Twinky

"Ping pong" teachings, LOL (Hey, that wouldn't be "pong" as in, something stinks about the teachings, would it? )

Does anyone believe this fine Biblical principle (cough) any more? Did you believe it then?

Now then, you might recall from PFAL that one of the keys to interpretation of the Bible is the usage of a word or expression "in the context." Additionally, a word or expression might have been "used before" - so we were exhorted to check out "first usage" of a word. And that encouraged everyone to learn to flip around the Bible looking for first usages and to forget to look at the context. In fact, the PFAL class and just about every teaching looks at one verse or section of a verse, and then jumps onto something else. Sure, we were given syllabuses, and we wrote down scripture references during teachings, so that we could check them out later...but generally people were kept so busy that there was little time for privately checking anything out. To begin with, things weren't wholly awry. There was some semblance of relating a verse to its context (after all, that was PFAL). If it appeared to say something other, well, that was because we didn't know enough Bible to be able to argue differently. Later, of course, we were fully indoctrinated into the special interpretations given by TWI with our special understanding that "those churchy Christians" couldn't understand because they had no spiritual awareness. On those rare occasions when it was possible to find time to read the whole context, it could often be seen that the interpretation was not quite that given by the TWI teacher. Or it might not bear the emphasis given. But by then, of course, we had learned to defer to the teaching and/or didn't want to expose our own lack of spiritual understanding. That idea of pulling a verse out of the hat (as it were) and introducing it into a teaching is fine IF everyone is FULLY instructed and understands the context ... a sort of shorthand for referring to the whole context or incident. It's entirely inappropriate for beginners, with no background, where it only serves to magnify the teacher's superior knowledge. I find it helpful to read more modern-English versions of the Bible (anything but KJV) so as (among other things) to avoid that voice in the back of the head triggering off a TWI-approved line of thinking. Hmm. I see Groucho picked up on the same point........

Well, today has been a lovely day. There has been snow the last couple of days and below freezing nights - but today was warm and sunny, windless, vivid blue sky, pretty clouds... Ah, spring is in the air!!! There are catkins on many bushes, and leaf buds are swelling on trees. Snowdrops are everywhere. I have tulips in a pot near the door, and they are shooting, a couple of inches high now. I have some self-setter chard. My leeks are still in the ground and probably growing. There are some brassicas including some purple sprouting broccoli which are beginning to grow again. They were looking sorta leafy before it got really cold but the leaves are ragged round the edges now and I suspect the pigeons have been gnawing on them during the hard weather. Best of all, I got to get out with some secateurs and trim away some now-dead foliage which has been looking messy for a while but no way was I venturing out there in sub-zero temps to trim the lavender bush! I must clean out the pond. It's only a little pond and it seems to have acquired a lot of silt blown/washed in from the garden. My solitary remaining fish will be walking on the surface before much longer. Reduces his hide-ability from the local heron.

That same ego ... look, we know the Greek word for this or that ... therefore, we have more of the truth than anyone else. ah...no, not exactly. Not what you know, but what you live. Show us your faith, John, without your works...faith without works is useless. Truthfully, John, how many works greater than Jesus have you done? How many have you raised from the dead, healed from long term illnesses, how many have you fed from the crumbs on a plate at the functions you speak at? If any of these are verifiable, then show...then you won't be able to keep people away. And someone will donate an RV just because they want to - not because you need to beg for it. (Now that sort of thing I have seen, people getting real needs met. And having vehicles donated to them.) And I've seen some of those "below-par Christians" live through difficult times and come out with miraculous results where all they have prayed for has been met, way above all they could ask or think. Otherwise, John, TLTF is just another talking shop. Try giving it all away, John, not trying to accumulate it. Remember, "you can't outgive God."

Actually bangers might not be too bad. Wrap them in a pancake - a bit like toad in the hole with soggy batter. And for dessert: more pancakes/crepes with lots of fruit rolled in inside them. mmmm-mmmm. I was in a pancake race last year. My team won. It was the inaugural race...heard nothing this year, perhaps it was the alpha and omega of races.

Just a thought... Maybe they're sending Linder out to work so that he can "abundantly share" 15-20% of his commissions. Buy some blessings from God, or whatever.

English bangers? The sort you have with mash and thick gravy - that's brown gravy with water and flour, not milk and flour! Or bangers as in what you have on 5 November - Boom! Bang! Along with all the other fireworks? No, never tried bangers of any sort with pancakes. Though strangely I have had bacon with what I guess you might call a "short stack" of fatter pancakes/crepes. This year it will be pancakes with fresh orange juice and sugar. And maybe some other interesting things as well. Yum.

Pancake Day approaches... yum yum!!!

It snowed again here at lunchtime, just lightly. Didn't settle. My lawn is a dismal sickly yellow colour, perhaps because covered in snow too long. Things just look sorta dilapidated. But there is a day lily starting to shoot in one corner of the garden. I have a wallflower that was in a pot, looked pretty dead so I shoved it in the garden, and it hasn't stopped flowering since. It's huge, too. The leaves and flowers all shrivelled up in the intense cold lately, the plant looked miserable - but now, when it's not quite so cold, it's off again, full of bloom. A bit confused, methinks. I have leeks in the garden which have shown no signs of growth in ... months. Likewise some purple sprouting broccoli and some other sort of brassica. Well, they fill the space, even if they aren't doing much. Better than weeds and maybe I will get something edible yet. Time to start sowing a few seeds so as to get wee plants to go out in a few months. I have a brassica seed box, got about 4 different types of brassica in 80 seeds. Give that a go. First up is to complete the path re-laying. Started it last autumn and then the weather got either too appallingly wet, or too darn cold so the path was hastily made safe. Now the slabs want setting correctly and safely.

Hell's bells, VPW didn't understand English, never mind anything else. You'd think if someone is so keen on what the Bible says, that person would be as precise as possible with their own use of their mother tongue. He: didn't understand English grammar; didn't use words correctly (assigned incorrect meanings to words); contradicted himself in definitions. As well as that, he didn't take into account wider Bible history/archaeology or the different cultural aspects that came into play. Sure the Bible fits with mathematical precision just like 2+3=6 if you can assign your own meaning to "2" and "3" - and to "6" while you're about it. Unless of course that little + sign is tipped on its side and really means "x" which you found out about by reading some long-lost piece of paper that nobody else has ever heard of.

For what it's worth, from WikiAnswers: And there were a few other sites with similar answers. Good question, I never thought about it before.

Waysider - exactly! When I started healing from TWI abuse and started to attend a mainstream church - had been there about 3 or 4 times and then it was their annual "reporting" Sunday. "Here's our income, here's where it came from. Here's how we spent it. These are the things we need to spend on next year; this is a longer term project. What we'd like from you is... These are just abridged accounts; you can get a fuller version, and ask any questions, of XXX [who stood up in the congregation, so's he could be identified]." And what they ask for first, is not your hand in your pocket, but how you could be more involved: the different ministries/areas of service. Last of all your money. Every year has been the same. This church never asks for money except at the annual laying out of accounts. Never passes the collection plate. Gives away lots of money, or "things" like meals to those in need. Looks after elderly, youth, families, a particularly poor area of the city. Has fostered one church plant, is fostering another, and is rebuilding a church that was arsoned. Refurbished the church rooms where children's ministry takes place. Jawdropping, after the non-accountability of TWI. If TWI, STFI, whoever, is so open about needs, why don't they show and tell? It's okay (prudent) to make a few strategic reserves. But when they compel everyone else to "travel light" - hey, set the example, huh? Where does the money go, and what are the real "needs" of those (cough) "ministers"? What else do they have the use of? (Log cabins and all)

Never was a research dept. Should have been called the "Plagiarism Dept." Guess they might have been "re-searching" for new material to plagiarize.

Because, soul searcher, in TWI speak, there is, as it were, an omitted word. In Authorised/KJ Version (as used by TWI): 4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. 7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal . VPW logic said (and I could be wrong on this) that the "one" and "another" in verses 8-10 should relate back to the nearest noun and chose "profit" for this: whereas, really, in the KJV translation, the nearest noun is not "profit" but "manifestation". However, the Interlinear renders verse 7 as: "but to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for profit." Which uses "profit" as a noun. Maybe it's a noun; could be a verb as KJV - I don't know enough Greek to say. On VPW's logic using KJV, it shouldn't be different profits [benefits] but different manifestations. And the "profits" are first to bless the person, then to bless the body of believers. 8 For to one [profit/manifestation] is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another [profit/manifestation] the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9 To another [profit/manifestation] faith by the same Spirit; to another [profit/manifestation] the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; 10 To another [profit/manifestation] the working of miracles; to another [profit/manifestation] prophecy; to another [profit/manifestation] discerning of spirits; to another [profit/manifestation] divers kinds of tongues; to another [profit/manifestation] the interpretation of tongues: 11 But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally [interlinear: separately] as he [the man] will [desires]. 12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body [=manifestations of the spirit], being many, are one body: so also is Christ [=the spirit of Christ]. I simply note that many churchgoers talk of the "gifts" of the spirit and desire "the gift of tongues". The word "manifestation" is from a root word meaning "to render apparent; appeer, manifestly declare, show" and that root word itself is derived from a word meaning "evidently, openly." So nothing about "gifts" there, lots of individual gifts or one bigger gift; only about something being obvious. Whatever, TWI view is that everyone has the full package of holy spirit and has the ability to manifest all 9 of the manifestations.

Oops, wrong thread.

Ho, bro. We've nearly all been through it, to some degree. Feel free to rant, shout, be angry, change your mind lots of times, as you feel your way to your new normal. Lots of wrong has been done; there's lots to get upset about. There are several TWI child survivors at the Cafe. Welcome!

Ah come on. How on earth would he have time for any "moonlighting"? Isn't he too busy cutting the grass with nail clippers or some such useless task? Could this mean (cough) that he has been kicked out? I loved the bit where he said he had a "BS in Administration." Sure does. So much BS at TWI.

One has to actually apply for a staff job? Can't they just order Corps to do the work? Make that their assignment? (Maybe they could just short-circuit those people and write "DNR" - sorry, "DFAC" on their Corps jackets, as the assignees would soon quit) Or maybe there just aren't that many Corps left anymore.

And Orwell's "Animal Farm" whre the new regime ends up indistinguishable from the old - except in the nature of the new regime's greater abuse of its followers.

Well! What news! Congratulations both! Rummie clearly must enjoy delicious Italian cooking. (mmmmm) And anyway, are we hearing from Dooj in this?

I guess what I'm asking is how to uninstall Messenger. I can't be bothered with that stuff. I want my Hotmail account, and I want to go straight to it, not to some stupid page that tells me what stupid things some of the people in my address book are doing. If I want to know what they're doing this minute, I'll ask them. Skype 'em, maybe. Otherwise, I don't care. Can Messenger /Live (I dunno what) be deleted or uninstalled? Because in Control Panel there is no installed program called Messenger to uninstall. Is it something I have to do through Firefox? If so, how? Anyone? Please??

The pages "About us" and "Statement of Beliefs" are clearly lifted straight from something TWI put out - an earlier edition of their own website, probably. The rest is written in quirky style, by a non-native English speaker (and God bless his little cotton socks, he writes better English than most of us could write Hindi, so I'm not knocking him). There's quite an interesting little section about "What is religion?" Sangat has not been affiliated with TWI for decades. He hangs out with CFFM but has a huge ministry in India. He also does tours in Europe and in the USA en route to CFFM. Because of the background in the Indian culture, he does not teach things that would be exactly as TWI would do it but (gasp) attuned to the cultural norms of the people he lives with.

What mstar said! Why waste your time reading, when there was all that Way stuff to keep current on. Or even read the Bible! In rez [under LCM], we were banned from reading anything non-Way. I was in Plurality Palace one day and someone had put some books, including some novels, in there. Relieved at finding something different for a change, I plonked myself down and started to have a quiet read. What do you know but a few minutes later, one of my Corps sis came in - saw me reading whatever-it-was - and said if I didn't put it down immediately, she'd report me to the Corps Coord. I've been reading since I was two years old, have got myself locked in the library a couple of times (at least) after closing time (), am a prolific reader of a huge range of books, and if I get any more, I will have to move house. Oh-oh...but the local library is having is annual book sale this week - fill a bag for some minute amount of money....

It is odd, isn't it, how animals play gentle with baby animals of other species. They know. Now we need a picture of Rocket. Or Rocket and Lilly. Sounds too cute. Great neck warmer - like those "fox fur" things women used to don (yeuk) only yours is so much better. We used to have a cat (had her from a teeny kitten) and she loved my dad and rode around on his neck. Even as an adult cat, she especially liked running up his back if he had a shirt off, and perching on his shoulders. Dad didn't think this was quite as much fun.......