WordWolf

It was worth considering, but, yes, it would be illegal.

Oakspear's fingertips needed this thread. :)

[WordWolf in brackets & boldface.]

Here's that poem: "The Bridge Builder, by Will Allen Dromgrode, 1934 An old man, going a lone highway Came at the evening, cold and gray, To a chasm, vast and deep and wide, Through which was a flowing sullen tide. The old man crossed in the twilight dim; But he turned when safe on the other side And built a bridge to span the tide. 'Old man', said a fellow pilgrim near, 'You are wasting strength with building here. Your journey will end with the ending day. You never again must pass this way. You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-- Why build you a bridge at eventide?' The builder lifted his old, gray head: 'Good friend, in the path I have come,' he said, 'There followeth after me today A youth whose feet must pass this way. This chasm that has been naught to me To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be. He, Too, must cross in the twilight dim. Good friend, I am building a bridge for him.' "

[Mike, you're the only one who wants that. Go ahead and make your OWN messageboard for that. If people REALLY want to discuss it, and you invite them, they'll show up.] [Well,you DO want to control the microphone. You can do that when you control the forum.] [No problem. Right after you stop posting commercials of your OWN, it will diminish AGAIN.]

Larkin: ---"Rightly Dividing the Word"----- Chapter 1 Rightly Dividing the Word Chapter 2 Ages and Dispensations Chapter 3 Jew and Gentile Chapter 4 Church and Kingdom Chapter 5 The Four Gospels Chapter 6 The Two Advents Chapter 7 The Spirit World Chapter 8 Satan Chapter 9 The Satanic Trinity Chapter 10 "The Mystery of Godliness" and "The Mystery of Iniquity" Chapter 11 Resurrection of Jesus Chapter 12 The Resurrections Chapter 13 The Judgements Chapter 14 The Two Adams Chapter 15 Atonement and Redemption Chapter 16 Sin and Salvation Chapter 17 Law and Grace Chapter 18 Faith and Works Chapter 19 The Two Natures Chapter 20 Standing and State Chapter 21 Regeneration and Baptism Chapter 22 Election and Free-Will Chapter 23 The Reciprocal Indwelling of Christ and the Believer Chapter 24 The Threefold Work of Christ Chapter 25 Christ Our Passover Chapter 26 Heaven and Hell Chapter 27 Judaism and Christianity Chapter 28 The Circles of the Christian Life Chapter 29 Palace Beautiful Copyright is 1920. Larkin is younger than Scofield and Bullinger, and their books came before his. However, in both cases, these books had a wide circulation among Christians. Thus, A) divinity students had access to them (like young vpw) B) their contents were in the world before 1942, which means that teaching their contents does not reveal anything not extant in the church as of 1942.

See, Mike lacked the closeness with vpw that the corps had. If he HAD, he'd have been in a better position to see him as he WAS, and not as he's built vpw up in his mind. Ever see people in love with a celebrity-from afar? Then when they get to actually meet the real person without the press releases, they're completely crushed, since the reality failed to meet the fantasy? That's what we're dealing with here. A starstruck person dealing with a fantasy. Hey, Che Gueverra still has fans-probably more now than when alive. Of course there's resentment. Worse-those who interacted with vpw regularly (HCW, among others) have already told him he's completely wrong with the basis of his doctrine, as well as how the "written pfal" is supposedly superior to the "taped pfal" and so on. They have an inside track on information he wants, AND they disagree with him, both of which are unforgiveable. Mike has met vpw a few times, and has constructed a detailed personality of him, based on those and his entire PUBLIC PERSONA. That's a completely different person than the one you've met. Mike loves the persona he's constructed. That person is nigh-perfect, and shakes the earth when he walks. He's got an overabundance of brains and brawn. You might even say he's OVERgifted. Finally, you're forgetting his framework! pfal didn't work, twi didnt work. He has declared by fiat that it wasn't vpw's fault, but everyone else's. (That wasn't just "Passing of the Patriarch-Mike's said it also.) Therefore, like PoP did, Mike blames every leader and every corps person. It's all YOUR fault. vpw is blameless- a pox on you and your ancestors! And your mother dresses you funny. And you killed vpw. And so on.

Oh, it goes a step FURTHER than that. Mike adds a delicious new level. See, if you just go by the contents of PFAL, you will NOT agree with Mike. PFAL says PFAL is about KEYS, that it does not REPLACE Genesis to Revelation. The Mikean system puts forth that Genesis to Revelation is now obsolete, so long as you have pfal-that pfal, in short, replaces Genesis to Revelation and that it is more than simply KEYS. So, vpw put his own name on work that wasn't his, and claimed it was his. Mike has come along with a new system, has put VPW's name on work that wasn't VPW's, and claims it was his. vpw claimed to make known the Bible. Mike claims to make known pfal, a new Bible. But don't blink-his precise claims are subject to change without warning, and retroactively were ALWAYS the claims he holds today-even when YESTERDAY they were different.

Since we only have vpw's word on this incident, I can't trust it any more than any other incident- and vpw's track record on inventing incidents is too long for me to trust it. For those of you who are new, here's what Mike is talking about. vpw spent the entire time of twi and pfal insisting that it was better than ANYTHING the Christian church can offer outside of twi and pfal. (Since it was a composite of the works of a few other Christians, this was-at least-an outright lie and a deception. Mike is perfectly comfortable with this, and keeps saying that God WANTED it this way-God wanted vpw to plagiarize, God WANTED vpw to leave out footnotes, etc. Virtually everything in twi was an advertisement for pfal- or something that advertised pfal (like the wow program) or otherwise centralized power to vpw (like the corps.) So, after decades of advertising pfal, vpw made a "final" tape, called "the Joy of Serving." It is an ad for pfal. It says, in short: A) The best thing you can do is serve people. B) The best thing you can serve those people is pfal. C) Therefore you must learn more pfal so you can serve people more pfal. You must master it and then serve it to them. D) There are no answers among Christians outside twi. I can find you a link, but I just saved you 20 minutes instead. Feel free to look it up yourself. :) "The Joy of Serving", if it was really a Last Will and Testament of vpw to twi, was a miserable indictment of the crippling limitations vpw suffered under. If he, at that age, honestly was blind to the skills of other Christians, he lacked acumen. If he was AWARE of the skills of other Christians, he was not blind-he was a vicious LIAR who WITHHELD the truth from people so as to keep the gravy train running on time. So, all that "rebellious teenagers" blather was because "we failed to master PFAL." Mike, see, views that tape as a damning indictment of everybody in twi except vpw. twi had problems, but vpw was NOT the cause of any of them, and he did NOT set the stage for them in how he taught the corps, treated staff, etc. Since it CAN'T be vpw's fault, it must be the fault of everyone else. Just as the fake "law" of believing is used to continually "move the goalposts" i.e. "if you REALLY believed, it would have worked, so you must not have REALLY believed..", Mike claims the fall of twi was due to the rank-and-file failing to live up to the "promise" of pfal that NEVER materialized in our lives. So, Mike blames us all collectively and individually. And if you never met vpw, then you lack sufficient experience and are too moronic to comprehend what Mike's talking about without such experience- which is the ONLY thing that allows one to agree with Mike. vpw makes commercial after commercial for pfal. And many of us, without hearing them, had set out to "master" pfal on our own-which is why some of us can recite sections of the books without having read them for DECADES. According to Mike,since the bad stuff happened, it must have been our fault, so we must have been doing the wrong thing. The Last Great Commercial of VPW is upon us! It was a commercial the likes of which have not been seen since the First Century! According to Mike, if we don't see The Last Great Commercial of VPW as anything less than the great spiritual wakeup call of the 20th century, we're spiritually inept. Since that one comes from Mike, most of us-to say the least-are less than terrified of this appraisal. Therefore, you "must" see it Mike's way, right? "You can agree with Mike, or you can be spiritually in error." vpw is still THE TEACHER as he called HIMSELF. And those who came to different conclusions are "jaded". More of a comedy of errors.

Of course it is. Take one poster (rhino, for example.) rhino spends some time in twi, trying to learn some God-stuff, sometimes learning some God-stuff. rhino spends some quality time with some Christians that feel like family. rhino later learns that there were terrible things happening, and while rhino was being blessed, others were being cursed (by vpw in the motorcoach and other places, or by those he trained in that sort of thing, aka his criminal gang.) rhino concludes at some point that God doesn't need felons to lead people to Christ, and splits. rhino has learned some good stuff, but now seeks BETTER- among Christians out there. Was twi a scam from the beginning? Well, mostly. Was there some benefit in there? Well, partly. Was it God's will for the 2 to be mixed? No. Was rhino's time all wasted in there? Probably not. BUT, rhino has moved on. Take a different poster. (Let's call him "Gabe".) Gabe spent some time in twi, trying to learn some God-stuff, sometimes learning some God-stuff. Gabe spends some quality time with some Christians that feel like family. Gave later learns that there were terrible things happening, and while Gabe was being blessed, others were being cursed. At some point, Gabe leaves twi. Later, Gabe looks back at the time he spent in twi and refuses to accept that it wasn't all "profitable". "I spent all that time in twi TRYING to serve God- so it MUST have served God! Somehow, God must have WANTED me to focus on PFAL- so I shall! Oho! THAT's the reason! PFAL is the new Bible, better than the current Bible! My life has meaning! I must spread this good news to others!" See-that would not be about what GOD wanted, but what GABE wanted.

Eventually, one of us jumps in with a new song. Usually, we give the other person a few days first. In this case, the thread moved, so that adds to the confusion.

5 pages. And yes, it's effectively interchangeable, no?

It's SUPPOSED to be pawnbroker's turn....

....which makes it Linda's turn......

Why do I do it now, or what would give me the most satisfaction? Why I do it now..... At this moment, there is someone who was kicked out of twi who was told that all other Christians were scum, that life outside of twi equals death, that anything bad in twi is only WORSE outside of twi. He's feeling like life is over since he failed to grovel convincingly, or just got sick and tired of being sick and tired. At this moment, there is someone who is suffering their way through twi. She's desperately hoping that SOMETHING will change, but nothing ever does. She was taught that other Christians were scume, that life outside of twi equals death, that it's always worse outside of twi. At this moment, there's someone who's just heard of twi for the first time. I post for all of them. :) What would please me most.... Seeing an announcement that everyone left twi, 100% of the rank-and-file, leaving them with an empty auditorium and some buildings, and the IRS would like a word with them about their status as a non-profit.

Not to mention this followed lcm making a DEMAND for an oath of loyalty, and saying that you refused to choose among men instead was not an option. This was a BLATANT disregard for Acts and how the average Christian was to be treated. (We had no idea this was how vpw and lcm had always run the corps, and this was now just getting around to the rest of us.)

I really don't want to get into a debate about this one. However, to hear anti-dispensationists tell it, the whole thing was cooked up in one afternoon by Darby and was based entirely on a prophecy by a little girl. The concept, however, IS many centuries older than that. No, I don't have the documentation in front of me. Yes, I know you don't have to believe me just because I said so. However, you are free to do your own checking. I'd recommend skipping anything that references Dave McPherson. He's demonstrated a personal vendetta to the entire concept, and has shown he's not above manufacturing testimony and outright manufacturing "evidence" to support his point. He blames it for many problems in his life and his father's life. Disagree with Darby and Scofield all you want, but please don't mix facts with speculation, and especially don't make up lies in the process (don't be a Dave McPherson.) Darby and Scofield saw reasons to believe what they believed, and others did as well.

Hey guys, One of the things I wish Mike would do is actually READ WHAT'S WRITTEN, instead of see something and hallucinate an entire post around it. Until this moment, I haven't posted on this thread YET! What battle has Mike been observing with me in it? I'm missing all the details, since I'm not even there!

[Doesn't take many posts of Mike's to determine that. Actually, as of the other day, it takes fewer posts, since he's being a lot more candid in his posting, less coy. Now we can have a nice civil discussion on content-in theory, anyway.] [FALSE DILEMMA, aka BIFURCATION. Once again, that is the separating of a discussion into TWO positions when there are MORE THAN TWO positions to hold. For example, "Either PFAL is completely useless or PFAL sprang forth from God's temple!" would be a FALSE DILEMMA. PFAL could be the work of a man, and have some useful things, and some error. Therefore, SOME of it may be useful, which would be more useful once it's separated from the error. In fact, such is the case. Your statement once again IGNORES that position. If ONE SENTENCE in PFAL is useful, that hardly elevates the entire thing to Divine status, let alone "master the whole thing" status. Furthermore, "mastering the Orange Book and the White Book", for example, would actually give you a MUCH different result than "mastering" the Mikean system of "pfal", as he claims it is. And THAT IS on-topic for this thread.] [FALSE DILEMMA NUMBER TWO! "People who cling to PFAL either do so because of Wierwille OR because 'PFAL teaches God's Word many times over.' " With no other possibilities. Oh, there's so MANY reasons some folks still cling to PFAL. MOST of them ARE because of Wierwille in one way or another. twi innies were told all other Christians live in ERROR, and that they can cling to twi and pfal, or wallow in ERROR. (Yes, THAT was a False Dilemma also.) twi innies were told that they had a special doctrine FROM God because their teacher-who called himself THE Teacher- supposedly had a special connection to God-and that they were being taught like First Century Christians, and GREATER than anything Christians had learned for NINETEEN CENTURIES. So, even if they leave twi the organization, many find they have not left the specific indoctrination. They are afraid to be exposed to other Christians and touch ERROR. They are afraid to discover twi taught some error, also. (Well, humans don't teach PERFECT doctrine-which is contrary to twi but matches common sense.)] [Or, you know, he or she can look over some quality materials fromOTHER Christians, and see that there's BETTER material available, and easily findable.] ================== Actually, since those ARE your exact words, and they represent what you said AND meant, and they represent the position you have not changed from, I represented you accurately. You wish I wouldn't ACCURATELY QUOTE you so. Hey, I could have gone into what you've said about vpw himself, but I didn't.

Presuming your initial premise-that PFAL exalts Christ-is true (which I would argue it doesn't on a different occasion), someone does not have to push something SENSIBLE to push something. The words of Christ are in the Bible. The words of pfal are in pfal. Mike advocates reading pfal to the exclusion of the Bible-if you have access to both. Mike has said "When you see Christ in his glory he will be holding a PFAL book in his hand and teaching you from it." 2/2/04, 12:17am Eastern. "Jesus Christ appointed Dr his spokesman. Jesus Christ is VERY interested in PFAL. He told me so." 2/3/04 5:22am, Eastern. Those were single-sentence posts, BTW. Adding things that Jesus Christ PROBABLY had nothing to do with to the words of Christ, BTW, waters down/adulterates the word of Christ. === Please also note that Mikean pfal is NOT the same as PFAL. Those of us who studied PFAL studied something completely different than what Mike's proposing. Mikean pfal, for example, is a replacement for the Bible. PFAL says-right in the opening of the Orange Book-that it is on KEYS, and is NOT a replacement for the Bible. (It says "Genesis to Revelation", which is a figure of speech saying "the Bible"-synecdoche, if you want to know the figure.) One CAN read PFAL and learn some useful Bible stuff. The Mikean pfal, however, leads AWAY from the Bible, and the Mikean approach is to throw away all Bibles, all Christian writings by any other writer, and anything else containing print, and reading nothing but vpw books and magazine articles, and listening to nothing BUT vpw tapes. (With occasional supplements from approved sources.)

Good topic. One of the problems in tracking the SPECIFIC sources for plagiarism is finding the source when there's more than one possible source. Scofield, Bullinger and Clarence Larkin ALL wrote on a number of topics that each other wrote on. They were roughly contemporary to each other, and I speculate these were COMMON TOPICS at the time, where each responded to "supply and demand" by addressing the same subject from their own perspectives. To a point, all of them agree. The details and "flavour", however, is their own. Now, if they drew on common source material or each other can be found by checking the backs of THEIR books, since they were aware of copyright laws, and honoured them. Since we KNOW he plagiarized Bullinger, when approaching subjects taught by people we aren't SURE he plagiarized-if someone he DID ALSO covered the same topics- my suspicions are that he just used ONE source to plagiarize other than two. However, that is my suspicion, and simply an approach, an assumption. Reality may easily be that he plagiarized Bullinger, Larkin AND Scofield, (as well as Oral Roberts, EW Kenyon and JE Stiles.) ============= On the subject of "standing and state", for example, Scofield began as follows: "A distinction of vast importance to the right understanding of the Scriptures, especially of the Epistles, is that which concerns the standing or position of the believer, and his state, or walk. The first is the result of the work of Christ and is perfect and entire from the very moment that Christ is received by faith. Nothing in the afterlife of the believer adds in the smallest degree to his title of favor with God, nor to his perfect security. Through faith alone this standing before God is conferred, and before Him the weakest person, if he be but a true believer on the Lord Jesus Christ, has precisely the same title as the most illustrious saint." "What his actual state may have been is quite another matter-certainly it was far, far below his exalted standing in the sight of God. It was not all at once that he became as royal, priestly, and heavenly in walk as he was at once in standing. The following passages will indicate the way one's standing and one's state are constantly discriminated in the Scriptures." Hm. I can't find a corresponding explanation offhand from Bullinger, nor a source of same. The Companion Bible has NO appendix addressing it, which by itself tells me something. So, perhaps he did NOT get that one from Bullinger. Clarence Larkin, however, DID cover this subject in his book, "Rightly Dividing the Word." Scofield was well-known then-and now is MUCH better known than Larkin. However, in this PARTICULAR case, I'm at least partly suspicious Larkin's work here was the stolen one.