Bolshevik

Just now, OldSkool said:

Heres a list of links the Bible's history.

https://textusreceptusbibles.com/Editorial

Right The Word The Word nothing But The Word.  

  . . . . which word?

5 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Agreed.

Cigarettes have warning labels.

But the population of underdeveloped and overly attached will continue to need them.

Death is not a person's biggest fear.

What does The Word take the place of? What is Christ?

55 minutes ago, skyrider said:

     3.  Isolation -- within weeks, you are subtly being isolated from friends, family, information, past activities

Within a matter of weeks of attending twig fellowship, the process of isolation has begun.  You have entered the "recruitment stage".... to be another soldier in the cult's army.  With phone calls and constant undershepherding, they have one immediate goal to achieve.... getting you into the pfal class.

It all sounds so harmless.  Who could ever imagine the path you'd have to tread just by taking a bible class?  

But pfal is far more sinister than just a bible class:

• Class sessions, generally, are scheduled for 4 nights per week... for 3 weeks.
• Lasting nearly 3 hours per night.... with only a strict 10-minute break.  No questions allowed.
• Every session is packed with a volume of information.... "information overload."
• Assertions are made on biblical integrity that are not backed by scripture.
• Wierwille adds private interpretation to several conflicting verses of scripture.
• Stories are injected that add "zingers" of fear and/or confusion...ie little boy killed by car.
• "Every woman in the kingdom belongs to the king".... gives license to his sexual predation.
• Wierwille plants seeds of doubt when he denigrates churches/denominations.
• Recruitment begins in earnest...."To stand with the ministry that taught you the Word."
• Holy spirit field is paramount to vp's ministry.... even though his SIT is repetitive.
• Etc. etc.

After pfal, you have come to a crossroads.  Do you go back to your friends, family and activities... or, do you stand with "the ministry?"  Some experts say that it takes three months to break a habit.  Well, after about three months of attending twigs and taking pfal you have been re-formatted to be a cult follower.  Now granted, the vast majority of pfal class grads EXITED and were never seen again at this juncture.... but for those who stayed, the isolation from life and society only increased from there.  Two roads diverged before me..... I had a choice before me.  Which one had the better claim?

Robert Frost poem.....

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~~~~~~

A difference that changed the trajectory of my life.

 

 

When I personally ask TWI joiners why did they join, they say they just started going and never stopped.

The world is full of people passively engaged in life.  Join a cult?  They aren't doing anything productive anyway.  There's noting in those empty minds to counter a leader, even an evil leader.

Look out into the world TODAY . . . what is happening out there?

8 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

I think there was a bookcase or a cloak or something that contained the list of texts to canonize... maybe even a folder with a rough draft.

There's good reason why vpw was afraid to talk about canon.

There's a thread on this topic. It has a circular shape.

The Orthodox continued to add books, the Catholics had no issue with that.

Adding books is something one would expect.  Since people exist before books.

The Protestants removed books, which the Catholics had issue is.

The point being the Church existed before the book.

Think about how much attention Mike gets here.  Where will that attention be in 30 years?  In a book?  In a thread?

Who does GSC take the place of?

8 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

I think there was a bookcase or a cloak or something that contained the list of texts to canonize... maybe even a folder with a rough draft.

There's good reason why vpw was afraid to talk about canon.

There's a thread on this topic. It has a circular shape.

DragonBall GT is not canon.  There's some concepts I think are superior to and I wish were incorporated into DragonBall Super.  

A cloud was also involved in transport early in DBZ.  That was before instant transmission, which is much less showy.

It was tradition that guided the formation of the Bible in the first place.  Did a text follow what the Churches were already practicing?

There were many many texts.  Some that were probably just fine weren't included.

Apparently the Orthodox Bible had books added to it.

The Protestants removed books from the Bible.

The Catholics didn't have a list hand by God to decide which books to include.  So one criteria they provided was the text must be widespread.  

Anyway, the Bible didn't always exist.  

Wierwille’s Truth versus Tradition argument makes no sense.

Witnesses come in clouds, too.

Unless they were nebulized and sprayed into the air.

By his stripes we are healed.

Next time you are sick, simply choose not to be.

On 2/10/2023 at 4:55 PM, Rocky said:

Indeed, besides considering how with the experience of living for a while (decades perhaps) a person can better recognize the traps cult leaders set up, with those years of experience, there are people who learn to exploit the vulnerability of youth. That's sad. Perhaps it's behind the call, in education circles, to teach critical thinking skills.

However, it occurs to me for a young adult to fend off those who would exploit, emotional/mental health skills are necessary additionally. It's not so easy to raise children who immediately recognize their own vulnerability. It also occurs to me the academy has or should have room for more disciplined study of the phenomenon. 

I posted about Dr Lindsay somewhere else, who has documented fake intellectualism in our universities and how easy it is to mirror.  These professors are the students of a generation ago.

Studying the history of the dating scene, multiple generations used to be involved in the vetting process.  Now we put all decision-making onto very young individuals, generally and culturally speaking.

The more atomized we become, the more prone to mob mentality we become.

14 minutes ago, Charity said:

Hi Raf, I read the answer OldSkool gave later on in this thread to your question in the above post.  When I went back to check my post to you on page 77, I saw I had omitted this question in my list of things you had said about the Bible.  Your question was very much on topic and I should have included it in the list. This was not fair of me to have done this and I apologize. 

The question he asks accepts the introductory reasoning of VPW, the worship of the Bible.  Which he takes from protestants.

There's a long history there, with guys like Martin Luther breaking with the "authors" of the Bible, the Catholic Church.

AFAIK, tradition and scripture go hand in hand.  As do Faith and Science.

Otherwise, we dance around the question of where's Waldo?

A Fog is like a low elevation cloud.

When VPW croaked he left a power vacuum. So then everyone was in a Fog.

I wonder about music produced in a world without free speech.

Then I found this inspiring masterpiece.  (Time stamp 00:59)

Water often symbolizes overwhelming emotion.

Like how Noah's flood overwhelmed the earth.  Chaos.

They looked up when Jesus ascended, with their "heads in the clouds"

The angel told them to snap out of it, and get to work.

Where's Raf?

Jesus ascended into Heaven.  Heaven is water.

It doesn't say Jesus took his place among the stars.

Cosmology might be a dead end?

Water vapor is invisible.

The water is not absent.

It's in a different form.  

"The heavens" means water.  Clouds are water.

Water is kinda a big deal in agriculture.

3 minutes ago, Rocky said:

 

"A Cloud" was mentioned filling a house.

Cloud must be symbolic of something 

He said tremendous again.

Omg again with the power, 

The switcheroo was plain as day.

Like reiterating "this power" just makes people give up out of annoyance

Kids made "clouds" today using a bicycle pump and a soda bottle.  And water.

. . . If Jesus just disappeared the void left might have allowed water vapor to expand quickly . . . Creating the cloud.

. . .  Can't assume he just kept traveling into space

Interesting "the Comforter" and the pronoun "he" are completely brushed aside and reframed as "this power"

47 minutes ago, Mike said:

Oh, the author was John Seiffer, 5th Corps

The title is "What Is Jesus Christ Doing Up There?"

 

Are you sure?

I read "tremendous" in some form at least twice already?

2 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

No doubt. That's one of the main points of fail with fundamentalism. Whereas, the Bible is an eastern book it's loaded with their idioms, figures of speech, etc. Not to mention they thought pictorially and relied heavily on symbols, which causes a culture clash of sorts to the westen mind trying to understand an eastern book.

Sure.  But what we all have in common, east and west, today and 4000 years ago, is the human brain.

Flood stories, for example come up across the globe.  Is this because their was a global flood?  Retellings of the same story? . . . . Or that we all have similar minds that symbolize our psyche in similar ways.  . . . When something is true . .  it should true for everyone, everywhere

This might be the wrong video but I think it is the right author.