waysider

When I read that, I thought Taz was saying VP expected entirely too much from his followers. Yeah, I know, "the closest pronoun" and all that stuff. But, that's how I interpreted it, none the less. I guess we'll have to wait for Taz to clarify.

Ahhh 'cmon. You had to know I would post , no?

Open season on armadillos.

Just for the record. I never said Paul lied or that he was a con-man or perverse in a manner that resembles VPW's depravity. I said "what if." What I alluded to is that we accept his credibility based on a criteria that he, himself, established. That doesn't necessarily make him a liar or a con-man or anything else. It certainly dilutes the value of his credibility, though.

Well, it is, after all, just a cult. Know what I mean?

Yes. There's always an element of credibility. Paul said we should all speak in tongues so we all spoke in tongues. Why? Because we trusted his perceived credibility. And why have we concluded Paul was a credible source? Because we have accepted that "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit"/ "All scripture is God-breathed"/ "The epistle were written directly to us as The Church of God"/ etc. And who was it who introduced us to Paul's criteria for scripture valuation? Well, what do you know? It was Paul. Of course, he must have been credible because the epistles depict him as a "holy man of God" who spoke to "The Church of God".

Even HANK SR. saw the light.

What they said.

HeeHee

I dunno. I think I'd be surprised if I just FOUND it. period.

"You lived it"??? What does that mean? We didn't live it. We only pretended to live it. There is nothing about the way we tried to mimic "life in the first century church" that even remotely resembles the original. Not the culture, not the structure, not the daily routines. Nothing. I spent multiple years in a program that was supposed to replicate the way "believers" lived in the first century. You know what? It was really just an exercise in communal living. That's all it was. A commune with a religious twist.

I think that class was like the Emperor's New Clothes. People came out of it with a "WTF?" look on their faces but didn't dare reveal their true evaluation with each other for fear they would be thought of as "spiritual lacking".

I just googled the entire poem, word for word. It appears that we, in The Way, may have been the only people on the planet who had NOT heard this anywhere else before. Page after page after page of this very story. "Author unknown" was all I could find for credit.

We only "know" these things because we read them in the epistles.

Personally, I really think this whole deal of "manifestations" is a crock of hooey. If there really is a God, and He wants or needs to "say" something to you, I'm sure it wouldn't be beyond the scope of His abilities to do so. As to learning how to "operate" them: Thousands of us Wayfers graduated from the Advanced Class. I don't think any of us really knew any more going out than we did going in.

Now you've gone an opened up the family sized can of worms. How come a guy who, supposedly, successfully defended a doctoral dissertation forgot all about citation of sources in latter years?

I know he said he studied homiletics, but did he defend a doctoral dissertation on it? It seems rather broad in scope, don't you think? Q. What was your thesis on? A. Monkeys. Q. Oh, well that narrows it down.

I don't know. It seems to me like a good part of the modern Christian faith is not so much based on Jesus but on what Paul said in the Epistles. At least that was the case in The Way.

I wish I could have heard his defense to the review committee. "You guys will just hafta take my word on it.-----Dat's Riiiiight!"

If Wierwille was a "Dr.", as he allowed people to believe, what was the nature of his dissertation?

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-------and some for the ladies.

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This whole concept can be traced back to "the good old days" of The Way. How many times did you hear that it's not your place as a giver to question how the money was being spent? In fact, it was seen as a sort of weak point in your "believing" to "question" (read:"doubt") financial matters. Our responsibility, as they taught, was to simply give and then "believe" for the money to be spent wisely. It was the leadership's responsibility (to God, not to us) to be good stewards of the funds. A variation of this is even included in the Way Corps Principles. (Believe for the prosperity of the ministry) So, I think this sort of mindset is culturally ingrained in Way and Way-derivative followers, so much so, that it seems like business as usual to carry on in this fashion.

Have you ever wondered how deaf people speak in tongues? No, I'm not trying to be funny. But, stop and think about key #3 to walking in the spirit. How does that one work for deaf people?