WordWolf

I'll answer you right after I finish beating my wife....

BTW, Refiner, People who visit the GSC are either investigating twi, or looking to recover from exposure to twi without a hazmat suit. There is a third group of people: drive-by posters. Those are people who show up, and, in their first post, advertise their website, messageboard, or doctrine. Thus, the post is a commercial. Generally speaking, they tend to get it from every direction, and so they leave. (Which is what we wanted in the first place. We don't like ads here.)

I'm bothered that some non-Christians have to, for lack of a better word, characterize all Christians as uneducated knuckle-dragging Luddites who have no understanding of how the world works and are incapable of linear thought. I'm bothered that some Christians feel the need to oversimplify their positions and not have intelligent discourse with more polite seekers and dissenters. No, I'm not thinking of anyone at the GSC. I've seen worse out there, actually. Some people are quite eager to level blanket insults at the opposing POV. (Well, I'm not thinking PRIMARILY of the GSC, anyway.)

[A worthy goal. I just wish you'd have asked a few days earlier...]

The idea of getting rid of things impeding your relationship with God is not a bad idea, in and of itself. Naming it after someone is a different story. Especially when you're criticizing all other groups who've done the same. Amazing how people can go from having the right motives (?) to thinking they're entitled to 10% of your income....

This here site is your "one-stop shop" on such information. The more you look around, the more info you can find to make an informed decision. http://www.greasespotcafe.com/main/editorial.htm http://www.greasespotcafe.com/waydale/main/way-generated.htm http://www.greasespotcafe.com/waydale/main/misc.htm http://www.greasespotcafe.com/waydale/main/editorial.html If you're more concerned about the lawsuits and all the times twi was sued by people, there's a lawsuit archive off the main page, as well. There's a forum, "Greasespot 101", for getting up to speed on twi and what it's about, also. Look down this board for it. There are also various archives, depending on the subject you're interested in. Want to find out how they ruin lives? How leaders slandered ex-members? How leaders set the stage and set out to rape and molest members? How leaders spent twi's money on luxuries while telling the members they should send in all money about their strict needs? How staff was paid less than minimum wage and live in little cells, working over 70 hours a week, every week? These answers, and so many more, are all in the archives. As to short answers, I shall quote Dr Fraser Crane, who said: "RUN LIKE THE WIND AND DON'T LOOK BACK!!!!!!!"

How about this, then....

I forget. Statistics was never my forte. Will someone who IS good at statistics explain, and rephrase my sentence into an accurate one?

Honestly, I strongly recommend getting involved with other Christians for that. The GSC is not particularly adapted for that, since it is intended to be a site open to Christian and non-Christian. Face to face is best for that. If you're not up to that for any of a hundred reasons, you can find thousands upon thousands of forums and websites for that. Send me a private message if you have difficulty finding one you like. Actually, a smarter idea would be a private topic with you and every Christian here you want to hear from, asking for such sites. However, I recommend your OWN search first. Only you know what suits YOU.

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that the guy whose only "research book" was called "Rise and Expansion of the Christian Church" oversaw an organization thru a decade, and it experienced a "negative growth rate" of greater than -2000% ? And this is the BEST they can offer?

Man, that Jesus must really have been walking in error in the garden of Gethsemane.... Father, if there's any other way to do this...let's take it. Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done.

Switching from CoC to twi-or vice versa- is a lot like having the stains removed from one pair of pants and placed on another pair of pants. :D-->

In the videotaped class, vpw said that his response upon hearing the guy say Paul was a sex pervert was to stand up, say "SHUT UP!" and leave the room. Since, on other occasions, he's said he was slow to leave the room on people saying the Bible was full of myths (said Don had left several minutes earlier), and he did NOT yell at that, one might wonder why this PARTICULAR statement produced what one might call a "knee-jerk" response. I would ask that question, anyway....

Vickles, all my advice is already on the "Registry Keys" thread. :)-->

YES. That goes back to Zixar's point about "never install ANY program until you've checked it out." "Anything that's ad-supported has a high risk of having embedded spyware." I've heard of programs that "detected spyware", then you download the free program to remove it, which adds new spyware in the process. Check reputations with TRUSTWORTHY sources. AdAware and Spybot:Search and Destroy are VERY reliable, and free for the downloading. (Spybot is technically shareware and does deserve some money donated in exchange for the valuable service.) I like to run them both daily, and again after ANY download of ANY kind. Ditto an antivirus program. In short, most advertised anti-spyware programs ADD spyware.

I agree with everything except Zixar's last sentence. Certain other programs will increase the security of your computer, and many of them are free for the downloading. Spybot Search and Destroy has an immunizing function as well as its spyware scanner. It will protect you before certain programs hit the machine. Antivirus programs have a "guard" or "shield" that will catch some viruses as they attempt to download to you. Other programs eliminate specific security flaws in programs. Plus, various programs (including the aforementioned) can be used to do an active scan and remove malicious programs, data-miners, keyloggers, trojans, etc that somehow made it past your main protection. I'd say an updated firewall, an O/S other than Windows, a browser other than IE, an antivirus and the other programs, and the external router are probably the MOST secure you can get. However, you can have an amazing level of security purely thru free programs of each type.

Here's how that worked, Refiner.... You took pfal EARLY in your twi "career". You learned Bible study and research tools after that. By that time, you already sat thru it 2-5 times, and are used to just memorizing and spitting back its contents without critical analysis. Besides, vpw supposedly knew better than you, so any questioning of him usually was suppressed by yourself before you took it any further. As you've seen, there WERE some exceptions here and there..... Most of us figured it out after we left, tho.

I agree with a la prochaine as to how meetings went. Me, I was approached in a non-standard fashion, and you won't get much insight from my details. Simply put, I needed information they had. I was NOT love-bombed. I already knew about love-bombing and sat right next to the door. If they had acted like brainwashers, I was going to run. pfal WAS pushed, but not every 15 seconds. Not everybody fit the formula. The people in my area weren't so formulaic. Then again, we're talking NYC, where conformity is a joke.

So, Suz, you have no problem with the film putting forth that the bin Laden family was never questioned, and that an exception was made for them to leave the country, when all other planes were grounded.... even though these were shown as patently untrue years ago and can easily be reviewed by anyone checking the Snopes website? I'm not a fan of either political side, but I resent attempts to lie or deceive, especially under the guise of "reporting the facts".

A comparison between Bullinger's 7 dispensations and vpw's 7 administrations was done on the "Mastering pfal" thread a few weeks ago. (Partly by me. ;)--> ) Their listings agree with the following exceptions. Bullinger includes the Gospels as under the Law, and has dispensation 6 as the Millenial Reign of Revelation 20, an event yet to come. vpw lumps the Millenial Reign in with the rest of the end-times as one administration (which, apparently, includes something over 1000 years in it.) vpw adds an administration for the Gospels-the "Christ" administration. Having compared the 2, I'd say Bullinger's set makes more sense. (This should hardly qualify as news.)

Actually, just as there's differences in spirit between God Himself, angels, and the spirit for Born Again Ones, there would be differences in soul between man and animal (possibly between types of animal, even.) Since there's differences in Body, but animals all have a body, this isn't so far-fetched.

Got it backwards. vpw said the one Greek word should be 2 words in English, representing 2 different things-"faith" (a noun), and "believing" (a verb). According to vpw, a natural man, thru believing God, gets born again and receives faith.

Posted by Refiner. [WordWolf replies in boldface. ] [Mike would say the Orange Book is 100% correct, and it's the Bible that's wrong. He justifies that by claiming the Bible was virtually rewritten over the centuries so as to lose all accuracy. ]

Depends. On certain subjects, I DID look them up myself (like the "four crucified with Christ", and so on.) Others, I figured I'd get around to eventually, like the contradiction between athletic vs military imagery lcm pushed. I was working on that one when lcm drew his line in the sand and I left. I think, eventually, I would have examined a LOT of it, but some of that would have been years or decades later.

Whoever taught that was ignorant of the Bible. And where in the Bible does it say that? In Acts 8:26 an angel of the Lord speaks to Phillip and give him directions. Philip was already saved. In Acts 12 an angel busts Peter out of jail. Peter was already saved. Trefor is right. So much was taught concering devil spirits that any teachings about angels were easy to miss. TWI could give intricate details about devils spirits - names and kinds and exactly how they operate, but very little was ever mentioned concerning angels where they now fit in. The entire subject of angels and their relations with us-or lack thereof- in twi, was based on a gross oversimplification and misunderstanding of Hebrews 1:14. Contrasting Jesus with the angels, it says "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" twi took off from there, and began speculating lengthy teachings on the subject, never checking them against Scripture. They started by saying that this meant angels were supposed to minister to us until we get born again, after that, we're on our own. I myself heard the great forehead explain that this is why sometimes it would be good NOT to speak The Word to someone, why sometimes it would be good for them NOT to be born again-because that would make the angels scram. I'm not even going to dignify that "private interpretation" with a response. It should have been obvious to me from the get-go why this was so wrong. (I knew it was nonsense from the beginning-twi never seemed to have any real understanding of "Advanced" level materials, but I didn't have a lengthy explanation.) An heir is an heir APPARENT until the heir INHERITS. The heir APPARENT of Britain is Prince Charles. If, however, a tragic polo accident kills him today, he will not inherit-the next in line will inherit. It should be obvious from even a cursory look at the book of Acts that twi's official stance fails miserably to account for the actions of angels since the day of Pentecost, and the rules since then are supposedly fully in effect now. The only generalization one MIGHT get from that verse is that angels are ministering spirits. That covers a lot of ground.