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Power for Abundant Living Today™


OldSkool
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One of the many problems I have with rehashed PFAL is all the self-help type verbage they use to advertise it. Well...law of believing is major error... as is administrations...etc...anywho.
 

The life-changing truths in this class will help each student:
 
overcome worry and fear
increase in prosperity
maintain health
develop more harmony in the home
pray effectively
—and so much more!


https://www.theway.org/blog/power-for-abundant-living-today/

Edited by OldSkool
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Let's hope they got rid of the red drapes, Johnny Jumpup, Maggie Muggins, and some of the more obvious errors.  No doubt they've also reworked the Orange and White books.

Do they still push the collaterals, I wonder?

 

I won't be signing up again to find out!!!!

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Strikes me that it's a bit like new wine (new presentation) into an old wineskin - since their website states: "Although it has been nearly seventy years since the original Power for Abundant Living class was first taught, the heart of it remains the same—to teach the timeless truths of God’s Word  [according to TWI] so that men and women of all ages can manifest the power of God in their lives."

Although they do admit this:

"While it expounds upon the same foundational truths covered in the original class, Power for Abundant Living Today is tailored to the day and time in which we live. It truly is a new class for a new generation."

Perhaps they have updated things a bit.  Perhaps.

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I'm curious how they will handle  PFAL page 83 where it says:

"Not all  that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed."

 

i THINK most grads have never flashed on that sentence, neither in the book, nor in the film class. They are nearly identical. When  people read it fast, or listen to the audio, it slips by like greased lightning!

Even when people do see of hear it, I am pretty sure that they mentally figure that they read it wrong. "He couldn't have said THAT!" they say.  And so they forge it to say what they figure it MUST have been saying, which is:
What Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed."

I am TOTALLY SURE that many do DELIBERATELY forge the sentence to say that, because they tell me so.

It would be almost funny if they left that line in intact, because it probably means no one even saw it.... the norm.
It would be tragic if then forged it to what they want it to say.

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3 hours ago, Twinky said:

Strikes me that it's a bit like new wine (new presentation) into an old wineskin - since their website states: "Although it has been nearly seventy years since the original Power for Abundant Living class was first taught, the heart of it remains the same—to teach the timeless truths of God’s Word  [according to TWI] so that men and women of all ages can manifest the power of God in their lives."

Although they do admit this:

"While it expounds upon the same foundational truths covered in the original class, Power for Abundant Living Today is tailored to the day and time in which we live. It truly is a new class for a new generation."

Perhaps they have updated things a bit.  Perhaps.

 

Well, I can't speak regarding this particular class because I have never, and will never take it. However, I was married to a former way publications lady. Their method of editing for their publications is not developmental editing. Think copy edit/proofreading here. They tend to make all their books agree with one another, removing VPW's various and sundry rants, redacting anything that could indicate that TWI is a cult or that could potentially land them in legal trouble. So any editing they do absolutely does not indicate a change in doctrinal direction for them. Those doctrical points are condidered proven research and are above question.

 

As for the red drapes. Who knows if the illustration is removed but you can bet your bottom dollar that the prosperity gospel based law of believing is still sitting there as well as administrations/dispensations. Forget about the first century, dispensationalism traces back to John Nelson Darby from the 1800s and isn't found anywhere in early Church history.

Edited by OldSkool
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Excerpts from the first draft for a totally revised burnt orange book “Power For Materialistic Living Today”, page 3, Introduction: The Materialistic Life

…This post literally changed my life. My extraordinary life first began on Myspace, plodding ahead with keeping up with the Joneses; but somehow, I lacked a very materialistic life. Then one time I was especially alerted when I read on social media that there was a man with a Th.M.  (a degree in Materialistic Theology)   who said he had come to give us an even more materialistic life. I was stupefied into submission. 

I looked about on social media and compared my current Facebook account where I post mostly pictures of myself. I could see that many online communities were manifesting a more materialistic life than I was. Thus, I earnestly began to pursue the question,   “If this materialistic specialist came so that men and women might have a more materialistic life, why is it that my selfies on Facebook do not manifest even a materialistic life?
 

Edited by T-Bone
I am come that I might edit more abundantly
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8 hours ago, Twinky said:

Let's hope they got rid of the red drapes, Johnny Jumpup, Maggie Muggins, and some of the more obvious errors.  No doubt they've also reworked the Orange and White books.

Do they still push the collaterals, I wonder?

 

I won't be signing up again to find out!!!!

 

I don't know if they give their books away as part of the class registration any longer. Their bookstore pretty much tells the tale though.

 

https://store.theway.org/product-category/books/page/2/

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2 hours ago, T-Bone said:

Excerpts from the first draft for a totally revised burnt orange book “Power For Materialistic Living Today”, page 3, Introduction: The Materialistic Life

…This post literally changed my life. My extraordinary life first began on Myspace, plodding ahead with keeping up with the Joneses; but somehow, I lacked a very materialistic life. Then one time I was especially alerted when I read on social media that there was a man with a Th.M.  (a degree in Materialistic Theology)   who said he had come to give us an even more materialistic life. I was stupefied into submission. 

I looked about on social media and compared my current Facebook account where I post mostly pictures of myself. I could see that many online communities were manifesting a more materialistic life than I was. Thus, I earnestly began to pursue the question,   “If this materialistic specialist came so that men and women might have a more materialistic life, why is it that my selfies on Facebook do not manifest even a materialistic life?
 

ROFLMAO! I think this about hits the nail on the head.

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Mike:

"I'm curious how they will handle  PFAL page 83 where it says:

"Not all  that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed.""

===========================================================

I'm not.

As Goey pointed out the first time you mentioned this sentence, long ago (even wierwille would have dinged you for isolating it from its context- as in "why don't they ever read the next verse?" )  ,  vpw was contrasting "THE SCRIPTURES"- which he said are "GOD-BREATHED" - with his own writings and the writings of a number of men.   Looking for HIDDEN meanings in sentences with OBVIOUS meanings takes one down the rabbit hole very quickly.

 

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2 hours ago, WordWolf said:

Mike:

"I'm curious how they will handle  PFAL page 83 where it says:

"Not all  that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed.""

===========================================================

I'm not.

As Goey pointed out the first time you mentioned this sentence, long ago (even wierwille would have dinged you for isolating it from its context- as in "why don't they ever read the next verse?" )  ,  vpw was contrasting "THE SCRIPTURES"- which he said are "GOD-BREATHED" - with his own writings and the writings of a number of men.   Looking for HIDDEN meanings in sentences with OBVIOUS meanings takes one down the rabbit hole very quickly.

 

 

Not all that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed; not what 'Calvin said, nor Luther, nor Wesley, nor Graham, nor Roberts; but the Scriptures - they are God-breathed.

It's obvious that he was trying to include himself amongst well known Christian writers/leaders. However, in no way was he saying his writings are God breathed. My inclination knowing way publications is they most likely editied that out of the newer versions of PFAL. Older editions of Wierwille's "writings" are littered with contradictions amongst themselves. Of course he plagairaised his work so cross checking his "material" for accuracy was appearantly not important to him. Way Publications has spent YEARS cleaning up his writings.

 

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26 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

 

Not all that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed; not what 'Calvin said, nor Luther, nor Wesley, nor Graham, nor Roberts; but the Scriptures - they are God-breathed.

It's obvious that he was trying to include himself amongst well known Christian writers/leaders. However, in no way was he saying his writings are God breathed. My inclination knowing way publications is they most likely editied that out of the newer versions of PFAL. Older editions of Wierwille's "writings" are littered with contradictions amongst themselves. Of course he plagairaised his work so cross checking his "material" for accuracy was appearantly not important to him. Way Publications has spent YEARS cleaning up his writings.

 

 

You are not looking at the grammar of that sentence.   It says that normally  VPW's words were just as untrustworthy as others, EXCEPT when he was working with God on the God-breathed writings that we need so much. I can't think of ANY God-breathed writings PHYSICALLY existing today.   Can you?

You are like all the others who look ONLY at the context of PFAL page 83.  You ignore WHAT IS WRITTEN.

I am claiming that the grammar says that VPW's earthly words are flowing with the surrounding context, AND that the same sentence mentions a MAJOR exception, and that's the God-Breathed documents thet God produced with VPW.

You are not handling the words "not all" and "necessarily" in your context analysis above.

What you (and nearly everyone too) want that sentence to say is
"What Wierwille writes will necessarily not be God-breathed.

With that forgery, the context is smooth and contains no major exceptions, like Dr and God wanted in there.

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46 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

 

Not all that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed; not what 'Calvin said, nor Luther, nor Wesley, nor Graham, nor Roberts; but the Scriptures - they are God-breathed.

 

 

 

not all = some

So now we have
"Some of what Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed."

But why the word "necessarily" ?


 

Here is my expanded paraphrase of that passage on page 83.:


“Men have lots of untrustworthy words, even great leaders in the Church. That applies to me also, even though I was commissioned by God to restore accuracy to the scriptures and teach it in 1942. Some of my words are not God-breathed, even though the work I was commissioned to do for God involves writing God-breathed words.”

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It is going to be very interesting how they handle that sentence in PFAL-T

I am bringing this up with my TWI contacts.

Chances are they will be too spiritually asleep to notice it.  I only knew of one person who knew page 83 was astoundingly significant, and that was 1982.  I have never heard anyone mention it since.

 

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In case anyone is late to this 20-some-odd-year-old "conversation," the real problem is that Wierwille in his writings which ARE allegedly God-breathed provides us with very specific characteristics of the "God-breathed" word, characteristics his own writings do not live up to. We have cited multiple examples, any one of which would disqualify the thesis that Wierwille's writings are God-breathed according to Wierwille's outline of the characteristics of God-breathed writings.

The preferred method of dealing with these... let's call them Actual Errors in PFAL, has been to dodge. Distract. Deny. Anything but admit an error is an error.

I swear I am not making any of that up.

Anywho, My views have changed dramatically since we first engaged in this debate. I've come to the realization that the only thing Wierwille wrote that was genuinely true was that he reached the point in his life where he no longer believed the words "holy" or "bible" on the cover of the book. Everything he said and did in his life from that point forward is consistent with a con man milking gullible people for everything they're worth, abusing their sincerity for his own personal profit.

But to be certain, one can remain a faithful believer in Christ while also realizing that Wierwille's characteristics of the God-breathed Word not only don't apply to his own writings, but they don't apply to the Bible either. Because the Bible is not God's Word. I'm not saying that because I'm an unbeliever. I'm saying that because if you read the Bible, you realize very quickly that it does not consider itself God's Word. It doesn't even consider itself a thing. The Bible is not aware of itself as "a" book. That's why Wierwille can say he didn't believe the word "holy" (because his education showed him it wasn't) or "Bible" (because that gives the 66 documents a unity they never had in authorship or compilation).

Wierwille came to the same realization I did. He just chose to milk the church where I chose to leave it.

The Bible is not the God-breathed Word even according to the Bible! God's Word, Biblically, can be learned from reading the Bible, but they are not the same thing. They do not pretend to be. When you see it that way, contradictions and errors are just things to ignore. Mistakes made by men making a good faith effort to communicate God's will. Nothing falls apart if a preposition is out of place. Luke and Matthew can just disagree about what happened to Judas, neither of them knowing for sure because they didn't know any apostles. Biblical errors and contradictions are the natural result of different authors writing about the same characters decades apart with conflicting sources of information.

And Wierwille's errors can just be ignored as the growing pains of someone who adjusted his teaching as he learned more, whether he was sincere about it or not.

But Wierwille's books are God-breathed? Nonsense. Not if Wierwille was right about what God-breathed means. And you can bank on that regardless of how you feel about my current beliefs. 

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8 minutes ago, Raf said:

In case anyone is late to this 20-some-odd-year-old "conversation," the real problem is that Wierwille in his writings which ARE allegedly God-breathed provides us with very specific characteristics of the "God-breathed" word, characteristics his own writings do not live up to. We have cited multiple examples, any one of which would disqualify the thesis that Wierwille's writings are God-breathed according to Wierwille's outline of the characteristics of God-breathed writings.

The preferred method of dealing with these... let's call them Actual Errors in PFAL, has been to dodge. Distract. Deny. Anything but admit an error is an error.

I swear I am not making any of that up.

 

And I appreciate the reminder because I really don't want to debate the merits of wierwolf, et. al.

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|"Not all that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed; not what 'Calvin said, nor Luther, nor Wesley, nor Graham, nor Roberts; but the Scriptures - they are God-breathed."

As was pointed out long ago, this sentence- when read in its entirety, is clear and straightforward.    vpw HIMSELF said that the word "BUT" puts into contrast that which precedes it and that which it precedes.   (Anyone who doesn't know this needs remedial English.)    After this was "the Scriptures- they are God-breathed."  This is placed in very obvious contrast with what precedes it, which is NOT God-breathed.

For the student who needs remedial English, I will point out that figures of speech exist in English as in other languages, and exist in 3 types just as in other languages.   There's figures of addition, figures of subtraction, and figures of substitution.   You don't need their names to recognize them.  All of them have the purpose of emphasizing something.     In the case of this sentence, we had a figure of subtraction.  The sentence, written out plainly but awkwardly, would have been:

"Not all that Wierwille writes will necessarily be God-breathed, not all that Calvin said was necessarily God-breathed, nor all that Luther said was necessarily God- breathed, nor all that Graham says is necessarily God-breathed, nor all that Roberts says is necessarily God-breathed,

but the Scriptures- they are God-breathed." 

That the phrase is shortened is obvious when you look at the entire phrase, since it included dead authors in the past tense and living authors in the present tense. The sentence was specifically contrasting "the Scriptures"- and in pfal in both forms, that was used for Genesis to Revelation-  with the words, whether spoken or written, of various Christian writers, teachers or speakers. 

The exact same point would have been made, more grammatically and making the exact same point, if it were phrased thusly, with no added meanings whatsoever:

"Although the Scriptures are God-breathed, not every writing or speech of Wierwille, Calvin, Luther, Wesley, Graham, Roberts (or any other Christian writer) will be God-breathed." 

If Wierwille himself hadn't stressed the use of contrast by "but", and if he hadn't been so obvious in drawing a contrast here, there might be room to insert one's own ideas here.   However, it's the poor student of English- or of wierwille for that matter-  who can bring himself to do so. 

THAT'S why it doesn't come up. Few students are this slipshod or in need of remedial work.

wierwille could have phrased himself more clearly- if his use of English was more precise.  He was never that accomplished a writer, speaker or linguist, so his phraseology remained mediocre.   So long as one isn't reading too closely into it, this is not a problem.   Reading too closely into wierwille's exact wording when he was never that exact- as if wierwille's writings were "God-breathed",  is as sure to cause problems as wrangling extensively over the exact phrasing of 450-year old wordings in the KJV when the Greek texts read differently. 

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The reason there isn't a "but" to set in contrast VPW's fleshly words from the other religious leaders, is because the whole point of that page is to state that their fleshly words are NOT directly from God.

So, that one sentence has TWO elements in it:  one that flows with the context, and one that is contrary to the context.  It is a minor exception in number, though.  Most of VPW's words were mere flesh like the others.  It is only the finished books and magazine articles that God worked directly with him on. He had to work it all in the senses realm, and then God could show him more.

The word "necessarily" is there to mark this contrast.

Wordwolf, you want to change what he wrote to exclude the necessary exception to this context, the 1042 Promise, where VPW's job is to obediently bring the God-breathed Word back into the world. 

You want it to say "What Wierwille writes will necessarily not be God-breathed."

That flows perfect with the context with no exceptions, BUT that is a forgery.

The reason VPW phrased it so compactly, and nestled in a camouflaging negative context is because WE WERE NOT READY FOR IT YET.

He hid other Easter Eggs in there for meek grads to find. He hid them all well.

I'm working on another hint right now. In the last magazine issue, VPW's very last, he repeats 5 sentences in the Our Times article and the main article.  Why the repetition?  It is established.

It's a big deal to read these 5 sentences. I call them VPW's call that we all do a "Spiritual Makeover."

He hid them well.  No one  (hardly) has ever seen that sentence on PFAL p. 83,  and I have NEVER heard of anyone flashing on those 5 repeated sentences.  There is more to the 5 sentences. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, waysider said:

:biglaugh:

OMG!

You are one funny guy.

I am consistent and I don't forge the words to make them say what I want them to say.

You just can't fathom that God would be SO good to us that He would get His pure Word to us, and that He would be able to tolerate a sinful man to get it all written.  We are the beneficiaries to this work, not VPW.  God is good.

Edited by Mike
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Oh wow.  Just read the plaf today article on the website.  These guys are so unimaginably stupid it is not funny.  Do you know how many complete church startups that occurred during the time period you were using all the blood money broadcast production equipment to video yet another version of an old wine skin?

Wierwille never had a genuine experience in his prayer life with the worship manifestations so he stole Stiles experience and teaching along with manufacturing a miracle that is easily proven false.  This is readily evident by each time you hear him perform the sit it is exactly the same lo shanta lol.

Now two generations later they are re doing the same damn charts with new faces and the same equipment.

How stupid do you need to be to promulgate a scam two decades after it fails working?  I mean renovate a house or something not an intro class to an abusive cult.  But hey stupidity never stops catching fish lol.

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2 hours ago, Mike said:

I am consistent and I don't forge the words to make them say what I want them to say.

You just can't fathom that God would be SO good to us that He would get His pure Word to us, and that He would be able to tolerate a sinful man to get it all written.  We are the beneficiaries to this work, not VPW.  God is good.

God is great.  He gave us a brain to use and a subconscious mind that protects us.  God gets His word to us via a thought, by a butterfly flying, by a brief picture of a bridge, by the feeling a song gives us, by a complex system of thought that He designed.  We are all sinful people.  Reading scripture and praying builds a closeness in the relationship.  

Study scriptures for yourself.  Don't be an elitist butthole that thinks you are slightly better than other Christians.  Interact with the whole body of Christ, not a select group of Pharisees.

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