Mike

Dang! Had I remembered to wear my tuxedo, you'd be in checkmate.

For us it is no longer a life or death kind of struggle, but for others it still is a very desperate situation... a war of epic proportions! But if you look at 1 John (ashamed) and 1 Cor 3 (suffer loss) you will see that even for us, the loss of rewards can be a very devastating thing. The Word compares it to having your house burn to the ground. We are in a competition FOR KEEPS, and there is no blowing it off.

It sounds to me like you, as a victim, are totally unaware of the spiritual war going on all around us.

I will find the paper copy of the mag for scanning.

As far as living God's ways, the only practical application I can see for this thread's maybe-idea is to hang in there with patience and persistence if you are not getting an answer to prayer. Always trust that God is doing His best and that He will eventually get through. That is my take-away from this whole thread.

Time doesn't permit me to read this whole thread, but I know I have the GMIR article that answers the big question posed at the beginning of the thread. Did I post that article here? I may have not found it in 2005, but I know I have it now.

I don't think that it is superior. It is just a candidate for that. Plus, it's not like I know of a bunch of other ways of looking at some of these scriptures, so it's hard for me to compare my ideas to others' ideas. This set of ideas that I presented in this thread simply kept bubbling up to the surface of my mind for decades, as I would be reading the Word and come across things. As far as being superior ideas, they sure are superior at bubbling up. None others can compete with that.

At the beginning of this thread and several times through it I have said that I have NOT YET gone through the PFAL steps for this one idea of budget and double doors. This idea is not yet ready for that kind of study. I did this same thing with the Canon idea, but that idea was much more developed, and I was turning the PFAL crank on that. On the Determinism versus Free Will thread, my developing of a set of minFW ideas had very little PFAL cranking in it, but lots of science cranking. I think it has been rare here that I bring up undeveloped new ideas. Long ago I was working the area of spiritual versus senses knowledge in the Ubiquitous thread circa 2003, but it got too complicated for me to finish, so I backed off of that undeveloped idea. The mirror reversal puzzle I presented here was totally developed and nailed down, but I had to practice my presentation. Later I wrote it up for a different audience in finished form. Other than those minor exceptions, HERE I try to present PFAL cranked ideas most of the time.

If you can add to my understanding of it, please teach us all the chapter as you see it.

No. You got that condescending Way Brain Condemnation working on overtime. Give it a rest. Let me explain what you missed with your rotten attitudes blinding you. (1) I had this odd and cumbersome idea as to how a bunch of these odd verses fit together. (2) I thrashingly try to express this odd idea, that no one yet knows is true or not because of its oddness and novelty and difficulty for me to express. Bu (3) But I try anyway and make a little progress, and take special note of how other posters reacted to it. If they reacted WRONGLY, that is I could see they didn't get what I had tried to say, then I get to learn how to express this odd idea better the next time. */*/*/* It's not like I am saying "My odd idea is correct and you all got it wrong." What I am saying is "My odd idea did not get processed properly by you and/or me, so I will try to express it again. So the "wrongness" I was talking about is the communication of this odd idea from me to you. From your feedback I can see I still need to try better explanations, as I examine your feedback on how this odd idea works. I was NOT saying you all are wrong for not understanding me. Please go back and re-read some of my recent posts with this better perspective in mind.

I am merely thrashing about an idea here. It's not like I bet my life on it. There are just these odd verses, that seem to want an odd interpretation.

Sometimes...He barely eeks by. And those that are documented are there for our learning.

I've mentioned recently some of the scriptures that baffled me, until this idea gelled. One was the flaming sword in Genesis that actually protected man. Another was how Paul both saw Jesus and was blinded on the Road to Damascus. Like in Daniel 9, I see the True God and the devil both at work, and God won, but just barelyh. I believe the devil was trying to kill Paul, but God provided enough protection to save his life, and later his vision.

You are trying to crank logic WAY too early. I'm trying to use actual scriptures as anchors for what I think. So, far this chapter 9 in Daniel is an obvious scene of a close struggle and God's intent delayed. PERIOD Now how we interpret that has to fit with other scriptures that are similar. One is the flaming 2 edged sword that guards the tree of life... another limitation, again to protect man. I don't see any of these things as limiting God Himself. It is limitations that God put on His major interventions in the senses world, and it seems (again from some scriptures) that God then can "legally" or "equitably" limit the major interventions on the world by the devil. I see these limitations as like PARTIAL INSULATION of the senses world from the devil, and in the way this insulation works, it limits God also. This whole thread is just me working a loose hunch, based on scriptural anchors. I'm also learning how to express this idea better and better, based on how people get it wrong.

I was referring to how the Word says there are twice as many good angels as bad. That seems to say their number is finite. It also seems that Daniel 9 is about an angelic visit. I try to learn from it. The sense that I see in this chapter is that God's infinite power was not used, and instead this angel, and how ever many other angels he had in his command, were taking a long time in answering Daniel's prayer because they were meeting opposing forces that hindered them, thus delaying them. So I see in this chapter that God did not use His unlimited powers to answer Daniel's prayer, but instead He is limited Himself to the angels that eventually got the job done. This is the idea I had in mind when I used the word "budget" for this thread.

It suddenly occurred to me that in Daniel 9, the struggling GOOD ANGELS were God's budget. God limited Himself to these angels to get a job done, and it was a struggle that took time for them. We know the angels are numbered, and therefore not infinite in that kind of power. So, in Daniel 9 we see God getting a job done within His budget, beating the devil's ability to work his budget. But we do NOT see an overwhelming infinite force that QUICKLY wipes out the devil's resistance. The numbered angels are God's budget. (....I told you this idea comes and goes for decades with me.)

His father could have had a different last name.

It is a fact.

Rogue snow storms in rural areas can come and go in minutes and cover small patches of land much less than a city block. Weather stations, especially in rural Ohio in 1942 were no where near able to sample large swaths of land like radar can now. Most rogue snow storms are not witnessed by anyone to report them in rural areas. In 1942, to whom would such a report be made? Remember they had no Internet then, and long distance phone calls were very prohibitive. Several times here a poster (I forget his name), who is sympathetic to most of the Greasespot conversations, somewhat reluctantly reported on seeing 2 such rogue snow storms in his time near HQ. I have quoted his report several times over 15 years here. No one pays attention or remembers because if does not fit in with the anti-idol hate program. I could find the name of this poster, but I know it will not influence a single synapse in your thinking to see it again.

You missed my reference to 1942. Add to it rural Ohio where you can see the weather coming 100 miles away. Other flimsy data includes the words from VPW while he was driving Elena Whiteside around the county (WLIL) , and another while he was teaching a Sunday service (Light Began to Dawn). Hardly what I would call a time when he was concentrating carefully on gatting dates and places in his distant past 100% accurate. I know I can't get my past real accurate without graph paper, a pencil, a good eraser, and a few weeks to pinpoint things. Then there is the issue of rogue snow storms that last a few minutes and only cover a football field at most, and we have had first-hand solid data reported here about this. I laugh at the flimsy efforts here to undo the earth shaking God did with PFAL starting in 1942.

That's one of the reasons I used the word flimsy.

Oh yes. It was very memorable in its uniqueness. I chalk it up to just another way he was telling us that God was directly teaching him on how to fix the broken doctrine of churchianity. Without such an intervention by God in 1942, there was no chance of churchianity ever getting back to what God had set up. It was when I started taking the 1942 promise seriously in 1998 that MANY enigmatic things of VPW started fitting together. I never took it seriously before 1998. I saw others who were very moved by that story, but not me. I had no way of verifying it. Same with the smattering of miracles I'd hear about. The doctrinal things that I was able to verify were what occupied my attention. I spent years going through them one by one. But the 1942 promise did not interest me. But by 1998 quite a few enigmas had accumulated, and the no evidence for the CF&S presentation on the original sin was just one of them. The mandate to the Research Department was another set of enigmas. These and a few others were all cleared up when I started taking the 1942 promise seriously in 1998, and seriously reading all the collaterals with that meekness installed in my brain. It was a very deliberate, non-emotional decision. I was not sleep deprived or in a cult lifestyle. I had 26 years of evidence to sift through, and had observed how poorly all the leaders after him did with their classes. It is from this solidity that I laugh at the flimsy weather report research done to try and debunk the details that were given on the 1942 promise.

I agree about the evidence part. It was the only time I ever saw or heard of VPW saying anything like that.

You are incorrectly merging what LCM said on the original sin with what VPW said about it.

Oftentimes a doctrine would appear in the written or taped teachings, and then in later years the TVT versions of that doctrine will have become distorted. I think this happened with feelings. We were given some good advice about not letting feelings run our doctrinal lives, and then it was later distorted and expanded in the later TVTs. I think we should ALWAYS check the record in matters like this, and not rely on 40 year old memories that are saturated with negative feelings for some.