Cynic

The Massachusetts Supreme Court should not forget those other Democrats who might want official legitimacy for a sexual relationship with a sibling, a cousin or that favorite sheep. http://www.adrianplass.com/articles/chainsaw_fellowship.htm

The establishment didn't care for Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh, either. Being a pariah is not necessarily a sign of one's greatness.

Mike wrote, "Could you tell me which pages you are referring to in WWAY?" ***** Mike, I was working from memory and thought Wierwille unpacked his assertions about man being sovereign over the acts of God as it concerned the birth of Christ more than I can find that he did. What I wrote seems to have been based on the implications of the following statement by Wierwille (italics added), though I thought there were other statements: "God's actions are limited by man's believing. And Mary the mother of Jesus was the first woman who believed to the extent that God could create soul-life in her so that she could bring forth God's only-begotten Son." The above statement is quoted from a hardback edition of The Word's Way that appears to have been published in 1971. The chapter containing it is called "Sons of God: Adoption and Birth." The statement appears on page 80 of the edition I have.

Mike, Do you maintain that Wierwille's account in The Word's Way about Christ's birth being ever-available since the Fall, but held off while God waited for a woman to arise who would believe he could inseminate her miraculously is inerrant and God-breathed?

A closer analogy possibly could be made between Jeroboam the son of Nebat (1 Kings 12:26-31), who for political and personal reasons drew Israel into idolatry, and Wierwille, who developed a group of fawning adherents by making grandiose claims and promoting himself and his false teachings in a heretical and bastardized alternative to biblical Christianity.

In the PFAL collateral The Word's Way, Wierwille maintained the birth of Christ could have occurred at any time after the Fall, and taught that its timing involved God's wait for a woman to arise who would believe that he could inseminate her miraculously. Scripture, however, indicates a redemptive history involving the Law bringing about a judicial effect upon the world, God sending his son in the fullness of time, and God accomplishing his redemptive purposes in a temporally progressive manner towards those he will redeem. Wierwille posed as a theological and spiritual giant, but there probably are Sunday school toddlers who have a broader and deeper comprehension of redemptive history than what Wierwille seemed to have had.

The following is from a post titled "Wierwille and the Greek" I made back in July: "I just bought and began reading Exegetical Fallacies by D. A. Carson. Under /Common Fallacies in Semantics,' 'The root fallacy,' Carson attacks the notion that agapao and agape mean 'some special kind of love.' "He does not endorse equating phileo and agapao across their 'entire range,' yet asserts 'they enjoy substantial overlap.' "His argument is rather strong. He notes that John 3:35 uses agapao for the Father's loving of the Son, while John 5:20 uses phileo. "He also points out that agapao is used in 2 Timothy 4:10 for Demas' loving of the world, and that both agape and agapao appear in the Septuagint rendering of 2 Samuel 13:15." ***** Mike, How did Wierwille restrictively define agape and/or agapao?

Mike wrote, "In that passage of mine you quoted I said "Everything Jesus said was either in the Old Testament OR GOD TOLD HIM." ***** So you did. I retract. I completely missed that. (I'm need to quit posting from work to avoid making errors like that.)

Mike wrote, "Another thing we was taught in the good old days is that Jesus Christ never came up with anything new. This may be a barb in the anti-plagiarists saddle they try to ignore or forget. Everything Jesus said was either in the Old Testament or God told him. He was not original in anything he said, only in how well he absorbed and obeyed what he was told." ***** Scripture indicates otherwise: Matthew 13:34-35

Vickles, What detestable false prophets!

Long Gone, Patricia Liberty's "opinion" is implicitly didactic, and it is probably not a contentious point that the subject stories about Wierwille are not about "relationships" that were "non-abusive." Notwithstanding your invoking of current Texas law criminalizing a clergyman's exploitation of another's "emotional dependency," it is open to question whether "most" of the stories concerning which Linda has admitted belief involve what should be characterized as "sexual assault." That phrase seems to have been used ambiguously on WayDale and this forum. If "most" stories involve a clandestine drugging, your assertion that "most [stories] are stories of sexual assault" would, of course, attain. That aspect of some stories, however, seems less than even tenuous outside of John Lynn's reported assertions--which are something I think should be investigated if statutes of limitations would not prohibit prosecutions, and some of the alleged perpetrators are still alive. [This message was edited by Cynic on January 08, 2004 at 1:47.] [This message was edited by Cynic on January 08, 2004 at 1:49.]

I wish Wierwille were alive to experience the light of public exposure. I think some criminal investigators should evaluate John Lynn's assertions about there having been druggings of some that Wierwille desired as sex-chattel.

Contrary to the position of Patricia Liberty, I think those who are exploited by someone holding a position of power and influence generally do not enjoy an absence of responsibility for their own (non-coerced) actions--despite their having acted at some reduced level of consent due to various relational, psychological and/or social influences. I do not think the exploiter and the exploited are responsible for things completely equal in kind, or that both are worthy of symmetrical contempt. I think Wierwille was a self-promoter who exalted himself before a following of ignorant and impressionable (and sinning) teenyboppers, and was a contemptible teenage-girl-exploiting sonofabitch. ***** I am an ex-Wayfer. [This message was edited by Cynic on January 07, 2004 at 20:15.]

Oldiesman has a point.

I figure it has had to do with some subjectivism and a tendency to manufacture doubts about that which is upsetting to a somewhat rosy opinion about Wierwille than it has had to do with skepticism provoked by deficiencies of Wierwille's accusers and critics. But, of course, I'm an a$$hole.

brewmands9, I generally have avoided discussions about Wierwille's sexual sins, because to me they seem a distraction from a more fundamental fact about Wierwille: Wierwille was a false teacher who raised his mouth against normative biblical Christianity, and against the revealed Christ of Scripture--whose eternal existence and deity Wierwille denied. It seems appropriate, however, in response to your characterization of Wierwille's collection of sins as being less extensive and constituting something less egregious than Martindale's collection of sins, to point out that Wierwille--while he was in his fifties--was repeatedly attempting to seduce teenage girls, and reportedly practicing preemptive defamation against some who turned away his sexual advances. In my cynical opinion, it is no tragedy that you and others around here had Martindale ruin the TWI-experience for you. [This message was edited by Cynic on January 02, 2004 at 21:56.]

If Rafael buys and resells Lorna's cookies, it should be okay if he uses her recipes to produce and market his own cookie collection, along with egregiously false and swollen personal claims -- until, of course, he hands the business over to the likes of Long Gone.

Actually, it appears that disclaimer appears before the introduction.

From the introduction to The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner: "Any one is at liberty to use material from this book with or without credit. In preparing this book the writer has received help from many sources, some acknowledged and many unacknowledged. He believes the material herein set forth to be a true statement of Scripture teaching, and his desire is to further, not to restrict its use." http://www.ccel.org/b/boettner/predest/01.htm

Like an 80-year-old woman who would don a purple sweater, orange blouse, plaid pants, a 3-inch wide white belt and lime green shoes, and go around pressing her chest into the arms of 20-to-30 something young men at some affair also attended by some somewhat more refined, resigned and sleepy old ladies, Mike seems quite competent at installing himself as the centerpiece of discussion. I think this little fellow needs his own special forum within this forum.

Rafael, I figured I would wind up explaining that assertion. By asserting that adherents of Oneness Theology deny "the divine person of the Son," I was attempting to communicate that Oneness adherents deny the Son has identity as a divine person. They confine what it meant that Jesus Christ was the Son of God to a human existence having a beginning. Their view involves a tension between holding that Jesus Christ was the Son of God (in their dogma, a mere human figure who did not exist before conception and birth) and holding that Jesus Christ was God the Father. Consequently, in their theology, Jesus' prayers are characterized as dialogues between his human and divine natures. The fellow I mentioned as having some apologetic focus on Oneness Theology has a website (http://www.christiandefense.com) with information about Oneness dogma. I previously decided against posting a link to that website because of this statement which I happened upon there: --------------- "Even more, the ontological distinction between the Persons of the Trinity is well observed in constructions where the article is repeated before all of the personal nouns." ( http://christiandefense.org/grammaticalDist_Oneness.htm ) --------------- There is NO ontological distinction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In informed and orthodox Trinitarianism, the distinctions are personal, NOT ontological. What does that mean? In part, as D. A. Reed -- among others -- lucidly maintains, it means the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are THREE WHOs, but ONE WHAT. Undivided. It appears, after some perusal of that website, however, that the statement about there being an ontological distinction among the three divine persons was an aberration. The following statements reveal a much more solid grasp of an orthodox Trinitarian view of God: --------------- "Historically the Christian church has always and tenaciously taught there is one true God ontologically (by nature) who alone is eternal and uncreated. The very foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity is ontological monotheism: There exist three coequal, coeternal, and codistinct Persons or Selves that share the nature of the one Being." ( http://www.christiandefense.com/one_introduction.htm ) --------------- "First, Scripture presents only the divine Persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the true God (ontologically)." ( http://www.christiandefense.com/one_rejctTrin.htm ) ---------------

Along with Arians (e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses) and Socinians (e.g. Wierwille, Wayfers, CES-types), adherents of Oneness Theology deny the eternal existence and divine person of the Son. Oneness theology is a form of Unitarianism. One fellow who seems to have some apologetic focus on Oneness Theology has characterized early Sabellianism as "successive modalism" (i.e. the notion that the Father became the Son who became the Holy Spirit), while characterizing the dogma of present-day Oneness adherents as "simultaneous modalism."

My favorite critique of evolution involves the evolution of evolution. One can read it at: http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/PA012.htm#n11

"O Come, All Ye Faithful" would be very high on my list. Came across that link at the following webpage which has several choir-sung Christmas hymns: http://funsite.unc.edu/cac/noel_listen.html Another page at that site: http://funsite.unc.edu/cac/listen.html

Unfortunately, I cannot find that it is scheduled to open around here. It is some independent effort. Website for the film: http://www.lutherthemovie.com