Mark Clarke

It was on the Album All Aboard where he read stories - sort of a prelude to love Letters - I think. Didn't Sonship also do one that had the line "Get onboard the sonship, ship ahoy, ship ahoy"? Listened to everything at once back in 2000.... don't remember for sure.

I remember a brief snippet of "Get on board the Sonship, ship ahoy..." on the Rock of Ages '76 album, and I remember somebody saying it was by Sonship. Don't know where the whole song was. I also had the All Aboard album, but don't remember the Mountain Railway song being on that. If I remember correctly the music was mostly (if not entirely) by Joyful Noise. I still have those old records packed away somewhere. I'll have to dig them out again one of these days.

You're right. I think the song..."with an engineer so brave...." is an old gospel tune. I think changing it to "engineer gone wild" was a TWI thing and was never on the radio; I could be wrong. I'm thinking it was sung by that 5th Corps group called "Sonship".

That would explain why I couldn't find it with Google. I'd never heard of the original until I recently started looking for the "engineer gone wild" version. I could have sworn I heard the "wild" version on the radio, but apparently not. As they say, the memory is the first thing to go... I forget what the second thing is!

So VPW's TWI was sort of like a mountain railroad with an Engineer gone wild..................

Completely beside the point.... where is that quote from? I know that the original song was "Life is like a mountain railroad with an engineer that's brave." But I distinctly remember some country group on the radio singing "with an engineer gone wild" in a version on the radio back in the early 80's. But when I tried Googling it, I only found this thread. Anybody know who did it?

Actually, wasn't Emporia a minimum-security prison for a while (not including its Way tenure)?

George

There was a proposal to make it into one, but the townspeople protested and it wasn't done.

I personally have no desire ever to go back. Too bad Adolphs closed, I would go back there.

Adolph's closed? Now I REALLY wouldn't go back to New Knoxville!

The big difference between VPW and MLK is that MLK did things to help people, whereas most of what VPW did was to promote himself and build up his following. (IMHO)

When I was a "Red Tagger" (1980-81) they were still trying to figure out the College Division's role in the ministry. There was a lot of elitism on BOTH sides, with each being like competing elements. In addition to some Corps viewing the CD as second class citizens, there were also some CD's who viewed it as a unique program, to the extent that when former CD's went into the Corps they were thought of as a disappointment, if not outright traitors.

But by the end of my year and throughout the following few years, the promotion for the CD was presented as being training for the Secular Arm of the ministry, being complementary to the Spiritual Arm, which was the Corps leadership. The Spiritual and Secular elements were supposed to be two sides which worked together, each in a different capacity. Sounded good anyway.

But then a few years later they canned all of that, and renamed the College Division as the College Program. It would henceforth be a place to study the Bible in depth - nothing more, nothing less. It was essentially an expansion of the old Summer School program they used to have at HQ in the late 60s and early 70s. As much as I liked the idea of the Spiritual and Secular arms of the ministry, the fact was that very little of what I learned really prepared me for that. It really was just a place to learn the Bible. But I had been trying to build my identity on the idea of being a "Spirit filled leader in the secular realm" (even wrote a song about it!) and now all that was declared to be bunk. This was the beginning of my dissatisfaction with the Ministry.

Still, I made some good friends (sadly almost none of them are still in touch since the big split) and I did learn some good things (although much of it turned out to be wrong), but I have mostly fond memories of that time in my life.

i didn't see them, mark

poor mick died. he was 9th.

This is definitely Padraig.

And the one in the front center is either P@trick or M!ck H3ron.

I thought I saw P@dr@igh Butt3rly and P@ddy H3r0n in there, but weren't they 11th Corps?

Yeah, I thought the same thing as George. If the name of the man who is the subject of the thread is spelled SHUCK, why is the thread title spelled "John Schuck" like the actor?

And not just cults. Mainstream religions do it too at times.

you would not even tell them what Salvia's mother said!

OK, then I guess I'll have to be the one to tell you what she said.

HERE

Too funny! I was thinking the same thing when I read that!

Remember his side-kick on the TV show? It was Rowlf the Dog, the very first Muppet. The two of them were a perfect fit. Jimmy Dean's legacy will live on.

I do remember Rowlf being on the Jimmy Dean show! (Although he wasn't the first Muppet - that would be Kermit who first appeared on Jim Henson's local show back in 1955.) I remember first seeing it when I got to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Such fond memories!

After reading this and the other thread started by teachmevp, I have to say I think Martindale may have been right about one thing: this guy needs help!

Begs the question what kind of idiots broadcast a meeting over the phone lines when you could send it over the web, via satellite - hell, carrier pigeons would be an improvement.

The same kind of idiots that got "revelation" to use Beta video tapes rather than VHS.

Sign in a camping equipment store:

"Now is the discount of our winter tents"

What's the difference between a puppy and a seagull?

A seagull flits on the shore....

I don't believe mankind has fallen.

That would be God setting up man to fall.

Sounds like dictatorship to me.

Fallen asleep, I'd say.

How is it God setting up man to fall? He defined what His rules were, and gave man the choice to obey or not. If you have children, and you tell them to do something, are you setting them up to fall if they disobey?

I'm with Cman.. Who says man has fallen. Fallen where?

Fallen from the exalted position God originally meant for man, having dominion over His creation.

A smart God would just forgive them! Geez....

God cannot leave sin unpunished or He would not be a just and righteous judge. The price for sin is death... somebody had to pay it. In His mercy God provided His Son as a sacrifice to pay for our sins. God is not only smart, but also both righteous and merciful.

Spectrum49,

I agree with you that the Trinity doesn't make sense. However, as Geisha779 pointed out, your arguments don't work because they start with a wrong definition of the Trinity. Any arguments that involve differences between the Father and the Son don't disprove the Trinity, because as Trinitarians will tell you, there are differences between the Father and the Son. The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father. However, according to the definition, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, yet there is but one God, who exists in three persons.

The Scriptural argument I would offer to that definition is that Jesus declared that "the Father" is the "only true God":

John 17:

1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

3 This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Paul likewise declared that there was one God, the Father; and one lord, Jesus Christ, the man who is the mediator between God and man.

I Corinthians 8:

6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

Ephesians 4:

6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

I Timothy 2:

5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

In addition there are specific differences between God and His Son:

• God cannot die (I Timothy 6:16), but Jesus died.
  
• God cannot be tempted (James 1:13), but Jesus was tempted in all things, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).
  
• God is omniscient, i.e. He knows all things (I John 3:20), but Jesus said there were things that he did not know, including when he would return (Mark 13:32).
  
• God is omnipotent, i.e. all powerful, but Jesus said he could do nothing of himself without the Father (John 5:30).
  
• Jesus said that his doctrine was not his own, but His that sent him, and then differentiated between God and himself, emphasizing that he sought God's glory and not his own (John 7:16-18).
  
• Jesus made a distinction between himself and God, saying there is none good but one, that is, God (Mark 10:17-18).
  
• Jesus prayed to God (Luke 6:12). If he were God, he would have been talking to himself.
  
• Jesus was the Lamb of God (John 1:29,36), the perfect sacrifice to God. How could he sacrifice himself to himself? Jesus was the perfect sacrifice to God on behalf of mankind.
  
• Jesus is now seated at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19; Romans 8:34; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 10:12; I Peter 3:22). If he were God, how could he sit on his own right hand?
  

The differences indicated in these verses aren't just differences between the Father and the Son. They are specifically stated as differences between God (as a whole) and Jesus. In addition, there are many clear, unambiguous references to Jesus as the Son of God, compared with only a handful of verses that call him God in a representational sense. And as I said before, it is largely because the early church lost the Hebrew understanding of this concept that the doctrine of the Trinity was developed.

Well, whatever the Word is, it was with God and was God from the beginning...but we don't know from reading verse 1 who or what "The Word" is...until verse 14...where we are told it was made flesh...and it's pretty clear who that flesh was.

I'm making no preconceived assumptions about who or what The Word is in John 1. I don't believe that Jesus is God; I'm not even sure he wasn't a fictional character!

We don't know from reading verse 1, but we can know from how the word is used throughout the Old Testament. "The Word" is always the communication of God's heart and mind, and never a separate person.

as if John is speaking of a one time event.....

or is it something continuing from the beginning

Both. God's Word is something continuing from the beginning, and it became flesh in a one-time event.

BTW, here is a good list of books about the subject:

http://kingdomready.org/blog/2010/01/13/biblical-unitarian-books/

I disagree that one has to start with that assumption:

verse 14:"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."

I don't have to assume too much, just read what's there.

In verse 14 it is clearly talking about Jesus. "The Word" - whatever that is - was made flesh and we beheld his glory... as of the only begotten of the Father. But how you interpret verse 1 (which is what you originally referred to) will determine how you interpret the rest of the passage. Is "the Word" a pre-existing Person? Then verse 14 says that Person became flesh, and thus you have the Mystery of the Incarnation, etc. Is "the Word" God's mind and His plan? Then verse 14 says that mind, that plan, became flesh, and the only-begotten Son of God was the result. It all hinges on what "the Word" means to you.

It seems to me that the doctrine of the Trinity was as much an attempt by early Christians to make the bible "fit together like a hand in a glove" as Wierwille's later attempts were. They were faced with the same "apparent contradictions" and had to reconcile somehow sections like John 1:1, which taken by itself sure seems to say that Jesus is God, and others that plainly indicate that Jesus is different and distinct from God. A lot of theological man-hours went into coming up with a theology that would harmonize seemingly contradictory passages. If you're going to maintain that the bible is inerrant, than you have to do something to tie it together. Giving it a label: "The Trinity" makes it look like these guys just pulled a concept out of the paganism of the day when in my opinion they were working overtime to try to make sense out of conflicting verses and viewpoints.

As T-Bone said, that's the agenda in any systematic theology. But in those early centuries of Christianity, they ended up with apparent contradictions because they lost sight of the understanding that did make things fit. In the original Hebrew mindset, a person could be called God in a representational sense and not mean he was THE God, the Creator. (Besides, only a small handful of verses call him God in any sense.) The idea of the Messiah being a man, the Son of God who would rule the world on God's behalf, was a simple concept for the Jews that was prophesied throughout their history.

When Greek thought started overshadowing Hebrew (as more and more Gentiles became Christians) this understanding was overshadowed by gnostic and philosophical ideas and that's where the apparent contradictions come from, which led to the dilemma: Is Jesus a god or a created being or a demigod or what? And if he's God and the Father is God, we'd have two Gods, which we can't have. Since Hebrew thought was looked down on by then, they had to come up with a solution from Greek philosophy, and the rest is history.

BTW, John 1:1 only seems to say Jesus is God if one begins with the assumption that "The Word" is a person rather than the mind and plan of God. And that idea was influenced by Greek philosophy too.

If I had only VPW's writings to go by, I probably would have changed my views about the Trinity as I changed my views about many TWI doctrines. But there have been and still are many qualified writers who present the case much better than VPW did, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that the Trinity was developed long after Christ and the NT.

TrustAndObey has it right, IMO. The real issue in John 1:1 is not the meaning of "with" but the meaning of "word." If you begin with the assumption that logos is a person, then the whole chapter could seem to be saying something other than what it says. But the logos or "word" has to do with the heart and will and mind of God. Therefore God's Word was God in the same way my word is me. It was understood this way for hundreds of years, even after the doctrine of the Trinity was developed. In all English Bibles before the KJV in 1611, verse 3 of John 1 still read, "All things were made by it; and without it was not any thing made that was made."

Saying the word was "with" God is a Hebrew expression. The following is from John 1:1 Caveat Lector (Reader Beware) by Anthony Buzzard:

It makes perfect sense to me. Then the Word of God became flesh when His plan became reality - at the birth of His Son. It's all about God's plan of salvation coming into fruition, not God becoming a man. John even specifically states that the reason he wrote his Gospel is so that we might believe "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31).

Well, logically speaking, the reverse should also be true. Ie., keep lowering the minimum wage (or abolish it altogether as some staunch conservatives _still_ want), and there would be an increase of (minimum wage) jobs, right? ... Why, keep up with that 'principle', and we'd revert back to the days o' slavery. I mean, they didn't get paid _at all_, and there were jobs o' plenty. ... In the South. ... Pickin' cotton!

_Or_, could be that there is something called the "Works great on paper, but doesn't work so well in _real life_" principle, and perhaps there is more to be considered here than what one economics professor teaches.

Or maybe it's more like "Balance between two extremes." On one extreme you have no minimum wage and slave-like working conditions. On the other extreme you have too high a minimum wage that forces smaller companies to hire fewer minimum-wage employees. Somewhere in between there's a balance.

BTW, this isn't just the opinion of one economics professor. There are many economists who hold this view. There are also many who hold the opposite view. And it's not a matter of one side's right and the other side's stupid. There are many factors to consider when it comes to economics.

Also: Cancer: Is it secretly good for you?

Actually, there is an economic principle involved with the minimum wage debate. My economics teacher (several years ago) pointed out that if you raise the minimum wage, many of the employers who hire such workers won't be able to afford to pay as many employees, which ultimately results in loss of minimum wage jobs.

Why...whatever are you talking about? Have you forgotten H@yes Geh@gen? Now there's an insider for VPW if there ever was one. What with one 2-year term in the Maine State Senate, surely he was privy to our nation's most valuable secrets. I remember on more than one occasion VP coming to a meeting and starting it with, "I just got off the phone with Senator Geh@gen...." then he would launch into some sort of conspiratal tirade. Had us all storing up on extra toilet paper in case we had to escape into the wilderness to avoid capture from the commies.

I think we may have had some janitors working on Capitol Hill too...again, deep deep inside information on Uncle Sam's activities.

Don't forget - VP was "personally" invited to the Reagan inauguration! He must have had connections! :lol: