March 27, 2018 Show with Sam Frost on “A Reformed Christian Evaluates Alcoholics Anonymous & the Addiction Recovery Movements”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 27th day of March 2018.

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I'm delighted to have back on the program today Sam Frost, otherwise known as Samuel M.

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Frost. He is the author of Why I Left Full Preterism, which is the topic that we had discussed the last time

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Sam was on the program. But today we are going to be addressing his book,

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God as Bill Wilson Understood Him, aka

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Christian Evaluation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Addiction Recovery Movements.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Sam Frost. Hello, thank you

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Chris for having me back on. I'm delighted to have you back on, and I'm also delighted that we received the agreement or the acceptance of my invitation to Don Preston, who is well known globally as a full preterist.

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He is going to be debating Sam Frost at some point in the near future, hopefully.

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But we did get an official acceptance of this invitation, and we are going to be planning sometime within the next couple of months,

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God willing, to have a two -day debate on full preterism. Those of us who are not full preterists typically would call it hyper -preterism, and there are many different labels for this, especially used by those who are full preterists themselves.

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But that's going to be an exciting event, a two -day event, and we hope that you stay tuned for updates in the future as to when exactly this two -day debate will be,

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God willing. But today we are going to be addressing, as I said, a Christian Evaluation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the

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Addiction Recovery Movements. Sam, if you could tell us, first of all, something about your own life and what led you to become so knowledgeable of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you eventually actually had such knowledge and had such a passion to investigate this topic deeper that you eventually compiled the data necessary to write a book on it.

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Well, thanks. I guess it's just my own personal testimony.

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I grew up in a household where drinking is a social lubricant.

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You know, it's accepted. And one finds oneself drinking and then building up,

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I guess, a sort of a tolerance where your drinking actually begins to create and cause problems in your life that brings about consequences that you did not start off wanting.

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And usually the consequences are a direct result of your drinking habits.

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And these tend to pile up over time so that when, at a certain point, whether it be years or whatever, you begin to look at and bring all this data together of your own personal history and think, you know what,

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I need to look into this legitimacy or non -legitimacy of whether or not

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I am an alcoholic or what that is. And so that begins an entire foray into a debate between a mental model and the disease model.

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And there's clinicians and doctors on both sides of that debate.

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That's not just a debate going on within, you know, alcoholics and non -alcoholics. There's that and the other. And we can discuss a lot of that in more detail as we go along.

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But that's my research background of being a seminarian. Naturally, if I was going to get involved with an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous, I want to know who they are, where they came from, their roots.

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And so over the years, I just, you know, anything I could get my hands on studying where these guys came from.

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So that's where the book kind of came out. The book's been in process for years. It was just in the last couple of years

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I was able to finally finish the thing. And I'm pleased with it. I've received a good deal of feedback from those who are not in AA as well as those who are in AA.

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And again, my mind is kicking in where we're not defining any of these terms yet.

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I don't want anyone to assume that I have fixed definitions on a lot of the stuff that I'm saying.

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But that's what the book grew out of was just my own personal experience and research, just as I would any particular topic, read anything that I can read on it and its history.

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So that's basically what the book is about. And then, of course, myself as a theologian, I wanted to apply my

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Christian background, particularly Reformed, background to it.

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And I didn't find a whole lot of material on it from a

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Reformed perspective. The only one that I really found was a book by Ed Welch, who

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I believe you had on the program, on your program, Ed Welch. That's a book called Addictions at Banquet in the

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Grave. And that was published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing. And that was a good book, too.

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So, you know, he's coming at it from a thoroughly Reformed perspective. And you eventually, going back to your own enslavement to alcohol, addiction to it, however you want to phrase it, you eventually, by the mercy and grace and love of God, you were delivered from that.

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Yeah, and that, again, Reformed theology gets,

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I guess it's deserved in some circles. You know, this kind of a cessation of the miraculous and the spiritual and, you know, gifts and things like that no longer occur or whatever.

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I, you know, I had struggled for years to control my drinking to where it was in moderation, to where it was acceptable.

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And I found myself increasingly not being able to do that. And, of course, I would relate Romans chapter 7, the very thing that I want to do that I find that I cannot do.

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And nothing that I was doing in terms of a solution, in terms of, you know, seven keys to success, just follow this, follow these steps and your life will be great.

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None of that, for me, was working. And going to pastors, going to counselors, going to psychologists, one of my best friends is a psychiatrist.

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And, you know, and then being told, here's the other problem, then being told, like you go into some of these AA groups, you're told that you're just too intellectual to recover.

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So I'm like, well, then I'm screwed. Because I always, you know,

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I want to figure everything out. Like, why does this happen? And, of course, in your own devotional life, you know,

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God, why is this? What's going on here? And I seemed to get the victory over there.

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And then, without going into too much detail, I moved up here in Indiana to be with my dad and his health.

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And he, you know, died of alcohol -related cirrhosis of the liver.

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And so, I noticed that about seven months prior to when he passed away that I, my desire for any kind of out just was going away.

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And there was an episode that happened to protect privacy I'm not going to get into.

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And, you know, months went by, two months went by, and I, you know, that desire just wasn't there.

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And now it's gone on to nearly a couple of years where there's just nothing.

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And now, looking back on it, the Lord delivered me. I explained it to one person who's had much work with dealing with those that are addicted and alcoholics.

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That's a 20 years experience. And when I explained my own, my own just experience, what

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I would, I guess I would call experience, it's like an amputation. I've heard of amputees where if they've had their arm amputated, they call it a ghost arm.

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You still feel that arm there, but you know it's not there. Your arm is no longer there. That's called a ghost reflex.

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And I said, that's kind of how it feels. It's, you know, it's been there for so many years that it's been amputated.

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And it doesn't feel like it's there anymore, even though I know it's not there anymore. But, you know, it isn't.

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And the desire of what I would use to, you know, bring me to the barstool or whatever, was gone.

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And I have to think that that, again, as a theologian is one that believes in the revealed written

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Word of God, the Scriptures, but that was just an accumulation of God answering prayers over the years, hearing my own cry over the years, and then applying that old adage that God will answer your prayers on His time, not yours.

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And it was just six months, seven months prior to when my dad did pass away. And so that all, you know, came as a real dovetail experience there when you're staring death in the face.

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And the reason for that death was 50 years of drinking on a part of my dad.

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And I love my dad, and I miss him very much. We had, you know, we were very close. And that being shown to you that, you know,

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I think, again, this is my own experience. This is how I interpret my own experience and my personal walk with the

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Lord. You know, that the Spirit of the Lord is just showing me this is what He's delivered me from.

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This could have been my future. This is the way I was going. And so that kind of put the nail in the coffin, you know, as far as ever returning back, and I knew that I'm recovered and that those days are over.

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So I was just, and I tell you what, it really, truly, genuinely, sincerely, by the

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Spirit of the Lord, you know, being recovered, and you know that you're recovered, it really changes your perspective on life.

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It just turns everything around. Hopefully that makes sense. To Christians, it makes sense.

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To the world, I don't know if it makes any sense. Well, I rejoice with you as being one myself who was rescued from this sin, this deadly and damning sin of drunkenness, habitual, unrepentant drunkenness.

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I was rescued by the grace of God from that, and this is why this program is so near and dear to my heart.

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The subject matter is because I have such empathy with those battling this serious problem, and I cannot stop singing the praises of Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina, which is where I admitted myself for,

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I believe, it was a 13 -week program at the time, and may still be, and it is just a wonderful place, and the

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Lord used it mightily in my own life, and if anybody needs any more information about that, they can email me if they want to know more about Hebron Colony Ministries, which is basically a men's discipleship ministry, and they have a sister ministry out in Santee, South Carolina that is a facility for women, but the

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Hebron Colony Ministry, the thing that's interesting about it is that the actual issue of alcohol or drugs or addiction to those things was something that was really not a primary area of focus.

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It was discipleship, and it was evangelism to those there, because there were many lost people there, and they were being evangelized to repent and embrace the atoning death of Christ, and those who were

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Christians there who had fallen back into this sin were being called to repent and be restored, and I was in the latter category, and interestingly enough,

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I was only, even though the ministry began in the earlier part of the the 1900s and the 1940s after World War II, a

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Presbyterian minister saw GIs coming back from World War II, and many of them, multitudes of them, were drunks when they came back home, and this

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Presbyterian pastor set up this ministry, and I believe it is the longest ongoing or the oldest ongoing men's rehabilitation ministry for drug and alcohol addiction in the

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United States. It's also absolutely free of charge and only requires a $300 deposit for pharmaceutical needs that you may require if you get sick or what have you, but if you don't use that $300 while you're there, or if they don't use it for your pharmaceutical needs, they return it.

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So it's just an amazing ministry, and I cannot, as I said, stop singing the praises about it, but before we go into the history of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, because one of the reasons why we are discussing it is that there have been many crucial, serious changes for the worse in Alcoholics Anonymous, not to say that the organization even began without its problems, but it's just become a lot worse than the design that was intended by the founders.

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But before we go into that, were you at all helped by AA? Because even if something is seriously flawed, the

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Lord could use it to bring repentance and restoration into somebody's life.

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I mean, even in the lives of people who are seriously addicted to substances of one kind or another, you know, you can even join a cult, and it will quote -quote work on many occasions in that area of someone's life.

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Somebody could become a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness or a Muslim, even when we hear about the history of Malcolm X when he became a member of the

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Nation of Islam and, you know, he gave up all intoxicating substances and so on.

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So things can work even if they are riddled with error. So did you ever go to these meetings, and were they of value to you?

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Yeah, the real strength—each meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is an autonomous group.

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There's no diocese or synod or, you know, you think like that, the denomination of the church. They operate independently.

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There's very little requirement. Anyone could literally start an

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AA group if they wanted to. So it's really an autonomous kind of a thing like that.

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So each group—I've been to several across several states—each group is different.

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Each group has its own little dynamic and some are more, I guess,

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Alcoholics Anonymous to them is more akin to a religion. It's their life.

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They literally—this becomes their whole life. And because of that, like you said, the practical outworking of that is that if you do align yourself thoroughly with Alcoholics Anonymous, yeah, you'll stay sober.

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If you follow the steps and do what it is that's outlined in the book, it's just like following directions.

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You just follow the directions. You'll put together the cabinet that came in the box. You'll put it together if you follow the directions.

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Put the screws in all right, yeah, you're going to get yourself a cabinet. So I guess for many it does work, and that was not—you know,

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I read enough William James and pragmatism, which they draw heavily off of, actually, to realize that for many it was working.

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It was the problem that runs into some of these groups is the credit that they give to that.

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You know, their own work or their own—and then they give it to a higher power, and that's where we get in.

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That's mainly where I wrote the book. But before, you know, getting into all that, did

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I experience useful tips and tools and meet some people who were also church -going, you know,

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Bible -believing Christians that were there? Yes, I formed some relationships that were there that are very close to this day.

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So you were going to meetings? Well, yeah, yeah. I go—I don't go—I go maybe, you know, now once a month, maybe.

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I mean, it just depends. There's one here that meets on a Friday night, and if I'm not working or doing something else or it just crosses my mind that, oh, there's a meeting tonight, you know, then

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I'll go. You know what? I don't have a sponsor or any of that kind of thing, and interestingly enough, sponsors are not required.

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Bill tells you to go to your pastor or your priest in the book. It tells you to go to your pastor or priest if needs be.

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But there's a lot of things that have grown out of AA today than the

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AA we find in early 1940s, 39, 40, 41, 42.

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And they're interesting. There's an inner debate within Alcoholics Anonymous between the historians—they call them the big book thumpers—the

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AA historians who are running to get back to the roots of where AA came from, and then those who largely have recognized that Alcoholics Anonymous, because it was really one of the first organizations that really exploded by 1945—it started in 1939—but by 1945, it was huge.

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This thing just really, really caught on. This is post -Prohibitionism, Temperance Movement, which was largely a women's, suffrage women's, or women's

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Christian movement. A lot of preaching about alcohol in the 20s and 30s.

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I've collected a good deal of sermons from Reformed Presbyterian Episcopate. They were really preaching about alcoholism, because alcoholism like it is today then was a huge problem, a huge drain on the economy.

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It was destroying families. You can go back and read about all that kind of stuff. And so AA grew out of that, but they didn't want to become another religion, and nobody was really doing what they were doing.

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There were a few groups—Salvation Army, you had the Washingtonians that were trying to help alcoholics, and of course the church.

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The church, historically, the church was always there to help those that were struggling with this particular type of sin.

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But the other part was the condemnation of it that could come from the church, too.

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A condemnation without any attempt at understanding. So I think AA helped blossom that understanding that this is not—yes, it's a sin.

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We'll call it what it is. You're not helping anybody by minimizing that from what it is.

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But at the same time, it is a phenomenon that exists among certain people that they seem to—this is what we would call a sin that's easily entangled into.

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It's just something that some are just easily very drawn to, and they can't seem to get—it's a struggle for them.

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That's a phenomenon. Now, what you do with that, how you define it, what that is, we can get into. But it is a phenomenon that seems to be there.

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I don't know if that raises more questions you want to ask, or we just continue to go into it. I find that AA is helpful, but you've got to read between the lines and between the people that are there and take them on as individuals.

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You can't judge the whole. And you were talking about the condemnation that you have in some circles towards people battling this sin.

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And I have to continually remind everybody that it is a sin because it's not treated that way in the vast majority of cases in regard to secular society and even within some of Christendom.

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But you also have, unfortunately, in our own circles, theologically reformed churches and denominations.

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Some of them—I'm not broadbrushing them by any stretch of the imagination because my own church rightly put me under church discipline when

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I was involved in this sin and was not repenting of it. And if it were not for that discipline,

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I might be dead because of the level, the very serious level of drinking that I was doing.

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But you have many—from my own interaction with Christians throughout the last couple of decades—I was saved in 1985—but there are reformed churches and even pastors that wink at this.

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They are so caught up in wearing this liberty of the freedom to imbibe that they wear it as a badge of honor and it escalates into winking at the sin of drunkenness even though the scriptures warn that this is among other sins that sends people to hell, which is quite strange.

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So I find it interesting that you said earlier that you were finding it difficult to find resources from reformed resources—resources from reformed resources—material from reformed resources because it seems that reformed people, by and large, many of them are so busy standing up for their right to drink and proudly waving the flag of their liberty that they don't want to really get mixed up in this stuff with the alcohol recovery until members of their churches become scandalously involved in these sins and perhaps they are beating their wives or cheating on their wives or they're losing their jobs and, you know, they're just becoming a public nuisance.

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Then the church might say, okay, we got to do something about this, but am I exaggerating here? No, and I don't want to say—I believe, again, as an exegete of scriptures,

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I believe that the Bible does not say, thou shalt not have a glass of wine, thou shalt not drink.

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I'm not a teetotaler, so I don't believe that drinking is something that a

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Christian cannot rightfully enjoy. Right. Well, I would say that I am a teetotaler because I don't drink alcohol, but I do not believe it is—I do not believe—

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I, myself, cannot imbibe on that. Right, right, right. Yeah, I think you have to clarify that.

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Even though I believe I cannot drink alcohol,

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I cannot biblically lay a guilt trip on people who responsibly enjoy the moderate consumption of alcohol.

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Right. Yeah, and I want to make that clear, and I know people that do. Now, I don't understand them because they have one or two 12 -ounce bottles of beer and they're done, and I don't understand that.

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That, to me, makes just no sense. Having two beers is—

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Yeah, I'm right on the same page with you. I can't remember ever having just two beers or two glasses of wine.

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Well, that's the point. My stepfather was like this.

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He would have a beer. I mean, his six -pack of beer would last for three months in the refrigerator.

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I'm not—I don't want to downplay any of that. However, I've been with others that imbibe a great deal that are in the

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Reformed Church that are active in all that they do and power to them.

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Nonetheless, it's a kind of a parading kind of thing, and I would use that as a reason or an excuse, rather, to justify my own drinking.

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Real simply, see, they do it, so why can't I? That would embolden me to do that.

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And I have come down on a line that those that are in pastoral or leadership positions that are facing this crisis, which has now reached administrative levels of opioid, you know, all these addictions—I mean, this is a multibillion -dollar drain on the economy.

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This is a massive problem—families and all kinds of things, some of the things you've mentioned. So for a representative of Christ behind the desk of God, the pulpit there, and administering

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Eucharist and these things, I don't think that's something you should be parading around that, hey, I've had a sift of bourbon last night, and it was really good stuff, just going on and on and on about how they drink and stuff.

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That emboldens people like me. It did. It doesn't anymore. Well, we have to go to a—

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All right, now. Okay, like, big deal. So what? You can drink a fifth? Why do you have to parade that around? You know, is that something that you're proud of?

30:34

Is there—I think there's something else going on there. I'm just like, I don't—okay, so you can drink.

30:41

Yeah, Jesus drank wine. Okay, great, fantastic. What's your point? So I have come down on that.

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You know, I've come down on that side a little more stronger than I normally would.

30:54

Well, we have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I could obviously see clearly how this subject, more than most, might lend itself to people wanting to write in anonymously.

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Just as we offered our listeners yesterday when we had Chris Croats of Overcome, a ministry that he co -founded to help people prevent and overcome addiction to pornography, we are offering that same opportunity for people today to write in anonymously as we always do if the question involves a personal and private matter.

31:57

It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Don't go away, we'll be right back with Sam Frost and more of our discussion on a

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Christian evaluation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the addiction recovery movements right after these messages, so don't go away.

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40:01

We are now back to our discussion with Sam Frost, an author who has probably been most well -known for his connection formerly with hyper -preterism, and he wrote a book called

40:17

Why I Left Full Preterism, and he's going to be involved at some point, God willing, in the near future, he's going to be involved in a debate right here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with Don Preston, who is a full preterist, and we'll be keeping you updated on that.

40:33

But today we are discussing his book God as Bill Wilson Understood Him, and for the sake of those who have no idea who

40:41

Bill Wilson is, we are discussing a Christian evaluation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the addiction recovery movements, and tell us, if you could, if you would,

40:53

I should say, I know you can, but if you would, Sam, tell us about Bill Wilson and the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous and what this organization was really based on, and then we will have you basically discuss how it devolved in what it is today.

41:12

And I know that you already said that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a monolith because you have different meetings that may have maybe close to radically different approaches.

41:24

I don't know if they would have clearly a radically different approach, but perhaps you could address that more accurately than I can.

41:31

Tell us about the foundation of this organization. Well, Bill Wilson was an entrepreneurial personality of sorts there in New York City where he applied his trade to various things, mainly trading stocks, penny stocks, junk bonds.

41:58

He was doing whatever he could do to make, earn a living. Sometimes he was successful, sometimes he wasn't.

42:05

A World War I veteran drank heavily that he found that his drinking was getting in the way of his earning a living.

42:20

And so, towards his later years, he was, you know, in and out of what they had back then.

42:27

You could check yourself into an asylum, I guess, of sorts, a hospital.

42:33

You could just check yourself in and get dried out for a week and they let you go. And he, you know, realized, came to the place where the doctor that was treating him,

42:52

Dr. Silkworth, there at Charles B. Towns Hospital there in New York, and this was a doctor.

42:58

Dr. Silkworth was one that was earning a reputation of working with these skid row drunks, these winos, these drunks that would come in and dry out.

43:06

So, as a doctor, he was formulating his own theory. And there were other theories going on.

43:11

Again, this wasn't something A .A. originated. This stuff was already in the air. Basically, the doctor told him after many failed treatments that he's just a hopeless case.

43:25

For some reason, that meant for Bill that, you know, he was an agnostic, self -admittedly an agnostic.

43:35

He had a little church life growing up, familiar with it anyway, but never really confined himself over to religious upbringing or going to church or any of that kind of stuff.

43:51

And so, you know, but he, you know, believes in God, as does, I guess, the majority of Americans believe in God.

43:59

And really was at a crossroads, so he says, in his life. And a friend came to him from the

44:07

Oxford Group. The Oxford Group is an interesting fellowship of, basically, evangelicals.

44:18

If you go to Walter Elwell and his Dictionary of Theology, that massive volume that he edited,

44:31

Frank Buckman is the founder of the Oxford Group. Frank Buckman has an entry there in there.

44:37

And if you research the Oxford Group and what they were trying to do, they're still active today, actually.

44:45

They're not called the Oxford Group anymore. This Buckman guy had this religious experience,

44:56

Christian religious experience, that he got overseas in Europe. I think he went to the

45:01

Keswick Convention, which was a Methodist kind of thing where you had this, you know, spiritual gifts and all this kind of stuff was going on.

45:11

Keep in mind, this is early 1910s, 1920s.

45:17

So, on the cusp of all this, you have the Azusa Street Revival, you have

45:23

Pentecostal, and you have a lot of this stuff going on, especially Keswick. So, you have a lot of this stuff going on, and that's coming over here to the

45:30

States. And many pastors were going overseas to experience this. You know, we were hearing these before.

45:36

So, Frank does. He comes back and he's just, you know, he's on fire for God and starts this

45:43

Oxford Group. And this is basically Methodism. It's the kind of stuff that you would read, like,

45:53

Practicing the Presence of God, Andrew Murray, you know, that kind of stuff, that really devotional, personal walk with Jesus, a personal life with the

46:04

Holy Spirit daily. When you wake up, you pray. So, I'm assuming that this is not to be confused with the

46:15

Oxford Movement within Anglicanism, which is an attempt of Anglicans to be more in alignment with Roman Catholicism.

46:23

No, no, no, no, yeah. Yeah, the Oxford Group is a completely... So, and, you know, like Charles Wesley, just taking these methods that, you know, they call

46:38

Methodism, and this is, you know, practicing the presence of God in your life. When you wake up in the morning, you pray.

46:44

You order your life according to the Scriptures. Everything you do is with the mind towards God, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

46:53

And you get these, a lot of these daily devotionals and things. Now, this is old, you know, this goes back, again, steps of Ignatius, Francis of Assisi, you know, they had all these kind of, you know, methods and steps that one would follow, ordering their daily life around the

47:12

Gospel of Jesus Christ, and your life around those kind of things, and these were to become principles or steps.

47:19

And again, nothing wrong with any of that. You get up in the morning, you should pray.

47:25

That should be the first thought on your mind is, you know, I will be done. And that's what they were stressing.

47:31

That's what they were trying to really... And the other thing is really holding each other accountable, really speaking personally into each other's lives.

47:39

And again, they're drawing this off of James, confessing our faults one to another, really getting into these kind of intimate relationships, brother to brother, brother to sister, sister to sister in the

47:51

Church, and holding each other accountable. You know, so that more or less was what

47:58

Oxford group was doing. And a friend, an old drinking buddy of Bill's, Ebbie Thatcher, came to him, and he wasn't drinking.

48:10

And this intrigued Bill, like, you know, why aren't you drinking? And so Ebbie Thatcher goes into this long story, and they talk all night long, and this interests

48:23

Bill, because he's at the, you know, total despair in his life. And he gives it a try, and starts reading their literature, and starts talking, and he goes down to I think you mentioned it,

48:38

Chris, there in New York, where the Reverend Samuel Shoemaker... St. George's Episcopal Church, which is where my friend

48:45

Jacob... My friend Jacob Smith is the rector there, and today, it returned to its biblical roots in the 19th century, because it began as a low church, thoroughly

48:59

Calvinistic Episcopal Church, and Jacob Smith, who fits that description to a

49:05

T, has been used of God as the rector there to bring that church back to its roots, because there was a period of time when there was apostasy there, and a very liberal minister tore the

49:20

Ten Commandments and the Apostles' Creed off of the wall, and threw them in the garbage, and it was just a horrible thing going on there for a while.

49:29

But anyway, that is a historic church, in fact, was involved on the fundamentalist side during the fundamentalist modernist controversy.

49:38

Yes. Well, Bill goes to these,

49:46

I guess, more or less these revival meetings, street revival meetings, and the Reverend Samuel Shoemaker is there, and Bill goes to the altar call and gives his life.

49:56

And from then on out, I think he suffers one other bout, and then he goes back into the... And then he has this religious experience.

50:03

He has this white light kind of thing, and according to his testimony, he never drank again.

50:11

That was the end of that. And him and Sam Shoemaker, the Episcopal rector there, really begin to hit it off, and Bill gets introduced to all of this kind of stuff.

50:24

And of course, he's in the Oxford group now. And he hits on, you know,

50:31

Bill being the entrepreneur, he hits on this idea, why don't we just concentrate it on alcoholics?

50:37

You know, it's not church, we're not going to start a church, but we'll just have an organization of fellowship of people who have this one particular issue in their life, and we'll speak into each other's lives, and we'll just create a fellowship, and it's a fellowship of alcoholics, drunks.

50:55

And we'll have these principles and these steps, and we'll hold each other accountable to following these steps, and we'll appeal to the power of God, which he calls in the big book.

51:09

The big book is the book of 1939. It was written, and that's if you go to any AA meeting, you'll see there it's called, the text is simply, the book is simply called

51:19

Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's in four editions. It's in its fourth edition today, but that is the main text.

51:28

That's the Bible, if you will, of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, they wrote that book starting in 35, 36, and then by the time of 1939, the book was ready to be sent out, and it was sent out to clergy and psychologists and medical experts, and it was sent out, and then they sent it back with notes and editorials and all these kinds of things.

51:50

And then you have the first edition of the book that came out in 1939.

51:57

And reading that book, you can see, as is plainly stated in its pages, that they were drawing heavily from that Methodism principle, you know, steps to Christ kind of stuff, and a personal relationship, because this was really what

52:18

Bill said before he was agnostic. He had kind of a, he's from Vermont, so you can imagine kind of a deistic view, deism, you know,

52:30

God's out there kind of winding up the clock, and God's not very personal with us at all.

52:37

You know, He's just out there, and who He is, what religion's got Him right, you know, who knows, whatever.

52:43

So this idea of God being out there was, you know, okay, and Christ had some good teachings, and love your neighbors as you love yourself, yeah, that's a good idea.

52:51

But that's about as far as Bill went, and that's what changed for him. He began to see that God is a personal

52:58

God, that personally can come into a person's life and arrest those wayward or sinful desires that what person has and can take it away, as he said, root and branch.

53:13

I'm quoting Bill there. In fact, we're going to have you pick up on that very point when we return from our midway break.

53:21

Our midway break is longer than most because of the requirements of Grace Life Radio 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, so please be patient. Write down the information that you hear from our advertisers, and also take this time to write questions for our guest

53:36

Sam Frost, and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

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from Chris Ormson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to our guest today, Sam Frost, who is discussing

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God as Bill Wilson understood him, aka a

01:04:18

Christian evaluation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the addiction recovery movements. Before we return to that discussion,

01:04:24

I just have a couple of more important announcements to make. First of all, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having the

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Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology again. That's going to be held at two different locations, neither of which are in Philadelphia.

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The first is the First Christian Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan, and that's going to be held

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April 13th through the 15th at that location. And then the second location is the

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Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, a lot closer to Philadelphia, April 27th through the 29th.

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That is the location that I intend to go to the conference, where I intend to go to the conference.

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And the theme this year is the Spirit of the Age and Age of the Spirit. The speakers include

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Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, Conrad Mbewe, I believe the most powerful preacher alive on the planet

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Earth today, pastor of Kobwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa. Richard Phillips, Jonathan Master, David Murray, Scott Oliphant.

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And if you would like to register, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, and click on the

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Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. The Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit is the theme.

01:05:39

And please tell the folks at the Alliance of Evangelicals that you heard about these events from Chris Arns and on Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

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01:09:12

Now we are finally back with our guest Sam Frost, author of Why I Left Full Preterism and the book that we are discussing today,

01:09:22

God as Bill Wilson Understood Him, aka A Christian Evaluation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the

01:09:30

Addiction Recovery Movement. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:09:38

chrisarnson at gmail .com and there are a number of you already waiting to have your questions asked and answered and we will get to as many of you as possible, but we do want our guest

01:09:49

Sam Frost to continue a little bit more with more details on the foundation of this movement.

01:09:54

When we went to the break, as you may recall Sam, you were talking about how

01:09:59

Bill Wilson went from being what might be described as deism, where basically

01:10:05

God is distant and a non -personal deity. He winds up the universe like a clock and just watches it go about its natural course without interacting personally with it.

01:10:17

He became more of an evangelical who believes in a personal relationship with a personal

01:10:22

God and if you could continue right where you left off. Yeah, there's a good deal of, you know, research.

01:10:31

Probably one of the best historians out there is a Christian brother, Dick B., again an

01:10:37

Alcoholics Anonymous, he only mentioned the initial of your last name, but he's written about 42 books and he's actually gone to the archives in New York.

01:10:50

There are Alcoholics Anonymous World Services there that's in New York and searched through the actual archives.

01:10:55

They have a whole thing of these archives. What did you say his first name was? Can you spell the first name?

01:11:05

I'm not making out the first name. Can you spell it? Oh, B -I -C -K. B as in boy,

01:11:12

I -C -K. B as in dog. Oh, okay,

01:11:18

Dick B., okay. Yeah, if you just Google that name, an amazing amount of material comes up.

01:11:25

He's done thorough research where he has shown, you know, handwritten letters of Bill Wilson very early on in the 40s and things.

01:11:36

Bill talks, he sounds like an evangelical Christian preaching

01:11:41

Jesus Christ and the deliverance that comes through Jesus Christ by the power of the

01:11:48

Holy Spirit. I mean, this is basically what Bill is preaching. But if you look into, you know,

01:11:59

AA begins to grow, and again, as an agnostic, Bill, one of the keys to understanding the text,

01:12:07

Alcoholics Anonymous, is that Bill is not writing to Christians. He's not writing to people who believe in the

01:12:14

Bible. He's not writing to people that go to church. He's not writing to any, he's writing basically to people like himself, which were either atheistic or agnostic.

01:12:26

And a great bulk of the book is written towards that. The first chapter of the book is his own story, where of course he's giving his own explanation of his agnosticism.

01:12:40

And then he writes a couple of chapters about alcoholism and what it is and just about the others.

01:12:47

And then he goes right into a chapter called We Agnostics, which is one of the longest sustained chapters of the book.

01:12:53

I guess this is prior to what you were saying before. You were talking before about him being a deist, becoming an evangelical, or at least something similar.

01:13:01

So this is prior to that. Yes, this is all prior, yeah. And so he's, in his book, the chapter on We Agnostics, that really becomes the real fulcrum of the whole approach as to what

01:13:16

Bill is doing. In that, coming at an atheist or an agnostic who has no spirituality like himself, who has no...or

01:13:29

what religious experience they had was an abusive one.

01:13:36

You know, the very God of damnation, God of hellfire, you know, they just, you know, being pointed down and just ran down.

01:13:43

And you know how that works. People can use God to be quite abusive. And so they want nothing to do with religion.

01:13:50

They don't want anything to do with, you know, religious people or churches or any of that kind of stuff. These are hardcore drunks.

01:13:57

That's who Bill mainly is writing to. When that's understood, you can see that his approach is not one that's going to come at him, a person like that, you know, quoting scriptures.

01:14:14

And although the big book is filled with scriptural quotations, they're littered throughout the whole main text.

01:14:20

His approach, basically, is an evangelical approach, an approach, early on, to keep in mind the 1930s, 1940s, and the famous hymn,

01:14:29

Just As I Am. And that is, even if you don't believe in God, God has helped my life and God has set me free from alcoholism.

01:14:41

So why don't you give God a chance and just pray, just get on your knees. God, if you're out there, help me.

01:14:48

I need help. And that's his approach, which he's not saying anything about God theologically.

01:14:55

He's not going into the Trinity. He's not denying it. He's not affirming it. Bill is trying to, and this is a theological question that Reformed Jonathan Edwards gets into, is at what, the verse in Hebrews, you must first believe that God exists and that he is a rewarder of those that seek him.

01:15:19

So obviously, you have to first believe that God exists. That's the first step.

01:15:26

I mean, just to acknowledge, even if you don't believe that God exists, can you at least bring yourself to the idea that there might be a

01:15:35

God that exists? So he's trying to get at the most basic, fundamental level before you get into a full -blown

01:15:42

Christian Orthodox faith, a robust Christian Orthodox faith. He's trying to get it down to the most common, basic, fundamental denominator that you possibly could get theologically when it comes to discussing

01:15:57

God as you understand him. Let's just start there. How do you understand God?

01:16:02

Well, would God be in your personal life? How do you, well, I was raised in a Methodist church, and my mother used to beat me over the head with the

01:16:10

Bible and lock me in the closet. Okay, well, that's not a good conception of God. So do you know what

01:16:19

I'm saying there when he's really trying to break evangelism Yes. Because he's not a church, he's not a minister, he's not a pastor, he doesn't want to act like one.

01:16:30

He wants to strip away all religiosity as possible, as much as possible, but yet God delivered him, and so we have to talk about God.

01:16:41

But how do you talk about God to these atheists and agnostics who are alcoholics and they want nothing to do with God?

01:16:48

That's Bill's dilemma. If you understand that, then you'll get what

01:16:54

Bill is trying to do. And again, it's controversial, of course. And Bill says and does some things that I, as a

01:17:02

Reformer, would disagree with. And of course, Bill is operating as a New Englander.

01:17:08

He is thoroughly free will. There's no ands, ifs, or buts about that. So that's his theological orientation.

01:17:17

But another key to understanding it is that this is Bill's God, as Bill understands it, and I don't have to accept Bill's theological understanding of God.

01:17:25

God, as I understand him, is the biblical God, but in my theological heritage,

01:17:33

Westminster Confession of Faith, or like you said, the Baptist Confession, which I love reading, and that's what

01:17:41

I mean by, that's my understanding of God. When you talk to me about God, I want to talk about the

01:17:46

God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac, the biblical understanding of God. So that's what he's doing. He's not saying, as it is often stated today, and as many

01:17:56

A .A .ers do, make up your own God. That's not where Bill was coming from with that.

01:18:04

And, you know, the rest is, you know, we could get into all sorts of other things, but that's, hopefully that helps some of the listeners maybe to understand, or at least, what he was trying to do.

01:18:15

Yes, as a Reformed Christian, such as yourself, it's interesting how

01:18:23

I have always thought this was somewhat strange, and I think it might have something to do.

01:18:31

In fact, I'm pretty certain it has something to do with the Arminianism or semi -Pelagianism of Bill Wilson, because here you have the first three steps.

01:18:45

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had to become unchangeable, that our lives had become unmanageable.

01:18:55

We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and then the third step is made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood

01:19:09

Him. How can you be an insane person who needs to be restored to sanity, and yet you're making a decision to turn to a

01:19:18

God that you understand, or God as you understand Him? If you're insane, you're not going to be choosing the

01:19:25

God of the Bible or the real God, if you follow what I'm saying. It's out of order here, it doesn't make sense.

01:19:34

But what we have to do, because we're running out of time already, and we have a line of listeners asking questions, how has this really devolved in our day and age?

01:19:49

To give you an example, I checked into, before I went to Hebron Colony Ministries, because they did not have a bed available for me immediately,

01:19:58

I checked myself into St. Charles Hospital on Long Island, who has a drug and alcohol rehabilitation wing.

01:20:09

And so I was there until a bed opened up at Hebron Colony, and we had a counselor, a psychologist assigned to us, there were like several groups, and each group was assigned a particular psychologist.

01:20:25

And this psychologist used to butt heads with me, my Christianity made her very uncomfortable.

01:20:32

And she says to me one day in one of our rap groups, or whatever you want to call it, our open discussion groups, she says, why do you dislike

01:20:43

AA so much? And I said, well, as a Christian, it is blasphemous to say that you can choose any

01:20:51

God that you wish to serve, or any higher power, and you can even invent this higher power.

01:20:59

And I said, picking a chair, for instance, to be your higher power is not only blasphemous as a

01:21:06

Christian, but it is insane. And she said to me, oh, people don't pick chairs as their higher power, it has to be something that's living, she says.

01:21:18

She says it has to be something like a tree, right? So I said, okay, so somebody picks a higher power to be a tree, what happens when you cut the tree down and make a chair out of it?

01:21:28

And she didn't like that at all. But tell us about this devolution, if you will, de -evolution of what began as an imperfect thing to begin with, but even became more distorted and unbiblical and even blasphemous in regard to this higher power aspect.

01:21:55

Well, I think it was Bill's intention, from what

01:22:03

I know, what we have documented of what he believed as a Christian, and what he professed, is that if he just was able to bring people to the idea that God may or may not exist without defining that God, because he's not in the context of church, he's not in the context of evangelizing people or any of that kind of thing, because he doesn't want to function that way.

01:22:32

Then his idea was, I'm not going to say anything about God, because one of the tenements of Alcoholics Anonymous is, we are not

01:22:42

God. And the problem of the alcoholic is that he thinks that he is God. He's running his own life, he's making his own decisions, he does what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, to who he wants to do it to, where he wants to do it, how he wants to do it, on his own terms, and he answers to nobody.

01:22:58

And so Bill really hammered that, that you are not God, and so we're not going to play

01:23:05

God anymore. And if the spirit is active in somebody who comes to the place where they're at least willing, maybe, believe, then that's where Bill left it.

01:23:16

And the spirit of the Lord, the true spirit of God, the Great Physician, many names that Bill referred to Jesus Christ as, would then take over and Bill's job is done.

01:23:29

And that's kind of how he, I think that's kind of how he went along, which is why he refrains from entering into a theological, creedal, orthodox statement about God.

01:23:39

Even though even though he does, it's peppered throughout the main text of Alcoholics Anonymous and scriptural references and this, that, and the other.

01:23:52

So what happens is that an organization such as this, which is not a church, it doesn't have a creed in terms of a theological confession or anything like that, is left open to all sorts of definitions by those to whom the spirit of God does not move.

01:24:09

And Bill saw that as a problem and that yet still has to be inclusive. Those ideas, whether they're right or whether they're wrong, have to be inclusive because AA is a very inclusive, it's not a church, so it doesn't have a checklist of doctrines that you have to believe in, in order to get in.

01:24:28

And is there problems with that, a paradox and all? Yes, that's created a good deal because now you allow this influx of any and everything to come in.

01:24:40

And when you start confronting that with what Bill says in the big book, then you become a big book thumper and nobody wants to be around you.

01:24:48

Or if you start quoting the scriptures that are mentioned in the big book, and you can see here where that divide is happening even in AA, between those, a very large

01:24:58

Christian recovery movement stemming from AA, historical AA, and then those that are accepting more of the anything -goes kind of thing, and that is the divide that's taking place in AA.

01:25:09

It's been taking place for quite some time, 20, 30, 40 years. And you can see it, it's palatable.

01:25:16

So some groups you enter into are, the Bible was on the table, I mean, the

01:25:22

Lord's Prayer is being said, Jesus Christ is being mentioned, and nobody cringes. You go into other groups, you mention the

01:25:28

Bible and Jesus Christ and people cringe. They don't want to hear it. And that's, there you have it.

01:25:38

Bill is not saying you can't be members because you don't believe in the Bible. Bill is not saying because you believe in the

01:25:45

Bible and you're preaching Jesus Christ, you can't be a member. You're not saying that either. And he just kind of leaves it there, which just opens it up to this mess.

01:25:52

It does open it up to that. The problem is, is that you get some AA -ers that are trying to squeeze out the

01:26:01

Christian roots. They're literally trying to do this. So that you mention anything about God, if you don't say higher power, if you say, my

01:26:08

Lord Jesus Christ, you can, I've seen people literally cringe in meetings where I say, you know,

01:26:13

I thank my Lord Jesus Christ. And they're like, higher power, say higher power. That way you won't offend anybody.

01:26:20

But that's not in the big book. Right. I can say whatever I want. I can say whatever I want with Bill's permission.

01:26:27

Right. And you understand that that's the problem. So yeah, it can become a cult.

01:26:32

Yes. It can become quite dangerous in some places. Yes, there was an NA group meeting in the basement of the church where I was once a member in New York.

01:26:43

And my pastor, one of my pastors said, hey, can you check out this NA meeting and just give us a report on how you think it's being conducted and if you're comfortable with it, because they knew my own former addictions and so on.

01:26:58

And so I went to the NA meeting and I was loaded for bear with Jay Adams tracks on addiction.

01:27:08

And everybody there, well, not everybody, but a lot of people there were giving their methodology.

01:27:15

They were reciting their methodology for stopping their urges to use drugs in its tracks.

01:27:27

And they were very much, most of them were very spiritual. They were false spirituality, but they were spiritual.

01:27:35

And one guy said that he repeated the Hail Mary over and over and over again until the urge went away.

01:27:41

And I could just remember hearing religious methodology that was going on and nobody was rebuked or censured or whatever.

01:27:50

When I got up and I gave my Christian testimony and said that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one come to the father but through him, and that hell is filled with sober people.

01:28:03

If you really want true freedom, not only from addiction to substances that are deadly and damning, but also if you would like eternal life, come speak with me later.

01:28:13

And by the way, I have these free booklets written by Jay Adams about addiction. The guy who was running the meeting called me outside and said, you can't do that.

01:28:22

I said, I can't do what? You can't endorse your specific religion. I said, what are you kidding me?

01:28:29

Nearly everybody in here was giving religious ways that they prevented themselves from going back to drugs.

01:28:36

This was just another religious way, but it is the only true way out of the bunch.

01:28:43

And he said, hey, you know, I'm a Christian too. I'm on the same page with you, but we can't do that in these meetings.

01:28:48

And I said, well, do you do know that you're a guest in my church's basement, right? I mean, so unfortunately

01:28:54

I had to report back what happened to my pastors and they told the NA group to leave, that they could no longer return to have their meetings in our church if they were going to prohibit the declaration of Jesus Christ and his gospel as the only way to true salvation.

01:29:11

They could not in good conscience, obviously, let them continue. See, that goes against everything that is stated on paper.

01:29:22

You read it in the very first press. We do not endorse any religion, nor do we oppose any.

01:29:28

And see, that's where I find that you should have been welcomed and totally accepted.

01:29:37

And I've gone, you know, I knew from Dick B., from his book, one of the early things that they were reading in these early groups back in Ohio and New York was

01:29:49

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost Forth Highest, which is the book I grew up on. And I still read that book.

01:29:56

It's just a daily devotional of the great Oswald Chambers, who has a wonderful life and testimony back in the 1910s, 1920s as a

01:30:04

World War I chaplain. And, you know, this tremendous daily devotional, probably the most printed daily devotional out there,

01:30:13

My Utmost Forth Highest. And they would read that. That would be the basis of their hour -long meeting, was what he would say, or others, like the upper room

01:30:23

Methodist, you know, if you go to a Methodist church, you still get the upper room daily devotional there.

01:30:29

So, that's what they would read, and then they would quote out of the Bible. They would literally read out of the Bible. The Sermon on the

01:30:36

Mount and things like that, that was their main, these were some of the main early texts. So, that's what

01:30:43

I find interesting is, you know, you being able to do that. I find these, at Goodwill, I find a lot of these

01:30:51

Oswald Chambers books, and I buy them for like 99 cents, and I hand them out at the meetings.

01:30:57

I've handed out whole stacks of them, saying, here, I've just got these, put them on the table, and I only have whatever. And I've never had any opposition at the one that I go to, but I could see where a ton that I went to, if I did that,

01:31:08

I probably would face, which is unfortunate, because that is not supposed to happen. So, you know, you're in a meeting where they're actually prohibiting that.

01:31:17

They're actually violating what Bill was saying not to do. You're not to do any of that kind of thing.

01:31:26

Well, we have to go to our final break, and if anybody would like to join us on the air.

01:31:32

I'm sorry? You can get to some questions if you want to, if there's some out there. Yes, there are.

01:31:38

And when we return from our last break, we're going to go right to the questions. And by the way, Gordy in Mechanicsburg, your question, if you've been listening, has already been answered by our guest,

01:31:48

Sam Frost, about the Oxford Group. So, if you have another question, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

01:31:54

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. And if anybody else would like to get in line to ask a question, please do so now or forever hold your peace because we're running out of time.

01:32:04

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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01:35:30

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the Pastor's Study every

01:35:36

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

01:35:46

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the

01:35:52

Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

01:35:59

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

01:36:06

Welcome back, and remember, if you call into the live call -in show,

01:36:11

A Visit to the Pastor's Study, and you speak to Bill Shishko, the host of that program, please mention to Pastor Bill that you heard about his program from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I urge all of you whenever possible to listen to that live program and to call in with your questions every

01:36:30

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on wlie540am .com.

01:36:36

That's wlie540am .com. Very unfortunate call in, or should

01:36:41

I say call letters for a radio station that's Christian, WLIE, but it's named after the

01:36:47

Long Island Expressway. And you can also hear the program live on your radio dial anywhere in the tri -state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and even parts of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island on 540 on the

01:37:06

AM dial. That's Saturdays from 12 noon to 1 pm

01:37:11

Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study. We are now back to the final 20 minutes or so of our program with Sam Frost.

01:37:20

We're talking about Alcoholics Anonymous. I forgot to mention to you before the break,

01:37:26

Sam, that Eddie from Floral Park sent in a question, which

01:37:31

I just got a message from Eddie. Okay, I forwarded that to you, actually, because I wanted you to be able to read it during the break, and I forgot to tell you before the break.

01:37:42

But anyway, as Eddie in Floral Park asks, as a Christian who is also a recovered alcoholic,

01:37:49

I have no problem identifying myself as an alcoholic, especially based upon the manner by which it enables me to evangelize in recovery.

01:38:00

Why do you believe Christian pastors have a problem with this, saying, you are not an alcoholic but a new creation, when it is obvious that we cannot drink successfully just because we are born again?

01:38:13

Interesting question. I myself, though, do not believe that it is required of a

01:38:22

Christian in particular to walk around identifying themselves with a sin that they have repented of and that the

01:38:30

Lord has delivered them from. And I don't, I mean, are we to walk around saying, hi,

01:38:37

I'm Bill, and I'm an adulterer. Hi, I'm Joe, and I'm a thief. Hi, I'm Pete, and I'm a murderer, if those things have been repented of.

01:38:48

But if you could respond. That's a good question, and I like,

01:38:53

Eddie, I know Eddie, I like how you have recovered, recovered alcoholic, not a recovering.

01:39:00

Right, right, right. I appreciated that myself. Oh yeah, that's a huge point there that we haven't even, that's another controversy that goes on.

01:39:11

I don't, I tell people I'm an alcoholic, there's that old slogan, what's an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.

01:39:18

For the big book, again, Bill's Alcoholics Not Almost the

01:39:24

Main Text, he talks about and uses the word recovered, ex -alcoholics, former alcoholics.

01:39:30

And then he says, you know, what's an alcoholic? So what does he mean by that? Well, it's twofold. If on one hand, the aspect of alcoholism is that there is a physiological, chemical, neurological, cellular, genetic, any of that kind of theoretical thinking of which alcohol does something bodily to you that it does not do to other people.

01:39:57

Then in that sense, I do not, I don't drink, my body is not going to change. But that's not the real emphasis of the problem that Bill Wilson focuses in on.

01:40:09

He focuses in on that mental and spiritual aspect, that spiritual issue that you've got going on that only a spiritual remedy can cure.

01:40:19

And so from one standpoint, I can say I'm an ex -alcoholic. On the other, from another standpoint,

01:40:25

I'm an alcoholic. I don't drink, I'm an alcoholic. I don't have any problem saying that because of the new creation that has delivered me from my spiritual malady, which is what

01:40:36

Bill calls a spiritual malady. Yes, I'm a new creature in Christ.

01:40:41

I've been delivered. I no longer have a desire for drinking. I can be around it. I've been in bars with friends, and I have no issues, temptations, nothing whatsoever.

01:40:56

I'd serve it at my house if somebody wanted to, you know, I'd drink it. I don't have any issues with that at all. So from that one aspect,

01:41:04

I think when people say, well, you're a new creation, it's the same thing as, you know, if you're recovered from cancer, you know, you say you're,

01:41:11

I'm in, I'm recovered, you know. I'm, I'm, you know, however they, however they would say that.

01:41:18

So I, I don't think that people, while you're a new creation in Christ, you shouldn't go along saying you're an alcoholic. Well, I'm still an alcoholic.

01:41:24

I just, I just don't drink. I've been delivered from the desire to drink, which is the spiritual issue. That really is the issue.

01:41:31

Well, let me give you an example. Yesterday I had Chris Croats on, and he is a co -founder of a ministry called

01:41:40

Overcome that deals with pornography addiction. Is he to walk around saying, hi,

01:41:46

I'm Chris, and I'm a porn addict, even though he has repented of this and is no longer enslaved by it?

01:41:55

Right. And that's, that's where I would use phrases, you know, I would say something like I, I'm a former alcoholic or I'm an ex -alcoholic or, or as it's said, as Eddie says, you're a recovered alcoholic.

01:42:07

I would use that if, and it depends on who I'm talking to, the context of, I don't, I don't walk around and say those kinds of things.

01:42:16

It's, you know, few and far between when I have to actually bring that issue up. So I'm talking to somebody and, um, suffering from what

01:42:25

I would look like, you know, not pending or diagnosing them as being an alcoholic. Well, like when

01:42:31

I say, I'm, well, I'm a recovered alcoholic. Actually, I've spent many years, uh, battling this.

01:42:36

So, you know, I'm here to help. I have often said, and even this week,

01:42:42

I have said to people when ordering food in a restaurant, uh, would you like a glass of wine with that?

01:42:49

And I, and I have said, sometimes I'll just say, no, thank you. But, uh, on a couple, on a couple of occasions,

01:42:55

I said to the people asking me this, no, no, no. I had a very serious problem with that.

01:43:01

And I am thanking the Lord that I am no longer, uh, imbibing in that and I have no interest in it.

01:43:08

You know, I refer to it as my past history. Yeah. And that's what recovered alcoholic means.

01:43:15

It's, it's, you're no longer, it's, um, it's, uh, as Bill says in the big book, the problem has been removed.

01:43:24

And when you do have genuine, actual spiritual recovery from the

01:43:30

Lord Jesus Christ, from the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, um, you can't say

01:43:36

I am recovered. I'm an ex -alcoholic. I'm a former alcoholic. I'm recovered. Um, now bodily, if I thought that I could, but see, that's the conundrum because the thing that I asked

01:43:49

God to take away, He did. So it becomes a moot point as to whether bodily,

01:43:56

I still, because I don't have a desire to even choose it. So it's been taken away.

01:44:03

So I'm not going to test or attempt that and say, well, let me see if I can drink a six pack and let me see if anything happens.

01:44:09

I don't want to do that because I'm convinced,

01:44:14

I'm convinced that if I did drink a six pack that I would be right back out again. Oh, of course. I have no doubts about that.

01:44:21

Yep. Of course. No doubt. So that in that vein, I say, I'm not even going to attempt this.

01:44:27

I'm not even, cause I, I, I'm convinced by my past that I would be right back out at it again.

01:44:35

As, as am I. And, uh, my main problem with it is that AA, uh, acts like it is a religious dogma when it comes to identifying yourself as an alcoholic.

01:44:47

Uh, it can be. Yeah, it can be. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Eddie. Thank you,

01:44:53

Eddie. And can, can keep listening to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio and spreading the word about it in Floral Park and beyond.

01:44:59

We look forward to future questions from you. Uh, we have, uh,

01:45:04

Tony with an eye in Rock Hill, South Carolina. And Tony says, your guest seems to be compartmentalizing the sin of drunkenness, much as the homosexuals have successfully done with the sin of homosexuality, meaning special treatment.

01:45:24

He stated that it is a phenomena or whatever you want to call it.

01:45:30

He said, according to scripture, it is sin and a particularly destructive sin.

01:45:37

And that's all according to his thinking. I would have to say that liars and adulterers are also a phenomena as they are everywhere inside and outside the church.

01:45:48

How do you respond to Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina's comments? Well, it is a sin.

01:45:55

There's no ands, ifs, or buts about that. Uh, you can't, you can't read the scriptures and not see the sin of drunkenness.

01:46:01

Equally, you would see the sin. I've had, uh, people that they didn't know it at the time, but they were grossly overweight.

01:46:09

And the Bible refers to that as gluttony. Um, that's a sin.

01:46:14

You eat too much. Your food has become your idol. So, you know,

01:46:20

I mean, I could come at it like, like that. I mean, I actually had one guy who had a problem and he was, he was, he was very much overweight and he struggled with food all along and he was lecturing me about me drinking too much.

01:46:30

I just want to turn around and call him a fatty. You know, well, I'll say fatty. So I don't mean to, uh, compartmentalize or do anything.

01:46:42

What I mean by phenomenon, I'm using that in a clinical sense, um, that it's a phenomenon that with some people, it seems to have a hold over, um, more than others who just have a couple of glasses of wine and they leave it at that.

01:46:58

They don't think about it. They don't even, they couldn't even tell you how many they had because they don't sit around counting. Oh, they only had two.

01:47:04

Right. Just not thinking about it. And whereas with those like myself, if I had two,

01:47:10

I knew I had two. And I tell you, I only had two cause I'm counting them. And that's a phenomenon.

01:47:16

You know, it's just, that's what I mean by phenomenon. I'm not, I'm not minimizing the sinful destructiveness and the rebellion of, that was in my heart, um, the rebellion and turning my back against God whenever I decided that I could control my time.

01:47:34

And I'm tempting God is what I'm doing. Right. And I'm not really, I'm not really sure what she meant by you saying that, that alcoholics or drug addicts need special treatment.

01:47:46

I mean, sins are different. Sins are different from one another. And we have to respond to them sometimes in a unique way.

01:47:54

Not that we ever diminish the damning nature of them, but we, like for instance, a person who deals with lust, who battles lust in an overwhelming way, who has falls into sin in that area, they are going to be, uh, dealt with and should deal with themselves in unique ways like that might involve, they can't go to the beach anymore.

01:48:19

They can't, they can't watch certain TV programs. They can't go to certain movies, just like an alcoholic might have certain things that need to change in their lives that other sinners don't have to change for because of the uniqueness of the sin.

01:48:35

Right. I mean, you can take, I mean, I know what pornography is. I've, I've seen it. I, as a kid,

01:48:42

Playboy magazine, Hustler, you know, pornography, I had a friend that had almost destroyed his marriage.

01:48:48

He could not just stop. He couldn't stop watching this. That's not really been an issue with me.

01:48:54

I'm not, I was always kind of turned off by it. I didn't really see the point of that.

01:49:03

You know, it's like, oh, and then when you have daughters, it goes out the window completely. It's like,

01:49:08

I can't, you know, so I, porn was never something that I could sit and enjoy. So it was never, it never hooked.

01:49:16

There was no hook there. Alcohol, on the other hand, that got a big hook. And again, there's so many factors.

01:49:25

The way I was, grew up, family, friends, acceptability, social lubricant, you know, all that kind of stuff.

01:49:34

You know, when you want to have a good time, you have, when you want to mow the yard on a

01:49:39

Saturday, you have a beer. That's just handed. How do you mow a yard? How do you go play golf and not have a beer?

01:49:49

That's how I was raised, you know, and that, you know, there's all kinds of factors that go into this, but it would be the same that I would approach for those struggling with homosexuality or, or, or any other,

01:50:04

I mean, you could go down the list of certain, this is what Paul calls easily besetting sin. I have an issue with homosexuality.

01:50:12

Right. Never been an issue with me. What I can say, what I can say in empathy with Tony is that I agree that far too often sins like this do, however, become discussed and identified even by professedly

01:50:30

Bible -believing Christians in clinical ways. And they make a person more out to be the victim of his ancestry or something, rather than the fact that the person is a sinner who, in spite of any proclivity that they may have, even from birth, they are voluntarily participating in something that is sinful, if they drink to excess,

01:50:56

I mean. I'm sorry? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, these, you know, in the beginning when you, you know, you think before you drink.

01:51:05

So in the beginning, before I've even taken a drink, it's already in my mind.

01:51:11

So I've already made the choice. I've already acquiesced to that lust of having a drink.

01:51:17

And once that's clicked in, it's very difficult at that point to, that's where I would say you're powerless. Once that clicks, that's, that's, that's it.

01:51:24

You're off and running. Even if you think this time I'm only going to have a couple, it hardly ever works out that way.

01:51:32

I can't tell you how many times I've sat down where I'm just going to have three beers, and I end up shutting the place down at two o 'clock in the morning.

01:51:39

So, you know, that's what I mean by phenomena. You know, and this happens for years, hundreds of times.

01:51:49

These things pile up to where you can look back and think, man, I don't have any control over this at all.

01:51:55

You know, I've got a problem here. Because I want control over it. How, what power,

01:52:02

I need a power, I need, I need something else. It's not just something, you know what, I'm not going to drink anymore. If that was that easy, we wouldn't have any problems.

01:52:10

So that's what I mean by phenomena. For some, it's not a choice like whether I want a red car or a blue car.

01:52:19

It is, you know, choice is there, and it is involved, but there are other factors going on as well that we need to pay attention to.

01:52:27

We have Joey in Clifton, New Jersey, who says, I appreciate the delivery from alcoholism that you have experienced, and I thank

01:52:36

God for that. At the same time, I think we need two clarifications. Number one, the existence of desire for a drink is not what defines whether someone remains an alcoholic.

01:52:48

So while your personal complete deliverance from the desire is wonderful, it does not mean that others who have remaining temptation are not delivered.

01:52:59

If they have repented of it, they are being faithful. Number two, we must not use the language of I am an alcoholic if we have been delivered by Christ.

01:53:10

We must always use the language of Scripture as a reminder of 1

01:53:15

Corinthians chapter 6, verse 11, such were some of you. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in there.

01:53:23

The only thing that I would take an exception to though, I mean, is the Apostle Paul did refer to himself in the present tense as the chief of sinners.

01:53:31

So there is some kind of an ongoing identity with the sinfulness of our...

01:53:38

Well, it's my past. I mean, I can't, I'm not going to shut the door on my past.

01:53:44

My past has brought me up to where I'm at now, and my past is what God has brought me to the place where I'm at now.

01:53:50

So I have to identify with such as what I was. I'm still wanting to identify with that so that I can tell, yeah,

01:53:59

I used to have this issue, I had this problem. How'd you go about? Well, this is how I went about doing it.

01:54:06

This is how the Lord delivered me or delivered you from what I was.

01:54:13

And what I desire not to go back to because that's what I was. And there's still a,

01:54:20

I think a, I don't want to tempt the Lord and saying, oh, now I can go back and have drinking in moderation.

01:54:27

I don't even want to go down that path because of what I was. So I just avoid it altogether.

01:54:35

Well, thank you so much, Joey, in Clifton, New Jersey. Please keep listening to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio and spreading the word in New Jersey and beyond.

01:54:42

I want you to have about four minutes of uninterrupted time to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:54:52

Well, just, you know, my own testimony is that, you know, and I was a

01:54:57

Christian, you know, I've been in church all my life. Um, I can't remember a time where I was not in church and in love with church and scripture and the gospel story and Jesus and drawing pictures when

01:55:10

I was a kid. And I've been, you know, and going through a Bible college and then a few different seminaries and receiving my degree and all this bunch of other stuff there for those latter years.

01:55:22

And yet having a drinking problem, um, don't get so discouraged in all of this.

01:55:29

You know, God is faithful and God will deliver. And sometimes it can look extremely bleak and it's not going to happen.

01:55:38

But I'm, my testimony is that it does, it does happen. And I root this in my understanding of what

01:55:48

I, what is called the doctrine of progressive sanctification. The spirit is working. I'm not perfect.

01:55:54

I am a jar of clay in shape, being molded and being shaped into the image of his son, which is ultimate glorification and resurrection of the dead.

01:56:05

And so I know that that process is going on, but yet I know that God can deliver me as well.

01:56:12

And that came through years of process. So even if you're struggling and sometimes you occasionally fall, if the spirit of the

01:56:20

Lord is at work and doing what it is that he's doing, that's all part of the process that brings you to the place where deliverance as in my testimony, the testimony of millions, even of Chris is that deliverance can be had.

01:56:35

It is something that does exist. It is something that the spirit of God does. Jesus Christ, he does do it.

01:56:43

It is, it's not a pipe dream. It's not something that is wishful thinking. It does happen.

01:56:50

But you know, the time and the place, the event, I don't know. And you know,

01:56:56

I know that's a little scary, but it does happen. It, you know,

01:57:02

I'm delivered and I can proudly proclaim that in Jesus Christ, that he has done a work and not just me, others that are close to me see that they, you know, you've changed it, you know, something's happened to you.

01:57:17

So, you know, all praise and glory to the Lord. Amen. You know,

01:57:23

I tried every method known to mankind, I think, to try to quit in part of my struggle.

01:57:29

I really did for years because I knew it was sin. I knew it was wrong. So, but I, you know, looking back,

01:57:37

I really, you know, I was unfaithful. I was faithless, but he was faithful.

01:57:43

God, I may have left God, but he didn't leave me. And you know, that thought really,

01:57:52

I want to rejoice. I thank God for his grace. And I love that. I'll leave you with this.

01:57:57

I love this passage in Paul that he writes to Timothy. It says, it is the grace of God, which teaches us to say no to ungodliness.

01:58:05

Amen. The grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodliness. Amen. That's my story. And I want to very quickly give my own word of warning.

01:58:14

Parents, I don't think that you should send the ladies in your lives, your daughters, your sisters, your mothers to AA meetings because of the fact that there are criminals there that have to be there by law in order to, you know, keep in alignment with their parole or whatever the situation is.

01:58:36

And they are anonymous. And there have been very scary stories about women being abused at these recovery meetings because they don't even realize that the people that are around them who are asking them out for coffee and out on dates may be sex offenders and so on.

01:58:53

So I think that you have to seek out a church -based recovery group. And I just want to mention again that Hebron Colony Ministries is a wonderful ministry.

01:59:06

You can go to hebroncolony .org. Hebroncolony .org. Do you have any contact information that you care to share,

01:59:14

Sam? No, you can email me samuelmfaust at yahoo .com.

01:59:22

And then I think I sent you a PDF of the book. I'm not sure what you're talking about. Yes, yes. In fact, everybody who sent in a question, in fact, everybody listening, if you want a free

01:59:32

PDF of Sam's book, God as Bill Wilson Understood Him, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:59:39

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And put, I want Sam Frost's book in the subject line.

01:59:45

And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater