WordWolf

Some of this is eventually self-correcting. With the numbers of new people affected by twi dwindling, this problem afflicts fewer people because twi trains fewer people in its dysfunctional methods. So, over the decades, the puffed-up leaders get old and die of old age if nothing else. Most people who leave twi, after a few years, discover their splinters (if they jump to one) aren't helping them, and they get on with their lives without splinters. Those ex-twi who don't, generally end up in groups with no authority figure at all, and end up just doing house-church. Those can actually work and help people, depending on who's teaching and what they're teaching. Since that's a system that selects AGAINST authority figures, it selects for the more "Christian" types who actually wanted to help people and do the right thing from Day One. (I don't think there's sizeable numbers of those, but I know they exist.)

I'm sorry to bring this up since it's unrelated to the main thread, but now I'm trying to figure something out for a personal reason, which, I'm sure, you can see. When I was laid up in the hospital with broken ribs (and other fun injuries), I was breathing shallowly due to having broken ribs. The doctors said that I had to breathe more deeply because the shallow breathing was causing me to get fluid in the lungs and pneumonia. So, I had to breathe deeper to get rid of that. I even had to practice with a "spirometer" that looked like a toy and measured how hard I was inhaling if I inhaled through it. Perhaps the doctors were in error or explaining poorly. They were in a city hospital, which, for reasons unclear to me, my parents insisted on keeping me in (even though the party at fault was paying for the hospital stay so we didn't have to worry about the cost- and lied to me about, promising I would be transferred for several days.) With all of those in mind: A) Were the doctors describing something incorrectly, whether to "dumb it down" or out of simple incompetence? B) If true, was my deeper breathing getting rid of pneumonia and preventing more? If so, doesn't a machine that breathes for a coma patient ALSO prevent pneumonia the same way? C) Was my treatment a sign of general incompetence all around and they thought I was cared for, or does it look like my parents really didn't mind I was getting bad care? (Ok, that last one isn't a medical question, but I am curious how it looks to a neutral party. Some of my injuries were never even LOOKED AT, let alone treated. I finally got them treated a few years ago, and felt 10 years younger.)

Jon Rubin Sam Nicoletti Bruce Pearson Alfredo Berlinghieri Monroe Stahr Jimmy Doyle Lloyd Barker Mario Trantino John Civello Michael Vronsky Desmond Spellacy Rupert Pupkin

I'm sure you meant more to offer it for others to like, which happened with Allan. However, you phrased it with a question- so we answered your question. Most of us don't have a beef with you even if we disagree. (Most of us don't have detailed, personal reasons to have a beef with you. One of us certainly seems to.) Mind you, I'm sure we all reserve the right to change our opinions and tones, one way or another, depending on what we're responding to. (We've seen posters condemn women for the crime of letting vpw drug and rape them, then later say that he drugged and raped them- and some of us responded rather sharply to that, for example.) Also, there's no single consensus of opinion around here. We are all free to think as we wish, and to disagree freely. So, we do. Please don't think otherwise, and don't paint all of us with the same brush. (Now, THAT can get everyone to start liking you less...)

I tend to approach testimonies carefully BECAUSE I know that some people are: A) great big liars or B) not smart and honestly mistaken or unobservant or C) fanatical enough to ignore more mundane possibilities So, I don't dismiss them categorically. but I do approach them carefully, and I tend not to blow a trumpet on things I've been in on. However, I'll let you have one for free. It happened back in 1988. There was this guy coming off the WOW field. He was on a super-tight budget and "camping" in airports because hotel rooms would have been outside his budget. (He said some things happened in the last few days of his tour of wow-ness.) His plan at the end was to wait in a local airport where he was, take a plane to Dayton Airport the day before everybody travels there for the ROA (the day before twi sent the shuttle buses to pick people up at the airport), and "camp" in the airport until the next day when the shuttle buses showed up. He prayed about all this regularly, of course. As it turned out, the assigned seat next to his was occupied by someone arriving a day early for the ROA. They were going to be picked up at the airport by another attendee, go have dinner, then proceed to an RV that was going to be mostly vacant until the next day when the others arrived. Because of that, the guy had a lift, a place to stay for the night, and people to hang out with and watch his back. The odds of him sitting next to someone else attending were small. This was the day before, and it wasn't like the NEXT day the airport would be full of ROA attendees, nor the planes. It appeared as if the only person on the plane who was going there was seated next to him. The probability of that happening by chance was not zero, it was not impossible. However, it was incredibly improbable- enough, at the very least, to raise a few eyebrows. How do I know this happened? I was the guy in the other seat. As to anything else that he said happened in the days before, I didn't witness them so I don't know for sure they happened, or that they happened quite the way he said. However, what I saw was interesting enough, to say the least.

jim jack, thread's original post: "What thinkest thou?? ;^) " waysider: "In my opinion, you're dabbling in self delusion." Rocky: "That said, even if (though) I think you're likely off your rocker, who am I to judge you if you're not hurting anyone? Otherwise, I'm inclined to agree with Waysider. " WordWolf: " What do I think? 1) I think God does have information to give us. 2) I think we are far too quick to label things as information God has for us. (snip) Taking all of THAT into consideration, what would I say about what you're doing? I think it's much the same. (snip) That doesn't make you a bad person, nor crazy. It doesn't make you right nor receiving messages from God, either." jim jack: "At this point I'm not really looking for so called "approval" from anyone" Well, you were in the original post. If you ask for people's opinions- which you did- don't be shocked when some of them, or all of them, disagree with you.

As to the poster, yes, that's a lot of information on which to form an opinion. I'm curious-but will get no answer- on the tiny minutiae of the lungs functioning in this instance. I'm well aware (broken ribs inspire shallow breathing) that pneumonia is no joke, and can result from an infection in the lungs (introduced matter COULD cause that, I suppose, if it introduced a virus or made it easy for a virus to thrive) or from an inability to properly inflate the lungs. (If you can't take even an OCCASIONAL deep breath, you're at risk for pneumonia.) I would imagine that pneumonia here would be prevented by some respiratory machine that made sure the lungs fully inflated every once in a while, a respirator or some other device, I really don't know what each would do but it seems the obvious answer. If anyone's curious, now that DWBH's refreshed my memory and added to what I'd known, I'll mention that the epiglottis is the thing that covers the windpipe and keeps us from something "going down the wrong pipe" when we accidentally inhale some food or drink. Lots of things can cause problems that affect it or compromise it, and that's potentially dangerous for our thinking.

Next round, let's see.... Jon Rubin Sam Nicoletti Bruce Pearson Alfredo Berlinghieri Monroe Stahr Jimmy Doyle

"I won't fail you. I'm not afraid." "You will be. You... will... be." "All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing."

Would you believe I have the thing on DVD? I found it on extreme clearance. Paid $2 something for it. I figured that- even if it was awful- it would be worth at least that. I feel I got my money's worth, and paying that little made me feel better about how badly it stunk. Now I need to come up with a movie, let's see...

Was this set in Los Angeles?

So, Human's turn.

Thank you, it helps a lot. As someone whose main information about intubation centers around "once had a tube down his throat towards his stomach", I am understandably curious about some really specific things. (In my case, I had broken ribs, and the tube was to occasionally introduce something to neutralize my stomach acids and keep them from climbing up and dissolving stuff. I was 'eating" by IV at the time, so my digestive system had nothing to digest, and a bored digestive system is a mischievous digestive system. BTW, It's hard to talk with one of those in- lots of talking and you're at risk of throwing up.) So, I'm curious about a really, really minor point- where the stomach contents went. Did some of them end up in the windpipe and thus in the lungs, introducing foreign matter into the lungs? (I know I'm the only one who's curious, so if it's not worth it, don't bother. I'm not trying to disintegrate YOUR grey matter in the process. ;) ) BTW, thanks for explaining that you know him PERSONALLY. That explains your reaction. Any chance you haven't heard from him in decades, and he MIGHT have improved since then, or are you roughly aware of how he's been doing down the decades? (I'm guessing the latter, but I shouldn't guess.)

You asked if he was in. I followed up by asking where and when, which caused a little confusion. But, yes, this question's worth asking. Why DID twi discourage personal testimonies? Except, of course, when vpw made them....

If it gets moved from Doctrinal, it will either get sent to Soap Opera (if it descends to drama and name-calling), or be locked and/or deleted as being off-topic even for Doctrinal. The GSC is for ex-twi, for twi survivors. No belief system is assumed or required. So, generally, discussions of belief go in Doctrinal or its skeptical subforum. There is no subforum for non-skepticism, so it's Doctrinal or post it elsewhere.

DWBH, if you could explain a little about aspiration and possible lung damage for those of us who know a lot less, I'd sure appreciate it. I don't think the OP is trying to CON anybody. I think he means everything he's posting, and genuinely loves God, and has little idea why he's being yelled at.

That is a good question. Were you ever in that organization, and, if so, where and when?

Actually, Hawkeye's question was in response to the crashing the jeep and setting himself on fire. The other incident was when Flagg's arm was healed, and Hawkeye was going to remove his cast. When he found out Hawkeye couldn't give him a medical reason to stay, he shouted and slammed that x-ray machine (or something) into his arm, smashing the cast and re-breaking his arm. Hawkeye: "NOW I can give you a medical excuse." That was "Colonel Flagg", which may or have not been his name. The other intelligence agent called him "Sam", but I think that was more to invoke "Sam" and "Ralph", the coyote and sheepdog that punch a time-clock at the beginning and end of the day. https://looneytunes.fandom.com/wiki/Ralph_Wolf_and_Sam_Sheepdog

It'll be hard to find the posts where we discussed family, since some were edited for privacy reasons. However, there's still a discussion here that included quoting him mentioning family, which will take time to find. I bumped up some discussions that overlapped this, with quotes of some overlap.

"When they came for me, I ran like a thief right into Grand Central Station. They trapped me in a pay toilet." "Beautiful." "Cost them four dollars in nickels to get me out." "I love a volunteer." One recurring character was interesting. He once claimed to be with the CIA, but said he had to stop because that made people think he was with the CIC, and he was actually with the CID all along. In fact, he once tried to get into the CIC's offices by crashing a car and setting himself on fire. He also claimed to try not to sit for more than 2 hours a day, IIRC. ("It's bad to put pressure on your brain.") He prided himself on neither laughing nor smiling. "I've trained myself not to laugh or smile. I watched a hundred hours of the Three Stooges; every time I felt like smiling or laughing, I jabbed myself in the stomach with a cattle prod."

That makes me feel more confident about my guess, then. Let's see. It sounded familiar. To be specific, that opening reminded me of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. So, a ST movie from "Generations" to "Nemesis", inclusive. That includes at least one good movie ("First Contact", so we count that out) and several stinkers. I think I have it down to 2 movies. To save time, I'll throw both names up, "Star Trek-Insurrection" "Star Trek- Nemesis". Raf's comment has me suspecting the latter, despite the former having funnier quotes.