waysider

Must have been long after I left.

Yes, I can see if one were still obsessed with defending the tenets of PFAL, some of these points might seem to have merit. Personally, I see PFAL for the error filled piece of crap that it really was, especially the bogus "law of believing" nonsense. Your "only rule" requires that one, of necessity, subscribe to contaminated doctrine in order to access non-contaminated doctrine.

My, aren't we clever?

In the interest of condensing things a bit, I am pasting the items referred to from post # 241. **************************** In a few cases grads presented their “only rule for faith and practice” confusing it with things like the idea of “the most important” rule for conduct, or confusing it with the “greatest commandment,” or confusing it with an abbreviated thumbnail summary of a system of rules. On January 15, on the “snow” thread, in Post # 401 Twinky wrote: “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.” On January 31, on this thread, in Post # 107 socks wrote: “I do have a single rule of faith and practice, actually, to the original topic - and again in Galatians as it's written in these words, a perfect way to view it for every Christian - ‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’” On February 1, on this thread, in Post # 140 waysider wrote: “If I had to declare ONE rule of faith and practice, it would be The Golden Rule. It transcends religious boundaries and theological inclinations.” *************************** Suppose we just cut to the chase and you state what you think is "wrong" with those statements. Is it because they don't precisely reflect what "Doctor" insisted must be our only rule? I don't need a lengthy chastising explanation. Just get to the point and state your case.

This is a statement that was made recently on another thread regarding people who were adversely affected by the depraved lifestyle of VPW. ********************************** "You see we did not select VPW to "put it all together" and distribute it around the world. God selected Dr to get the job done and it got done. Anyone hurt in the process would have probably gotten hurt some other way, and either way God is there to help them get healed if they want it." *********************************** I'm personally at a loss to understand the sort of rationalization it would take to accept this statement. Any comments?

I was never involved with any splinter, though the last twig I attended was a bit on the rogue side in regards to "towing the line". I have often said, and this is, of course, just opinion, that the lifestyle that evolved from our involvement played, perhaps, a larger role in our destinies than the actual scriptural tenets we adhered to, such as "four crucified", "Jesus Christ is not God", etc. Something that I think was overlooked in The Way was the reason believers met as they did in the first (and second and third) centuries. There is speculation as to the actual reasons but, for all intents and purposes, it can probably be summed up as "necessity". They really had nowhere else to meet. Couple that with the persecution and a pattern begins to evolve. These "churches" were autonomous. They didn't emanate from a central location. Early groups during "The Jesus Movement" bore some similarity in that, they too, were decentralized. They had few formal meeting centers and thus they enjoyed a level of autonomy. And, in fact, there were pockets of groups, twigs, inside The Way in the earlier days that were operating in a similar manner. Wierwille changed all that. He centralized everything at HQ. Yes, we continued to meet in homes. We weren't however, "home fellowships" in a strict sense. We were "cells" of a centralized organization. This is one of the biggest realization I garnered from my Fellow Laborer experience. Here we were, living in a commune, pretending to be replicating the lifestyle of the first century "believers" when, in reality, we were living a contradiction. Every move we made was dictated from the outside. That's not how the church existed in the first century. From what I have observed, many of these so-called splinter groups favor the home meeting format as well but are really nothing more than a perpetuation of the cell group structure. If that's what they really want, more power to them. I think people need to take an honest look, though, at what they call "home fellowships" and see if that is an accurate description before they decide to declare allegiance.

50 years ago

Chance--Man On A Mission

Which of these are you handing out?

Sorry, Twinkie It's amazing how these simple critters can bring so much pleasure to our lives.

Here is an example of a question that would warrant a short answer. QUOTE (Mike @ Jan 30 2009, 12:19 PM) * Christ formed within is Christ in you THE GLORY, whereas pneuma hagion is only the token, the hope of glory to come. It came. My response Reference? **************************** Care to explain why you think that would require a lengthy answer? Mike's answers aren't short because he doesn't want them to be short. He dodges the questions. He takes a simple question and responds with lengthy jibber-jabber that makes no logical sense in context. Then he belittles his audience by telling them they are either suffering from attention deficiency or just not smart enough or caring enough or their memories are faulty, or they lack proper study skills or they're not spiritually sharp enough to get "it", whatever "it" is. Then he cries, "Boo Hoo, poor me, I'm living a life of martyrdom for such a noble cause. Nobody understands me." Like the old saying goes, "You made your bed, now sleep in it." It's really just that simple.

-------------Da Boss

How can I know if I want his answers or not if he never brings them out in the open? Am I bothering him? I don't think so. He is, after all, the one who continues to broadcast and re-broadcast his PFAL infomercial. Why advertise if you don't expect anyone to respond? Mike spends inordinate volumes of time and space pitching his product when he could simply answer a few simple questions and be done with it. I don't feel the least bit of sympathy. If he feels it's taking too much time, maybe he should rethink his priorities and be a bit less evasive. Now what would you give for it? Wait!!------There's more.

My questions have all been very straightforward. They are the type of questions that require short and to the point answers. Perhaps if Mike didn't devote page after page after page to dodging them, he would have the time to answer them.

You dodged my question---again. (Not that I'm surprised.) My question was---"What does PFAL say we should expect of our ministers and teachers?", not how they are chosen? You're the guy who says he knows more about PFAL than all of us. Surely this should be easy-------AND SHORT!

He sounds like someone I would like to have known.

I don't need a scripture to tell me the man was unrepentant. His lifestyle was a manifestation of his attitude toward repentance. But since you insist: As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Ya know, I'm just curious. What does PFAL say we should expect of our ministers and teachers? Seems like we ought to go there and see if it's going to be our "only rule---".

Pardon me for saying so, Mike, but that's a wagon full of equine excrement. The class is riddled with errors, not just disagreements over doctrine, real honest to goodness errors. You dodge and dart because you really have no genuine answers. I used to have a U.S. History teacher who demanded answers be given loudly and clearly. He was fond of saying, "When in doubt, mumble." Maybe we could rephrase that to, "When in doubt, dodge and dart." Your sole purpose in posting here is to present what is, in essence, an "info-mmercial" for PFAL. If someone is paying you to sell this garbage, I recommend you get the money up front and stash it in a secret bank account before your customers discover what a poison filled product you've been pitching.

Maybe you could just post a synopsis.

Define "soon", please

Was it buried, lost, dismembered or dead, Mike? Poop or get off the potty chair.

So now you are proposing that the word was DEAD? That has a final sort of tone. If it was DEAD, how did Bullinger, Stiles, Leonard, etc. bring back to life the portions they contributed to Wierwille's PFAL?

Expanding one's view beyond a narrow, error filled Bible class would hardly qualify as getting bogged down with a few trees. In fact, it would seem that it might even increase one's ability to see the whole forest.