In Reply to: Thanks for explaining posted by Coordinator on November 27, 2004 at 09:42:51:
Hi, all.
First off, I am reviving my old posting name, here. It suits me, so to those who objected to it, please get over it. I'm another oldtimer, we have certain characteristics, and this webpage allows you to track the posts of any individuals, so that should end any confusion.
Call me Richard if you like, although it is rare that we ever knew each other by anything other that "Bibile-names" while in the cult. I'm cool with that. I'd appreciate the respect of being called what I ask to be called. I actually prefer OldtimerToo.
I've been out 31 years, and really love all
ex-ers, as well as all current members, and I feel God has called me into a very particular, if sometimes very odd, fellowship with all I meet--of course I do not mean I condone, or would "lay hands suddenly"...or participate in (or "partake in the sins" of, or) any of the degenerated beliefs and/or practices of TF. That would be having fellowship with darkness, which is something I avoid vigorously these days!
I regularly pray that God will deliver all current members, whatever it takes, and at whatever price (including "the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit might be saved"--like I said, whatever it takes).
Before TF (and after), I was a big Karate guy (i.e.: not a wimp), and at the World's Fair in Spokane WA, in 1974, my then wife, Jerusha, and I had taken in an ex-biker lady, and later a street person (then called "hippies", of course--by the mid-'80s my stepson called them all "bums"!--all on his own).
I came out of the occult, and TF was my first experience of Christianity of any kind; I loved and followed Jesus to the best of my ability, led hundreds and hundreds of people to Jesus as Lord and Savior, saw people miraculously healed (in Mexico City, as part of the first team there, with Agabus and Abishag, Emmor and Tehan, Rock, Gethsemane, Agustin Cisneros,later Watchman and his little brother, and others) and was in TF on my own terms--I left the very day I understood that what I was beginning to believe (Berg's earthly sensual and devilish perversions of Scripture) was not Scriptural.
The street person, back in Spokane, said to me, Jerusha and the ex-biker lady, "All women are my wife!", and I took him aside and said, "Listen, friend, if you try to live out that belief here, and make passes at my wife or our guest (in our tiny apartment near the Colony and the World's Fair), I'll kick your ass, and repent later if I think it's wrong, but I don't! Otherwise you're welcome to stay, eat our food, and learn to worship and follow Jesus--you are not welcome to just associate with us so you can chase tail!".
When I accidentally found the "Law of Love" DO letter that week at the Spokane Colony while stocking up to litness, let's just say that God used the experience, among others He'd planted in my heart for the years of my membership, to begin to lead me out.
But the love and concern for current members is still there, in a "...there but for the grace of God go I..." manner. I never saw or participated in sexual immorality, adult or pedophilic, nor in imprisonment or torture, or planned and protracted destruction of personalities and identities. I mostly provisioned, and used my fluent Spanish, to "further the cause".
A big leader's wife made a serious sexual pass at me at the Toluca, Mexico radio transmitter hacienda colony, and I politely turned her down, and she was gorgeous and I was single, and hadn't had any sex in years! I just considered it something wrong on her part--I had no idea of the immorality of the leadership at that time--I'd never even seen it! I was just one of the "rank and file soldiers"; if you will.
I'd have left the adult sexual immorality offenders alone, of course, but would have personally "seriously torn up some ass" (i.e.: read "...have gotten as physically violent as necessary with...") if I'd seen any of the other stuff. Except for God's prevenient grace, I still would; most likely.
Having said that, I would like to ask that fairness be extended to all posters on their particular ex-er Journey. I feel that the current prevailing belief paradigm of Political Correctness coupled with Postmodernism (all defined and described by Google searches, if those beliefs are not understood) creates a climate in which "fairness to all" is kind of like "All men are equal/ all men are brother/ but some are/ More equal than others".
In other words, most ex-ers tend to leary of people whose beliefs we were conditioned against at the most formative and impressionable stages of our lives (I'm talking FGAs, here).
Some of us have proceeded in our journeys, beyond the cult, to a place where our politics have changed, for one reason or another, to a well-reasoned belief paradigm, where we may not believe like the "average" poster on the boards of this webpage. There are, I am sure, other "well-reasoned belief paradigms" than my own--of that I am aware.
If anyone would insist on categorizing me, I'm a lot more like, say, EBW, than Mr. Don, but I greatly respect both, and respect others as well. I just sense that a little more fairness from current adimin. people as well as some posters who follow their suit, would be in order.
I just wanted to ask others to commit, with me, to being polite, civil and respectful to all, in our exchanges here.
Could I please have the assurance that there will be, this year, no individual, nor corporate (i.e.: by the staff, especially new members whose politics have proven to be quite anti-Christian, and whose filibustering multi-board posting methods are, shall we say, less than honest and open?) prejudice, direct or indirect mockery of those of us who happen to still believe the Bible, actively participate in Spirit-led fellowship, and happen to, in our observation of history, love democracy, tripartite government, and conditional patriotism, as over against hard-left radicalism?
That would make the public rebuke of people like Mr. Don a little more palatable, at least to me. He did violate a few posting rules, but so have others, and I believe an impartial "accountancy" of other posters and their behaviors online, here, would show a somewhat "hard-left-leaning", tendency--in other words, only the non-left politics are appropriate, or at least seem to be.
In plain words, it seems that mostly, not "only" (that would be absurd, of course), "right-leaning" Christians are the ones attcked most of the time; all other things being equal!
For the entire webpage staff to continue to become a sort of cabal of people prejudiced against the opinions (POLITELY stated, it is hoped, Mr. Don) of people LIKE Mr. Don (CAPS for emphasis, not "shouting"!!!), is uncivil and distasteful; at the very least.
Please stop; administrative staff. Thanks. If you don't, I'm afraid you'll lose your readership to more equitably-run webpages, whether Chritian or not, whose administrative decisions tend to show a wisdom which is "easily entreated, full of good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy"--it would be in everyone's best interest to run off those who refuse to show a sense of fair play and civility.
ANd the posts you would attract would become dull and predictable!
A word to the wise should be sufficient; I would think.
Have a Happy New Year!