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mstar1,

You wrote: "Knowledge for knowledge sake puffeth up, if i remember rightly"

I think you got it right. One reason I never joined the Corps is I saw too many who seemed to want that knowledge for the prestige it gave on them, and the idea of serving others with it got farther and farther in the background as the 80's wore on.

***

But the opposite of knowledge accumulation can be wrong too. I was thrilled to see the way you quoted that verse: accurately according to it's context. If you had quoted it verbatim, like I've seen others do, it would have read "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth."

When challenged on doctrinal error, many run and hide behind this verse as if it's condoning ignorance. They develop a false doctrine of "If I just be nice to people it doesn't matter how accurate my theology is." This is the HEART of the error ridden pleasant social clubs that has been discussed here lately.

I think seeking after the knowledge of Who God is, who Jesus Christ is, and how can we effectively work in concert with them, as well as with people, is a wonderful thing and God encourages it highly. True Christianity is far more than morals and ethics.

***

You wrote: "Mike In my business I deal with churches of all types. Although they vary somewhat in their methods of practice, just about any one of the them is lightyears ahead of TWI in coordinating what they believe with making actual contributions to practical life."

Again, I agree. Many things did slip in the practical life areas for us, as well as the morals and ethics. Few paid any attention to "The Lifestyle of a Believer" booklet Dr issues toward the end. Our operation of the law of believing degenerated. We paid little attention to what was or was not actually on the "Available List" and thought we could simply "believe" for the practical things to work out magically. Our "believing" became mere "wishing" and the accompanying actions that must be there for genuine believing were often absent.

BECAUSE we were given such a large load of the Truth, the adversary hit us with pressures and lures to get sloppy with that knowledge and misapply it or not apply it at all.

I agree that many social club churches are far more practical in dealing with the surface issues of senses living that we were. But that's changing now. Many of us have seen that error and are changing. The only thing left is for us to... (...thanks Galen, for giving me a thread that's impossible for me to derail...) ...the only thing left for us to do is come back to PFAL and again start dealing with the deeper issues of spiritual living.

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quote:
Originally posted by Mike:

Why are they "great" if they are riddled with the kinds of errors I just listed?

Why is their never hearing of PFAL so significant to you? Does fame = truth in your book?

And why is PFAL so great if it, too, is riddled with errors (and it is)?

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quote:
Originally posted by UncleHairy:

It's unbelievable how so many still worship at the feet of Vic the grifter and his spermsickle cult. I say throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I agree!

Hear me out, though:

My belief is that if we who still profess to be Christians decide to follow this advice, and honestly examine the scriptures, we will not have lost any "baby" in PFAL. We will, however, have lost ALL the bathwater. Not a bad exchange.

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Raf,

It's not riddled with errors if you use the proper set of tools to examine it.

If you used your current set of tools on your KJV, or any other representation of the original scriptures, you'd find them wanting too.

Your toolbox contains a fundamental assumption of: PFAL is man-breathed. You treat it with that attitude, and you get the results you do.

If you treated the Bible with that same attitude, you'd get similar results.

If you Google up "Biblical contradictions" or "Bible errors" you will find many contributors to the list of these so-called errors use the same toolset you use. They refuse to recognize the proper Author of the original scriptures, refuse to apply the idea that apparent contradictions and errors are merely apparent, and they halt their research when then find the "errors" they are looking for.

Bible "errors" can be found if the wrong set of tools are used. PFAL "errors" can be found the same way.

With all the massive and deep social errors AND doctrinal errors (TVT) that crept into TWI, I can understand your motivation to use the toolset you use. When you arrived LCM and many others had totally corrupted the scene. I can totally understand your loathing to use the toolset I suggest. I have no reasonable expectation of convincing you to do otherwise.

Those of us who did witness a decade of somewhat proper application of the PFAL teachings, along with a decent social setting, CAN be expected to re-examine PFAL to see that those written teachings were NOT responsible for the chaos you were exposed to. Those who did witness the "good old days" CAN adopt the respectful and meek approach that my toolset encompasses, and they will see all the apparent errors in those PFAL writings reconciled, just like the Googled Bible errors get reconciled.

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It's a TWI/PFAL myth that applying the biblical research keys would necessarily yield "the truth" in all cases. Go visit the doctrinal forum and see people arguing opposite sides of an isssue, and both sides can cite scripture to back up their point.

Just because we learned something in PFAL, and it still makes sense, and the opposite view seems to not make sense, and we've worked it ourselves, doesn't necessarily mean it's "truth". There are too many points along the way where our own understanding, faulty translations or definitions, or just lack of cultural context could lead us to the wrong conclusion. Yet we feel qualified to judge a church's doctrine as unambiguously "false".

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quote:
Originally posted by Mike:

WordWolf and dmiller,

Your homework assignment is due today!

Show me all the KJV verses that mention the "return" of Christ.

Geez -- I didn't know I had an assignment due. icon_confused.gif:confused:-->

And while I am at it -- do you mean the *return*, or the *rapture*? I confess to inter-changingly using the two terms myself, even though I know better. icon_smile.gif:)-->

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quote:
Those who did witness the "good old days" CAN adopt the respectful and meek approach that my toolset encompasses, and they will see all the apparent errors in those PFAL writings reconciled,

Hmmm. I was there in the *good old days*, and I guess your "toolset" is kept right on your "table of challenge", eh?

Here is an assignment for you. You said:

quote:
Our operation of the law of believing degenerated.

Show me your verses (not docvic-speak) where this is called a *law*. I know you can find it in pfal, but not in the bible. icon_smile.gif:)-->

But since you think the bible to be *flawed*, and pfal to be *god-breathed*, I don't expect this assignment to be completed. icon_frown.gif:(-->

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dmiller,

I don't think the Bible is flawed. It's what has been pass down from antiquity, with all its alterations, that I see as flawed. Anyone who's scratched out a spurious KJV verse or phrase, or written a better translation in the wide margin is acknowledging that the book in their hands is flawed.

***

You wrote: "Geez -- I didn't know I had an assignment due."

I was kidding, of course. The answer is that there are NO verses in the KJV that talk about the "return" of Christ.

There is an article that appeared in a very early CES magazine on this, around 1989. It asserted that our TWI use of the word "return" was inaccurate, and that we should have been using words like "coming" or "appearing" or "gathering."

I initially thought the article was accurate, and that Dr was just a little sloppy in using the term "return" so much. In recent years, as I have been closely looking at his exact use of words, I now see that he was using it in the way I described a few days ago here: in close association with the Christ in us RETURNING to the revelations God initiated in 1942.

All these words like "coming" and "appearing" and "gathering" and "return" are related, yet all have their slight differences in what exactly they refer to.

I think "rapture" is Latin, and I don't like it.

Right from the start, in Session One, Dr brings up the idea of us coming back or returning to "this" Word. I have a large file to someday share on over a hundred such other places in his teachings where he talks about these kinds of things.

***

You wrote: "Hmmm. I was there in the *good old days*, and I guess your "toolset" is kept right on your "table of challenge", eh?"

I make up these terms just for conversation sake. It's the ideas behind them that I hope you will consider.

***

You wrote: "Here is an assignment for you... Show me your verses (not docvic-speak) where this is called a *law*. I know you can find it in pfal, but not in the bible. __ But since you think the bible to be *flawed*, and pfal to be *god-breathed*, I don't expect this assignment to be completed."

I have no KJV verses that use the word "law" in conjunction with believing. I don't think there are any.

The original scriptures were not flawed at all. But when culture changed, and language changed, and religious bias filled the culture, then many ideas in the scriptures became very elusive to simple linear translation.

In the Orientalisms class we were taught that the Bible is a Eastern book. It was written by Eastern people to Eastern people using Eastern imagery. There are many Eastern ideas that have simple Eastern expressions to express them. These expressions don't convey the same ideas to Western minds if translated word for word in a simple linear fashion. Someone with oversight of the cultural differences must step in to help make the transition.

The same thing works in reverse. There are Western concepts, like that of a scientific law, which have no simple counterpart word in the ancient Eastern world's vocabulary. Someone with oversight of the cultural differences did step in, God, and gave Dr the revelation (sometimes via other men) that the Western word "law" was appropriate in discussing the situation with believing.

In our culture the word "law" conveys certain ideas. Those ideas can be seen in the verses that describe believing and all that it entails.

I've asked Raf repeatedly: if he is so sure that believing NOT a law, then WHAT IS a law? I think he doesn't know, because he practices what he hates most in me whenever I ask him this: he dodges the question.

Here is what a scientific law is in our Western world: it's a pattern that can be observed to happen all the time when the same conditions are set up.

The pattern happens the same way for all people, in all places, at all times.

That's the bare bones basics of a scientific law. Legal laws are similar, but they are man-made and have lots of loopholes and exceptions, and are sometimes not enforced. A scientific law works the same way all the time, no exceptions.... until you get down into the quantum level of the extremely small, and there the exceptions themselves STILL follow laws, just different laws.

Newton was a theologian by trade, and science was his hobby. He and his contemporaries used the word "law" as I described and derived it from the law of Moses.

What Dr taught was identical with what all the scriptures teach about believing, and he added the word "law" to his teaching, by revelation from God, to convey the Western notions I just outlined.

The word "law" (when used with believing) is just a convenient abbreviation of a large set of ideas boiled down to a few small symbols. All those ideas can be seen in long form in the ancient scriptures.

The confusion we experienced with this law seeming to not work for us was due to several things:

### We got sloppy about the Available List with which this law works. We tried to apply believing to things other than the promises of God.

### We got sloppy with our understanding of exactly what those promises were. Our accurate understanding of God's Word drifted away from the fresh revelations God was guiding Dr to put into written form, and we drifted towards traditional concepts and/or our own unguided research into the ancient scriptures.

### We got sloppy with our mental operations, thinking that mere mental assent (or agreeing with a promise under agreeable circumstances) was genuine believing. When the circumstances became disagreeable, our mental assent was challenged and withered. If we had progressed from mental assent (which IS a good start) to genuine believing, then we would have seen the law "enforced" after we waited out the storm of doubts that come with the disagreeable circumstances.

When we come back to the accuracy of God's Word in the written forms of PFAL we will see that the law of believing works well as we get accurate on what to believe for, and have that abundance of Word to help us progress from mental assent to believing, and develop that mental discipline to persist in the storms of doubt that get thrown at all of God's children.

.

Edited by Mike
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Danny,

Yes, I do paint with a broad brush, and senses wise it's pretty accurate; spiritually it's totally accurate. "We" did get sloppy in all those things.

***

justloafing,

You seem to have a hard time focusing on the issue at hand. Or did you resort to those two standard distractions on purpose? There are a lot of hours in every day. How many of those hours do you devote to breaking the greatest commandment by loving something other than the One True God?

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Well, you return from the dusty roads of Kakamega Kenya and what do you find bouncing around these pages?

Mike chooses an interesting rubrick which is a kingpin of his assertions: the English Bible is hopelessly flawed, especially the KJV.

Mike you need a few lessons on the origins and state of the English bible, including the relative translation protocols of the various versions, recent shifts in textual theory including a debunking Westcott & Horts strange favoring of the Alexandrian family of texts.

Mike, you are unworthy to even wipe the hiney of the least of the KJV translators. It is one of the crowning masterpieces of human history, forever remaking the role of our language in world events and setting the stage for the birth of our nation. A little reading may go a long way of raising your esteem for something you so readily trash.

How convenient. create a Big Problem (where none exists). Then propose an Exclusive™ & Patented© solution to the fabricated problem. shady salesmen & grifters do it all the time...

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Looks like Mike is now pointing fingers and quoting verses...how typical of religious fanatics. Mike, you speak for no one but yourself...trust me on this. For you to suggest that grifter Vic's plagiarized class was "God breathed" suggests to me that you are in need of some serious therapy. Wierwille never claimed that...he claimed just the opposite.

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TheEvan,

It's a relative thing.

I have GREAT respect for what the KJV can do, and did do for me, and for Western civilization. So much so that I feel the 27 years I spent trying to master it were well spent.

You just have not understood my posts, and only latched onto a small portion of my words. AND YOU EVEN ADMITTED THIS ONCE!

I am thankfully exposed to KJV verses every time I open up a PFAL collateral.

Since God chose the KJV to have the written form of His revelations to Dr focused on, and wrapped around, that work MUST be of great significance.

It's a relative thing. As far as the words of man, as far as man-breathed efforts to represent God's written Word go, the KJV is way up there in prominence.

Compared to the PFAL writings, the KJV takes a lower place, though.

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quote:
Originally posted by Mike:

Raf,

It's not riddled with errors if you use the proper set of tools to examine it.

If you used your current set of tools on your KJV, or any other representation of the original scriptures, you'd find them wanting too.

Your toolbox contains a fundamental assumption of: PFAL is man-breathed. You treat it with that attitude, and you get the results you do.

If you treated the Bible with that same attitude, you'd get similar results.

If one treated ANY book with the attitude you approach the pfal books,

that book would be seen as "perfect" also.

pfal IS riddled with errors. Lying about Raf doesn't change that.

It doesn't require ANY kind of toolkit to see that the Orange Book gives

a standard that something God-given can not have one single error.

It doesn't require ANY kind of toolkit to see that early in the book and

class, we're told that "all the women in the kingdom belonged to the

king." It doesn't take a degree in history to notice that this claim was

never substantiated, because it was completely wrong. If it was technically

true, Nathan would have had no basis on which to confront King David.

If it was historically accurate, it would not contradict all the laws

of the Old Testament. Therefore, that claim is an ERROR, and, according

to pfal, any book with a factual or doctrinal ERROR is NOT divine

inspiration. (This was not an "inksmudge" or an "editing mistake",

either-that's exactly what vpw MEANT to say, AND it was WRONG.)

Therefore, using the "toolkit" of pfal ITSELF, it failed by its own

standards that quickly. This is not a problem to 99.99% of the graduates

of pfal, who don't think it was supposed to be divine revelation.

An entire book was added, "Christians Should Be Prosperous", written BY

vpw for inclusion in the pfal materials. It's main premise and its

documentation are both in error-God does not require a tithe now.

By pfal's standards, that error-BASED book is NOT divine,

but then again, it wasn't claimed to be so.

Hiding from the ERRORS, pretending the ERRORS don't exist,

and outright LIES and PERSONAL ATTACKS on people who've seen the ERRORS

don't change the reality of the errors.

You can slap the label "apples" on the pickle-jar, but that doesn't turn

the pickles into apples.

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quote:
Originally posted by Mike:

dmiller,

You wrote: "Here is an assignment for you... Show me your verses (not docvic-speak) where this is called a *law*. I know you can find it in pfal, but not in the bible. __ But since you think the bible to be *flawed*, and pfal to be *god-breathed*, I don't expect this assignment to be completed."

I have no KJV verses that use the word "law" in conjunction with believing. I don't think there are any.

The original scriptures were not flawed at all. But when culture changed, and language changed, and religious bias filled the culture, then many ideas in the scriptures became very elusive to simple linear translation.

In the Orientalisms class we were taught that the Bible is a Eastern book. It was written by Eastern people to Eastern people using Eastern imagery. There are many Eastern ideas that have simple Eastern expressions to express them. These expressions don't convey the same ideas to Western minds if translated word for word in a simple linear fashion. Someone with oversight of the cultural differences must step in to help make the transition.

The same thing works in reverse. There are Western concepts, like that of a scientific law, which have no simple counterpart word in the ancient Eastern world's vocabulary. Someone with oversight of the cultural differences did step in, God, and gave Dr the revelation (sometimes via other men) that the Western word "law" was appropriate in discussing the situation with believing.

In our culture the word "law" conveys certain ideas. Those ideas can be seen in the verses that describe believing and all that it entails.

I've asked Raf repeatedly: if he is so sure that believing NOT a law, then WHAT IS a law? I think he doesn't know, because he practices what he hates most in me whenever I ask him this: he dodges the question.

Here is what a scientific law is in our Western world: it's a pattern that can be observed to happen all the time when the same conditions are set up.

The pattern happens the same way for all people, in all places, at all times.

That's the bare bones basics of a scientific law. Legal laws are similar, but they are man-made and have lots of loopholes and exceptions, and are sometimes not enforced. A scientific law works the same way all the time, no exceptions.... until you get down into the quantum level of the extremely small, and there the exceptions themselves STILL follow laws, just different laws.

Newton was a theologian by trade, and science was his hobby. He and his contemporaries used the word "law" as I described and derived it from the law of Moses.

What Dr taught was identical with what all the scriptures teach about believing, and he added the word "law" to his teaching, by revelation from God, to convey the Western notions I just outlined.

The word "law" (when used with believing) is just a convenient abbreviation of a large set of ideas boiled down to a few small symbols. All those ideas can be seen in long form in the ancient scriptures.

The confusion we experienced with this law seeming to not work for us was due to several things:

.

There you go, rewriting history again.

Those of us who were here saw exactly what happened.

Raf demonstrated that "believing" is not a "law".

Then you kept trying to crowbar exceptions into various definitions of the

word "law".

Then you told him you rejected the meaning of the word "law" as defined by

everyone else, and asked him for more definitions.

Then Raf, who ALREADY had provided SEVERAL, said it was YOUR TURN, since you

claimed to HAVE a definition that worked, and said that you'd refuse to give

it, since to give a definition would mean you'd have to remain faithful to it,

rather than change the meanings and definitions as you always do.

Your response was to refuse to give a definition.

Now you're claiming HE dodged the question.

(That's as intellectually honest as the claim that Jesus cast out devils

by the prince of devils.)

Further, HE asked YOU repeatedly.

You must be reading a heavily-edited version of your own posts.

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quote:
Originally posted by Mike:

TheEvan,

It's a relative thing.

I have GREAT respect for what the KJV can do, and did do for me, and for Western civilization. So much so that I feel the 27 years I spent trying to master it were well spent.

You just have not understood my posts, and only latched onto a small portion of my words. AND YOU EVEN ADMITTED THIS ONCE!

I am thankfully exposed to KJV verses every time I open up a PFAL collateral.

Since God chose the KJV to have the written form of His revelations to Dr focused on, and wrapped around, that work MUST be of great significance.

It's a relative thing. As far as the words of man, as far as man-breathed efforts to represent God's written Word go, the KJV is way up there in prominence.

Compared to the PFAL writings, the KJV takes a lower place, though.

....and yet,

with all your reading of pfal,

you STILL miss its testimony about The Word of God, and how reading

the English Versions, it is possible to get to The Word of God....

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quote:
It's not riddled with errors if you use the proper set of tools to examine it.

If you used your current set of tools on your KJV, or any other representation of the original scriptures, you'd find them wanting too.

ok -- Fair enough. Let's use Docvic's (or maybe your) *set of tools*, on Interpretion of Tongues.

Doc was a big one on *first usage*, right??. What was the first usage of speaking in tongues, and the interpretation right after, in Acts?? If you answered *It magnified God* -- I'll give you an A+.

However -- Docvic went on to teach that tongues and interpretaton was a message from God or for God and that directly contradicts Acts (in the first usage) --- where it was a *message* To God As Praise.

If you hold a fellowship in your home, and have manifestations, and call on someone to speak in tongues and then interperet, their interpretation better not start out with "My Children" -- cause if it does -- you all are doing something that is not in the book of Acts, but are following veepee's teaching.

Whenever I hear *My Children* in a believer's meeting --- IT IS PROPHECY! Doen't believe me?? Take a look at Acts 2:11 -- where the witnesses of the Apostles speaking in tongues gave witness to the fact that the Apostles were praising God , NOT giving a message from God.

Doc Vic got this one wrong too --- PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

Now --- if you have verses showing me otherwise, or if you even have docvic saying otherwise, I will listen. Trouble is -- I sat through those classes, and I know what he said. He is in diametric opposition to the Word, and you are saying what he says is *God-breathed*.

Which *god* --- Mike ??????????????????

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"Compared to the PFAL writings, the KJV takes a lower place, though."

I suspect that such outlandish remarks are meant to provoke. Certainly nobody with half a brain could possibly take you seriously.

Mike, I remember quite well that Wierwille, during the pfal class...elevates the bible far above his own writings. How many times did we hear Veepee say...(I'm paraphrasing) "It's the word, the word and nothing but the word. I may make mistakes in my writings and what I teach but the word of God is perfect." Wierille NEVER intended for anyone to elevate his class as you have done. You have done exactly what Veepee warned people NOT to do. How utterly foolish of you to embrace the writings of a man such as this...and call them "God breathed". Wierwille's writings were not God breathed, in fact his writings are a joke and don't even meet the standards of "Man breathed" in any qualitive way.

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