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God’s Budget and Double Doors .... On the Scarcity of Miracles


Mike
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Let's visit the GSC players one more time.

Snowball Pete is dressed in a cliche God outfit with long robes and a long flowing beard. The rest of the players are in a line. Midstage is a cliched representation of the pearly gates.

Johnny Jumpup (dressed in tattered clothes) Why did you let me die of thirst in the desert?

God: Well, you see, there are spiritual things going on you don't understand. I was delayed.

Joe Blow: Look how emaciated I am. Why did you let me starve.

God: I have this gentleman's agreement with the devil and I can only act in accordance with it.

Maggie Muggins (in a swimsuit): Why did you leave me to drown?

God: I know you need oxygen. But I have this deal and I got delayed.

John Doe: According to Mike's "two doors" theory, this is how God would act.

All bow stiffly and exit stage left.

 

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1 hour ago, Mike said:

he 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.

The Bible itself is ONE BIG REMINDER of a lot of invisible spiritual stuff happening . I think your theories are more of an unnecessary risk than an advantage, because you insert your own opinion of who is winning, assume others have the same impotent life that you lead, and trivialize God to something less than sovereign and all-powerful, besides the fact there is usually an unhealthy fascination with the devil - much more so than what Scripture says about Christ disarming the enemy’s power and authority:

6So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

8See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces a of this world rather than on Christ.

9For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh b was put off when you were circumcised by c Christ, 12having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you dalive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. 

16Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. 19They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Colossians 2 NIV

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2 hours ago, chockfull said:

My comment here on this long diatribe is that your pro Plaffy mindset you say you constructed in 1998 when you arrived at the point you felt you had the truth - sounds remarkably like the logic that RFR used to eliminate the TWI research department and to ramp up the whitewashing (I mean publications) department.

If you already have the truth like it hasn’t been known since the first century there’s no need for further research.

Just re-search.

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.

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10 minutes ago, Mike said:

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.

“Big enough job learning and moving what has been given to us.”

Along with a complete denial or investigation of the truth of or fruit of VPWs plagiarism and dishonesty.  Oh but it is all better now because there won’t be another VPW.

Yes that is the re-search camp.  And the whitewash camp.

It really is another example of false advertising to call TWI a “Biblical Research, Teaching and Fellowship” ministry.

Those words are only true if you re-define what each of the terms mean.

Re-search instead of research.

One way communication instead of teaching.

Fellowship with only those Christians who have “taken the class” and are “standing with the ministry”.

Yes if you redefine darkness as light then TWI makes sense.

:spy:

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47 minutes ago, So_crates said:

If you read Penwork's book, there never was research. So just what are they re-searching?

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.

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2 hours ago, So_crates said:

If you read Penwork's book, there never was research. So just what are they re-searching?

Last I checked Mike was averaging around 5 pages a year on penworks book. He'll have it finished in the next few years. Patience. 

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Charlene isn’t the only former member of the “research” department who has posted her unvarnished, accurate, historical record here at GSC.

If I retember correctly, real, actual, honest research was being done. HOWEVER, the accurate, honest results and conclusions flew in the painted face of victor paul wierwille’s own imagined and dishonest “research.” The REAL research didn’t support Vic’s man-made, false, asserted claims.

The honest, REAL research was squashed, buried, stifled by victor paul wierwille. The narcissist’s greatest fear is being found out for the fraud that he is. This is what one means when one says the department wasn’t doing real research — they weren’t allowed to do real research. 

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2 hours ago, So_crates said:

If you read Penwork's book, there never was research. So just what are they re-searching?

I did.  From her book mainly the research was looking for backing scripture for VPs foregone conclusions.  And firing people at the apex of their work and publishing books with his name on their work.

 

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1 hour ago, Nathan_Jr said:

The honest, REAL research was squashed, buried, stifled by victor paul wierwille. The narcissist’s greatest fear is being found out for the fraud that he is. This is what one means when one says the department wasn’t doing real research — they weren’t allowed to do real research. 

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.

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31 minutes ago, Mike said:

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.

Saint Vic asked two people to research adultery or fornication?

That's like Jeffery Dahmer asking someone to help him research a book on BBQ.

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36 minutes ago, Mike said:

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.

And those are the leaders that are most likely running the ministry now.

After all, they still haven't admitted responsibility, have they?

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Efforts to confirm victor’s flimsy opinions and conclusions do not constitute research in 1955, 1965, 1975 or 1985. Real research never begins with a conclusion. Never. 

Schoenheit. Why is his name so frequently invoked? He still teaches the obvious stupidity of four crucified. Not impressed.

How many sermons, essays and theological monographs have been written on adultery and fornication over the last 2000 years? Innumerable.

That vic requested “research” on the topic speaks to his deception and stupidity. Who could possibly require further “research” in order to get straight on this topic?

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4 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Efforts to confirm victor’s flimsy opinions and conclusions do not constitute research in 1955, 1965, 1975 or 1985. Real research never begins with a conclusion. Never. 

Schoenheit. Why is his name so frequently invoked? He still teaches the obvious stupidity of four crucified. Not impressed.

How many sermons, essays and theological monographs have been written on adultery and fornication over the last 2000 years? Innumerable.

That vic requested “research” on the topic speaks to his deception and stupidity. Who could possibly require further “research” in order to get straight on this topic?

Good points. Nate.

To which I'll add: many of the people that scotched the adultery paper are still in the ministry in leadership positions. Makes you wonder what they're suppressing now.

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48 minutes ago, So_crates said:

And those are the leaders that are most likely running the ministry now.

After all, they still haven't admitted responsibility, have they?

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?

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Mike said:

Yes. That is what Schoenheit wrote at the very beginning of his paper.

The one that is posted here should have it.

 

Now why would Saint Vic want a paper on adultery and fornication?

Looking for a loophole maybe.

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2 minutes ago, Mike said:

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?

 

 

But it was more than them that hid the paper, otherwise it could have been leaked.

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46 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Efforts to confirm victor’s flimsy opinions and conclusions do not constitute research in 1955, 1965, 1975 or 1985. Real research never begins with a conclusion. Never. 

Schoenheit. Why is his name so frequently invoked? He still teaches the obvious stupidity of four crucified. Not impressed.

How many sermons, essays and theological monographs have been written on adultery and fornication over the last 2000 years? Innumerable.

That vic requested “research” on the topic speaks to his deception and stupidity. Who could possibly require further “research” in order to get straight on this topic?

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.

 

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Again, why would poor, poor vic ask for “research” to be done on a topic that even nonbelievers find unambiguous?

Why are so many so easily impressed with schoenheit’s paper? What does it say about the foundation of a “ministry” that its inventor would charge his sycophants with such an endeavor?

 

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10 minutes ago, So_crates said:

Now why would Saint Vic want a paper on adultery and fornication?

Looking for a loophole maybe.

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.

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22 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Again, why would poor, poor vic ask for “research” to be done on a topic that even nonbelievers find unambiguous?

Why are so many so easily impressed with schoenheit’s paper? What does it say about the foundation of a “ministry” that its inventor would charge his sycophants with such an endeavor?

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.

 

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