Is all truth “God’s truth?”

A powerful man, an overseer of the saints, has defended his approval of Anne Lamott (a universalist) and Tony Campolo ( a “Christian” universalist). After discovering this overseer’s endorsement of Campolo and Lamott, I informed him of their theology.

He responded, “If it is ‘truth,’ it is from God!  Lamott and Campolo write profound truth, for which my mind and heart is touched.  I never throw out the “baby with the bath water.”  Great ideas stand on their own feet.”

Is all truth “God’s truth?” This is very reminiscent of writer Connie Neal, who promoted Christian acceptance of the Harry Potter saga, even going so far as to state “glimmers of the gospel” could be found in Harry Potter.

I am waiting to hear from this man, who is a very busy overseer of thousands. I have no desire to embarrass him, or point fingers at him, or anything else. But we are seeing things now, in every denomination, that would appall the saints of yesteryear.

The watchers on the wall no longer point in the distance, and say, “Beware! Here they come.” No. It has come to this: “Beware! They are among us.”

All the gods all the time

Christians in A.A. are literally praying and worshiping with New Age folk and others who, as they have been encouraged, have custom-created their own gods. To justify belonging to such a religion, some Christians claim it is okay because, well, it’s all about evangelism.

And so it is. Unfortunately, it is the usually Christians themselves who are “evangelized,” who are unknowingly affected by the theology of the 12 Step religion. This is why God tells us to stay away from such a thing in the first place.

This is potentially a fertile mission field, but such a ministry is not for those Christians who are already caught in 12 Step theology. There are many wonderful people in A.A. bowing to various deities. The best thing we can do for them is to obey God, get out, and pray for Him to strengthen our churches.

A great separation is taking place. For the 12 Step religion–an anti-Christian religion–grows stronger everyday. Emergent/contemplative/12 Step Spirituality will continue to blend together. False gods will boldly be celebrated and elevated.

REST OF ARTICLE: http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4180/Brannon-Howse/John-Lanagan

The first ‘Twelve Steps’ not from AA

Throughout A.A.’s history are indications of the devil’s handiwork. These are small things, perhaps, but indicative nevertheless. It was still astounding to discover that occultist Emanuel Swedenborg had written about ‘twelve steps’ more than one hundred and fifty years before the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Swedenborg writes, “[Angels] picture wisdom as a magnificently and finely decorated palace. One climbs to enter this palace by twelve steps. One can only arrive at the first step by means of the Lord’s power through joining with Him…As a person climbs these steps, he perceives that no one is wise from himself but from the Lord…the twelve steps into the palace of wisdom signify love in union with faith and faith in union with love.”[4]

Did Wilson copy this term from Emanuel Swedenborg? I do not believe so. I believe that Wilson, having opened himself up to communication with spirits, received his 12 Steps from the same place as had Swedenborg. ARTICLE: http://mywordlikefire.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/the-first-version-of-the-12-steps/

PASS IT ON: AA co-founders’ spiritualism

“The ouija board got moving in earnest. What followed was the fairly usual experience–it was a strange melange of Aristotle, St. Francis, diverse archangels with odd names, deceased friends–some in purgatory and others doing nicely, thank you! There were malign and mischievious ones of all descriptions, telling of vices quite beyond my ken, even as former alcoholics. Then, the seemingly virtuous entities would elbow them out with messages of comfort, information, advice, and just sheer nonsense.”

–AA co-founder Bill Wilson, from his official AA biography, PASS IT ON, pg. 278

“…[AA co-founders] Bill and Dr. Bob believed vigorously and aggressively. They were working away at the spiritualism; it was not just a hobby.” (bold mine)

–Early AA member Tom P., from PASS IT ON, pg. 280

Pro-AA author Dick B. tees off

“Glenn: I admire your speaking up to John. A former drunk devoted to calling A.A. heretical, an abomination, and all the rest seems more concerned with himself than with the need of tens of thousands of Christians in N.A., A.A., and other fellowships to learn where they came from, how the love and power of God, His Son, and the Bible are as vital to them today as they were to the original A.A. Christian Fellowship. The site has simply become an ad hominem attack vehicle, rather than an accurate, balanced, truthful review of the evidence of what God can do for those who want His help.”

dickb@dickb.com

 

 

My wife’s birthday

She hit the big 43 today. She looks about 30. She’s mature in the Lord, though. There has never been a woman like this.

I wrote this a little over a year ago, when she was just a 41 year old kid:

The Bible proves the existence of God. The coming of Jesus Christ was foretold in the book of Isaiah, writtten hundreds of years before the Savior was born.

I also am in awe of the Lord when I think about my wife. The only way I could end up with such a woman is through God. Nothing is impossible for Him, and that is why I have been so impossibly blessed. My wife is funny, compassionate, beautiful, and laughs at seventy five percent of my jokes. She laughs at me (and with me) all the time, too.

My wife looks to God first; then to me; my wife loves the Word, and loves to help people.

My wife makes me pancakes.

God is good.

Happy birthday. I love you. And read this fast, I’m not keeping this mushy deal up very long.

AA co-founder: LSD for “influx of God’s grace”

A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson’s involvement with LSD began in the 1950s. Wilson hoped ingestion of the chemical would help alcoholics. He wrote, “It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God’s grace possible. If, therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going–well, that might be of some help.” (PASS IT ON, pg. 370)

In the 1950s LSD was a recent development. Wilson, aware that A.A. simply did not work for every motivated alcoholic, was searching for things that would help.

For those who have heard or read that Bill Wilson was a Christian, the fact that he believed LSD could possibly facilitate the “influx of God’s grace” demonstrates much. There was no understanding of the grace of Christ. According to his secretary, Nell Wing, during Bill’s own ingestion of LSD, “He had an experience [that] was totally spiritual, [like] his initial spiritual experience.” (PASS IT ON, pg.370)

PASS IT ON, Wilson’s official A.A. biography, also states, “Bill was enthusiastic about his experience; he felt it helped him eliminate many barriers erected by the self, or ego, that stand in the way of one’s direct experience of the cosmos and of God.” (pg.371)

“Almost to the end, [Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson] engaged in serious and prolonged experiments with spiritualism, hallucinatory drugs such as LSD and megavitamin doses of niacin,” states Nan Robertson. (Bold mine; quote from ‘Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous,’ by Nan Robertson, pg.124)

Robertson notes Wilson “felt that no one should have to believe in any particular religious faith or dogma; that each member was entitled to a personal interpretation of the words ‘God as we understand Him,’ including the concept of the A.A. group as a ‘Higher Power.’” (pg. 124)

Nan Robertson is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and Alcoholics Anonymous member.

Bill Wilson’s first personal use of LSD was on August 29, 1956.

AA’s co-founder called himself a psychic

Alcoholics Anonymous co-founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith were both “drawn to spiritism and extrasensory phenomena.” (PASS IT ON, pg. 156, bold mine)

The A.A. co-founders were very serious about attempting to communicate with the dead. Only, it wasn’t the dead they contacted. It never is. The history of AA, its very formation, has been tainted by this demonic deception.

Most are unaware that the original 12 Steps NEVER mentioned Jesus Christ. From the very beginning AA and the 12 Steps were intended to point people away from the Biblical God–and to water down the Body of Christ. Come on, let’s be honest. These unholy goals have been accomplished. 

According to early A.A. member Tom Powers, “Now these people, Bill and Dr. Bob, believed vigorously and aggressively. They were working away at the spiritualism; it was not just a hobby.” (PASS IT ON, pg. 280)

Wilson seems to have had many experiences communicating with demons posing as the dead. Referring to one such instance, Wilson notes, “Of course, this was a typical experience that our amateur circle had often had with those discarnates who seemed stuck in some sort of purgatorial state.” (PASS IT ON, pg. 276)

Recounting his adventures with a skeptical host at breakfast, the A.A. cofounder writes, “At first, though, my host thought I was ribbing him; he knew little of psychics and had heard nothing of my adventures.” (PASS IT ON, pg. 276, bold mine)

It is through television and entertainment that we have come to see things like seances and other attempts to reach into the spirit world as a good thing. We have been dulled down, and many of the very things that entertain us are hated by our Holy God.

As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My Face against that person and will cut him off from his people. (Leviticus 20:6)

The activites of A.A.’s cofounders demonstrate, despite claims in various books by well-intentioned author Dick B. and others, that the 12 Steps are not from Jesus Christ. The very structure of Alcoholics Anonymous demonstrates this. It is errant theology to accept the placement of Jesus Christ in AA as one of many deities.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3)

How AA is weakening Christ’s people

In ‘The Fall of the Evangelical Nation,’ secular author Christine Wicker credits Alcoholics Anonymous with “hastening the fall of the evangelical church.”[6] (Bold mine)

 Indeed,  watered down understanding and lack of reverence for the Biblical God corresponds with the rise of the 12 Step religion.

Wicker states A.A.’s 12 Step program “slowly exposed people to the notion that they could get the [higher power] without the dogma, the doctrine, and the outdated rules. Without the church in fact.”[7] This has removed the authority and influence of “the preacher and the Bible and tradition.”[8]

After all, why bow to a God that always holds you accountable for sin? Why not cobble together a deity of your own? A “higher power,” so to speak.

“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons…” (1 Timothy 4:2)

A strong argument can be made that A.A.’s 12 Step system is the most powerful religious force in the country. Likable emergent/apostate Phyllis Tickle notes,  “Not only did AA, almost by default, begin to supplant the pastoral authority of the professional clergy and open the door to spirituality in the experiencing of a nondoctrinally specific Higher Power, but it also revived the small group dynamic that would come to characterize later twentieth-century Protestantism….”  (The Great Emergence, pg. 93)

This emergent leader sees what many pro-A.A. pastors simply cannot, or will not come to grips with.  A.A. has severely weakened the church. We are watching, through AA and emergent systems, the rise of false “christs” such as the one written about in The Shack.

It is all beginning to blend. LINK: http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-3870

12 Steps, spiritualism, and Swedenborg

There shall not be found among you…one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whosoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you. (Deuteronomy 18: 10-12)

Although his name is unfamiliar to most, Emanuel Swedenborg was a great influence on A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson, and therefore a great influence on both Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps.

As we learned in ‘The first version of the 12 Steps,’ Emanuel Swedenborg wrote of a spiritual ‘twelve steps’ long before the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. http://mywordlikefire.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/the-first-version-of-the-12-steps/ 

Swedenborg (1688-1772) has been called the “Father of modern spiritualism” for good reason. Like Bill Wilson, Swedenborg communicated frequently with familiar spirits posing as deceased people or other spiritual entities.

An extremely talented man who excelled in many fields, Swedenborg in the 1740s was troubled by strange dreams. Then, in 1745, something incredible happened. As Professor George P. Landow writes, “that night in 1745 his visions began to invade his waking life as well. As he ate, he became aware of frogs and snakes crowding into his private dining room, and an unknown gentleman materialized in a comer to rebuke him for eating too much. Back home in Salisbury Court the stranger appeared again, and introduced himself as Christ, the man-God, creator and redeemer of the world. He then made an important announcement: humanity stood in need of a definitive explication of holy Scripture, and Swedenborg had been selected to provide it; moreover, to assist him in his labours, he was to be given unrestricted access to the entire spirit world.”[1] 

This false ‘christ’ gave Swedenborg “unrestricted access to the entire spirit world.” Swedenborg obediently spent years communicating and learning from demons posing  as Paul the apostle, Luther, Newton, entities from other planets, and many others.

Directed by these familiar spirits, he wrote what he believed was the real interpretation of Biblical Truth. Of course, since he was being taught by fallen angels, his teaching denies salvation through Christ alone. 

Thus, one of the Swedenborgian tenets of  the New Church states:

“Salvation is not dependent on the doctrinal specifics of the religion you have followed on earth. As long as you have lived a life acknowledging God and refraining from evil because it is against Him, you will be saved. Acknowledging God does not necessarily mean recognizing Him by name. A person can be ignorant of religion and still acknowledge God by living a life of goodwill. This is because the choices that we make on a daily basis are what determine whether we end up in heaven or hell. Yes, worshipping God is essential for admittance into heaven, but we worship Him through the actions of our lives.”[2] 

 Many people over the years have been fascinated with Swedenborg, or exposed to his teachings, and this certainly includes A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson. Wilson married into a Swedenborgian family.

Swedenborgians absolutely love and respect the Bible, even as they deny salvation through Christ alone. Swedenborgian influence seems to have affected Wilson in two major ways. First, he was now exposed to people, including his wife, who valued the Bible as Spiritual Truth, but did not interpret it as the literal Word of God.

Like the gnostics with their “special knowledge,” Swedenborgians believe only Emanuel Swedenborg was given the real truth of the Bible.  This is very important in terms of A.A.’s 12 Steps, because Bill Wilson began A.A. and the 12 Steps with the understanding that the Bible did not have to be understood in a literal, fundamentalist manner.

This, of course, is also what Emmet Fox taught. His heretical book, ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ was loved by both Bill Wilson and A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob Smith. While endorsing the Bible (?), the book denies the salvation of Jesus Christ, and was used as a teaching aid in A.A. until the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book was written![3]

As spirits gave Swedenborg his blasphemous interpretation of the Bible, so was Bill Wilson given the 12 Steps. While many desperately want them to be Christian, Wilson’s Steps never stated Jesus Christ is God. Based on their real spiritual origin, God’s people should not be using them at all.

…they have set their detestable things in the house which is called by My name, to defile it. (Jeremiah 8:30)

These, then, are profound Swedenborgian influences on Bill Wilson: As an unsaved person he learned Swedenborgian “understanding” of salvation and ”interpretation” of the Bible. Of equal significance, Wilson’s immersion in spiritualism was almost certainly triggered by exposure to Swedenborgianism.

When Wilson was being treated for alcoholism in Towns Hospital in December of 1934, he demanded that God show Himself. Wilson was, as they say in A.A., “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” 

This was the spiritual experience that that would forever change Bill Wilson’s life. He would never drink again. According to his official A.A. biography, Wilson cried, “If there be a God, let Him show Himself.”[4]

Wilson states, ”I became acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the Preachers.’”[5] But what God? What Preachers? This passage is often used by those who want A.A. to be Christian in origin.

Robert Thomsen is the author of ‘Bill W.,’ the very first biography of Bill Wilson. He personally knew Wilson. Thomsen’s book comes from his own conversations with the A.A. cofounder, and from historical documentation. [6]

What was Wilson’s understanding of God after this experience? Thomsen writes, “There could be no doubt of ultimate order in the universe, the cosmos was not dead matter, but a part of the living Presence, just as he was part of it.

“Now, in place of the light, the exaltation, he was filled with a peace such as he had never known. He had heard of men who’d tried to open the universe to themselves; he had opened himself to the universe. He had heard men say there was a bit of God in everyone, but this feeling that he was a part of God, himself a living part of the higher power, was a new and revolutionary feeling.”[7] (Bold mine)  

This is pantheism. It is not found in the Bible.

Francis Hartigan was the secretary for Lois Wilson, Bill’s wife, for thirteen years. He had many conversations with Lois about Bill. He writes, ““[A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson's] belief in God might have become unshakeable, but he could never embrace any theology or even the divinity of Jesus, and he went to his grave unable to give his own personal idea of God much definition. In this sense, he was never very far removed from the unbelievers.”[8] (Bold mine) 

In conclusion, many of the books promoting A.A.’s alleged Biblical origin are inaccurate. This is a grievous thing, because many have been lured into this system based on these books. If the 12 Steps are unholy in origin, does a Holy God want His people using them?

There is another bit of false history that has impeded our understanding of the 12 Steps. For, while downplaying–or ignoring–factors such as spiritualism and Swedenborgianism, some authors have made a cottage industry of portraying the neo-evangelical Oxford Group of the 1930s as a Christian/Biblical root of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This is simply not true. The Oxford Group had some Christian members–so does Alcoholics Anonymous. Please read Martin and Deidre Bobgan’s excellent ‘12 Steps To Destruction,’ which can be found online. Here is what they have to say about the Oxford Group: http://www.pamweb.org/e-books/12steps-ebk.pdf (Go to pg.104)

H.A. Ironside, a fiery and Biblical preacher of the 1930s, also had something to say about the Oxford Group:

“This movement appeals to both modernists and fundamentalists alike.   It appeals to people who reject the inspiration of this Book as well as to those who profess to believe it; it appeals to people who deny the Deity of Christ as well as to those who acknowledge it; to those who deny the eternal punishment of sin as well as to those who believe in it.   Here in our city it is openly indorsed by the Swedenborgians and by the leaders of the Unitarians, as well as by a number who belong to orthodox churches.   But it is silent as to the blood of Christ.”[9] (Bold mine)

Please note that Pastor Ironside mentioned both the Swedenborgian and Unitarian endorsement of the Oxford Group in his city. This alone indicates O.G. doctrine was not Biblical. The Oxford Group, in truth, had much in common with A.A. today. 

It is accurate to state that A.A. took general principles from the Oxford Group.

But not Jesus Christ.

Endnotes:
1.  George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University, http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/swedenborg2.html

2. http://www.newchurch.org/beliefs/salvation.html

3. Mel B., New Wine, pg. 111-112, 114

4. PASS IT ON, pg. 121

5. Ibid., pg. 121

6. http://www.lewrockwell.com/white/white45.html

7. Robert Thomsen, ‘Bill W.’  pg.223

8.  Francis Hartigan, ‘Bill W.,’ (pg.123)

9.  http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-Ironside.html