Zixar

John: If you want instant-on, get an XBox. :)-->

Steve: Yes, I've read KODT here and there, also John Kovalic's "Dork Tower"...

Wow, did anyone else see the premiere last night? Michael Chiklis sure ain't The Commish anymore...that Emmy was well-deserved.

This show helps take the edge off of waiting for another season of The Sopranos!

Definitely, Kathy. God bless your family and bring Cliff through this completely healed, in the name of Jesus Christ.

Coumadin needs careful monitoring, so expect frequent followup visits for blood tests. Zixette was on it for several months after her close call, and she came through okay. He'll also have to watch his intake of vitamin K, green leafy veggies may be a no-no while on Coumadin.

God bless!

Zix

There's a registry tweak that will shorten the length of time Windows will wait on a hung process. Unfortunately, I don't have it committed to memory. (mine, not the computer's) There's also a tweak to raise the interrupt priority of the system clock on IRQ8 which speeds up the machine too.

If I can find them again, I'll let you know.

(Later) Ok, here's the key. Open Regedit and search for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlWaitToKillServiceTimeout. The value is in milliseconds, either 20000 or 30000 for 20 to 30 seconds. Set the value to 2000 (two seconds). If you don't have that key, create one using that exact punctuation and make it of type String like the others. (it will show as type REG_SZ--that's a String to the Registry.)

I think this only works in XP and Win2000.

Better watch out, or the next thing you know, we'll all be playing Dungeons and Dragons in the chat room... ;)-->

One little trick is to remove unnecessary/unneeded fonts from your Windows/Fonts folder. A lot of programs install their own fonts and font enumeration on startup takes quite a while.

It may not work in every case, but it is one more thing you can trim.

Defragment your hard drive, and use WinXP's AppAccelerator if you're running XP.

Have at least 128MB of RAM for any version of Windows less than XP, 256MB for XP.

SteveL: Re-reading your post above, I think you make a good argument for your point. In fact, I can't immediately see a compelling counterpoint, in light of your analysis.

Good show.

Yeah, whenever it comes down to a puzzle where you have to pick a country that starts with a "D", I always pick Djibouti or the Dominican Republic instead of Denmark. If you're ever party to that type of joke, make sure you bet the jokester money they can't figure out what you picked. (It's usually either "an elephant" or "gray" for the answer, if it's trying to force a "Denmark" response.)

Make sure you see the money before they reveal their "brilliance". ;)-->

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Originally posted by Mike:

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Zix, for myself, I’m simply not trying to master the AC. If you want more detail as to how to deal with it’s status, I suggest you get down to serious mastery of the collaterals. Then and only then will you get to “all nine all the time,” and then you can ask God for your answer.

If you think you can skip around the collaterals and ask, I think you’re asking for trouble. The devil can counterfeit God’s voice so well that only a master can tell them apart. The past 2000 years of failure at “all nine all the time” shows me it’s useless to try and “5-senses” my way in an end run around the devil’s defenses. He’s smarter than any 5-senses researcher. Look what he did to Bullinger regarding SIT. A mere 5-senses researcher NEEDS the extra boost of revelation to get through all the confusion that the arch intellectual devil has erected.

Do you see the catch-22 here? The 5-senses researcher is trying to learn the difference between God and His counterfeit, but in order to learn this he must be able to ALREADY tell the difference to obtain and hear the needed extra boost God’s voice will give him over the devil’s smarts.

The only way out of this 2000 year (at least) old vicious cycle is God has step in. That’s what the 1942 promise was and is. And that project of fixing His Word that God initiated was basically finished after 40 years of Him working with Dr. This is stated by Dr as his last words to Craig at Craig’s installation, and it’s on the same tape I quoted on the “News Flash!” thread about Craig’s non-spiritual installation.

Another thing the rare “spiritually boosted researcher” needs is the courage to face the fire of tradition and it’s many, many vehement adherents.

God has had to OFTEN wait a long time for JUST the right individual with these unique characteristics (super diligent in 5-senses work, super meek to God ONLY, and willing to take on the war with tradition with gusto) to come along for many of the job HE wanted done. Examples: Moses, John the Baptist, Mary. As far as the job of restoring God’s Word (like in Jer.36) it took 2000 years for God to find BOTH a tough ornery contrarian crowd like us to believe, and a tough ornery contrarian like Dr to teach us.

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Whatever happened to "scientific exactness and mathematical precision"?

Nowhere in the collaterals are the revelation and impartation manifestations explored with a view towards their proper operation. That was supposed to be the Advanced Class, which you do not feel needs to be mastered. Had the collaterals been sufficient, the Advanced Class would have been unnecessary.

Yet, you claim the only way we can see through all the errors in the modern Bible is via revelation from God. The paradox is that now researchers have to operate without an absolute knowledge of the operation of the revelation manifestations. If no revelation=no true Bible, and no instruction=no revelation, you've effectively removed all hope of being able to accurately interpret the Word according to your standards. That's horribly bad science.

Another thing. One of the most basic keys to biblical interpretation that Dr. Wierwille taught was to get to whom it was written straight. Reading your transcipt of the Last Teaching, it is primarily addressed to the Country Coordinators, and only secondarily addressed to believers in general. That makes it his last teaching specifically only for Country Coordinators. Dr. Wierwille knew his true, public Last Teaching would be tape #1275, "The Hope". It was addressed to all believers, and is his final message to TWI assembled. Therefore, unless you are a Country Coordinator, the advice to master the FC, IC, and collaterals is not an absolute final mandate. Look to The Hope for that.

The Adversary has put a subtle set of blinders on you, Mike, getting you to focus on something that isn't specifically addressed to you so you won't realize the truth. Any idea or doctrine that imprisons you such is of the devil.

Why haven't you mastered "Release From Your Prisons" yet?

So now we're just supposed to take the Advanced Class as merely "for our learning", and not a direct revelation from God to Dr. Wierwille? Especially odd, as one of the requirements to take the AC was demonstrated mastery of the FC and IC so that we might separate truth from error.

What, then, of Rev. Earl Burton, instructor of the latter-day IC?

Mike, look, Rafael has tried to correct you via rational logic, Mark Sanguinetti and others have tried to correct you via Biblical logic, and I've tried via PFAL logic to get you to see that you are ensnared in a web of subtle idolatry that is contrary to the Word of God, common sense, and even Wierwille's own teachings. It's a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees, Mike.

It won't take 17 years of researching. Ever hear the phrase "looking for a black cat in a coal cellar at midnight that isn't even there?" Dr. Wierwille said it himself--whenever we come to the Word with preconceived notions, to prove our point, we are already wrong. I would think that goes for his works especially.

Ultimately, who do you wish to serve? Dr. Wierwille, through his works, or God, through His Word? You do not have to "purge" yourself of everything VPW taught, that's impossible, as well as foolish. What you should do is put all the books and collaterals aside, get a fresh KJV with no TWI notes in it, and prove to yourself from the Word every single doctrine that you can recall. Remember, the Word of God has to fit from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, it has to be the Word of God everywhere. We are still in the same administration as Paul was in, so anything that Dr. Wierwille said cannot contradict or supersede what the Epistles say--God would have to change administrations again to make such a reversal according to His Word, and that's not going to happen until Christ comes back.

Now, if you find that Dr. Wierwille was absolutely right on something, what does that tell you? That he interpreted it the way God meant it to be. If you find he was wrong on something (see Rafael's list of actual errors in PFAL for a start), you absolutely MUST follow God instead of Dr. Wierwille. We study to show ourselves approved to God, not men, after all.

At the end, you may just find that you have a greater appreciation for God's work, and see Dr. Wierwille's stuff as illustrative at best, not authoritative as you currently believe. You won't necessarily start going to Church, believing in the trinity, or praying to dead people. Or you might--several here have gone from VPW back to orthodoxy. Whichever way you go, make sure that it is the best possible decision based on what you can absolutely prove from the Bible.

That's all any of us can do, being imperfect before the Perfect One.

God bless,

Zixar

...And you earn people's respect by serving them the Word of God and loving them-- and then learning to keep your mouth shut. -- Victor Paul Wierwille, from his Last Teaching.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike:

Zix,

Just a quickie. Some more possibilities about cancer to bring into the mix...

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Possibilities? No sir. The Word is not subject to your private interpretation. This was the Advanced Class on PFAL, the vital revelation of the operations of two-thirds of the manifestations of the spirit. Dr. Wierwille would not have lied to us on such a vital issue.

Neither was he mistaken. This was the man who healed the paralyzed arm of a man in Jubbulpore, and cast all number of spirits out of a possessed woman there as well. You can't do those sort of things and not know what you're talking about.

Doctor said cancer is always a devil spirit. He was unequivocal on the matter. Trying to discern spiritual matters via five-senses knowledge "possibilities" is a tool of the Adversary.

Where is your believing that you could be so deceived in this matter?

Another thing. Remind me again how adultery is now not only acceptable, but actually required of the "Man of God"?

Just thought I'd bring this back up, too.

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Remember too that Dr. Wierwille died from cancer. It was his own teaching in the Advanced Class that cancer is always a devil spirit. Yet, despite the evident sexual abuse, not one of the Board of Trustees apparently cast the devil spirits out of him, nor did he apparently believe God to rid himself of it. Who knows when he was first possessed by it? Which books hadn't he written at that time?

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Since God supposedly theopneustosed the whole PFAL class to VPW, yet VPW contracted cancer (via devil spirit) well before his Last Teaching, how are we supposed to tell which words there are God-breathed, and which are devil spirit lies?

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Originally posted by Rafael 1969:

You guys aren't following the script. We're supposed to all hate Wierwille and be incapable of thinking he might be right on anything. We're never supposed to agree with him, ever. That would reflect independent thought, if we were able to agree with him sometimes and disagree other times. Now get back in line.

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Sorry, I missed this bit at the bottom of Page 1, too.

Remember that bit about "the truth needs no defense"? I'd suggest that it should be "the truth can withstand all assaults" instead.

I have been less than patient with a lot of the passionate anti-Wierwillites because the truth about the man speaks clearly. Any vengeful emotional embellishments actually detract from that damning truth.

No matter how good it may feel to some to imagine VPW as some Machiavellian Snidely Whiplash who took secret commands from his penis to create a ministry to provide him with unlimited women, it isn't objectively convincing. Like this thread stresses, it's the actual, demonstrable, indisputable errors that demolish any ideas of Wierwillian infallibility, rather than a bunch of sophomoric d1ck jokes.

So, to the passionate Wierwille-despisers, I'd just say that you have more than enough actual reasons to hate the man, without having to create imaginary, implausible, exaggerated evils to hang on him. The emotion muddies the message, which needs to be as clear as glass to those still inside.

To that end, the honest thing to do is not blanket-condemn everything VPW said, but rather be able to demonstrate each singular place where he was wrong (or right, even) such that no one can dispute your logic. If you can't conclusively disprove something, just "leave it" until you can. "It's wrong just because HE said it" is not the argument of a learned person, just as "it's RIGHT just because he was the MOG" is an idiot's argument.

I relinquish the soapbox... :D-->

(Note: Opinion follows! ;)--> )

Since Karl asked what I thought about Four Crucified, off the cuff I'd say I still agree with Bullinger on it. Sure, it's convoluted, but it does un-paradox the Matthew/Luke contradiction.

Unfortunately, Bullinger (and VPW too, if memory serves, since he usually swiped EWB's Greatest Hits) uses the same logic to come up with SIX Denials of Peter instead of three. That's just really shaky, to me.

In my humble opinion,

Zix

quote:

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Originally posted by Karl Kahler:

Zixar, of all people, the smartest man I ever met on the Internet, is an expert on a great many things, and ordinarily I would recommend him for answering just about any question correctly. Truly, he is a genius, and I'm not being sarcastic, I'm being truthful. But, having said that, I'm wondering if he slept through his Greek lessons. I think any "expert" could look at that verse, study it from every conceivable angle, and conclude that it's punctuated perfectly.

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Karl: Greetings back to you, O absent scribe!

I think you may have misunderstood my take on that verse. I wasn't declaring Wierwille's version the truth, I'm certainly not qualified to do that. I wrote my original post at the office and didn't have an interlinear in front of me.

Not that it would have done me any good, mind you. I've never had a Greek course, so I don't know how idioms break naturally in that language. I knew that Goey and others are much more knowledgeable of Greek than I, so I was hoping someone would say "Well, if it was Wierwille's way, it would read "greekity-greek-greek-GREEK", but the text says "greek, greek, GREEKITY greek" instead. So, it really can't be accurately punctuated his way without completely mangling this expression."

Sorry if I didn't make that clear. I didn't think I was trying to speak ex cathedra (as if) about it. I just think it made sense Wierwille's way, and given VL's side at the time, I didn't see it as a conclusive refutation, that's all.

My ISP has had DNS problems for most of the past 48 hours, so I couldn't respond earlier.

God bless!

Zix

(p.s. Thanks for the kind, but undeserved, compliments. I'll try to be a little more circumspect in the future when it comes to differentiating between my opinions and provable theses.)

SteveL: With respect, I don't think you've made your case for this one. I could see the case that Romans 9, 10, and the first half of 11 may not be "addressed" to Israel as VPW claimed, but Israel is the subject of those chapters, nonetheless. Romans 10:9 is further expanded to include the Gentiles in the immediate following verses. The record in the second part of Romans 11 is explicitly addressing Gentiles, so I don't really see what you're trying to prove here, unless it's that VPW is guilty on another count of bad semantics.

No offense,

Zix

VLimit: I don't recall hearing VPW say that they continued to say anything. His take was that it should read "we ceased saying 'the will of the Lord be done'" without the commas. Verse 14 is the last anyone says anything to Paul about it, so it looks like they stopped trying to persuade him.

Today would have been J.R.R. Tolkien's 111th birthday.

Happy posthumous eleventy-first, Professor!

Vertical: Actually, I think that one could really go VPW's way. Anyone out there know Greek well enough to determine if the punctuation is correct or not in the Stephens interlinear?

Mandii: I think the answers to the seeming dilemma were actually covered in PFAL, believe it or not. Didn't VPW say something along the lines of "when you come to something you don't understand or can't make fit, just leave it. Believe it or just leave it." Something like that.

Anyhoo, that was TWI's ultimate problem. When they came to something that they couldn't understand, they couldn't "just leave it." It's been brought up before that part of the problem with a "biblical research ministry" is the nagging need to churn out "new" research all the time--even if that "research" turns out to depend on stretching a single word so far out of context it was unrecognizable. As long as it was "new", it was pure money. ("Athletes of the Spirit" ring a bell? Oh, we're not "warriors", we're "athletes", and it's not a "shield", it's a "discus"....etc., etc. Blech.)

What was worse was when destructive practices got jammed into what was otherwise recognizable as "The Word". "All the women belong to the king", "abortion isn't murder", pick your favorite excuse out of the Appendix of the Schoenheit adultery paper.

Would to God that they had simply "just left it." Well, pride goeth before destruction, as the Word says...

Supposing for a moment that some of Dr. Wierwille's teachings were indeed God-breathed, and some were not, then what does that say of the teachings he agreed with enough to publish that came from other authors? If they were the ones who received God-breathed truth, and God confirmed them to be true to VPW, then we have God-breathed doctrine all over the place, and not just from one man. We should immediately read all works by:

B.G. Leonard

J.E. Stiles

George Lamsa

Ernest Martin

And a host of others of VPW's sources for his books. God is breathing on quite a few it would seem.

What happens when they contradict Wierwille, then? If, as Rafael has shown, that not ALL of VPW's work can be considered God-breathed, who then is qualified to privately interpret which bits are theopneustos and which bits are devilish error? By not reading the others, we could be missing out on even more God-breathed epistles to the believers.

If the others weren't God-breathed, but merely good guesses, how could we tell? Wierwille thought they were good enough to mix in with his God-breathed stuff, and God apparently didn't breathe to him otherwise, so what other conclusion can we draw but that they must have been God-breathed too?

Mike: You do know that American Christian Press was wholly owned and operated by The Way International, don't you? It was entirely PFAL-grads, from proofreaders to printers.

Look, I'm not a rabid anti-Wierwillite. I think his original goal was admirable--to get to a greater understanding of the Bible by placing the scriptures above the traditions of the Church. BUT, since the Bible we do have today does really have apparent contradictions due to holes in our understanding, anything anyone comes up with to fill in those holes has to be as consistent as the rest of the Word in order to even be a candidate for the truth. Dr. Wierwille filled in some of those holes with demonstrably false doctrines, hidden amongst the more reasonable and probably-true bits.

It is those false doctrines that were directly responsible for the decline of TWI over his lifetime, and the utter failure of it after his death. Chief among them is his easily-disprovable views on adultery and sex in general. VPW might not have laid the label of "sex pervert" at the apostle Paul's feet for his thorn in the flesh, but there are several corroborating accounts from the victims that support laying that label at Dr. Wierwille's feet.

How could a man of God betray his wife and family like that? A moment of weakness might be understandable, but to systematize error and entrench it as doctrine is the work of the Adversary. To be unrepentant of it, even on his death bed? To teach it to his successors such that there have been multiple lawsuits brought forth over it?

Remember too that Dr. Wierwille died from cancer. It was his own teaching in the Advanced Class that cancer is always a devil spirit. Yet, despite the evident sexual abuse, not one of the Board of Trustees apparently cast the devil spirits out of him, nor did he apparently believe God to rid himself of it. Who knows when he was first possessed by it? Which books hadn't he written at that time?

By the very logic Dr. Wierwille presented in his PFAL class, nothing he said should be considered sacrosanct. All the error in the modern Bible came from well-meaning scribes who were secretly possessed of devil spirits, right? Guess who you can add to the list...

Not that you should be ashamed, even Paul the Apostle thought he was right when all the prophecies said "don't go to Jerusalem." Remember what happened to him in his pride, though.

Believe God rather than man.

God bless,

Zixar

Rottie: If it were true, then everyone would have the same blood type as their father. I don't, for one. (I'm O+, he was A+.)

It doesn't necessarily mean that Jesus wasn't perfect; it may have been that Mary was the only person to have the exact genetic sequence in that one egg cell that was necessary to produce the perfect Messiah. It wasn't merely an all-dominant gene sequencing either--after all, the gene for extra fingers or toes is dominant, and there's no record that Jesus had twelve fingers. (Granted, it would have made it easier to count the apostles, but still... ;)--> )

But we're moving away from the topic...