WordWolf

Dr Who didn't count as a British TV series? I question the validity of naming all of those "spinoffs." We had characters appear as regulars in a show then go off for their own show (Joey from Friends, Frasier and The Tortellis from Cheers, etc.) Both "Mork and Mindy" and "Out of the Blue" were introduced in "Happy Days" in crossover episodes, then continued with their own shows without any further mention of "Happy Days" (M&M's pilot episode did but not the rest.) "All in the Family" became "Archie Bunker's Place"-that was a change, not a spinoff.

According to Wikipedia, Italian sandwiches ("heroes") were sold by Italian immigrants in the US (in NYC and other places) starting in the 19th century. with NYC ones becoming "heroes" around 1937. Then again, they also say they were invented after that in 1903, so make of that what you will. (See the beginnings of the entries for "submarine sandwich" and "Italian sandwich.") Lots of places have had people make fast food to buy and eat while working or traveling, throughout history. Empanadas have their traditional crimp on one side from the original purpose of eating them with one hand while at manual labour (so I've been told.) Again, there's examples across the centuries, across the continents.

He said it lots of times, some of them to Corps members, including those with military service backgrounds (they do more work before 9am than most people do all day...) Uncle Harry said it was due to their German upbringing (check TW:LiL for the exact quote, but he said that.) The hypocrisy of vpw saying it was that he skipped his chores on the farm all the time. His own Dad was quoted as having said so (TW:LiL). We know vpw vanished in the woods for hours at a time. Harry-who did not see him during those times- seemed to have confused him with Billy Graham. He said vpw was preaching to the trees. BG rather famously addressed his own nervousness at crowd-speaking by preaching to trees and altar calls alone in the woods. (Uncle Harry plagiarized too. This was a plagiarizing family. Plagiarizing and farming were the family businesses.)

Again, claims you have something without providing it, then saying the only REAL proof is to ASSUME you're right and spend months or years doing it your way in the hopes that you're right despite no evidence supporting it whatsoever. Still finding it hard to find converts? Still making the same mistakes.

It also allows you to fill pages without substance, claim you have substance, fill the pages, then later claim you provided the substance in those pages. You pulled that with your claims of "proving" pfal was god-breathed before. Want to find you claiming you did it? I'm sure you can. Finding you doing it would be a lot harder....

You are of course aware that this means you're confident that the law of believing works consistently- but only in the things that can't be shown, measured, or traced to actual operation of a physical law of believing, and where there would actually be space to show something, you're admitting you can't. Not only does that dovetail with the view you've got squat, but it contradicts all those times vpw talked a good game like it was easy to believe for all sorts of physical things like the unbelievers did SUCCESSFULLY all the time.

A chance to go on for pages DISCUSSING proof while offering none, then later claiming you did? I'll bet you'd love another one of those (discussions around something that never actually touch the subject.) .

I honestly don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if he came out with that. This same man claimed to never have a sick day or headache IN HIS LIFE.

This will go on for pages. Then he will eventually vanish. Later, he will claim he answered everybody and provided proof and nobody could dispute him. I don't think he even does it on purpose. He's not seeing the same reality most people are. So, where you see him stall for pages, he "remembers" he actually answered lots of questions. If you want to know what that's like, watch "Lord of the Rings-Fellowship of the RIng", and follow the ring in the scene where Bilbo is supposed to leave it behind as a gift for Frodo. I've shown that scene to people, prefacing it with "follow the ring in this scene", and periodically pausing and asking "Where is the ring now?" to make sure they realize Bilbo's not quite experiencing the reality he thinks he is, at that point. Don't expect Mike to have learned anything, either. He once made a claim about the Bible. I refuted it verse by verse, and ended with a comment that he would probably make the same disproven claim again 6 months later. Sure enough, 6 months later, he did.

It's fascinating sometimes what he wanted to take credit for, and compare it to reality. vpw claimed to have gotten the original idea for fast food. Chock Full O'Nuts (among other companies) claims to have a piece of that history. During the Great Depression, they switched from a gourmet nut shop (useless in a Depression) immediately to a sandwich and coffee shop, and because of that, claim to have invented fast food. (They used to claim it, I'm unsure if they do now.) Plenty of others claim to have invented it sooner, however. In the UK, in the 1800s. a rise in rail travel helped fuel a boom in fast food- specifically resulting in fish-and-chip shops where the travelers could grab food before continuing. A look back at different countries in different centuries will show people buying food quickly on the street to eat walking or to take home. Rome during the Roman Empire had that. China had that around the Middle Ages, as did European cities like London and Paris. It's likely that large urban centers, especially, have had them at least as far back as Rome, and almost continuously in major cities continuously since then. After many centuries of people serving fast food, vpw was born. He later claimed to have had the original idea for fast food.

Actually, I'm pointing out that his great IGNORANCE of Church history has led to him claiming he got a promise from God Almighty that was STUPID Just as he claimed angels lied to hm rather than admit a fraud, I'm sure he'd blame God Almighty for that than admit his fraud.

So, because vpw introduced people to some of Bullinger's work, he gets a pass on plagiarizing OTHER works of Bullinger? Sorry, doesn't work that way. BTW. I've noticed that vpw apologists TALK a good game. When was the last time you fed the poor? "Churchianity" does that regularly. They may not use all the proper Greek words you like, but many of them actually get the job done even using a different vocabulary....

A counterfeit can look very convincingly like the real thing- depending on the skill of the counterfeiter and what he has to work with. A money counterfeiter, if he has the right machines, can make a counterfeit that all but an expert would pass. So, "uneducated observer" to dismiss the comment is not valid, per se. "Delivering good." If you want to really hook someone, you need to use the right bait- which means you have to deliver good to them-for a short time.If you're subtle enough, they won't notice when you shift things slowly, eventually making everything one-way so they're giving all and you're giving none. Oh, and lots of people were harmed trying to follow pfal writings until they stopped. How's that Law of Believing working out for you? Got actual prosperity and a rich life with happy wife and kids? Or a reinterpreted life bereft of each of those but rich because your doctrine insists you're rich?

Smooth attempt to dismiss vpw's rapes, dude. But "everybody does it" is not an excuse. We can find rapes all over the place. We can find theft all over the place. We can find murders all over the place. "Everybody else does it, why can't we" doesn't fly in a court of law. And finding a few of each crime every place doesn't mean everyone's doing them or that they're COMMON anyplace.

We've been hearing those claims for decades, from the same handful of posters. I can count them all with my fingers from about the last 20 years. We've had opportunities to see the unhealthful POVs of the people who want to excuse vpw or give him a free pass. My favorite was the one who tried to justify wife-beating if she's nagging her husband. I've never been afraid of an uncomfortable truth, and my personal history of my entire adult life reflects that-as does my posting history here.

If charges were brought, both twi and the other group could be prosecuted and found guilty. Laugh if you like.

Mike MET him. Mike did not "know him personally." Mike's image of him mentally is like the teenagers who "know personally" the celebrities of which they are fans. The reality would take longer to find. I met cgeer and he seemed fine- for the time I met him, and I was looking closely during that time. He wasn't- but in those windows of time, he could fake it. After all, a rapist is only raping PART of the time.... AGAIN we get this "he was pure evil" thing that only exists when someone's trying to excuse vpw. "I saw him do good." People saw Al Capone do good. Lots of people saw John Wayne Gacy look good. Neither was "pure evil" but both were criminals who deserved prosecution for a lot of crimes. Really get a rounded education!

It's been suggested that vpw was in some way impressive intellectually, that he was above average in some intellectual fashion. Let's take a look at the evidence at hand, shall we? vpw was never known to be any sort of honor student. All claims about him and hard work seem to be people saying he DIDN'T do hard work. That's a negative- but when vpw was proud to trumpet his smallest achievements, a telling one when he has none to wave at others. vpw finished college, and did a Masters at Princeton Theological Seminary. In a place where there's lots of RIGOROUS fields of study, he chose HOMILETICS- how to preach- which is undoubtedly the softest option possible. (One can learn to preach without going to school for it, just by working with preachers. Fields like Church History would take some real study time.) It was a real school, but he took the softest degree there. His last stop was a degree mill to get a Doctorate from an unaccredited institution. What does that mean? It means he got a Doctorate from a source lacking accreditation, a vetting process that guarantees the degree is worth the paper it's printed on. What's the difference? I have THREE unaccredited degrees. That makes me TRIPLE the fake "Doctor" that vpw was. None of our "degrees" guarantees any level of intellectual skill or even accomplishment. So, that's it for his academic career. So, he has an actual Masters from a real school, in a really soft option. Academically, that's his highest point. After school, he preached, and complained about having been :"MADE" to go to he Bible and study each week to prepare a sermon each week. What a remarkable way to refer to it! He wasn't HAPPY to spend hour after hour there, excited when new insights arrived. (I've been there, and I wasn't a preacher.) He did it because he had no other choice in doing his job as a preacher. He also served as a proofreader and editor at a Christian written publication. He really liked to skip over that one. Why? He was exposed to the complete research of LOTS of young Christian teachers and researchers. Quite a useful thing to have access to. If he wanted to skip reading the Bible for himself- which he accidentally let slip he did- he could just plagiarize all those writers from the pulpit, and they'd never find out. What- do you think someone just wakes up one morning and his career switches to plagiarist? No- he was plagiarizing for some time before he discovered Stiles and Leonard. That's why he didn't have a crisis of conscience before plagiarizing them. What was vpw's entire goal in BECOMING a minister? He once told a minister he wanted to be one like him. Someone preached and he said that. He obviously didn't mean the part about LEARNING because he never pursued that. He wanted to preach and be in charge. In one of his accounts of his supposed 1942 promise (which was all an exposable lie), his first reaction was not that his congregation would be blessed- his first thought was that EVERYONE WOULD LISTEN TO HIM. Whether this incident happened or not, his own claim is that this would be his first thought. Small wonder vpw relied on sermons, invented stories, and outright plagiarism to make a name for himself. He was in it solely for the adulation and the steady work. The plagiarism was unapologetic because without it, he'd have to actually work and think. He preferred to lie and cheat instead.

If pfal was supposedly "theo pneustos" ("God-breathed"), then it would be required to conform to the characteristics of "God-breathed" as defined in pfal itself. The most obvious property it would have to have would be it would be FREE OF ERRORS. We've discussed LISTS of errors in the material before. We carried on active, lively discourses on multiple sides of several issues, and got places. Naturally, the one person who claims it IS-Mike- has categorically REFUSED to discuss ANY of the OBVIOUS ERRORS in pfal. What he did do was refuse to discuss them, claim he had answers and offer varieties of excuse why he would not offer even one, and when someone made a point that made it look like a single error in the stack might not be an error, Mike declared victory and said he knew it all along, taking credit for someone else's work. \ My favorite "it's technically impossible for this NOT to be an error" was when a statement was declared true in the Foundational and its opposite declared true in the Intermediate.

B) The alleged promise was a lie. Supposedly, God Almighty promised He would teach like it hadn't been known since the 1st century AD. If this were true, there would be a complete disconnect with what was being taught and known elsewhere in 1942 EVERYWHERE and what vpw later taught (because we know he taught others.) However, even those who idolize vpw agree that the material he taught was already taught by others. A paper trail can be traced for virtually all the twi material vpw taught. vpw took Leonard's class, and a few months later, taught 100% of the same material. vpw bought Stiles' book, then typed up a book with the contents- later adding the contents of books by Bullinger to flesh it out more. And so on. So, either God Almighty lied when giving this promise, someone else claiming to be God lied and vpw couldn't tell the difference between a lying spirit and God Almighty, or vpw lied and nobody promised him at all. C) The alleged promise was based on ignorance. twi's system shares a trait with the Mikean system- they're both Gnostic systems based on secret knowledge. The twi system-which was vpw's system, set up by him and used by him all the time- was that study of the verses was the key to God (plus the "Law of Believing"),. So, the more you study the verses, the more "godly" you can become, especially if you study it the twi way. We've all seen far too many horror stories of twi "masters" who partly memorized vpw/twi materials and were bigger schmucks if anything. Geer spent hours going over vpw's teachings in between drugging women for vpw to rape and preparing to throw himself over vpw as a human shield if anyone tried to shoot him. But, let's expose the IGNORANCE in the alleged "promise." How DID the 1st century Christian church know God's Word? They knew the Torah/Old Testament. They knew the SPOKEN word, They knew The Word BY EXPERIENCE AND POWER. Think about it. They were getting converts left and right while being a disciple was ILLEGAL and punished by imprisonment, murder, or both. They got LOTS of converts with that going on. No amount of charismatic demagoguery can make up for the risk of being killed or imprisoned. You might get a few disaffected outsiders. They got Saul of Tarsus, former persecutor and murderer of Christians (he didn't put his hand on the knife, but he ordered it done.) Did the Greeks hear good speeches then run out and conclude that their gods walked among them and prepared to offer blood sacrifices? They SAW something. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. However, provide the extraordinary proof, and the claims stop looking extraordinary-at least in comparison to the proof. The 1st century Christians preached-but were known because they had power and could deliver where they spoke. Lots of people preached and didn't get significant converts. Theirs was a pragmatic, direct, power-based ministry. twi was never that. They were study-based, and TALKED ABOUT power lots of times, then considered "Kojacking" a significant witness of "power." 1st century Christians were never centrally-controlled nor organized. twi bore no resemblance to 1st century Christianity except where twi CLAIMED they did. But all the claims don't mean reality matches a claim. The 1st century Christians probably didn't have access to the entire New Testament ANYWHERE. All documents had to be hand-copied. With no printing press and no scanners and PDFs, that was a laborious process and few copies circulated for the 1st century AD (certainly relative to now.) So, twi has NEVER had "The Word as it was known in the 1st Century." because vpw NEVER had "The Word as it was known in the 1st Century." vpw might have known that when he phrased the promise he was supposedly given, but he skipped over "Church history". So, he was likely to make such a mistake where God Almighty would not. vpw made up the alleged 1942 promise. and it's easy to show all the errors. There was no such promise. There's no real, sensible reason to laud vpw or "his" books. They don't comrpise "revelation."

I took a poll once. Even when given a chance to do so anonymously, nobody claimed vpw was pure evil. Mike sees it that way, but he has to "creatively reinterpret" what people say until he says they really said the opposite of what they said. He's an old hand at that, since he pulls the same thing with pfal materials. The Orange Book itself contrasts itself with Scripture- but according to Mike, it's Scripture.

The supposition that pfal was of significant long-term benefit hangs primarily on the alleged "1942 promise." That promise, as stated by vpw, was that God spoke audibly to vpw, and promised that God Almighty would teach vpw God's Word ;like it hadn't been known since the first century (AD) if vpw would teach it to others. vpw supposedly asked God to confirm this by a miraculous snowstorm. All right, how many ways can we show this 1942 promise failed? We've done it lots of times before, this is mostly compilation. A) The miraculous snowstorm never happened. There was NO report of actual snow anywhere near where this allegedly happened. When it supposedly happened, he didn't even tell his own wife it happened. Come on, that would have been the first words out of any spouse's mouth that evening. ("Honey, you'll never believe what happened to me today...") He never claimed it until decades later. He couldn't keep the details of the miraculous event straight, even. When he first began making this claim, he said the sky looked BLACK with all the heavy snow. This, BTW, isn't what it looks like for even the heaviest snow. Later-probably because he learned that doesn't happen- he switched to saying the sky was WHITE with snow. I'm sure details can get lost over time, but if a miraculous event that turns the sky all one color, you'd at least remember the color. Finally, this wasn't the only time vpw claimed a miraculous snowstorm. In fact, he did it whenever it was convenient. When he added special significance to the minister's conference where he met Stiles, vpw claimed that the entire city was snowed in completely. He was unable to get out because planes, trains and buses were all stopped due to heavy snow conditions, a blizzard. This was a rather big lie, and one that was checkable. When someone spoke to him about it, he didn't say "I was there and saw the snow and walked in it, check again", he immediately switched his story to prevent trying to contradict the weather report. He immediately began claiming the snow was an angelic apparition- angels made him see snow that wasn't there, and when he phoned transit places, angels answered the phone and lied to him. (He would rather have us think angels lied than that he lied.) In reality, not even a single FLAKE fell from the sky in that city that day, and the temperature didn't reach freezing. This wasn't the last time vpw made up a convenient snowstorm, even. A poster here once noted that vpw was supposed to visit their area. Instead, he phoned and said that he WANTED to fly there, but he was located at a bad snowstorm and he was told it was unsafe. The poster checked the weather in vpw's area at the time, and there was neither snow nor storms predicted. So, the entire snow part was a lie. Without that, there's no 1942 promise. However, even if it was possible for there to have been a snowstorm (it's not possible), the other problems with his story would be enough to discredit it. There WAS no 1942 promise. vpw was NEVER some great one. pfal was NEVER some great class nor great study materials. It was all built up as a con-and not the most secure con, either. It needed lots of outside help to prop it up.

He defends the POS because when it came time for self-actualization, Mike chose to base his entire life around his postulate that pfal is God-Breathed and that vpw was actually doing God's Will. It's what he's got left and it's cost him all the rest. You won't get through because he "doubles down" and "lets it ride" rather than leave the casino with whatever's left in his pocket. And he's proud about that.

Someone suggested (insisted, really) that vpw was not only an athlete, but that he was an exceptional one, part of the tiny handful of people capable of great feats of athleticism. The exact words used previously about this was that he had "an OVERabundance of brains and brawn", and that he was "OVERgifted". and that "when he walked, the earth shook." I'm not going to address the other points at this time. For fun, I thought I'd recap his athletic accomplishments and what they mean and what they don't mean. vpw was on his high school varsity basketball team. The end. THAT was the end of his athletic "career." Oh, but wasn't he a professional ballplayer, and on his college's team, and so on? NO. He later (when he was used to getting away with all sorts of inflated claims) claimed he invented the hook shot (attributed to Lithuanian Pranas Talzunas or Harlem Globetrotter Goose Tatum, among possible others). However, his previous claims are easy to track. He said outright he was on his high school basketball team. He showed photos of that. He later said he "PLAYED BASKETBALL ALL THROUGH COLLEGE." He showed no team photos from college. Did he actually say he was on the team? No, he was deliberately vague-he prevaricated. He phrased it so people could mistakenly think he said he played on his college's varsity team. However, all he said actually was that he played all through college. If he played a game of pick-up once a semester, he "played basketball all through college." ANYBODY could do that if they could move freely around the court, dribble, pass and shoot, even if they could do none of them WELL. vpw was fond of inflating his credentials and claiming everything he had even a questionable right to claim. If he was on the varsity team, he would have said so and shown photos. He didn't even try to claim membership in the JV team. Furthermore, he "was involved with" the Sheboygan Redskins team. Again, people thought that meant he played on the team. Someone even read that claim in "TW:LiL", cited their source, and claimed he played on the team. But their source for that was the sentence where he said he was "involved with" the Sheboygan Redskins. What WAS his association? Did he take them out for ice cream after the games? Was he the waterboy? Did he sweep up after the game? We only know he wasn't actually on the team as a player because someone once went through the roster of the entire history of the team, and his name does not appear ANYWHERE. So, we can either speculate that he was on the team but somehow absent from every record, or we can avoid being unforgivably stupid and accept that he was never on the team and never claimed he was. So, in short, vpw's career as an athlete goes all the way up to high school graduation and ends there, never joining a team or competing at any level. =========================================================== How does that stack up against the general population? I took a poll and started a thread here some years ago, asking about everyone else's levels of involvement. About 40% of GSC posters actually exceeded vpw's athletic achievements, either because they were on the college varsity team, or because they competed NATIONALLY at a sport (i.e, was eligible to be considered for the Olympic team),, and so on. All actual athletes, Including me. *holds up his varsity letter* The percentage of posters who were athletes at least to his level (meaning, high school varsity or higher) jumped into the 60s. That means more than 1/2 the posters who responded were athletes at least to the level of vpw, with most of those exceeding his accomplishments. ========================================================= Those are the actual, record-able participations we're discussing, things a matter of record. In those, vpw was shown to be strictly AVERAGE in athletic accomplishments. What about BEYOND college and tournaments and national competitions? As to that, vpw would be the first to LEAP forward and trumpet his participation and involvement. Yet, we have a tremendous silence on that front. We have him HINTING about a team in college and outside college, but never having the nerve to just outright lie and claim he was on either team. He also never had any anecdotes of athletic accomplishments otherwise. We don't have him claiming he used to preach to the trees then chop down record numbers of them. We never have him claiming to have performed some leaps, swimming, or even hiking accomplishments of any note. (I imagine that somewhere, sometime, he talked about walking while hunting, but I'm talking about LONG walks like a marathon or any size.) What does that leave? vpw's accomplishments-and thus, all measurable yardsticks of his athletic ability- end at high school varsity, and after that vanish into some vague double-talk that never directly claims he was on the college team or any other team. It's all smoke and hot air. Even his own father said he never worked hard on the farm. By any measurable standard, wierwille was average and lukewarm AT BEST, and underperformed almost 1/2 the GSC posters in athletics. Naturally, it's still possible to insist on discarding both the facts and the logic, but that's on the head of the person determined to do exactly that.

I'm impressed they were able to get together a class by 1996. In 1989, twi effectively kicked out 4/5 of its leadership and members, and reduced twi membership in NYC to a ghost town. (Intermediate-class grads became Territory Coordinators of the twigs-worth of people left in the Territory, and so on.) BQSI was no different than the rest, there-in fact, it was quite typical that way.