Mike

No. Very wrong. Schoenheit was not at HQ in 1978. The paper was squashed in fall of 1986, sez Schoenheit himself, by Walter and the BOT. I can find where he says this. It is in a short summary. Vpw had been dead for some 18 months when the paper was squashed and the ministry meltdown started. Check your sources. You and they got it very wrong. Check Penworks.

My impression is that you never saw first hand how the hippie attitudes of casual sex invaded the suburbs and middle classes in the early 1970s. Cultural attitudes towards sex tend to swing like a pendulum from law to license and back to law again. The 1950s thru 1964 were extreme law. After the Pill and the Beatles that all changed and the pendulum swung to extreme license. Then AIDS put the big kabosh on that party and the pendulum swung again. I don't know where it is today. Just as there are big problems with extreme license, extreme law is rife with problems. Who knows, where you draw the line? It shifts around a lot. I have also noticed that rural areas can be 10 years behind the mega cities with these pendulums. All this figures in how the ministry melted down with the Schoenheit Paper, and was never the same. It sent LCM into a crazed ricochet trajectory for the next 14 years.

I have considered that. I have also considered that everyone looks for loopholes with sex. There is a strange silence here about this paper that I have noticed. I wonder how many of the 14 "pick-up lines" at the end of that paper have been used by LOTS of people in TWI, and even some here. I started hearing the pick-up lines in the 1970s in the early TVTs. I get the impression that paper somewhat quietly ended the party for some who were "having fun" on the side.

I agree that "real" research is not the way VPW defined it. BTW, he did re-define what he meant by research in writing at a fairly early date in the Jul/Aug 1979 Way Magazine. You are missing a large chunk of history revolving around that paper. It literally took down the ministry, no exaggeration. It was well hushed up WITHIN twi, but not on the outside; not at all. Instead of me telling you about it and you not believing a word, read up on it here. Ask people who were in the Corps at that time. I peeked into the later chapters in Penworks' "Undertow." She may have lots of the details there. Trust me: To not know about the Schoenheit paper, and exactly HOW it completely melted down TWI-2 in late 1986, is like not knowing about how Pearl Harbor started WW2. Ask around with the people who were there.

No. TWI-1 started out with Craig, Donnie, and Howard. I think from 1982. They were at the top in the fall of 1986 when that paper exploded the ministry. Maybe John Townsend and the South American airline pilot were added to the B.O.T. by Geer by then?

Yes. That is what Schoenheit wrote at the very beginning of his paper. The one that is posted here should have it.

This may have happened to some topics, but it doesn't jive with what John Schoenheit wrote himself in the beginning of his paper on adultery. There is an odd note where he says that VPW had asked Vince and Ralph to research adultery or fornication in the early 80s, but they did not know how to begin it, so they asked Schoenheit for help. Now, eventually, that Schoenheit paper was squashed and hidden by fear saturated leadership, but it was over a full year after VPW's death. Thank God, the squashing and hiding were the most brainless cover-up job in history, and the paper got out.

I reported here (on the Jumping to Concussions thread, I think) that I had a preview of what I thought Penwork's complaint would be. In 1977 or '78 I had a conversation at HQ (as I posted here) with two members of the Research Dept who were in the 7th or 8th Corps. They told me that the Research Dept was not doing real research. They evidentially said enough to other people to get themselves fired in a big splash at Emporia where they were located. But I heard what they said and kept quiet about it, thinking it through for years. I added to this pondering some rather wild and perplexing things VPW said on SNT tapes about searching for manuscripts that back him up. I said I had lots of ups and downs with my respect for TWI and VPW, and this was part of the down side. After 1998 I finally understood the 1942 promise much better, after years of pretty much ignoring it. That was when the whole set of Research Department questions I had been harboring and pondering got answered. I wont be shocked at Penworks' revelations. I had been thinking about them several years before she noticed them, if my calculations are correct. This is why I am reading it so slow. I am 99% sure I know the ending. We will see. It is getting more nostalgic for me, because the place where I am at in her book is when I got into the Word in late 1971.

I think I now know much better how Raf felt in agreeing with me a few times on the Absent Christ thread. I think it sounds like I may be in SOME agreement with RFR on the various needs of a research department. I know for sure that the current attitudes at TWI-4 are that there will not be any more VPW's on the TWI roster, and that we got a big enough job learning and moving what has been given to us. This was my attitude in 1998: I found a lot of truth in my travels, but not a lot of it got disciplined into my life with love and service to others. Yes, I see the similarities.

Thanks much for taking it seriously. I am not full time thinking this budget idea, nor full-time promoting it. Like I said before, I may drop it entirely. When I am not thinking within this idea (which is most of the time) you might be surprised at how much I am in agreement with your items 1,2, and 3 above. */*/* The only advantage I see (so far) in this idea is it is a reminder that there is a lot of spiritual stuff going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm that we do not see. I think the scriptures largely shelter us from most of the details of this, but every now and then they give us a peak at a few of the details.

Thanks, Twinky. I can bow out now, having said my tiny piece.

Yesterday, I just finished the chapter where she finishes Summer School and about to enter the Corps. I am slowly getting to the heavier stuff. From John Lynn's report, VPW was asking these questions very late in the game, and he did it at Emporia, where he had a little more freedom to speak to people. Maybe that slipped by Penworks due to the location?

The music in AOS was very good. I still listen to it once in a while. But I edited out the words. The music was bright and cheery, but the scenery was dark and garish. As for the actors, people in the sexual fast lane were always on the other side of the horizon for me. I am not the one to ask about that topic. The ONLY thing I was reporting was that John Lynn was pretty clear in 1988 that VPW had second thoughts about the athletes thing being a genuine figure of speech in Ephesians.

Well, can you offer an alternative theory as to why the devil seems to be winning most of the time? How do you handle the scarcity of miracles in your life and the lives of people around you. Do you believe God can answer prayers at all? How do you answer the biggest question of all time, which is how can a pure loving God sit back while all the incredible amount of evil seems to just increase? Do you have a better answer than mine? See, I am trying to make sense of life and the scriptures. It that is too big a challenge for you, or one that seems to promise no pay-out, I would understand.

Did you find the two summary paragraphs of those other threads that I gave above to be clear? Here they are again: For the Canon, the main idea was that all through the Bible God entrusted His revelations to people who would get the revelation accurately into written form, and then distribute those writings in a responsible and even guided way. I gave one big example of this from 2 Timothy, but never got around to showing evidence to the same idea in the OT. I may add that someday. The Free Will thread was a simple idea that I am proposing: our biologically given free will is not as strong as we like to think, and it is not as instantaneous. By analogy, our biological free will is similar to biological muscles, in that they may need exercising to be sufficiently strong, and that the first times through a coordinated effort there may a lot of failures to perform adequately.

This was a long time ago, but in 1988 John Lynn visited San Diego with his little GreaseSpot Cafe traveling road show. At that time he reported that well before AOS got into production, circa 1984, VPW went to Emporia and was bringing up questions as to the validity of the athletes metaphor. The slant was that VPW was thinking that LCM had gone too far with it, or that he was having second thoughts about it. But by late 1984 no one was listening to VPW as he was visibly slower, had one or two strokes, lost an eye, and no longer controlled the payrolls. John Lynn, in 1988, made it sound like LCM had taken the ball and run farther than VPW was comfortable with. He made it sound like VPW was unhappy with the large scale production of AOS. I can't remember if anything about AOS appeared in the Passing of the Patriarch. It should be checked for this.

Well, I have to admit this budget/doors idea is not so clear, and the evidence is scant compared to the other two threads. Part of the problem there may have been all the distractions and the fast pace. If you were to comb through them the main idea for each is simple, and there was evidence of sorts supplied. For the Canon, the main idea was that all through the Bible God entrusted His revelations to people who would get the revelation accurately into written form, and then distribute those writings in a responsible and even guided way. I gave one big example of this from 2 Timothy, but never got around to showing evidence to the same idea in the OT. I may add that someday. The Free Will thread was a simple idea that I am proposing: our biologically given free will is not as strong as we like to think, and it is not as instantaneous. By analogy, our biological free will is similar to biological muscles, in that they may need exercising to be sufficiently strong, and that the first times through a coordinated effort there may a lot of failures to perform adequately. But this budget/door idea is not as clear. I was blown away at how both God and the devil were at work simultaneously in the incident with Paul on the road to Damascus. It seemed related to Moses' rod turning into a snake and then the court magicians did the same thing. The temporary hindrance "suffered" by God's angels in Daniel 9 was another eye-opener. I thought I saw a pattern in those scriptures, and then thought a few more popped up. I'll post my second list in the budget side soon, and then I may be done with this topic for a while.

Sorry to be so absent. There were a few posts I wanted to respond to from last week. [][][][][][][][][][][[][[][[][[][[] On 3/10/2023 at 8:33 AM, I had written: On this topic, my hunch, I am 60% happy with the idea; happy enough to invest time into it. But with 40% uncertainty, I am always prepared to junk the idea. So_crates Posted Friday at 08:37 AM: Sure you are. Like you were ready to junk "budget" and "two doors" even though they were proven confusing? Those labels were of serendipitous origin some 45 years ago, and I have no special interest in them. But if I were to use them again, I would introduce them later in the presentation, and make it clear up-front that they were only rough analogies. [][][][][][][][][][][[][[][[][[][[] T-Bone Posted Friday at 08:50 AM: …if you have something that is truly of merit it should be able to stand up to the toughest close scrutiny… this is such a disappointment- when shown you are wrong or negligent in providing evidence for your theory - you whine and complain people are biased - and you seem to shrink from ever admitting you’re wrong… Well, the reason I brought the budget/doors idea here to GSC was for the toughest of scrutiny. I wasn’t whining or complaining about the bias that goes along with that scrutiny… just laughing at it, and how it causes people to almost look for ways to misunderstand me, and how the bias is probably invisible to you all. But that’s ok. I expected it. And BTW, I may very well be wrong on this “budget/door” idea. Compared to other projects of mine, this theory has gotten very little, to zero attention from me over the years. I would just occasionally throw small pieces of paper with small notes or scriptures scribbled on them into my folder for decades, without ever looking at the contents of the folder. This budget/doors idea was very much unlike my "free will" theory, which got worked on daily on several other Facebook websites for years. Also this latest idea is unlike my NT Canon thread, because my old 1970s Canon folder got lots of attention as I worked it with Walter, Bernita, and a few others way back then. I may be wrong on this budget/doors idea. So far, I was disappointed with the first scripture list on Double Doors. I was expecting my pile of small scraps of paper to be a longer list, but many of them proved to be unusable (so far) due to being pretty cryptic, or too loose with associations. I was using my critical thinking tools (CTT) on them, and many failed the tests. Maybe I am forgetting some elements in some, and will someday remember them. Some of them may be suddenly understood in the future, if I keep working the topic, so the list may grow. The second list on the Budgeting side (so far un-posted) seems to be going the same way, and maybe worse. But I have culled out the best entries, though few in number, for posting soon. If I have to withdraw the idea, I can handle that. Thank you for your patience. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][[][][][][][[] Nathan_Jr Posted Friday at 09:04 AM: Mike has admitted on other threads that bias is a good thing. He has also admitted to not understanding confirmation bias. He has admitted to clutching and clinging to his bias. He beleeves in his bias. As for not understanding confirmation bias, what I don’t understand is how you do not understand the proper use of confirmation bias. You are a one-trick-pony here with your critical thinking tools, or CTTs for short. I admit that I have a proPFAL bias at times and in places. It was very consciously constructed in 1998 after many years of deliberation back and forth. My 1998 decision was to stop searching primarily for truth, and switch over to searching for discipline in applying the truths that I had found so far. My deliberate proPFAL bias was not an impulsive emotional reaction to events in my life. It was not the result of extremely negative experiences or trauma. As a result I am able to switch my proPFAL bias off at times. This is useful to do when it is necessary for me to not be blind to what someone else is saying. Sometimes the proper way for me to deal with a person, who was hurt in the TWI machinery and/or any individuals, is to drop my proPFAL bias, because it can blind me to the details in their story. My good experiences in early TWI-1 can blind me to the bad experiences of people who only saw TWI-2 and TWI-3. This has been a slow lesson for me to learn these years, but the last 6 or 8 months have stepped up the pace, as I have been reading a lot of the archives lately. */*/* Of course, I cannot lightly or rightly ask for a suspension of said GSC biases. I suspect the antiPFAL biased attitudes held and maintained here are not so flexible as to be turned off at will, because they are rather emotion and trauma driven, both first-hand and second. It is understandable to me that people in that category get a bad taste from thinking through the possibility that individual items taught us in PFAL were of God, and worth embracing and being thankful for. */*/* My proPFAL bias is useful for confirmation. Having confirmation is a good thing at times, assuming that what is being confirmed is true. In the law of believing, as Jesus instructed, having any doubt in the heart negates the proper operation of that law. I think that “believing without doubt” is a very fine-tuned state of mind. I think this kind of genuine believing often eluded us, and we were content with mental assent. I seek and find confirmations that help me to believe without doubt and act on the promises of God. Becoming convinced, through diligent use of CTTs that these promises are genuine and worth believing without doubt was a finished job for me in 1998. In the 1970s I started the process of using CTTs to wade through the baloney in the world and in the TVTs. After a few ups and downs I arrived at the end of this process in 1998. I no longer feel a need to apply CTTs to the collaterals. */*/* How do you get rid of all doubts when you want to believe something? Do you use something else, instead of seeking confirmation, to rid your mind of doubts. Did it occur to you, when in TWI, that purging the mind of doubts is important in genuine believing? I don't remember the ministry teaching the "no doubt" thing very much, but whenever I'd go to the Gospels for learning, the "no doubt" thing would stand out as important. */*/* Having good critical thinking tools, CTTs, is a good thing. There is a proper time for exercising CTT, and it is when you are seeking something worth believing in a forest of false trees. Separating truth out from lots of surrounding error is the time for using CTTs. Once that truth is found, then it is time to believe that truth, and believe it with no doubt. When it is time to believe, that is NOT the time for critical thinking tools. They should have been used long before, in the selecting of what you wanted to believe sans-doubt. If you ever get to the point that I got to in 1998, then you have got to put your CTTs aside and work on confirming your beliefs. Catholics even have a sacrament for this called Confirmation. Confirmation is a good thing if it is confirming the truth. How do you confirm your beliefs with all those CTTs cluttering your mind? In essence, CTTs are really TOOLS OF SYSTEMATIC DOUBT. How do you believe the truth with no doubt with CTTs constantly on your mind? You can’t. */*/* Academia says a seeker cannot really find the pure truth or truths, and a big rule in academia is that CTTs are always necessary. Academia does not recognize that there are truths worth believing to the extent of eradicating all doubts. Academia is wrong here. */*/* So critical thinking tools are basically doubt tools. They are tools for systematic doubt. Which is good to do if you are surrounded in sea of fraud and error and deception. Your CRTs are good for filtering out the good from the bad. Then once you find the truth, you should want to apply different tools to confirm it, to make that truth stick in your mind. Once you know it’s the truth, then you should really have it set solid in your life so that you don’t flinch on it.. and that’s called confirmation. And when you seek confirmation, then you need to have to have a bias towards finding it. Otherwise you won’t find much of it. */*/* Do you apply your CTTs to things that are presented here? I suspect many here do not, and swallow whatever is posted that is antiPFAL, antiVPW, etc. With those items, activities here more resemble sports rivalries than academic pursuits.

On this topic, my hunch, I am 60% happy with the idea; happy enough to invest time into it. But with 40% uncertainty, I am always prepared to junk the idea.

I don't buy this shell game at all. You are forgetting that our modern courtrooms are based on the Biblical backgrounds that things like the law of Moses and the courtroom scene in Job. Jesus also helped built this template for our culture with his parable about the widow who repeatedly petitioned a judge. I think it is right and proper to look at Job as portraying a reluctant judge, who fights for Job and ultimately wins. What other interpretation IS there?

There is no "maybe" about it. The active POSTING audience, we all know, is practiced and poised to poke holes in anything I say.

You heard wrong. It's everything you need to get started in really reading the Bible.

Well, maybe you will see these two patterns, IF you actually look at them. The bias to bash really is disabling for subtle patterns like these. BTW, one of the lists is still not posted. You seem to be gearing your mind to reject it before I post it. I think the next funniest thing would be if you or someone else here was to say they can be an unbiased judge. I'm waiting for someone to imply or even state that.

I'm laughing at the irony of the blindness that a bias imparts. The irony is in the bias being a feeling of super knowing. But I wish you the best at the bema.