WordWolf

1:"Unfortunately, we've found there's little profit in trading with the Federation. In order to comply with your commerce laws, we've had to pay a series of taxes and fees that have made the cost of doing business with you too high." 2:"What sort of taxes and fees are you referring to?" 1:"For example... on a recent shipment of Karemman Fleece, a four percent surcharge was added to pay for inspecting the cargo for 'changeling infiltrators.'" 2:"What?" 3:"You never know where they might be hiding." 1:"Another three percent of the shipment's value was lost due to 'unforeseen' currency fluctuations." 3:"There was a run on the Bolian Credit Exchange... played havoc with the markets..." 1:"A six percent tariff was imposed to help offset the 'lost income of Tarkalian sheep herders.'" 3:"Hardworking people... you have to feel for them..." 1:"Should I go on, Captain... ?" 2:"No... I think you've made your point..." "Sensor range was limited, so we learned to use an old active-scan system to navigate." "It works by echo-location... we send out a modulated tetrion pulse, and if it reflects off the hull of a ship, we can approximate its location." "Won't these pulses give away our position as well?" "We'll have to alter course and speed after each one." "Helm, take us to a higher altitude." "We're gaining altitude..." "How can you tell?" "I've got the lobes..." "You've got them, too. It's a Ferengi expression. Usually, when we say someone has "the lobes," we mean they have a keen business sense. That's you. I'll admit it. You fooled me. I thought you were just another easy mark. But you saw right through my little scam, and taught me a thing or two about doing business in the Gamma Quadrant. I guess I've gotten lazy. I'm used to dealing with the Federation. You think I was cheating you, you have no idea what I was doing to them. They still haven't caught on. And if someone like me can put one over on them, think of what someone like you could do." "Someone with my... lobes?" "Exactly. And I'm just the man to help you do it. we could become rich, rich beyond our dreams." "You... are despicable." I hate the Gamma Quadrant... "

I don't think you're going to get anyone who saw it. For that matter, we may not have HEARD of it. Especially if Raf was correct.

Must be.

So, the local fellowship in your area was NOT the direct result of the personal arrival of any of the "groovy Christians" and THEIR direct involvement? Seems you posted that before- which explained why YOUR local group deviated so completely from most of the STATE, including all of NYC. Seeing that allowed me to look at your experience and say "despite being in almost an entirely different MINISTRY than me, this could have happened not far away, and he could be telling the truth."

And if the role of "the class" wasn't more of a "do as I say, and this is what I say" as opposed to "do as I do (and this is NOT what I do), that wouldn't have happened.

A few cosmetic changes have developed in some of the offshoots, but many things have stayed the same. The leaders are unquestionably right, the answers are capsulized in their progam/class, if it didn't work, take it again. If it still doesn't give you answers, the problem is YOU. As someone else said, a lot of the questions it answered were provided by THEM.I can pose a BUNCH of questions I'm going to provide the answers to, and then provide them, thus proving my efficacy as well. A lot of us ex-twi'ers, familiar with that process, can. I think 1 evening, at most, should be sufficient to cover the basics of the entire 12 sessions that people REALLY want: God loves you, God wants you to understand, etc. Those are hardly unique to twi or ex-twi, although many may not have heard them- or heard them in a form they wanted to hear- before twi. We know vpw himself grew up going regularly to church, decided on going into preaching, completed his curriculum in undergraduate and graduate studies (and Princeton Theological Seminary, although it is not Princeton, is a respected institution for the education of Christians) and was preaching for A YEAR before he claims he FIRST claimed to have heard that the Bible was God's Word, at least "believing it." I have great difficulty picturing a man making it through SEMINARY without ever HEARING that, so to me, the catch is "hearing it such that I believed it." If you finally accepted it in the pfal package despite having heard it other places, hey, I'm glad for you. But the Bible being of God, God loves you, etc, that's not a secret, let alone a GREAT secret. Of course, if you're going to accept vpw's word for it, it is "THE GREATEST SECRET IN THE WORLD TODAY". (As opposed to, say, the exact time of Christ's return. Now, THAT's a REAL secret.) EXACTLY.

That's great. Then again, IIRC, she heard during the "best" days/times of twi, face-to-face from some of the "groovy Christians", the hijacked hippies from the House of Acts. No surprise THEY weren't high-pressure salesmen- the corps was still in its early development then, and there was no Dale Carnegie section in it-if they were even IN vpw's corps. THEY were about enjoyment and blessings. If twi as a whole had been about that, there'd be no GSC. Me, I got the later stuff, and my twig was much lower in pressure. That meant I got to attend a few before they mentioned signing up for "the class." However, when we had a corps drop in, he immediately began pushing for signups. When he found out I was the only one there who wasn't "a grad", they practically had to pull him off me and keep repeating "he's signed up!" At that moment, I might have been the ONLY person signed up locally, in fact. What a shame we all couldn't experience the groovy Christians who were the backbone of the "early twi" experience. (Actually, the REAL early twi days supposedly would run from 1942-1968, before there were groovy Christians. Of that period of over 20 years, we haven't heard any personal accounts, membership being small enough to barely displace water in a hot tub across the entire "era".

Having spent some time listening to all posters from the earliest days they've posted from, and read what twi themselves have written, it's a little more complicated. Despite them wishing otherwise, twi was greatly dependent upon the times and the "Zeitgeist." twi didn't really exist beyond a double-handful of people- despite having pfal and the pfal books- until vpw selected the hippies of the House of Acts in Haight-Ashbury, and recruited some of them into twi, and convinced THEM to be his "sales force" for pfal. Almost everyone who ever posted here can trace back, and back, and eventually point to one of the handful as they were assigned to different locations. (For example, if Steve H went to a place, he convinced people there twi had something to offer, and they joined, and got involved, and THEY convinced people twi had something to offer, and THOSE people joined, and so on. That process slowed when the days of the hippie waned, and vpw indoctrinated people out of the spontaneity and liberty that was once such a draw. So, fewer people were convinced, and membership growth SLOWED. However, with so many people now IN twi, a slower rate was STILL a sizeable number of people joining each year. As legalism got stricter and stricter-which began at the end of vpw's reign as he put more corps on-location locally. (Many corps absorbed the loyalty and obedience vpw wanted them to learn, so this served him well when they did.) Once lcm was in charge, this process sped up a LOT. However, it was already in place. lcm was a lot more efficient, however, at choking all the spontaneity, joy, and freedom from people, which led to membership numbers freefalling to current numbers of a few thousand adults where tens of thousands freely acted and were involved. All true. lcm learned it when HE was in the corps, he passed it on to all the corps when vpw put him in charge,and he imposed it on EVERYONE eventually. By this time, he was convinced this was "normal", since he'd spent almost his entire adult life fulltime on-grounds at twi. True, and a pity, true it's a pity, and a pity it's true. I'm confident those were good things. They weren't ALL things in twi, but those you mentioned were good things. They meant people's lives, and those are not minor things! True. So long as you don't say "that relationship=reproducing twi-classic all over again," I can get behind this. Of course, I only speak for myself. I'll take your word for it that you saw it then. I'm also being honest that anyone looking back and trying to reconstruct thinking in the past can sound a lot smarter than they would honestly have been at the time, since they can now suppose they'd happen to have passed judgements that reflected what actually happened. So, I THINK this would have been obvious to me if I'd been close enough, but since I was not, I can't guarantee it.

It's pretty much a consensus here that there was a least a dozen competent top people who would have stepped up if asked, all of whom would have been a better choice than lcm. (Which ones they are sometimes vary depending on the speaker- since some would name cg, some would name vf, some would name neither, and so on.) I don't think ANY of them-based on what I've seen since- would have been a PERFECT choice, but a few would have been very good choices, and most of the "short list" would have been less awful even at their worst when in office. People who were close have reported that vpw was recommended to a lot of people- none of whom were lcm. However, he decided lcm would be it despite all considerations offered to him. He gave one of two answers to the few he answered as to why: A) lcm was the corps director, therefore, the corps would follow him without question B) lcm never gave him an argument-whenever vpw told him to do something, he just did it, no questions. Hindsight is 20/20, but if someone could not give me better reasons than that today, I'd know the organization in question was steering on a course for destruction.

That's pretty much what he's saying, I think. It's essentially one thing I'm saying- we experience time moving from past thru present to future, and to God, they're all simultaneous, since He has full Understanding of all of them, and has the power to act fully in all of them. Isaiah 57:15 (King James Version) King James Version (KJV) 15For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. It looks like it from here. Then again, it's not QUITE the "smoking gun" when King James English isn't relied on, so it's not exactly fair or honest for us to do so.... Isaiah 57:15 (New American Standard Bible) New American Standard Bible (NASB) 15For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, "I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite." I think that, despite this not being a "smoking gun", that we're still representing the concepts fairly, accurately and truly. Please note that not having the family since He already knows us in the future is not an option- God would produce a time-paradox, where he prevented events from happening and they happened anyway. The old example in science fiction you know from Back to the Future- if you prevent your parents from ever meeting, you prevent your birth, which prevents you from going back in time, which prevents you from stopping them from meeting, which means they DO meet, and give birth to you- so now you can go back in time and prevent them from meeting..... It can make the head hurt. So, God, being sensible, doesn't miracle up a prefabricated "family" designed to love Him, he goes thru the trouble of raising them the slow, old-fashioned way. He also avoids making paradoxes and other problems. God doesn't just miracle away things and erase rules He's made (like "past" and "present", and "cause and effect.") ======== In other news, I have to take on faith that, to God, we're worth all the energy He's invested in us. Me, I don't see it. I think He's wasting a lot of energy on some barely-appreciative, and barely-loving, fractious children. To someone All-Knowing, this makes sense. So, I'll have to trust Him that we're worth it.

I already answered that in the past few posts....

You know, if you were less eager to insult me, you might be less eager to perceive insult WHERE NONE WAS OFFERED. I'm going largely from the front of the thread to the back, with pauses for what I consider are germane posts on this thread.So, I'm responding to MOST posts from days ago. I don't see anyone else perceiving insult in this. But it's particular with you. And I was writing a pair of very long posts, and didn't LOOK for your post while I was posting them both. This may surprise you, but when I post here, it's often to say something, and often that's not necessarily something YOU find a benefit, nor addressed to you at all, but OTHERS here find the use. This thread isn't about me- I deliberately stayed quiet for the beginning for that reason. It's also not about you, OR you and me. Your second request-which was NOT a "polite request" but an insinuation I wasn't replying for some reasonor other of less-than-innocent intent- was seen by me after I posted the second of the 2 lengthy posts. Actually, it would have been less polite if I just rattled off some quick answer to your question-suggesting that I didn't think it was worthy of serious consideration. Instead, I said I'd get back to it- so I could address it with a full measure of attention. Somehow, you perceive that as an insult. When you rephrased it, and I saw the rephrasal, it's obvious the question you want specifically addressed is one of Calvinism, which is not my interest, nor what I'm working on at this time. I wasn't having any discussion on Calvinism-others were. I have other aspects of this that I consider warrant more of my attention, and I'm addressing THOSE, both in my own mind and in the posts earlier on in the thread. I didn't say I'll NEVER address this, but if I do, it will be when I've dismissed what I consider are higher priority. So you're admitting that bringing in Calvinism-or those specific questions of Calvinism-were "to trap me." The rest of us were having an intelligent, cordial discussion about the knowledge of God. We're discussing in good faith. I'd rather complete THAT discussion before delving into trick questions. I certainly haven't been giving YOU trick questions-I've been giving you questions in good faith and in light of the posts already here-thus, questions with no surprises hidden in them. So, you're saying I can't expect the same from you. That's a shame. If you were less interested in "scoring points" and more interested in the exchange of knowledge, you'd get more from this thread. As it is, it's really not supposed to be about you, me, or both of us. You seem determined to change that, however.... Each of us can ASK others nicely to stay on topic- and I do so. Many times, they do. Many times, they do not. Since neither of us runs this messageboard, we can't do more than that. This came as news to you? No, just in a matter-of-fact fashion.I was stating a fact. I don't couch those in flowery prose, most of the time. You may have PERCEIVED insult, but none was offered. A) The rest of us are having a nice discussion without anyone having to give any sort of rules. You just admitted that-while we're doing that- you're upset that you're trying to trap (your words, not mine) us and getting angry when we're not satisfying your trap. B) You're the one showing anger and pushing a run of interruptions because we're not posting the way YOU want and falling into your INTENTIONAL trap. And you're trying to claim that refusing to do so, and carrying on with a polite discussion, is "bullying." How many people do you think you're fooling there?

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 (NASB) 13The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. 14For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. =========== Now, how about a partial answer as to why God doesn't just smash all evildoers NOW like some masked vigilante? Matthew 13:24-30. (NASB) 24Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25"But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. 26"But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27"The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' 28"And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?' 29"But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."'" Matthew 13:36-43. (NASB) 36Then He left the crowds and went into the house And His disciples came to Him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field." 37And He said, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, 38and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. 40"So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. 41"The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, 42and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43"Then THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the kingdom of their Father He who has ears, let him hear. We're addressing now what may be considered a great mystery to some people, but it can become obvious when asking the right question while looking at the right verses. Jesus said the servants of the evil one weren't removed and destroyed NOW because there would then be a risk to the sons of the kingdom. One might ask why there would be such a problem, since God can see who is His and who is not. The answer is actually pretty simple. God knows- but he relates to us not necessarily with all He knows about us, but only what we have done up to the present. Some people, at different times, whether through foolish choices, horrible events, or the malignant intent of others, can SEEM to freely choose to serve the evil one- at least for a time. If a sudden judgement was upon us at that time, we would have no time to reform, to turn and walk the paths of righteousness, to serve God. If a sudden judgement was upon us and reflected our later decisions, it would be unfair, since it was based on what we haven't DONE yet. (It would be like being jailed for a FUTURE crime when you haven't even CONSIDERED committing a crime...) Some of us children of God have traveled harder paths, traveled darker paths. God allowed us to turn to Him when WE were ready, and did not "rush" us. God's allowed us to leave those paths on our own time, and did not render a summary judgement BEFOREtime. God operates on GOD's schedule, which is often FAR too slow for our tastes, especially in the era of microwaved foods, airplane travel, overnight mail, and e-mail. However, He operates on a schedule with more than our whims taken into account. ALL is taken into account, eventually. Once it IS taken into account, things will be different. Revelation 21:1-4 (NASB) 1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.

Translation translation: I didn't get the answer I wanted, and I want to draw attention from refusing to dialogue equally like WordWolf pointed out, so I'll throw out an accusation that WW COULDN'T answer me, and insult him for posting at length. I'm not thrilled about that, but if that's where you're at, that's where you're at. I wish you wouldn't pull this on a thread with a productive discussion on this, however.

1:"Unfortunately, we've found there's little profit in trading with the Federation. In order to comply with your commerce laws, we've had to pay a series of taxes and fees that have made the cost of doing business with you too high." 2:"What sort of taxes and fees are you referring to?" 1:"For example... on a recent shipment of Karemman Fleece, a four percent surcharge was added to pay for inspecting the cargo for 'changeling infiltrators.'" 2:"What?" 3:"You never know where they might be hiding." 1:"Another three percent of the shipment's value was lost due to 'unforeseen' currency fluctuations." 3:"There was a run on the Bolian Credit Exchange... played havoc with the markets..." 1:"A six percent tariff was imposed to help offset the 'lost income of Tarkalian sheep herders.'" 3:"Hardworking people... you have to feel for them..." 1:"Should I go on, Captain... ?" 2:"No... I think you've made your point..." "Sensor range was limited, so we learned to use an old active-scan system to navigate." "It works by echo-location... we send out a modulated tetrion pulse, and if it reflects off the hull of a ship, we can approximate its location." "Won't these pulses give away our position as well?" "We'll have to alter course and speed after each one."

Was this "Freejack"? Had a time machine, stepping into the shoes of another, and almost nobody seeing it. I didn't see it, but I did read "Immortality Inc" which was the inspiration for the movie.

You suppose a great deal, and have supposed me a great fool. You've also skipped over what I HAVE said on the subject, and what I agreed to just a few posts back, saying "this reflects how I see this." I answer questions in the ORDER that suits me. You may notice I'm going approximately in the order of the thread. I'm also not a Calvinist, and your question largely was one of Calvinism. I didn't answer your question in the terms you asked it-I answered it as I understood it. When I get to your question again, I'll see if there's any other way I'd like to address it. In the meantime, I thought we were having a DISCUSSION. You posed a conundrum, and I offered my answer, and OFFERED TO HELP YOU BREAK THE DEADLOCK as I understand it. If you don't want to cooperate, that's your business, but that means you're less interested in us all gaining in knowledge here than in "scoring points" in some fashion. If that's your decision, then all I can say is, you're going to miss out.

"Oo shanta malaka sito la shonta." I think that's the sentence we've all heard from vpw, in the classes, and in a variety of settings in twi after that down the years. Including when he was making a big deal that the utterance was SPECIFICALLY from God. Of course, some may wonder if this was a repeat of behaviour he freely admitted to performing back in 1953, when someone tried to minister to him so he could speak in tongues, and he chose to PRETEND HE DID, and spoke Greek, which they somehow didn't recognize. I think it's worth considering. Hey, if this "fluency" issue is worth mentioning when someone wants to know if the only SIT he supposedly did was the same sentence all over the place, then certainly whether this same sentence was actually given by God lots and lots of times, syllable exact to syllable, all over the place and down the years.

I was agreeing with Abigail, but not disagreeing with Tonto, if you can picture that. "Bullying" is not a subset of "contributing" as I see it.

I'll take first shot at this one. That's a classic Groucho Marx line. IIRC, it was first heard in "Animal Crackers", the stage-show and the movie. (And 3 cheers for Captain Spaulding, I say.) Since you're specifying a TV show, I'd bet that the show was "You Bet Your Life", Groucho's game-show.

Omniscience=All-Knowing. Omnipotence=All-Powerful. Omnibenevolence=All-Loving. We can understand the basic concept of All-Knowing easily enough, more or less. He knows EVERYTHING, past, present, future, to the tiniest degree. We can understand the basic concept of All-Powerful easily enough, more or less. He CAN do ANYTHING, so long as He chooses to, including squash our free will. The problem with discussing "All-Loving" is that the ramifications of it are subject to huge amounts of interpretation. There's a lot of PREDICTION when discussing what God would WANT to do-which is hand-in-hand with His emotions like Love. This means we get sentences like "If God is Love, and He CAN end suffering, he would. Therefore, either He lacks the POWER to end it, or doesn't CARE, or there is not God, pass me another tallboy." Things along those lines, anyway. We don't THINK like God, and CAN'T think like God. Predicting-or even pretending to understand-the thinking of God is a futile effort. The closest I can come is using a chess analogy, and the Big Picture. A human chess player can consider possible moves long before the chessboard reaches a stage where those moves would be used. God can play with an infinite number of moves in mind, and act long before something to prevent it or to make it happen. He certainly has been seen to do so in Scripture. He told Noah-120 years beforehand- about the Great Flood, and had him make preparations in that timeframe. In the time of Daniel, 4 of His people taught wise men, whose students' students' students (and so on) would see the stars, centuries later, and understand the birth of the King of the Jews, and would then arrive at his home with gold and other valuables, then leave, just when God needed to tell Joseph (and Mary and Jesus) to flee the country for their lives- and could now say so when they had money (gold) for travelling in a hurry. God acts on the long-term scale. God's plans are deep and we are not. I can love a God that isn't Omniscient, Omnipotent, OR Omnibenevolent. I love PEOPLE who are none of those things, and can love people who are below average in knowledge and power, certainly. What I may not be able to do is to put a lot of TRUST in someone whose capabilities exceed the tasks he sets for himself. In the case of God, my ability to trust a God who can make promises but not offer 100% assurance of them- which a not-Omniscient and/or not-Omnipotent God could not do- would be LIMITED. So, how do you define "All-Loving", and what conditions do you require of God as the result of being All-Loving? Some people would expect such a God to jump in and stop them from sinning. Others would expect such a God to crush human suffering long before it was a huge issue. (I answered my own question, phrased differently, earlier in the thread, and visited another aspect of it in this post, if you're curious.)

another Spot: anotherDan: Right. I mentioned as much in the 2nd of the long posts, starting off. me: If you look at that link explaining Flatland, you may notice that the bottom of the pagementions Carl Sagan discussing it on "Cosmos" once. I saw that, and was introduced to the Flatland concept at that time. When trying to conceptualize a God whose existence surpasses ours in more TYPES and not just in magnitude (He isn't just "man, but moreso", He exists in ways we don't have names for), I immediately went back to that explanation of Flatland. I don't think I can improve on this explanation. This is how I see the interaction between Omniscience and free will.

Or maybe I was busy working on a significant post, and missed your question, and it had nothing to do with "preference." I'll look at it when I have time to review it and compose a thoughtful answer. (I could just rattle something off, but I'd prefer not to.)

Thank him for OFFERING HIS OPINIONS. He's entitled to his own opinions. Me, I say his conclusions were all SPECULATION and are UNSUPPORTED. If this was his PRIMARY GOAL, as you've suggested before, or even just a major consideration, then he should have just SAID THAT. Then again, since that's a POLITICAL issue, perhaps he should have just kept that as a PERSONAL OPINION and used that time at the pulpit MORE PRODUCTIVELY by TEACHING THE BIBLE MORE instead of dictating political opinions to twi folk. I bet you HATE it when any homileticist OTHER THAN vpw dictates political opinions from the pulpit, especially when they disagree with what positions should be endorsed....

Actually, I'd be fine with that. I probably would use it myself- now that separating the truth from the error is even POSSIBLE. Even the sections that are ERROR can be used as practice in "separating truth from error" and critical thinking.