In our many meetings, conferences, workshops, and articles, International Christian Recovery Coalition has been urging Christian leaders, workers, and newcomers to obtain from Alcoholics Anonymous World Services up to 500 of A.A. General Services Conference-approved Pamphlet P-53. We have found so few in the hundreds of meetings we've attended, and we've concluded that this brief pamphlet on The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their Last Major Talks is a sadly neglected door to what Alcoholics Anonymous really was and is like.
We still urge you to acquire the pamphlets, put them on literature tables, put them in sober clubs, put them in Central Offices, give them to sponsors and sponsees, quote them in your talks, and pass them out to AAs, Christian leaders and workers, and others as widely as possible.
In addition, this important pamphlet can be read online:
http://www.aa.org/pdf/products/p-53_theCo-FoundersofAA.pdf
If you get a copy, read a copy, pass along a copy, go to the URL, and utilize Pamphlet P-53, you will find that the last major talk by A.A. Co-Founder Dr. Bob in Detroit in 1948 is fully reported.
There Dr. Bob tells of his Christian upbringing in Vermont. He tells how he got sober through prayer. He tells how the visit of Bill W. to Akron was, in Henrietta Seiberling's words, "manna from heaven"--an answer to the prayers for Bob's deliverance. You'll find Dr. Bob speaking of his excellent training in the Bible as a youngster in Vermont (www.dickb.com/drbobofaa.shtml). You'll find him speaking of how the first three got sober by turning to God and studying the Bible when there were no Steps, no Traditions, no drunkalogs, and no meetings or Big Book as there are today.
You'll find Dr. Bob saying that the oldtimers believed the answer to their problems was in the Bible (www.dickb.com/goodbook.shtml), You'll find him calling attention to the Bible's Book of James, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 as being "absolutely essential" to the Akron recovery program. www.dickb.com/JamesClub.shtml.
You'll find him telling of the daily fellowship meetings they had, giving rise in part to the many remakrs calling early A.A. First Century Christianity at work. And you'll find him pointing out that the basic ideas for the Twelve Steps came from all the study and effort that had been going on for the preceding four years in the Bible.
You'll find Bill Wilson calling Dr. Bob the "Prince of All Twelfth Steppers."
And you'll see an A.A. that relied on the power of God in ways that you never knew before.
"Don't leave home without it." Read it. Share about it. Enlighten your suffering friends. Pass it on to others. Counter all the nonsense god ideas, all the "spirituality" talk, all the "not-god-ness" labels, and all the erroneous remarks about where A.A. ideas really came f rom.
Again, you can start your journey now with P-53 on the internet at:
http://www.aa.org/pdf/products/p-53_theCo-FoundersofAA.pdf
dickb@dickb.com.
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