Who's been perma-banned from BF and reinstated??

I must have missed that, another example of spilling interesting posters.

 

I have a theory on what the real cause of the downward was.

About the same time I joined the forum, it also received a spike in new members that shared something in common: they all belonged to a certain parachurch organization. One of them informed me (years later, long after we had each left the board) that the group's sudden interest in the message board was led by one of their leaders, who also joined. He wanted them to bring their group's views to the message board. He became a mod, and after some time he successfully pushed for the forum's owner and head admin to reorient the forum community's mode of thought around prophecy. They sent a private message to a dozen or two users (I was one of them) to join a hidden section on the message board to discuss this effort. Over the next couple of years that mod gained more authority on the message board and was made an admin. After that is when mods really began to abuse their powers, cracking down on free thinkers and unorthodox opinions, while breaking the rules and gaslighting users to protect themselves from criticism.

The parachurch organization those members belonged to is, on the surface, about the world-changing power of prayer. In reality it is an apocalyptic sect that targets young adults to recruit. The group was founded as an eschatological movement, it has a (constantly revised) founding document that emphasizes the charismata of its leaders, and many of the staff believe its chief founder is an (or the) end-times apostle. You might know which organization this is. I have an extremely negative opinion of it. Members (again, mostly young adults) who break from the groupthink, who ask difficult questions, or who don't instantly accept what leaders pressure them to believe are punished and scapegoated. In other words, critical thinking is suppressed. There is a list of common behavior in 'cults', and in my opinion this parachurch organization checks a lot of the boxes on the list.

Essentially, a handful of the organization's members made a successful 'infiltration' of the message board, one of their leaders worked his way up to becoming an admin, and once in that position he turned the message board into a reflection of the toxic environment of his organization: obsess about the end-times, suppress intelligent discussion, penalize critical thinkers until they conform, scapegoat those who leave or are banned.

 

On the side: I sure miss the old diced egg & ham platter at IHOP. It was huge.

 

I usually get the french toast when I go to IHOP, but I'm just unorthodox like that.

 

The forum started as a Protestant board and at the time I joined it was in a transition phase moving to charismatic, I remember the "Revival Discussion Group" (about Lakeland) trying to defend the indefensible (Todd Bentley), the pushing of his daughter as "she is the real deal" as prophet.

 

The funny thing is, in reading some responses here, is that I never raised disagreement with admins or "higher ups" on the board. The only thing I recall doing, which I was contacted by JeannieD to "tone it down a bit" (and rightfully so), was when I offered to another member there that I would retype a post/response slowly so that he could understand it better.

Other than that, I'm happy to be associated with the critical thinkers here.

 

What does it mean?

 

Yeah. That has gotten old.

 

It astounds me how He is intimately aware of every byte.