Oakspear

I thought the accepted spelling was "youse" Is NJ Refuge a place? Kind of like a retreat? Or one of those wildlife parks?

I think that I took some of those pictures!

Click on the "reply" button at the bottom of the post that you want to quote. You can end a quote (like I did by quoting just the beginning of your post) by placing /quote in brackets at the end. Start a new quote by placing

I'll take damnable heresies for 400!

No, there's quite a bit more to it. Aide from the fact that not everybody here even accepts the bible as divinely inspired, let alone inerrant, even among the bible fans there's a difference of opinion as to what it means. Answers like yours are usually a feeble attempt to end discussion, not encourage it. Is that the New World Translation that I see? How're things at the JWO board? Of course you do So you can't learn anything from what is discussed here? Well, that's what some of us are doing anyway So nice to be where you are spiritually. Until you say that it's God's opinion, not yours.

Yes, that is what I'm saying. I have no problem with civilly disagreeing.

:o You weren't being blunt just then? -_- Maybe I am. Can you cut and paste a quote to show me where I am doing that? What I am attempting to do is show how Trintarians and Unitarians take contradictory verses and massage them to fit into their theology. Okay! Right. Trinitarians are sometimes accused of worshipping three gods, but Trinitarians themselves do not see it that way. Yes, Trinitarians believe that this is clear. Yup, I understand that Trinitarians believe that.Here's my point: I don't see that the bible clearly makes the case either way. If it was clear, we wouldn't have contradictions, apparent or actual. Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is one in essence, but is comprised of three persons (or personas), or as some religions would put it, aspects. But you don't see that laid out anywhere in one place in the bible. Those who formulated and formalized the doctrine of the Trinity took things that they saw in the bible, like Jesus being referred to as God, as one with God, as a creator, and attempted to harmonize these sections with places where Jesus' and God's wills are distinct and opposite, where no man has seen God, where God is declared not to be a man, ad infinitum. Add in the multiple ways that the term "holy spirit" is used for extra flavor. Wierwille (as well as others) didn't like the way that the Trinitarians explained it. They took the same contradictions and explained them away in a different manner. That's what I'm talking about.

Yes I know, they came up with an "explanation" that reconciles the contradiction.

I've put dependence on "God" behind me and I'm doing pretty well. better than when I was a fan of ol' Jehovah most who know me would say

If the bible's so uncomplicated, why do we have thousands of denominations?

No matter which side of the Trinity debate one finds oneself on, there are some verses that must be "explained". These verses are (among other things) referred to as "unclear" or "apparent contradictions". This tells me that neither position is as clear cut and unassailable as its adherants think it is. Unitarians have to "explain" why several verses clearly call Jesus "God". Trinitarians have to "explain" things like Jesus clearly having a separate will from "The Father". Both sides, in addition to trotting out their favorite scriptures, appeal to logic that is often circular and take pot shots at strawmen. Wierwille tortured the rules of grammar and twisted definitions to make his version "fit". Early Christians devised elaborate theologies to prop up their thoughts on the matter. Sometimes a non-Trinitarian will point out that the word "Trinity" does not appear in the bible. Neither does "Law of Believing" or "Sonship Rights". As someone who does not believe that the bible is inerrant, I have no trouble believing that there will be contradictions in it. Different people had differing views of who Jesus was and what he accomplished. They didn't consult each other before penning their contributions to the canon.

duplicate post

I never made it into residence, although I had been accepted into the 13th Corps. I couldn't get my money together so that was that. I applied because I saw it as the "next step" in service within the context of TWI.

Man's basic spiritual problem...haven't thought about that in years. "The Word" either has integrity or it doesn't, what difference does it make what we think about it? Man's basic spiritual problem isn't cramming one's head full of arcane knowledge and hair-splitting about Greek words, it's how one acts, what one does.

That one was ignored every time Wierwille didn't like what was written <_<

Naw, sometimes you have to spell it out; I read your post and hit it from a different angle. Thanks for the quote tips.

For some reason I can't do multiple quote boxes, I'm using the WordWolf method of putting my replies in bold type: <_<

Yes, it is a rhetorical question, with the unspoken answer being "no", illustrated by other examples. The point is that the same mouth both blessing and cursing is unnatural.

yeah...what Alfakat said

I think we're coming at this from different directions OM. First, I did not label Wierwille's character explicitly as good or evil. Second, the way I understand character, it's not something that flips back and forth as you do different things during the day: you help an old lady across the street at 1:00 PM, you have good character; at 2:00 PM you steal a piece of fruit from the corner grocery you now have bad character. Your character is the complex web of motivations, opinions, upbringing, etc that makes you the kind of person who will both help that old lady and steal the fruit. Everybody's character is on a continuum that may range from altruistic to 100% mean S.O.B. - Wierwille did both good and evil. It was indicative of his character that he could talk about believing and the love of God and everything else that sounded good in PFAL and lure young women into the motor coach and lie and encourage others' adulation. As I replied to Oldies, I don't agree that it's a "fact". Some of you guys saw your TWI experience as good. In retrospect, I can't say the same about mine. You look at Wierwille as someone who "taught you the Word", I look at him as someone who used the bible to manipulate and gain power.

Who you are influences how you process what you know. For those who chant the "Wierwille's character doesn't affect the TRUTH he taught" mantra: Every single person who made it though PFAL and stayed active for even a short period of time did so because they believed that Wierwille was telling the truth in PFAL. Why did we believe this? Because we did our own research? Usually because we took Wierwille's word for most of what he said, and the things that we "investigated" on our own we did using assumptions and premises that we accepted from Wierwille. No, we believed what was in PFAL largely because we decided that Wierwille was trustworthy and that he knew what he was talking about. He convinced us of it himself. If we had known from the start that the man was a liar, if we knew that he sexually abused young women, if we knew all the negative "character flaws", would we have even listened to anything he said? It's only in retrospect, in hindsight, that we try to justify believing what we were taught. This is not to say that everything that he taught was wrong. But teachings such as "every woman in the kingdom belongs to the King", the whole concept of the MOG, unquestioned following of leadership were open doors for abuse. The framework of his interpretation necessarily being the only correct one fed into his apparent need for adulation. It doesn't matter how full your head is with knowledge, with facts, with TRUTH, if your heart is rotten, than what does it matter?

Hope springs eternal...

While I agree that a better biblical case can be made for a unitarian God rather than a trinitarian, Wierwille's arguments against the trinity generally involved misrepresentations of what trinitarians actually believed. There are enough "unclear verses" about the nature of Jesus Christ that either side has to concoct explanations that aren't all that logical to make them "fit like a hand in a glove". I disagree that a trinitarian is inherently illogical. That being said, it's very possible that Juedes was initially spurred to speak out and write against TWI due to Wierwille's anti-trinitarianism; some of his positions are simple doctrinal disagreements. However the bulk of what he writes goes a lot deeper than that, addressing Wierwille's shoddy "research", including incorrect and shifting definitions of Greek words, and plagiarism. Despite Wierwille's claim and our belief otherwise, TWI was very much a cult of personality and much of what we were taught in PFAL and in TWI in general was based on our willingness to take Wierwille at his word. Despite our pride in being "workmen of the Word", we, for example, took VPW's word that the definitions of allos and heteros, dechomai and lambano and others, on which so much doctrine was based, were right, when a little genuine research would have shown us otherwise. PFAL was based, not on the bible, but on what Wierwille said the bible said. What he said it said was that knowledge was more important than heart.

There you have it...you think TWI, CES, what have you is bad? hey, they never ripped out anyone's still-beating heart!