WordWolf

Sounds like it. Tinkerbelle has wings and is pretty strong, Peter Pan flies and crows, and so on.

I consider the book to have been poorly-written. Since he couldn't just plagiarize it from someone like Bullinger or Stiles, that it's MUCH weaker-because he actually had to WRITE- is obvious in hindsight. That having been said, despite having been poorly-written, insufficiently-researched, and more of an indoctrination than anything else, I think the position was correct. This shouldn't be THAT shocking. There were 2 main positions to take. His odds were 50/50, same as a cointoss. And his book was about as authoritative as a cointoss. Were you saying that holding that belief was the same as saying the book was correct? If so, I disagree. Lots of people of that belief have never been exposed to that book.

The quality of the teaching was no deeper than a sex ed class. The photos used were FAR more explicit than in a sex ed class. I kept MENTALLY censoring what he was saying, but upon later reflection and once the subject was broached, he sure spent significant amounts of time with women's body parts onscreen, commenting on how nice they looked. I think women are beautiful, but I don't think the point need be made with nude photos of women.... The class was 7 sessions long. If one stretched it, the Christian-related materials MIGHT cover ONE class. That left 6 sessions that were on biology and sex ed. "Dealing with the Adversary" had pages of material. "The Renewed Mind" had pages of material. "CFS" had TWO SHEETS. One was vpw's gonzo idea that the original sin was masturbation, the other sheet was that chapter in Proverbs. The rest of the class was sex ed. This class was inappropriate, IMHO, for 17-year olds, and 13 should have been out-of-the-question. Then again, since this class added nothing to the student, the entire class was inappropriate and should have been out-of-the-question.

Should I try to stop him?

With your kind indulgence, I shall use Oakspear's post as a comparison. I do this not because I want to criticize it, but rather since I thought it was well-written, and I could clearly indicate what I agreed with and what I didn't agree with. Disclaimer: All of this is me speaking for ME and no other party. This is my OPINION. Feel free to disagree all you want. First of all, Oakspear and I disagree in our basic belief systems in a fundamental way. (We agree on mutual respect.) I am a Bible believer, and I DO believe the Bible is God's Word, that is, the deliberate intent of God Almighty to communicate directly to us. That having been said, if you begin from one position- Jesus is God the Son, or begin from the other position-Jesus is The Son of God but not God, you will find verses that seem to support your position, and verses that seem to OPPOSE your position. I find it particularly noteworthy that most of the Bible verses with the most tampering- the end of Matthew, and I John 5 are what I'm thinking of here mainly- are demonstrated to have been FORGERIES- people came along later and ADDED doctrine to them-doctrine which just happens to push the Trinitarian position. (There's a few other verses, but those are the most egregious examples.) That's enough to get me suspicious of the Trinitatian position-a position where some people felt it was significant enough to alter the Bible to insert their beliefs into it. Now, when the Samaritan Pentateuch is a fair representation of the Pentateuch, but suddenly includes a few verses that elevate Mount Gerezim-the place of Samaritan worship- far above its previous position, we can accept those verses were forgeries, skip them, and skip their doctrine. We can't QUITE do that with these verses here, since some people will dogmatically oppose that-they WILL scream, call names, and label anyone trying to honestly arrive at the truth of the verses, if that truth disagrees with theirs. I've come to the conclusion that I have NOT heard the CORRECT position yet- that both positions that are popular fail to completely account for everything, and so they're both right to a point and WRONG to a point. Naturally, I can get flak from both sides about that. I consider it childish and petty that some of my fellow Christians can waste their time doing that- and labelling both ME and EACH OTHER as non-Christians, but I can't stop them, either. Mind you, outside of the ex-twi community, I've had Christians know my positions, and some have said I wasn't a Christian, some have said I was, and the positions range between a respected, beloved brother in Christ, and being yelled at in the street. That the ex-twi community should know better and STILL can't rise above that is a little sad to me, but I can't affect that, either. Since I do not believe the verses clearly make the case one way or the other, I do not believe God considers this issue to be the make-or-break, and thus spurns one side while embracing the other. I believe he considers them all Christians, no matter what labels we down here insist on using AGAINST each other. I would also add that "co-equal" is a necessary part of the doctrine, IMHO. Since it's Three-in-One and One Unity of Three, that's how it seems to be represented mathematically, anyway. No part of the Trinity any less than another. I agree with everything so far. I will clarify the last point, however- if one believes Jesus of Nazareth is not The Son of God, unique in birth, prophesied, The Messiah, The Atonement, He Who Will Return As King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who shall Judge the Earth in righteousness, who lived a physical life on Earth for some 30 years, was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected, THEN you're talking "another Jesus." I consider "another Jesus" to be "any Jesus who is not The Messiah, The Son of God, who is not unique in all of the history of man, and The Redeemer." There's people who claim that one, but they're not in THIS discussion claiming to be Christians. (Unless I missed them posting-in which case, my apologies.) JCNG is a poorly-written work. If the argument is made, it is NOT made with that book. If all the strength of that side was purely from JCNG, then it WOULD be fair to say "all non-Trinitarian Christians are silly and illogical." As it is, that does a grave disservice to those who say "it's true in spite of that book" as well as all the Christians throughout history who were devout Christians who did not believe in a Trinity. I am NOT prepared to call Sir Isaac Newton silly, illogical, or a less-than-devout Christian. I was raise with Catholic dogma, and told to believe in the Trinity. By the time I was a teenager, I had discarded what I'd been taught as insufficient answers. To this day, I believe those answers were incorrect. Since I'd been taught that Roman Catholics had all the answers, I wrongly generalized that ALL Christians were wrong and NONE had the answers I sought, and the Bible was an outdated set of books with no authority. I found twi teaching superior to what I personally had been taught in general. So, I believed the Trinity to be an incorrect doctrine. I did NOT, however, villainize the Trinitarians as I was taught in twi-I still considered them fellow Christians even if they had incorrect doctrines (including praying to saints, praying the Rosary, etc.) I do believe that, if I hadn't left twi when I DID leave, I would have found increasing problems with twi doctrine and twi dogma. Having left, I've had a number of years to examine a lot of it, and agree with some and disagree with some. I STILL don't believe this is THE make-or-break, "You're not a Christian" doctrine. I've seen good examples of Christians on both sides. (Poor examples, too.) I've seen sufficient evidence to convince me that God answers prayers for both, and miracles deliver both equally. I'm convinced the arguments we have on Earth are petty squabbles that waste the limited time we have here, and divide the family of God unnecessarily.

The thing is, without the Kool-Aid drinkers, the organization couldn't have kept the rest of us that could say "WTF? That's ridiculous!" and have us show up again. There were plenty of people who just took vpw's word for anything he said. I was chatting with a COUNTRY Coordinator, and I made a statement-which was true, but I hadn't been asked to SUPPORT it, I was just told I was wrong because they didn't see the support (which I could have shown in seconds if asked.) I asked them if they'd automatically accept it as true if vpw had said it was true but hadn't explained why. Their answer was, basically, "Of course." There were plenty of adults, Advanced class grads, corps grads, and so on, who were willing to accept almost anything because vpw said so.

I forget if it was Dot who said that vpw had summoned her with intent to do what vpw intended to do in private, and had her "Birth to the Corps" paper IN HIS HAND.

It's been reported that dirt from them was reported publicly about people if they quit or were fired.

Maybe he could use an onion motif- you know, like "the Onion" newspaper- and call himself "Raf-Scallion."

Oh, go ahead. Let's keep this moving.

Well, there's a subject I've heard vpw teach on ("Believing-Hebrews 11") and Chris G teach on ("God's Roll Call of Honour.") Both covered the same verses, but both had radically different conclusions on the martyrs mentioned at the end of Hebrews 11. ========================== KJV 32And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: 33Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. 34Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: =================== NASB 32And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, 33who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; ================ cg taught that the "deliverance" they didn't accept in 11:35 was a SECULAR one-meaning that the prophets could have accepted that "deliverance" by giving up to the people who tortured them- but instead remained faithful to God, and, as such, remained worthy of "a better resurrection." vpw made it clear how he saw the verses. vpw said the prophets COULD have been delivered-that is, GOD could have delivered them from the torture if they had asked- but they turned down the opportunity for deliverance, and instead preferred to die so they could cut out further living until the "better resurrection." He then went into how sometimes people "get tired of the fight," and just get too tired to go on. Of the two, I think cg had the right of it. But vpw's position is pretty clear here- if a prophet wasn't delivered, it was due to a failing of the prophet- either he had disobeyed God and was now outside God's protection, or failed to believe sufficiently for deliverance. It's of a piece with how he viewed Paul's imprisonment in Jerusalem-he was clear he thought Paul stepped out from under God's protection, and thus was imprisoned. Therefore, although before that, all of Asia Minor had heard God's Word in 2 years, 3 months, now, the closest Paul can get is someone saying "Almost you persuade me to be a Christian." Job's suffering, of course, was due to his FEAR-his "negative believing."

Wowzers! Congratulations! As Gallagher said, you don't have a baby-the baby has YOU! I trust you've got your time budgeted accordingly. :) Not to say I'm not happy for you, of course.

Not that it's on topic at all, but I think Paw's made it obvious that he wants posters to post fairly respectfully to each other, and would prefer to not shut ANYONE down, but have them post at their own discretion. (That's pretty much what he's always said.) That having been said, how about we get back to the topic and leave the personal stuff out?

"Sleep Paralysis" may be a LOT more common than actual demonic activity on that level. However, "Sleep Paralysis" doesn't show up abruptly, then leave abruptly and permanently with a spiritual rebuke. If Jonny's description is accurate (and I'm prepared to believe it is) this was no simple "Sleep Paralysis."

As if God couldn't have gotten things done without twi! If vpw hadn't choked and throttled down the ministries of BG Leonard (who became MUCH more quiet after his work was STOLEN by vpw), J1m D00p, St3ve H33fn3r, Fugit (vpw diverted thriving ministries that were ALREADY making the news-that's how he heard about them in the first place-and turned them from primarily promoting God into primarily promoting twi, pfal, etc) and so on..... One might be just as ready to say "If not for vpw and twi, the work they were already doing would have proceeded unimpeded, and so he did the devil's work by turning them from "best" to "good." (To use his OWN terminology.)

Which means it's Steve's turn.....

Psst. Raf? Still your turn...

Well, since it's listed in the birthday queue for the site, I feel little hesitation in officially wishing Raf a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! ("Official" from me-I have not been appointed anyone's spokeswolf.) He finally turns 29 this year.

Just to clear things up and avoid misunderstanding your position.... Do you think it's possible to forgive those despicable people for what they did, and still discuss what they did, warn others to avoid the same trap, and discuss what happened to help others understand why they had to leave or were kicked out? Or does your definition of "forgiveness" mean we would be forbidden to discuss any of that, and accept that if anyone wants to wander into twi nowadays, it's wrong for us to tell them what they're getting into? It's possible you mean either position, and there's some assumptions about what you mean taking place.

First of all, I think Paw and Dan's advice have the correct information and solution in them. Second of all, I agree with Dan-if you look at the same page under Firefox and there's no problem, it's OBVIOUSLY in your IE settings that the problem lies. Third of all, it never hurts to have good programs clean out the pc. I forget if you have the usual programs, but I always recommend, besides a firewall and antivirus (you can get good, free ones of both and I'm sure you have one of each), there's SpywareBlaster Spybot:Search and Destroy AdAware. There's also decent Registry cleaners like Clean My Registry. I'm sure you already downloaded all the updates to Windows that are security-related, when they were released or soon after that.

I know that sometimes teenagers were shown it, under the age of 18. I'm not aware of anyone pre-teen being shown it.

That's it- "the Pegasus", both the ship and the episode. My first comment was -what, when a ship ends up missing, it's always "the Pegasus!" That's because the old Battlestar Galactica's missing Battlestar was the Pegasus, and this ship was the Pegasus, and both turned up later. Yes, this episode featured Admiral Pressman and Riker talking over the mutiny on the ship when the thing looked like the experiments were going to blow up the ship (which it did-because the current tech couldn't safeguard the process, although the Enterprise-D's modern tech could), and Pressman's comments about the Riker he knew-who was a young ensign on the Pegasus, and a memorable exchange between Picard and a Romulan captain, both lying through their teeth, both knowing they were both lying. (I quoted most of the exchange.) I also think that Picard should have been reprimanded severely for his "solution"- unstead of just moving off at impulse speeds at the end of the episode, and letting the Romulans wonder what happened, and guarding NOTHING of value, he had to announce to them exactly what happened and confirm all their suspicions. (Ultimately, all they had were suspicions until that moment.) I'm sure the blatant proof of the violation of the Treaty of Algeron was NOT welcome by the Federation's diplomats.

I think it's VERY interesting that 2 people in the Bible are called "the son of perdition" (or "the son of ruin" depending on your translator), and that's Judas Iscariot, and the man of sins, spoken of as yet to come, who opposes and exalts himself above God and all that is worshipped, so that he sits in the holy of holies, and puts forth that he HIMSELF is God.

What, no Sister Mary Elephant?

"Captain Picard Day is one of the children's favorite school activities. They look forward to it all year." "How long have you had the beard?" "About four years. I think I just got tired of hearing how 'young' I looked." "What was it that Lieutenant Boylen used to call you?" " 'Ensign Babyface.' " "We are conducting a survey of gaseous anomalies." "How interesting. So are we. Perhaps we could combine our efforts and share our findings." "I doubt our objectives are... compatible." "You are probably right." "This has been a most pleasant conversation... but we must return to our research." " Then I won't keep you." "You know... I still think about what happened... about that last day." "So do I. It's not the kind of thing you just forget about." "Do you ever... wonder whether we did the right thing?" "Never. It was a tragedy, yes. But it wasn't your fault and it wasn't mine. What we were doing was for the good of the Federation. We can't blame ourselves because the others couldn't see that." "I know... but maybe we went about it the wrong way." "Well, this time we may have a chance to do it the right way." "You want to try again?" "It's not just me." "The Chief of Starfleet Security has personally assured me of her complete support." "Admiral Raner... ? How many other people know about this?" "Not many. And it's up to us to make sure it stays that way. Raner gave me written orders for you. You'll find them coded in the Enterprise computer. You've been instructed not to reveal the true nature of our mission to anyone, not even Captain Picard. Don't worry... it won't be like it was twelve years ago. This time, no one's going to stop us."" "Frankly, I've always felt it was more important for an officer to trust his captain's judgment. In a crisis, there's no time for explanations... orders have to be obeyed without question or lives may be lost." "I am aware of that, Admiral." "Of course you are. I guess this mission has brought up some... old ghosts for me. You know what it's like to lose a ship... you're always wondering if there was something else you should have done... something you missed." "Twelve years ago, I needed an officer I could count on in a crisis... someone who would support and obey my decisions without question... someone willing to trust my judgment... that someone was Wil Riker... and without his loyalty, none of us would have survived." "We have a chance here to change the balance of power in this quadrant." "Mutiny... on a Federation starship. It's shocking -- no, it's unthinkable. And yet you've never mentioned it." No, sir." " 'The Judge Advocate also believes that the surviving officers are deliberately withholding vital information from this inquiry. Further investigation is recommended.' But there was no further investigation... the file was classified and quietly buried."