My3Cents

There were a lot of things that went contrary to what vpw taught. Especially about the responsability of leadership. Many of those contrary things he promogated actively through his life and example. Many many others he did not lift a finger to stop. I agree with Ex10 about his mental health and that's probably the reason. But the truth was, if something worked toward his benefit in the short run(as he defined the word "benefit") he did what he could to encourage it whether by omission or comission.

I left about 9-8 months after the POP was first read. Right after the clergy were called to new knoxville to hear geer spew. Looking back I think one of the reasons I stayed so long was that at an non-conscious level I knew leaving would mean rebuilding my whole life. I had no friends outside the way, where I was living, what I was doing for work, and my indentity as a succesful person were so tied up in it, I wasn't ready to face rebuilding all that. That kept me from admiting to myself what I really saw going on. Part of the reason I could leave when I did was that I had friends to bounce this off and they were of a similar mind. I realized I wasn't alone. I think for many people who go through something like this the outward reasons are only part of the story. You have to be inwardly ready to deal with the outward stuff or you won't change. I think that's why many people who are still in are where they are. Nothing that anyone says or proves or anything that happens in court or in the paper will change their mind if they are not ready to come to grips with that that means for them personally.

I have 2 comments on this. I was on the phone the first time Geer read POP and I was at the clergy meeting after that when he "confronted" the board of trustees. It seemed like a simple power play, and Geer was clearly winning. But just when he could have stepped in and said "Follow me and I'll get you all back on track" he didn't. Instead he went back to Europe, and basically said - "thanks for the copyrights you guys are on your own. Call if you need me." I believe if he'd been bolder in trying to take over the whole thing martindale, howard allen and don wierwille would have followed him. But he didn't. This is not to say he didn't benefit from what he did. He got lots of followers and I'm sure got plenty of money - after all he learned the value of a buck from vpw who was definitely motivated by the dollar. My second point concerns the comment "He was teh first to really hurt it." Just because people liked vpw and felt they got some benefit from what he did doesn't mean he didn't do evil. There's a law suit now against WalMart and how they mistreat women employees. The question was asked about what was it like when old man sam was running the show. Turns out the same policies were in effect, but people liked sam more so they didn't object as much. Doesn't mean it was any better - just felt that way.

CGeer is in Maine? Any more details? Any idea how big his organization is? I heard his wife was ill. Anyone know how she's doing?

Random thoughts: Are there stitching design software programs you want to run? Do they run on Mac? Or are you just going to use all purpose graphic software like Photoshop. It runs on both. I've never used one, but my understanding is that for most stuff a windows program is just as good (though maybe not as elegant). I know there is some software for publishing and video (Quark is one) that they dont' make for windows. And you can get "windows emulator" software that allows you to run any (so they say) windows program on a Mac. That may give you the best of both - if it lives up to the hype. The emulator is no easy task because chips are different in how they process data. Kind of like Hebrew and English. Windows machines do tend to be cheaper. People I know that use Macs just like how they feel better.

Wishing, Thanks for sharing this kind of info. These are the details I love hearing about. Can you share how much the class cost?

Found This site this site I thought I'd pass along for those interested. This looks scary - you hack some XP files, hook up a bunch of hard drives and get RAID 5 without a hardware controler.

However obscure the "true" teachings of vpw are, he and the leadership who followed him did nothing to discourage people from accepting the idea that "believing = receiving" or "that 'what we believe for or expect, we get" is the law SIMPLY STATED!!!" The result of accepting this idea is that when things go well (according to your expectation) you feel like you caused it to happen. When they don't, you feel at fault. Since the "law" is never questioned, and the results are out there for all to see, the only variable must be YOU and YOUR believing. This leads to a very warped view of the world, and an easy way for leaders to control those who take comfort from this view.

I had a mormon family renting a house from me. They weren't so successful. Both worked for the same dot.com company (bad move) and when it tanked it seemed like they never found jobs. The church would pay their rent which I could understand once or twice, but this went on and on. AND not only would the church pay their rent, but they wouldn't ask for it till the rent was way late and they owed late fees so the church had to pay them too. These folks home-schooled about 4 kids and the place was a mess when I finally sold it. I don't fault them for loosing their jobs, but never being able to find work, not even using the church's charity wisely. It didn't look like success to me. I guess it depends how you define success.

Like most of wierwille's stuff there is no logical consistency. In one place he says the word interprets itself "in the verse" yet in another place he says the verses were put in by men, that the original text had no verses. So how can verses be used as a godly distinction? Likewise the term "used before". How do you determine the which came first? Do you use historically when they were written? What if there are competing historical theories? Do you use the cannonical order of King James? Why depend on those scholars for that but not their other insights? And for that matter - how is it determined that certain books made the cut? What about the "books" that some people believed in back then but we don't ascribe to today? What about texts that weren't given much credence in their time but are now? The whole idea of determining such unvarying truth from a disparate group of texts that have been hand copied and retranslated so many times is absurd.

Did they really let them have electronic stuff? I left in the mid 80's. But not before a wayfer figured out how to get the whole bible on a single floppy disk or some such technological miracle when "personal computer" meant an Apple II. I thought that would be an amazing tool to help research and move "the word". But they were more interested in that guy using his computer to program lights and music at the fountain. I bet Craig never used a PDA, did he?

In fact the mess is sometimes good for babies. There is evidence that kids who are exposed to pets and other "messes" at an early age tend to have less asthma. My son was diagnosed with Chron's disease (a chronic inflamation of the intestines) when he was 15. The gastrointerologist said that they don't know what causes the disease, but they do know it's not prevalent in countries where kids grow up playing in the dirt. Look around nature - it's not very "clean" or "neat". It's just beautiful and cool.

THis is nothing new. I left the way in the mid '80s. They were never consistent in that regard. Also their "research principles" are sufficiently overlapping for them to be able to choose the one they want so that it would illustrate a point that they wanted to make. On top of that they had no training in logic. For example it was quite common that mere illustration was given as proof.

You could just give your daughter the money you plan to spend on her clothes once a year, and leave all the other decisions about what to buy when up to her. As soon as she figures out that's all she's getting and you really won't give her more even if she spends it all on 2 pair of sneakers, I be she'll get smarter about buying coats. But even if she doesn't she won't come complaining to you.

I met my wife on the internet. One difference with how we did it, as opposed to all the other "job interview" type dates I'd been on. We met face to face right away. Didn't spend a lot of time emailing or phone calling. So there weren't as many invented expectations to deal with when we met. That's what worked for us. Your mileage may vary.

Nothing personal meant by this response, but humans are not good at "coincidence" we have very poor natural grasp of randomness and risk. And we have a natural tendancy to find patterns in things (whether the patterns exist or not). This has had great benefit for our survival as a species, but now that we have adapted our world so that the risks we face are much different from those we evolved to face, perhaps these traits don't serve us as well any more.

Belle, Congratulations on stepping out on your own. I'll echo what the others have said. Trust your gut. That is something the way vehimently taught against - they said you didn't have it within you to judge anything and all had to be judged by an external standard (the word). One other thing I'd encourage - don't look at everything as right and wrong. Try to see it as helpful or not. It's easier to trust your gut that way. Something may be helpful today and not what you need tomorrow (or vise versa). Right and wrong seem so cast in stone. And don't feel you have to do anything with the Bible or church unless you want to and your gut tells you it's helpful. Of course, feel free to reject my advice totally if your gut tells you to! Because you are free now.

I don't know when the hallucination of the snow on the pumps was, but I recall they always dated the anniversary of the organization from the Vesper Chimes broadcast. (I was in from 1970 - the mid 80's)

And the Bush administration is doing all they can to change that.

Sorry to say that stuff costs what it costs and if you're not in a market with lots of competition it can be costly. (FYI local phone service would be much more costly in many locations without government regulation). Perhaps you can look at the problem another way. If you can't reduce costs, can you increase income? $40 per month is about $500 per year. Is there anyway you can earn, save, get a gift, or sell something you don't need to raise $500? That would pay for your service till the kid is a year old. [After that he or she will cost you so much money it won't matter :D--> ] I'm not trying to be snide, but sometimes looking at the problem in a different way brings up solutions you wouldn't have seen.

That just means that legal title to the assetts (money, land, and other stuff) can't be in the personal names of certain people. That's an easy thing to get around in practice if the control of how those assetts are used has not checks and balances. For example if there is a business need for a teacher to visit a certain place, it's a deductible expense for them to drive, or to fly or to fly first class or to charter a private jet. The IRS will not determine that a person should have been more frugal in how they got there as long as a legitimate business reason can be shown. As to the second part - about investing - there's no problem with an organization taking its extra cash and investing it as long as the investments are still owned by the organization. If the investments turn out to be bad ones - that's not the government's concern. They leave that up to the internal checks and balances of the organization. But the way had none of those. Unless there's outright and obvious shinannegans that meat the legal definitions of fraud, the governement won't get involved.

Better yet, get one of those pringle can antennas and beam wireless to the whole neighborhood. I'd bet it violate their service agreement, so if they found out they could yank your service.

The short answer is no. It's not illegal. For a not-for-profit corporation (which is what churches are) to have a profit. The difference is what you're allowed to do with the profit. If a For Profit corporation has money left at the end of the year they pay taxes on it and can keep the rest in the corporation or give it to the owners (stock holders). Also money anyone gives the corporation is not tax deductible to the giver. With a not-for-profit, there are no "owners" so if there's money left at the end of the year it has to stay in the company. Also a not-for-profit does not pay income tax on the money left over. And some types of not-for-profits (churches are this type) if you give them a donation you can deduct it from your taxes as charity. In exchange for this type of tax treatment, there are certain restrictions on what a non-for-profit corp can engange in and how it must conduct it's affairs. But as you can see from the history of the way it's a pretty loose set of restrictions. By the way, salaries, buildings, grounds, buses planes and all kinds of other things are legitimate expenses to either type of corporation, if they can be shown to have a use of furthering the business of the corporation.

I haven't read a college text book in a long time. But I do read about what current economists say and do. Many do not agree. They think a tax cut aimed at the most wealthy was not the best way to jump start the economy. A cut more focused on the middle class, and working folk would have done a lot more. And the economy has not done that well. Yes it has shown some signs of life recently - but only anemic ones. Bush remains the 1st president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss in jobs. It has turned around in recent months, but not by much. In addition, the cuts in federal support to states have increased state taxes, state fees and cut state benefits for those same middle class and working folks. Not to mention the fact that the tax cut was "sold" in misleading terms about how much it would really benefit the "average" tax payer. When the benefits were so heavily skewed toward the richest 2%. It's a bit like having Bill Gates walk into a monistary and say that the avereage net worth of people in the room is $10 Million. Not a lie, but misleading all the same. No I do not think Bush has a good record on how he handled the economy. I agree that the recession wasn't his fault, and that he had to manage the economic hit of 9/11 which he didn't manage to prevent (but that's another thread). But I think he mis-managed the economy and I do think the size of the deficit is his fault. We will be paying that back for years - not only in higher taxes or lower government services, but in higher interest rates as soon as the election is over. Of course higher interest rates are great for folks in the top 2% of wealth - they are the ones who lend the money. But for most Americans and for businesses who borrow that's not a good thing.

I won't take up too much of your time quoting stuff that others have reasearched and put on the web - but I'll give you the links for those who want to put the time in. If you want to see flip-flops detailed Click Here If you want to see what the man has been up to in the senate Click Here It's a bit long - but isn't it worth the time to read to help elect the man who will secure America's leadership and security in the next 4 years?