Bolshevik

I feel there's a parallel with the Tower of Babel and the day of Pentecost.

It's like the same story but in reverse.

46 minutes ago, Raf said:

Like as of fire

I appreciate the like.

36 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

Never caught that...please explain? Interesting.

Holy Spirit came like cloven tongues

Before the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove

Madonna sang like a virgin

What does it all mean??

So what do I do with all these matches?

Make tongues of fire?

33 minutes ago, Charity said:

I'm older now yet I still find myself doing .  In fact, I'm doing it a lot more now that I over 60.  Can you share more about what you mean?  

My meaning was I was a kid and when I questioned matters I was told I'd understand when I became an adult.  By being a kid I didn't have the ability to understand.

I guess it's a type of future faking.

8 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

What kind of real strength is defeated by weakness? We that are stron ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. So, scripture doesn't support that statement. I wonder if he was keying from the section of scripture where it talks about "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners" from 1 Corinthians 15:33. When you decipher King James English it's basically saying that evil associations corrupt good character, or ethics. But weakness always brings down strength sounds like some ole BS that craiggers misapplied and used as a club to scare people into compliance.

I agree.

You should be strong enough as a person to able to help others up, and also not to be changed easily by the crowd.

But you should also be aware of who you surround yourself with, since you will be influenced by them.

The feeling I remember associated with that phrase is one of heaviness and tunnel vision.  People were being targeted?

11 minutes ago, waysider said:

Who does The Blue Fairy symbolize?

His Mom.  Mother Nature.  The Holy Spirit.

Disney used both Christian and Pagan symbolism.

Okay, I'm sensing it's not apples in the literal sense.

3 hours ago, Bolshevik said:

So the ascension when taken literally, which is a big no-no, sounds like Jesus lifted off like a Saturn V rocket.  Which is nonsense.

He stood on a hill, which is height.  Lifted up which emphasizes that further.  And the cloud is symbolic of power.  

 

He disappeared.  Not absent, not present, but also absent and present.  Transfigured.

 

Then the Comforter came and moved The People.

 

That sounds of political and social importance to me.  For Christians and Non-Christians, this is unavoidable.

 

(A millennia and a half later, Sola Scriptura is another act of Politics and Society)

In Disney's Pinocchio, God the Father would be symbolized by Geppetto.  An old man focused on old ways.  His shop was full of clocks, like Father Time.  Pinocchio had to descend into the depths and awaken his sleeping father from the beast (the whale at the bottom of the sea).  Pinocchio sacrificed himself.

Jesus had to go back to his Father.  Jesus is the renewal aspect in a Process.  So he had to leave.

The sending of the Comforter, the Spirit of God, symbolizes a new event?

Jesus can be absent and present, because that's the nature of a cycle?

16 minutes ago, waysider said:

I've never heard this. What does it mean?

I think it goes along with being unequally yoked and a rotten apple ruining the whole basket.  And iron sharpeneth iron.

I seem to remember LCM among others saying it.

It sounds like a move to thin the herd, in order to strengthen the herd.  Maybe move some into camps, I don't know.  Might be purge related.

It could be about motivating people to not be the weakest link in a chain.

Outside of TWI you hear phrase like "You become the five people you spend the most time with" . . . letting go of people who hold you back

The use of the term "always" may be a concern.  Context is always trivial and moot, right?

Is that how the phrase went?  Is that the right wording?  That's how I remember it.

On 2/1/2023 at 12:26 AM, Rocky said:

Because, after all, according to Mrs Wierwille's book, Victor was a MEAN MAN. 

 

 

Cats play with their food.  The universe is indifferent.

Is saying all cruelty springs from weakness a projection of responsibility and cause?  Weakness implies some sort of strength is demanded.  From whom?

(Just thinking out loud for discussion sake)

18 minutes ago, waysider said:

While both these approaches may or may not have merit for a kid on the playground, they almost never work in the adult world. Consider this analogy of learning to play piano: When you're a kid, you hone your chops by practicing scales, droning on and on with repetitive drills. But, the end goal is to sit before a live audience and impress them with an emotional performance of Moonlight Sonata. In other words, you have to become much more skilled. And that's what bullies do. They become much more skilled at applying nuanced methods. Please note, I'm not accusing anyone of being a bully.

As an adult ,having personally endured some horrendous corporate bullying at the hands of serial bullies, I can tell you the answer is not always simple or identifiably gratifying. One solution that seems to work is to just remove yourself from the bully. That's not always easy, though, and often comes at the cost of relinquishing the last word. Even so, it can sometimes be the ultimate solution. In the process, you have to also learn to recognize what made you a target in the first place or the victory will be pyrrhic. Another solution that sometimes works is to help the bully obligingly embarrass theirself. Bullies hate to be embarrassed, especially when it's of their own doing.

I have no real idea how this relates to the current situation. It's just some food for thought and decidedly off-topic to the current Absent Christ theme .

 

 

Once bullying becomes disembodied and institutionalized, you can't point a specific person anymore.  That's why you have to break down how it works.  At some point, it won't come in the form a person.

Boom.

The Absent Christ.

So the ascension when taken literally, which is a big no-no, sounds like Jesus lifted off like a Saturn V rocket.  Which is nonsense.

He stood on a hill, which is height.  Lifted up which emphasizes that further.  And the cloud is symbolic of power.  

He disappeared.  Not absent, not present, but also absent and present.  Transfigured.

Then the Comforter came and moved The People.

That sounds of political and social importance to me.  For Christians and Non-Christians, this is unavoidable.

(A millennia and a half later, Sola Scriptura is another act of Politics and Society)

Promises?

 . . . you'll understand when you're older

I found little Jesus on a cloud toys.

29 minutes ago, Rocky said:

Don't engage. You will NEVER get him to understand. NEVER.

Yes.

Empathy can backfire.  The most loving to do is walk away.

1 hour ago, Rocky said:

I get those once or twice a year. Perhaps it's easier than going door to door. 

. . .what? . .  I'm not spacial?  . . . *sniff*

5 minutes ago, Mike said:

No, no, no!

I do not do the derailing.

I post relatively smaller pieces that prove to be MOST inconvenient for your building and maintaining a fictional and distorted Pure Evil picture of VPW for your reading audience at home. 

The derailing comes in by all sorts, manners, and varieties of posts by you folks that find my simple post most inconvenient.  The all sorts, manners, and varieties of posts include jeering, misrepresentations, exaggerations, diagnosis if serious mental diseases, lunacy, selective omissions, and several more.

*/*/*

"You see, Mike, raf intervened because he is a moderator and he was trying to get us back on topic and unfortunately, we (myself included) have a habit of letting you comletely derail a thread when you have been proven in error."

Oh, REALLY!  And who are the impartial judges of said proofs?  Might it be the same crew who belched out said proofs?   LoL Such unabashed pompus bull$hit !!! 

The only close to impartial judge here so far was Raf, several times, and you folks were found wanting on a few points by him.  I find you wanting on MANY points in your Kangaroo Proofs from your Kangaroo Courts.

If I had the time and a few others on my team we could make big trouble for your said proofs.  A few weeks ago I looked at Raf's old thread on Actual Errors in PFAL and thought the first ten were doable.

But putting time into that is a luxury. I'm doing it as a mental exercise right now. I may even post some, or dredge up old challenges to said proofs. Of course they will be rejected before they are read.  You folks have too much at stake to be proved wrong.  You want to go down with this ship, after probably claiming the same for TWI years ago.

 

Victor Paul Wierwille was incapable of love.  

What proof is going to change that?

8 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

Agreed. He appearantly didn't have much depth to his reasoning. He was smart enough to gather unto himself what was donated to help move da verd. That took some form of intelligence...pimps have some form of intellignence...

 . . . you can find videos and listen to how these people reason as they speak for themselves . . . you could also have their faces peeled off and slid into toaster slots, hypothetically

1 minute ago, Nathan_Jr said:

The subtle difference between bull$hit and deception. 

Fool me once, shame on you. 

Fool me thousands of times over decades and decades . . . 

32 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

In my experience they promised relief for a condition that was NOT present, an imagined condition projected on the targets of their proselytizing.

When I first encountered all of this madness, my life was full of joy, peace, wonder,  prosperity, healings..."manifestations" that can't be counterfeited.

But they persisted with the relentless, if subtle, claim that I was lacking something, that I was incomplete without taking "the class," incomplete without "having" their contrived truth, that I was without REAL "power" until I heard and revered what "the doctor" had to say, that so much was "available" for me, but I was leaving it on the table "untapped."

Tell someone enough times they are missing something BIG, they will start to believe it, in spite of the evidence against the claim. This is called gaslighting. Gaslighting is the most wicked abuse.

. . . insecurity is a condition that would be present . . . that could have been present before an encounter with TWI . . . or induced as you are saying . . . 

like the kids game, "Are you mad?" "No" "Are you mad?" "No" "Are you mad?" "No" "Are you mad?" "NO!" "See, you're mad"

23 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

The concept is not totally without merit in scripture. However, it's the way in which wierwille capitilized on the concept, to promote himself as some great one, the entire time making Christ absent from his ministry, and forbidding interaction between followers and their savior. Scripture clearly shows copious interaction between Christ and his followers in Acts and we are told to let Christ into our lives as T-Bone once more demonstrated from scripture. Let him into our lives and not make him absent to us personally.

In 2 Corinthins 5 our earthly house of this tabernacle refers to our current physical, carbon based bodies. Paul is indicating his desire to be changed into what we will all be changed to in the future: A body that doesn't die, get sick, etc. One like Jesus Christ currently has. We are the ones absent from Christ in the sense that we are flesh and blood and he is not and is in the heavenlies with God. This is rather obvious, and not to answser for Raf, seems to be the point people agree on that wierwille stated but then morphed into an anti-Christ doctrine; making Christ absent in his Lordship and function as head of the body. Thus, there are points of accord along the way. I feel it was typical of wierwille to speak on things he didnt REALLY understand and morph his own doctrine based on his twisted concepts.

Raf will answer on his own, or not, but even though you weren't directly addressing me I still thought my two cents may offer some insight...maybe not..

 

2 Corinthians 5:1-8

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: 3If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 4For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 5Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

6Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7(For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 

I agree with Raf on the point Wierwille could have picked up "Lord of The Rings" and built his cult around that, conceptually speaking.

But, Wierwille was too stupid to understand mythology behind "Lord of The Rings" . . . 

Wierwille only said things to get people to have thoughts people in their own minds they would be drawn to.  He never made a point.  Seduction doesn't need a point.  

Wierwille does not need to understand what he is saying . . . and neither did the follower.

35 minutes ago, Raf said:

Just to clear something up: I don't "agree with Mike," per se. I see where Wierwille is coming from and submit that he has a point. Whether that point outweighs the points you guys raise in opposition to it is really up to each individual believer (or unbeliever) to decide (though believers are the only ones who have an actual stake in the answer). I decline to accept Mike as a frame of reference for my viewpoint here because I come to my point of view independent of his arguments. 

That is: I see Wierwille's point because I believe there is evidence to support it. I accept that there is also evidence to contradict it, and I can live with those contradictions because I accept contradictions as an attribute of the scriptures. 

Mike sees Wierwille's point because Wierwille can say the moon is made of green cheese and, as long as it was written in a PFAL collateral, Mike would accept it and dodge, distract, deny, etc if anyone told him it was objectively bulls hit.

Wierwille was a con man. He saw the absent Christ in the scriptures and exploited it for his own gain. He exploited LOTS of things he saw in the scriptures for his own gain. Why should the physical absence of Christ and the future hope of his presence be any different?

I accept that Mike and I are in agreement that there is a Biblical justification for the use of the term "absent Christ," but to say I "agree with Mike" is a bit misleading without the context that I still think he and Wierwille are absolutely full of solid excrement.

No offense, Mike.

By saying you see Wierwille's point you are giving VPW credence.

Did he even understand this "point"?  Is there evidence for that?

I doubt it.  He was a plagiarist.  A mimic.  

He did not have the faculty to see the story behind the words.   Mike hasn't demonstrated that ability either.

29 minutes ago, Raf said:

. .  (though believers are the only ones who have an actual stake in the answer). . .

False . . unless the argument is The Bible and Christianity have nothing to do with the development of modern civilization and thought . . . it appeared in spite of it