasn't circumspect, and erred on the side of caution. No, he just erred ... and erred ... and erred. A deliberate slap on the face of God. And God will reward him appropriately :eusa_clap:/> :mad2:/>

Subjunctive, actually. (Bold phrases in what follows are mine.) In this case - guess what! - VPW appears for once actually to have been correct grammatically. Which is pretty much a first for him. PFAL is littered with his misunderstandings of English grammar. Infuriated me during the class. Infuriates me to hear VPW-worshippers trot out the same errors now. (Don't ask me anything about the other irrealis moods mentioned. Heck!)

I woke up the other day with this mad idea, I suppose based on some dream I didn't remember... I planned to write a letter to TWI telling them how good life is now, away from them... ...which led me to thinking how the "sins" I committed were that I was not "meek to the Word" and I would be given a facemelting by someone or other and relegated to some "punishment" duty (dishroom, doing snow clearance at 5AM, etc) intended to ... to what, exactly? Reflect on what I'd missed out on - but never anything substantive. There was never anything substantive that I did wrong. Once I got reproved for being joyful and excited that an Advanced Class was about to happen! (I skipped down the corridor, Corps Coord told me it was "undignified"!) Plenty of "doctrine" - even more of "reproof" - but of "correction"? Real, honest, correction, given meekly? Very little - none from the facemelters. Though generally kindness and proper teaching from those I worked with. Veiled accusations, so that I could apologise for something they weren't aware of, thus accusing myself. Self-denunciation. Self-condemnation. . .. ... .... ..... ...... I didn't write any letter! WELL, I'M FINE, THANKS FOR ASKING. LIFE'S NOT QUITE WHAT I EXPECTED, BUT IT'S PRETTY GOOD AND THERE'S PLENTY TO BE THANKFUL FOR. GOD IS EXCEPTIONALLY KIND AND EVER WILLING TO SHOW THAT HE CARES. CAN YOU HEAR ME, TWI??? It wouldn't matter if you nailed 95, or 95 million, theses to the OSC or the Auditorium or the pregnant guppy. Some folks never get it. Or rather, they got it already (stashed in the bank) and they just plain don't care about anyone else's opinion.

Snopes gives CryptoLocker a green (=true) indicator.

This guy Atwill probably sees gas pumps and snowstorms too, or some equivalent.

I argued about that with the person who witnessed to me and persuaded me to take the class. - If I have to pay this money, then it's not a donation, it's payment for the class and/or the materials. - No it's not, it's just a contribution towards the cost of the books. - Well what if I don't want the books? - Can't take the class, then. - So it's payment, not a donation! And so on. But he ... I liked him. He was apprentice Corps doing his WoW year and the family was struggling to get a class together, under some pressure from interim Corps, and I wanted him to succeed ... Little did I know what I was letting myself in for. You could say I walked right into their double-speak with my eyes wide open.

I do like it when some of these old threads get bumped up again. Lest we forget how vile some of that time was.

I'd say the (compulsory) donation was more of a tax dodge. If it were something that had been sold, it would be taxable. However, if it were just given, as a donation, it wouldn't have to be taxed. Of course, if it were also a registered charity, then the donations may also be offsettable against tax paid by the donor. Not that receipts as such were given. And not that you could take PFAL without making the required donation.

Do other Christian organisations actually use the phrase "moving the Word"? I have heard "doing Kingdom work" and "sharing the gospel" and "bringing people to Christ" - but moving the Word? Nah.

It was probably supposed to have been a letter "I" as in Iesus not letter "L" And whoever was in charge of "proofreading" the design for the medal didn't do his job correctly.

Seriously cheap property, that. If it were in the UK you would be talking several million pounds. For the house and a fraction of the land. With all that land...buy it up quick, demolish the house, and put a small housing estate on it. You could pack a lot of houses into 6.5 acres. Was this house going to be the STFI "Gunnison Family Ranch" equivalent??

Wow, you lot are either boring or sorely disappointed in God!! Did God not do anything for any of you recently? By the way, the wrist injury I mentioned above is beautifully healed, just a slim red line left that gets a little shorter each day. I am now praying for (among other things) some trees I pruned at the wrong time of year. Too enthusiastic. Please God protect me from my foolishness in pruning them when I did.

Another cuty trick of Win 8. Today I sent an email to a friend with a link to a website. I used these words: "Here is a link." Win 8 does not want to send this without checking with me - looks like I want to send an attachment but there isn't one, should Win 8 send anyway or do I want to add an attachment? S'pose it might be a good idea, it's all too easy to forget to attach something. I don't know if it's a good thing or not, though. Win 8 is obviously double-checking what I do. And lets me know about it, too. Will Win 9 or some other later version...actually prevent emails being sent, if it isn't satisfied the sender knows what s/he is doing? :confused:/>

Was looking through some old topics and came across this one: Doctrinal topic Got me thinking. ... Maybe we should share a few stories. What did God do for you today? This week? I'll start. I was gardening last Wednesday. Placed my well-used loppers in a hedge that I'd just cut, so that I could reach them easily from a tree I was climbing up...and fell out of...onto the point of the open lopper blade. There was a big deep ragged slash across my wrist. I felt faint. But I washed it, TCP'd it; on my way to the walk-in clinic for it to be sewn up went past a pharmacy - called in, was bandaged up nicely. Was back at work in 10 mins! Out that evening at a Christian gathering - friend prayed for healing - when I took the bandage off the next day the wound was healed over already and is now only a short red slash which I believe will disappear completely. I thank God for His healing power. And I thank him for His grace. I could so easily have landed more awkwardly, severing a vein, an artery, or the nerves. Or contracted some vile infection from who knows what garden microbes lurking on the blade. Instead, there is no permanent damage. Strikes me as being miraculous. I'm so stupid. :redface:/> I'm so happy!!! :eusa_clap:/>

Oh, the hairs that were split over the difference if any between faith and believing. None of which hair-splitting ever got beyond an intellectual discussion. TWI was keen to tell us it was the "heart" that mattered and then distracted us by such intellectual discussions. And kept us all too busy to listen to our hearts. Whereas demonstrating (by actions) true grace, love and kindness, would have done far more to build our faith.

Squirrel, I'm sure you as a radio ham have never had a problem with finding a voice. Your own and many others. :wink2:/>

Article Raf refers to Useful sort of article. Actually I'd never considered it. What I have considered, and this is a bit off topic but not irrelevant, is that if Joseph had to travel - anywhere - to be censused, then so did his father (and possibly mother) and his brothers (and wives?) and who knows how many other hangers-on. What about Mary's parents, where were they from? They also are supposed to be in the same lineage, so wouldn't her father also be in the entourage? What a vast number of people on the move!!! (You'd think there might be some sort of swap-a-house for a few months, while everyone was moving about the country to their different places of origin) (Oh wait, pre-internet...) And surely, surely, Mary's mother would wish to be with her heavily pregnant daughter as she was about to give birth to her first child? Or some of the wives of the brothers? Would Mary really chose as midwife the innkeeper's wife or some random woman she just came across? Or did she expect the angel Gabriel or a midwife angel to materialise at just the right moment? So in this "stable" / caravanserai we have not just J&M but at least his parents, perhaps hers, a load of brothers (and their wives? and their kids?) quite a crowd. No wonder there was no room in the inn! But maybe in a nice big stable area, all of them could have space to move around and yet still stay together. With plenty of help for the new mother. Get rid of the schmaltzy idea of a lonely couple with naught but a donkey out in the savage wilds. Or two kids and a baby emitting light rays (halo) and mooing cows and whatever. There were loads of people present.

Hey, get this!! I was just drafting something up and used a word not in the standard MS dictionary though not an unusual one. As it's something I might use again, I added it to the dictionary. I finished the document and have gone to Save it - and up popped a new screen inviting me to send to MS all the words and phrases that Word doesn't recognize. "Help us to improve our proofing tools. The information listed below is from your use of the spelling checker, grammar checker, thesaurus and hyphenation tool. We want your permission to send these words and phrases to Microsoft. ...the information...is only used to improve our software and services." The program has been through ALL my documents (inc my old CVs/resumes) and has pulled out British place names (cities, streets etc), names of previous employers, phrases from my CVs - that's just what it's telling me about. While of course the place names can easily be picked up from any street atlas - or even Google maps! - I have to say I am NOT thrilled at a program that nosily pokes around in my documents and then wants to send info to MS or anybody else. Makes you wonder what else is poking around - without saying so - and what info is being extracted and sent who knows where. Win 8 ... spyware.

Krys, I do think you'll be happier with Win 7. Win 8 will probably be okay once they get all the bugs out of it. You can upgrade to Win 8 from Win 7 (on payment of a fee) but you should be good with Win 7 for some years yet.

Allan, in above post, the CC as in Corps Coord. The CC as in Country Coord didn't try to face-melt me, just to assault me Craig-style. (Y'know, "a man has his needs when he's away from home.") The only serious face melt from the Country Coord was the last time I saw him when he publicly threw me out.