WordWolf

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pigeonhole "3: a neat category which usually fails to reflect actual complexities" If I turn on the television at the perfect moment and gain insight from something broadcast at that instant, and someone comes along trying to explain that in terms of "gift ministries", I have to call "bushwah" on that because Not every blessing has to be the direct result of a "gift ministry." I really don't know how to make that any simpler.

That's why I said he "lifted things he didn't understand." When he taught it in pfal, he definitely didn't understand it, because he taught the opposite later. Naturally, this makes for an obvious error, since it can't be both true as one thing and completely true as its opposite at the same time. Not a problem for the sensible student-but for those who think that vpw was close to Jesus in understanding, or getting it direct from God Almighty, this is a problem and requires denial or enough fog to hide it completely.

Of course, just taking isolated quotes is no guarantee that they are FAIRLY represented. Cutting a quote from its context can be used to make it say the opposite of what it was meant to say. "There is no God" from "The fool says in his heart,'There is no God.'" It's certainly common enough in politics, even though it's dishonest. As for what vpw stole, I have no proof anything he stole was necessarily sound just because he felt it was worth stealing. He plagiarized the Word-Faith movement, with their "believe and deflect all bad events in your life" stuff- and that whole movement's based on a Christian voodoo. vpw claimed that "all the women in the kingdom belonged to the king" when Israel was a kingdom- but that was never true except in his delusions. vpw often lifted things he didn't even understand- which is why he sometimes made some remarkable mistakes or contradicted himself. ("'All' is always either 'all without exception' or 'all without distinction." "Now, was this 'all' 'all without exception', or 'all with a distinction'?") Just ASSUMING vpw's sources were sound and relatively error-free is a bad bet.

Even supposing your friend was joking, he was joking with a pattern of inflated claims like we'd heard lots of times before and after that. "In 1976 I attended my first ROA's in Sydney Ohio. I remember the WOW's with whom we travelled saying that VP does not sleep during this whole entire event. He was so 'spiritually' wired that he was awake for the whole 4 days, praying and teaching and meeting needs..." "It was TWI that caused the fall of the Soviet Union. If it had not been for Wierwille's stand on the Word countless countries would have fallen to communism, California would have slipped off into the Pacific Ocean, and we would all now be speaking Russian - That is, if the giant comet that was headed directly for the Earth has not been diverted by VPW's great believing." "When Squeaky From went to shoot the President and her gun did not fire, it was because VP had the foresight to send WOW's there that day. Because of the WOW's presence, under the direction of VP, our President was saved." "God told VP to put WOW's on the San Andres fault in California. This prevented the HUGE earthquake which otherwise would have happened. I recall someone in CA said something bad about TWI and VP said, "I should just take my WOW's off the fault and see what happens to them." "Did you know that TWI prevented the certain overthrow of the USA by all the witnessing we did and by the production and promotion of America Awakes? It was all going to happen by the bi-centennial in 1976. Heck, I still have my copy of "The Secret new Constitution" which had been drafted by the evil powers, the Catholic church being foremost among them! America Awakes drove back the spirit power. Our country was saved! Thank God all those WOW's signed up. Just in the nick of time. Their door to door and street witnessing changed destiny! A more recent example in TWI II was Y2K. Quote from LCM and other leaders: "It was the preparation on the household of The Way that kept anything from happening."

Not every blessing has to be the direct result of a "gift ministry." Trying to pigeonhole everything into one's pet theory is a good way to really sail off into left field- and was/is common in twi. I once heard someone on an STS tape teaching on his cutesy concept of "Recover, Resist, Rejoice." He began to read and expound. "*reading* 'Be sober, be vigilant' *expounding* That's like recovering." Uh, no it isn't-and it shouldn't have to be unless you're forcing EVERYTHING to fit into your framework, subordinating the communication of God Almighty to your religious construct.

"Censorship" is about silencing voices. Civil discourse, brother, DOES have limits. Generally, WE can manage OURSELVES and refrain from venting spleen or posting something coarse or truly insulting. Occasionally, a staffer has to remind us to manage ourselves. More rarely, a staffer needs to step in. Me, I prefer to manage myself before they need to step in. And I prefer that there is a limit after which is "going too far." Truly unmoderated messageboards are incoherent trollbait when they're not overrun by spambots and Nigerian princes looking for assistants. The Sun Sentinel, as a respectable newspaper, has a limit as to what it will allow in print-and an editor WILL step in if needed. That's S.O.P. for newspapers. ========================================== You caught that, too? And you beat me to it. It reminds me of all the other inflated, grandiose claims- and that reminds me of the thread where we discussed them... "vpw? Superman? Green Lantern?"

It's obvious his methods were all consistent with operating primarily as a business, because every single program was designed to operate AT A PROFIT. People never paid COST for anything-they paid RETAIL. He wanted money to come in, and after a certain point he became more interested in OBEDIENCE and BLIND LOYALTY than in simply raising numbers or even raising more money. It's really shocking to hear some of the stories-like vpw claiming to buy the furniture used to film pfal- then returned it and claimed he was unsatisfied so he could get a refund. Naturally, twi still recommends this type of strategy- "buy" a big TV for "the class" then return it when the class ends. Most people consider these "shameful" things for Christians to do-but vpw was big on never feeling guilt about things. Small wonder he was fine doing so many shameful things when he considered NOTHING to be truly shameful so long as you're not caught. Of course, vpw had no experience in managing, and absolutely no background in any type of leadership training program. That's why he claimed that a leader is someone who is followed blindly and never questioned. His view of leadership NEVER included the RESPONSIBILITIES for a leader, just the perks.

Mixed message: I'm not interested in insulting you, but let's talk about yo' mama for awhile... Think very carefully before hitting "add reply." To send insults that often means you really mean to insult, or you don't care enough that you're not thinking and reviewing before you post. Some days I refuse to reply because I'm not sure where my emotions would be, and posting angry or impulsive is a bad thing, as I see it.

The ugly bronze statue (and it is ugly) is in the Auditorium. The 3 graves on-site are together by the fountain, vpw's is one.

That's it.

To hear some people say it, he had "human frailties", which sounds like he cheated on his diet. It really doesn't do justice to saying he was a rapist, a fraud, a simonist, a plagiarist, an adulterer, a chain-smoker and alcoholic...... A FRACTION of the real list sounds scary to pair with a leadership position.

Ferris Buehler's Day Off Ben Stein The Mask

No. No. You made no reference to the old, corrupt South Dakota town.

In this TV-movie, Ash Williams and his friends end up in a cabin outside of an old South Dakota town, and discover the corruption of the town may be due to the cursed book in the cabin.

To some people, he definitely taught wantonness. lcm was willing to follow vpw off a cliff. vpw told him that he'd need to "loosen up sexually" or that he would be unable to minister to God's people. That's just one example. He also set up the elaborate NETWORK. There was a system to FIND the women to victimize, a system to set up the victimization, the system to "exit counsel" the victims, and the system to kick them out and smear their names if they looked like they would talk. vpw put more work into that than he did into actually studying the Bible, since he mostly just faked doing his own research, and he set up his own rape-system from scratch. Funny thing about the lack of remorse to the end (a hallmark of psychopathic/sociopathic behavior)... Someone who was on-grounds in his final hours said that vpw was in bed, and he said, sincerely, that he was trying to figure it out. He knew that God's leaders could get healing if there wasn't some obstruction in their lives, in their behavior, that prevented it. This is what had him stumped. vpw was UNABLE TO FIGURE OUT WHERE HE'D BLOWN IT. A trail of abuse victims behind him, and he was unable to think of a single instance in his life where he'd displeased God. It's possible he was faking it to his literal last breath- but I think he was telling the truth and literally thought God was ok with the rapes vpw did. Either way, he went to his grave UNREPENTANT. If he knew it was wrong, he confessed NOTHING. Possibly the biggest difference between vpw and lcm: vpw KNEW he was conning people. lcm thought he was doing what God wanted-because he bought into vpw's con. So, vpw knew when to hide his tracks, and lcm was proud of what he was doing. Since he really thought vpw heard from God, he really thought he himself would hear from God once he was anointed twi's next king. So, he concluded that many or most fool thoughts he got after that were from God- so he announced them or put them into action, and almost all of them were horrible ideas that damaged twi more each time. lcm meant to serve God, but had been so completely deluded by vpw and bought so completely into the whole act that he was unable to see when he was doing wrong and would displease God.

Donal Logue was also the Dad in the TV show "Grounded For Life," and...wait, I remembered something. From Donal Logue we have Blade Traci Lords some cheap pornographic movie Wesley Snipes To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

Matt Murdock to Elektra Natchios, in "DareDevil."

The CFS class treaded lightly on rather clear subjects of "no fooling around". We DID have a long list of dirty words, and a considerable number of nude photos that vpw displayed. The public classes treaded lightly on things vpw didn't want released to the general public. It was in private that he made some claims that will get redacted out of protection of others. It was about some claim he made that was perfectly acceptable (to him but not to any respectable Christian minister on the planet) about certain behaviors he recommended adults enact on minors (that would put them in jail if they were caught.) His justification was not from the Bible, but some imaginary African tribes (that don't exist because what he claimed is not practiced among any African tribe) that supposedly also do this but our modern society is too prudish to promote statutory rape acts but he thought they were ok. It was also in private that he would get "touchy-feely" with young women in twi, and make claims like he was trying to toughen them up spiritually. (He never tried to toughen the guys up by touching their swimsuit areas, only the women.) And so on.

The GSC did away with the Political forum-and political threads- because it was more work than all the other fora put together, and it was either drop that section or close the entire GSC. So, don't ask him to start a disallowed thread in a non-existent forum. And I agree with the practicality of the decision to close one forum rather than the entire thing because the GSC is not ABOUT Politics.

The opening post seems to not only be rather specifically Doctrinal, but the thread's title is "clickbait." The title is not what the thread is about. The title may belong in Open, but it isn't what the thread is about-and is phrased that way solely to get people to click on it. It's an advertising gambit used online, and is rather unprincipled.

vpw: "So long as you love God and your neighbor as yourself, you can do as you fool-well please." With it left completely vague how to do the first part, vpw's teachings left him free to do as he pleased.

I believed what I was told- and it was built up at the really big, deep stuff. I was personally told it would explain why mosquitoes exist as they do. I expected stuff on a lot of revelation and power, in between really deep things reserved for that level. We covered some stuff on 6 "manifestations", but none of the other stuff.

That's not how vpw presented it. He said 2 different things, and it's possible to conflate them because he didn't separate them topically. (Possibly he didn't understand or possibly he just didn't care and focused on his delivery.) He said that "God, who is the Holy Spirit, can only give that which He is, so he gives spirit." This is easy to disprove, so he said it in pfal but didn't say it elsewhere I'm remember. (If anyone has a copy of "Jesus Christ is not God" handy, please check page 130, which may have included it.) As Raf pointed out on this subject, God gave manna-God is NOT manna. The other thing was vpw saying that "God is Spirit, and God can only communicate with that which He is," which is why he invented his supposed Great Principle. It's even recorded in the Orange Book. "God being Spirit can only speak to what He is. God cannot speak to the natural human mind... Things in the natural realm may be known by the five senses - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. But God is Spirit and, therefore, cannot speak to brain cells; God cannot speak to a person's mind. It is a law and God never oversteps His own laws." (page 78.) Thus, his supposed Great Principle: "God, who is Spirit, teaches His creation in you, which is now your spirit, and your spirit teaches your mind. Then it becomes manifested in the senses realm as you act." So, according to vpw, it is IMPOSSIBLE for God Almighty, Holy Spirit, to communicate to a human mind, because "it is a law and God never oversteps His own laws." Ok, how do we get revelation? Your own holy spirit communicates to your human mind. Wait-he just said that's IMPOSSIBLE. You probably don't remember it that vividly because it was f'ing stupid.

From twi's beginning, the issue of people leaving has always existed. And, in private, vpw had used a "swear loyalty to me or leave" tactic on the Corps a few times. (ONLY on people primed to be loyal like resident Corps.) vpw KNEW he was a fraud, and had convinced lcm that he was the real deal. So, vpw could talk a good show in public, then lie in private and make it sound pious, knowing he was lying. (God wants you to bless me with extra-marital sex...) After vpw died, lcm was faced with some of vpw's dirty secrets coming out (he told women to have sex with him, his "revelations" were plagiarism...) lcm wandered confused for a few years, and things at the local levels ran FINE. Then lcm decided to demand that EVERYONE swear loyalty to him or else. The result, especially at that time, meant that 80% of twi present either were fired or left voluntarily, many alongside those who were fired. There were now more people leaving twi at once than remaining in twi. Since some areas had ALL their leadership (or nearly all) leave together, they were able to remain together and just change the name on the stationery and a few physical details, and keep the weekly meetings happening. Instead of national news, they got news from the "region" or state as the top dogs. So, twi had to call all those people who were still doing the same thing but without their logos. The popular term for the people was "cop-outs." But it was the GROUPS that were a threat to twi. If people could leave twi for "almost-twi", then threats to kick them out were nullified. So. names like "stick fellowship" were needed, with stories about how they were inferior because they weren't reporting to the farm.

STILL sounds like it. They were "out in left field", which is martindale-speak for "in error" or "confused"