Twinky

No, Mike, I will put on the mind of Christ if I absorb and master the material in the appropriate location... which is not in PFAL unless PFAL lines up with the scriptures (NOT the other way around). We are all spokesmen - we are all Ambassadors for Christ. It's not limited to VPW (btw it's okay to use CHRISTIAN names not manmade titles to refer to someone). Even if "Jesus Christ made him (VPW) his spokesman," does that mean VPW is the only spokesman? Does JC not walk and talk with us all as often as we are willing? Does that mean JC does not walk and talk with people in other churches - especially the leaders of those churches? A visiting minister at the church I go to presented a whole lot of stuff that was very similar to PFAL material, but presented so lovingly and with a different emphasis. It was much better presented, and very exhortational. You could see the whole congregation "growing" as they took the material in. It magnified God, not the minister, who was very self-effacing. There's no way this man could have read any PFAL material. Was he wrong? Or was he a spokesman for God, too? Or would you say he is a cunning counterfeit? (He comes from a place where there are lots of snowstorms.) I can only say that I have a better walk with Christ since I ceased to be hobbled by TWI.

Please, don't be so insulting, Mike. You do your "cause" no good. You have diverted this thread and people have posted in response to your diversions. I ask you to answer them. I am not gossip oriented at all. But I will not magnify the behavior of a wolf above the Lord Jesus Christ. Your hero goes against much that the Lord Jesus Christ said and did. It is not gossip to say that someone's repeated pattern of behavior goes against the gospel. Come to think of it - you mention VPW ("Doctor") so many times. Yet you never mention the Head of the Church. Why is that?

A bit more from the Snow on the Gaspumps thread: Nothing personal, Mike. But it is a rather outrageous statement.

* * spluttering with laughter into my cup of tea! * *

Never mind, Waysider, I didn't expect a response from the person asked. Nor to my post immediately above that one (# 423 on page 22). Edited cos I found the post number

Just looked in on this thread, first time for a while. GC, you did really well getting all those bulbs for 10p/pkt. Hope you get something out of them. I dug up all my daffs last year as they didn't flower and also have some tulips from a friend. BUT I haven't planted any of them yet!¬ Should have been in months ago. The bulbs have been in my shed so they have gone through their "cold" period - maybe if I stick them in this afternoon I will get some flowers, perhaps later than usual. Am giving some thought to what I want to grow this year. The caterpillars got my brussels sprouts and shredded the leaves so the tiny sprouts have little to nourish their growth. My Savoy cabbages are still in and looking good, but not growing much. I had a load of peas but frankly I could have bought a bag of the frozen variety and saved myself the space. I am growing chard which has been prolific - in the very hard frosts we had it all froze and wilted and looked done for - but as soon as it's turned warmer, there is the chard, standing up nicely. I grew onions from seed last year but the bulbs have never really filled out. I grew leeks from seed and they did well but originally planted them too deep and they failed; got some more and they are just dawdling in the ground. My courgettes did nicely and when they came in, there was abundance and I have bottled some of them. My squash decided to grow just about the time everything else was dying down. Of course, as every year, I will be growing runner beans, but they won't be going in till May so something else, a quick crop, can have their site until then. It's only a small garden, so things have to make themselves useful and be worthwhile. No point in growing what I can buy, cheaper.

Well, folks, thanks for your suggestions. I have now been using FF for some time, since that scare that IE wasn't secure re banking things. I really like that there are different tabs at the top which I think are available in IE when using Vista or high versions of the operating system; but I have Win 2000 which doesn't support tabs. (Or maybe I just got something else all mixed up here. Anyway I had no tabs with IE) The remembering of websites is useful too. Any other tips about FF that I could play with? :) I still haven't downloaded anything for Chat...which was the point of starting this thread...

Gotta agree, Leafy, a whole lot better than doing it elsewhere or weeing in places that she shouldn't. Have had to throw one rug away and need to clean its replacement; someone on this thread recommended borax. That's a job for when the weather is consistently warmer, another couple of months or so. Just lately I am starting to feed them real Go-Cat (not supermarket lookalike) and they like this very much. Eat all they can. Both are considerably larger, no bad thing since they were so skinny and bony before. However this high inflow of food they are now consuming also means high outflow. Yesterday I had 6 or 8 of Tuxy's stinky little statements. I remove it from the litter tray and whadayaknow, seems like she goes straight back and does another.

Leafy - three years! Maybe then I'm a third of the way through. Linda - getting a bit that way with Tuxedo. She jumps on a chair near me as if to say, I'm here! Play with me! but when I reach out she often springs away. But then, sometimes, she will just stay and be petted, head rubbed, back stroked. Okay unless I try to pick her up. Crypto loves to sit near me, about 3ft away. But if I move - she's away like a shot, usually. THW - Yes, one bad incident and that seems to be it. Takes a lot of overcoming. I think they are settled here. Much less jumpy, both of them, than they used to be. When it gets warmer, I will let them out - will be their first time unless you count Tuxy's adventure on a lead (see above) which was a Refusal from her point of view. I must make them a shelter before I open the door. They may never come back. No idea how they will react to the other cats around here, of which there are more than a few. Tuxy will quickly find that she is not the Boss Cat. Hey, has anyone else had this experience? They like to use the same litter tray (their choice). Crypto neatly covers her leavings, but Tuxy leaves great extremely stinky piles right there in full view (and smell - gag <_< ). She knows to cover (I hear her scratching nearby) but since about the second month I had her, she won't cover. She will do this whether the litter is completely fresh or whether it has been out for a little while and therefore used. I've thought this might be her showing her dominance. Believe me, I've thought of leaving my own message for her and not covering, but that seems too disgusting. If there were a zoo nearby I might ask for some lion poo. Any suggestions? Maybe when they start going outside they'll learn to use soil. Probably in my vege garden... Sorry if you were eating when you read this ! :D

Mabe it's true, maybe not. But I'd've thought it would be easier to use an animal as bait by tying a collar round its neck and dragging it along. Hooks wouldn't need to be affixed; once the sharks arrived, they'd snap at anything. Why have a hook through the animal's snout? A shark would surely bite first at easier to access parts, like a leg or a tail. It wouldn't bite a dog's nose and skewer itself on a hook there. And if the hook through the snout is simply to fix the dog on the fishing line - a rope round the neck would be considerably easier and entail less risk of being bitten oneself. Waysider: One of the guys in my twig (a fisherman) got a fishhook stuck in his finger. Why he came to me, I don't know. We took him to the hospital. He was squeamish and white with the shock of seeing this thing in his finger (and perhaps with the pain of it). I can imagine your cat hissing at and attacking anyone who came near. It wouldn't be loking placid about it.

Nice one! Lots of good points on this thread, yet it's all so simple and obvious. Quite possibly some of us learned a lot of it (the beginnings, anyway) in infancy. So here we are again, closing the circle. Or enlarging ourselves. I do think that most of us are wiser following our interlude with TWI. More mature. Would that wisdom have come anyway? Some of it. I've learned among other things to be kinder and more compassionate. Patience was never my strong point and TWI definitely didn't help there. But now, patience seems effortless. Was looking back at the things I've learned in the last few post-Way years and realized that Gal 5:22-23 is much more evident in my life. But - I'm still learning, still a work in progress. :)

Mike, I note you didn't respond to this comment in your post no 403.

Why, that's very kind of you, Mike, to think it's a "very good start." Most kind of you. Would you prefer this? VPW was love and in him was no darkness at all. Because he loved us, VPW stole PFAL so that his actions will never leave us nor forsake us. Nah, think I'll stick with what I said before.

Looks like Weirwille pinched this phrase as well. "The Rule of Faith and Practice" by A. A. Hodge (1823-1886) From Outlines of Theology (Chapter Five) Originally published in 1860, Outlines of Theology is now in the public domain. This chapter may therefore be copied and distributed without restriction. Rest of the article can be viewed here: http://www.the-highway.com/Scripture_Hodge.html A.A. Hodge (1823-1886), Professor in Systematic Theology at Princeton Seminary from 1877 until his death in 1886, urged that the aim of every Christian teacher should be to produce a vitalizing impression — giving students ‘theology, exposition, demonstration, orthodoxy, learning, but giving all this to them warm.’ ‘He taught the knowledge of God,’ said one of his hearers, ‘with the learning of a scholar and the enthusiasm of a loving Christian’. These qualities not only crowded his classrooms, they also led to frequent appeals for the delivery of popular lectures. This article is taken from his Outlines of Theology, first published in 1860 by the Banner of Truth Trust

There was a time when I might have believed this, or something like. Just like all of you, I subscribed to The Way Magazine, and read it eagerly. It was letters and articles. The NT is all letters, not bound together in a book. Letters. People still write letters. Christian leaders still write letters. Christian leaders still write articles. I believed in The Way Ministry, that it was a good and wholesome place to be, teaching me The Word in a practical way; how to apply it. So why wouldn't I see the letters and articles in The Way Mag as God's word to his people today? The Ephesians, Corinthians and all the others in the Pauline epistles had the choice to make: the words of Paul - or the words of God as given to Paul? But after some years of reading the same old same old stuff in The Way Mag, hearing the same stuff on SNS, it was just boring. I realized it wasn't freeing but constricting. Truth to tell, I liked GMIR best. Now I see the wide disparity between the way these articles were seeking me to behave; and the behavior as practised by TWI leadership. I felt the difference between the words preaching love, and the practice of "love" as espoused by TWI - keeping people in the dark, excluding people from their own lives, compulsion, bullying and intimidation. And I can see if I tucked those letters into my Bible after John 1, 2 and 3 as Vic 1, 2 and 3 (or whatever) (LOL) there certainly wouldn't be a fit like a hand in a glove. More like a wolf's paw in a glove. *** One rule for faith and practice: well, here's mine. God is love and in him is no darkness at all. Because he loves us, God will never leave us nor forsake us. Scripture references can be found if desired. I will leave that to established sleuths, those that like to mine treasures in written words. Not sure if they actually appear in PFAL so another Book may be required. If it's not a good rule, no doubt there will be those ready to "correct" me. I don't seek signs, miracles, wonders or snowstorms to be able to follow this rule. It's quite simple to operate, really.

From the Snow on the Gaspumps thread: PFAL writings are the Bible. Mike said it. Do you believe it?

Hi Leafy, happy birthday!

Very interesting! Prototype is not the prettiest thing, but hey, if it would help people would use it! Like you, Socks, I've needed optical aids since an early age. Unaided, one eye will focus at 4 inches and the other at 9". So I'd be pretty useless in the workforce without aid. The difference that can be made for people who have cataracts is also amazing; such a simple operation and one which can be done amazingly cheaply and in minutes, in developing countries. To supply these self-adjusting specs won't solve every problem but it could solve some problems. If people can see, they can work, and that brings wealth to their whole communities. Are these to be provided free of charge (charitable) or to be paid for, in which case $19 might be difficult for some developing countries' workers.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered nearly 60 years ago. Wow, that's a loooong time. Scholars have been examining them bit by bit, very slowly to start with, but copies have been released for quite a long time now. You would think a "research" ministry would have something to say, wouldn't you? I was expecting something, at least, as Corps studies: "We don't understand all this yet, but..." Historical value and background, even if not accepted as authoritative or copies of the scriptures. There are reference books and materials available. Looks from a post on this thread that Karen M had some interest; no doubt Walter C would also be interested. But of course anyone who knew anything or had interests other than simply VPW material got run off before they could expose the guru.

Ouch, Tuxy bit me again. Well it was my own fault really. I had captured her and was stroking her in my lap. She wasn't settled and at the first opportunity jumped off. I caught her back leg and we had a serious wrestle, with her tearing up the carpet to try and escape. When I plonked a cushion on her to subdue her, I think that's when she bit me - her last resort. Yes, it got infected...again, all swollen and fiery. But it seems to have responded (to prayer) and hasn't been such a huge problem as last time, which took 3 weeks of heavy duty antibiotics. What am I supposed to do with these unhandleable creatures? Yet both are so very very much better than they were when I first got them. As for Crypto...she allowed me to stroke her once as she passed her body near my leg, this evening.

Miss the header, the morning reality, but love the new look. Great, easy to view, clear. Never liked the immediately prior "look".

No market for them in the countries where I've lived, but checking on ebay last night seems to show them on offer for $13 and upwards, softback. Mine are hardback and in VGC (the 5th collateral, due to the fact that I only read it once for the AC pre-exam!!). Maybe I can recoup some of my lost outlay. Bliss, sounds like an offer you can't refuse from Coolchef.

So what are you saying, Potato, that you have learned to manage your money better? (LOL)

Great answers, all. Humanity, compassion, living life, getting on with it, walking one's own walk. Not relying on others (especially "spiritual leaders" of various types). Confidence to make own decisions. These are all good things to learn. Maybe we would have got there without our "Way" experiences. Maybe not. I think I've learned compassion, and to like myself. To love myself, even.

We've all left The Way International for one reason or another. For many of us, leaving was stressful because we were forced to choose between family loyalties, or were kicked out, or for whatever reason. For others, it was a more reasoned choice where they saw that what was practiced was not doctrinally or practically as set out in the Bible. But apart from that - what have you learned? Generally? Life lessons? To some extent this will vary according to why and how you "got in" as well as how you "got out." To be more cynical? To think a little more? To trust a little more - or a little less? To trust your own instincts when you see those "red flags"? To see through the ads on the TV for what they are trying to sell? Closer family ties? Value friends more - or less? To be harder, softer, kinder, less kind, more compassionate, less gullible --- what is it for you? I don't want this thread to become unpleasant, nor do I want it to be a "Way bashing" thread. Just - what you've learned from the experience.