Oakspear

That was great! I had almost forgotten the bad dance moves, the bad karate moves, the bad bible...

I doubt that those who use the term "Wierwille Worshippers" believe that those who they paint with the term are literally worshipping Wierwille, i.e. setting up an altar, or praying to, or viewing him as God. It's hyperbole, or exaggeration to make a point. That doesn't mean that it's not a personal attack...I'm just sayin'...

us witches take exception to that term

I don't know...do you? I agree that it's not common now...but then?

Sometimes the threshhold of what some consider personal attacks is ridiculously low.

IIRC it was to a family camp, not the Corps. There was a Way magazine article that they read extensively from.

Sorry...what are you referring to?

Forgive me ( ) if I don't come at this from a biblical perspective, but I think that forgiveness is at once situational and shades of grey, a continuum. There is also the aspect of forgiveness where you put the anger at the transgression out of your heart and the aspect where you absolve the one being forgiven of consequenses. Definitely not black and white in my view.

Martindale's take sounds wackier, but I think Wierwille had him beat on shear illogic and insistance on taking his word for it.

That "original sin = masturbation" thing was the most ridiculous, convoluted piece of illogic that I ever heard....something about trees figuratively representing people in the bible and the "fruit of the tree" supposedly representing the genitalia... :blink:

I think if you're going to determine whether Jesus had brothers & sisters or whether or not Mary remained a virgin you have to go with the only source that addresses these issues: the bible. What we think is common sense is not necessarily what the writers of the bible thought Whether or not it "makes sense" that Joseph would marry a woman and not have sex with her would be somewhat irrelevant if that's what the bible said. There are instances, rare as they are, of unconsumated marriages. I think it's pretty clear that "brothers" means "brothers". the only reason to interpret it as "cousins" or half-brothers or what have you is to make someone's doctrine "fit like a hand in a glove"

I guess if you really believed you were channelling a message from God, then you had to ahve been doing God's will, doing da werd, right? Now if you were making it up...

Abigail: "Two firsts"? I don't get it. Are you saying that the "be" in b e r e s h i t h means "2"? When I look up Genesis 1:1 in blueletterbible.com it lists " r e s h i t h" as the first word (with a slightly different spelling), although when you actually look at the Hebrew letter it is b'r'sh't (no written consonants) WearWord: Where did you come up with this? It doesn't seem to be based on anything. The verses that you reference don't seem to fit with what you're talking about, even if you squeeze them. Interesting how the first word of the bible in the oldest language that we have a text in doesn't have "God" as the first word. I wonder what language Wierwille thought "the original" was in?

Expressing an opinion without knowing the facts. I don't agree with that.

T-Bone: How are the three types of death documented? Are there specific references, or is the concept inferred?

You've got my address...I'll be expecting those cookies Last year we didn't do much for Yule or Thanksgiving, I was in & out of the hospital around Thanksgiving and still recuperating around Yule. And since both holidays are extremely busy where I work (grocery store) we do our holiday celebratin' on alternate days. We had our Thanksgiving feast yesterday. I commandeered the kitchen and did the turkey, stuffing and vegetables, Reikilady did the pies, and fruit salad. We invted friends who are on their own and had no one to share Thanksgiving with. For Christmas we generally go out to eat at a nice restaurant on about the 18th or 19th and open our gifts then; mainly because my stepdaughter goes to her dad's on Christmas Eve, and I work late Christmas Eve. Our tradition on Christmas morning is to make a big breakfast, go out to a movie, and eat at the buffet. I've already got my Yule decorations up, I had a few hours with the huse to myself the other day and got it all done. Shopping is about 1/2 done.

I meant Hezikiah

Although I personally don't view death as necessarily evil, I don't subscribe to the biblical view, but I don't understand how a bible believer could say that death is not evil, or that they welcomed death without ignoring the verse that calls death an enemy.

Since the biblical god is holding people responsible for their actions, it follows that he isn't causing those actions when he manifests his foreknowledge, merely reporting them. Another question might be whether the future is mutable, that is, whether what the biblical god, or any other hypothetical viewer of the future, sees a future written in stone, or one that can change based on people's actions. I think an argument can be made that it is mutable, e.g. when Isaiah was told that he would die, but was given a reprieve after he changed his attitude.

Part of the problem with the Corps application process was that the program itself was thrown together on the fly by Wierwille. He had no experience in developing training programs and didn't bring anyone on board who did.

Well said Rascal

"Face melting" could even happen because leadership was led to believe that they had the authority to interfere and the insight to have the right answers. When the "good" ones did it, it was merely annoying, when the bad ones did, it could be ugly.

Yet more testimonies regarding how Martindale got the way he was.

Whay are religious institutions tax-free in the first place?

Someone once threatened to delete my cookies...