(Special Bargain
Offer--January 2015 ONLY!)
The 31-Volume “Dick
B. A.A. History and Christian Recovery Reference Set”
$224.95 + FREE Shipping within the United States*
Are
you involved with a Christian Recovery and/or 12 Step:
·
Group;
·
Treatment
Program;
·
Sober
Living Home;
·
Family
Outreach;
·
Correctional
Outreach;
·
Active
Military and/or Veteran’s Outreach;
·
Recovery
Ministry;
·
Counseling
Practice; or
·
Other
Outreach to alcoholics, addicts, or those impacted by alcoholism & drug
addiction
Start 2015 off right! Add to your
recovery library the fruits of Dick B.’s 25 years of research on the roles
played by God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible in early A.A.’s astonishing
success with “seemingly-hopeless,” “medically-incurable” alcoholics who
thoroughly followed the early A.A. path (and many also had problems with drugs).
Dick B.’s books will help you become more effective in equipping suffering
newcomers with “the rest of the story” of recovery, including:
1.
Similarities
between First Century Christianity (particularly as seen in the book of Acts)
and the early Akron A.A. program;
2.
The
principles and practices of A.A.’s Christian progenitors, including:
a.
The
Young Men’s Christian Association;
b.
Gospel
rescue missions;
c.
Christian
evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody and F. B. Meyer;
d.
(Vermont)
Congregationalism (including the “Great Awakening” of 1875 in St. Johnsbury,
Vermont);
e.
The
Salvation Army;
f.
The
Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor; and
g.
“A
First Century Christian Fellowship” (later also known as “the Oxford Group”)
3.
The
original, highly-successful, “old-school,” early Akron A.A. “Christian
fellowship,” program, and practices; and
4.
How
practices of First Century Christianity, Christian progenitors of A.A. from the
1850’s to the early 1930’s, and early Akron A.A., can serve as “lessons
learned” to enhance the effectiveness of Christian leaders and workers in
today’s recovery arena by enabling them to avoid unnecessarily “reinventing the
wheel” in carrying the message to those who still suffer.
The
31-volume “Dick B. A.A. History and Christian Recovery Reference Set” will
enable you to see in a whole new light the solution A.A. proposed for the
problem of alcoholism:
There
is a solution. . . .
The
great fact
is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual
experiences* which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward
our fellows and toward God’s universe. The
central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and
lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never
do by ourselves.
[Big Book, 4th
ed., 25; italics and asterisk in original; Appendix II: “Spiritual Experience,”
to which the asterisk refers, was not present in the first edition, first
printing, of Alcoholics Anonymous
published in April 1939; bolding added]
You
will be able to share with newcomers more effectively the original message of A.A.’s “first three”—A.A. cofounders Bill
W. and Dr. Bob, and “AA Number Three” Bill D.:
“Henrietta, the Lord has been so wonderful to me,
curing me of this terrible disease, that I just want to keep talking about
it and telling people.”
[Bill W. to the
wife of “AA Number Three” in mid-July, 1935; Big Book, 4th ed., 191;
bolding added]
Your Heavenly
Father will never let you down!
[Dr. Bob, in the
last line of his personal story; Big Book, 4th ed., 181]
That
sentence
[by Bill W.], “The Lord has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terrible
disease, that I just want to keep telling people about it,” has been a sort of a golden text for the
A.A. program and for me.
[“AA Number
Three,” Akron attorney Bill D., in his personal story; Big Book, 4th
ed., 191; bolding added]
The
“Dick B. A.A. History and Christian Recovery Reference Set” will help you
understand in depth why A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob, a medical doctor, already felt
comfortable in late June 1935 stating to “the nurse on the receiving ward” at
Akron’s City Hospital that:
[H]e [Dr. Bob]
and a man from New York [Bill W.] had a
cure for alcoholism.
[Big Book, 4th
ed., 188; bolding added]
It’s
time for this nation, its families, and its citizens, long crippled by
alcoholism and drug addiction—along with the families and citizens of other
nations who have been similarly handicapped—to hear A.A.’s actual solution for
the problem of alcoholism. A solution that A.A. cofounders Bill W. and Dr. Bob
began developing over the summer of 1935 in Akron, Ohio. Dr. Bob stated about
this time period in 1935:
In early A.A.
days, . . .
At that point,
our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak of. When we [Bill W. and Dr.
Bob—“the first two”] started in on Bill D. [“AA Number Three”], we had no
Twelve Steps, either; we had no Traditions.
But we were
convinced that the answer to our
problems was in the Good Book.
[From the
transcript of Dr. Bob’s last major talk given at Detroit, Michigan, in December
1949, and quoted in The Co-Founders of
Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks (A.A.
pamphlet # P-53), 13; bolding added]
And
about this same time period, Dr. Bob also stated:
Bill [W.] came
to live at our house and stayed for about three months. There was hardly a
night that we didn’t sit up until two or three o’clock, talking. It would be
hard for me to conceive that, during these nightly discussions around our kitchen
table, nothing was said that influenced the writing of the Twelve Steps. We already had the basic ideas, though not in terse and tangible form. We got them, as I said, as a result of our study of the Good Book.
[The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous,
14; bolding added]
The
“Dick B. A.A. History and Christian Recovery Reference Set” will help you
understand the historical significance and modern application of statements
such as these by A.A. cofounder and primary author of the Big Book, Bill W.:
All this time I
[Bill W.] had refused to budge on these
steps. I would not change a word of the
original draft, in which, you will remember, I had consistently used the word “God,” . . .
[Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 166;
bolding added]
. . . [W]e [Bill
W., Hank P., Fitz, and A.A.’s first secretary, Ruth Hock—a non-alcoholic]
finally began to talk about the possibility of compromise. Who first suggested the actual compromise words
I do not know, . . . In Step Two we
decided to describe God as a “Power greater than ourselves.” In Steps Three
and Eleven we inserted the words
“God as
we understood Him.”
[Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 167;
italics in original; bolding added]
In
the quest for carrying an accurate, effective message to those who still
suffer, the books by Dick B. in this reference set will help you see and be
able to explain simply to newcomers vitally-important points such as the
differences between the original, highly-effective, early Akron A.A. program,
and what Bill W. called:
. . . the new
version of the program, now the “Twelve Steps.”
[Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 162]
For
example, in the seven-point summary of the “old-school” Akron A.A. program as
it looked in late February 1938 which Frank Amos included in a report he
prepared for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the second point of the seven read:
“2. He must
surrender himself absolutely to God, realizing that in himself there is no
hope.”
[DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 131]
Not
to “a Power greater than ourselves.” Not to God “as we understood Him.” And not
to “a higher Power” (as the phrase appeared on page 55 of the first printing of
the first edition of the Big Book in the last sentence of chapter three, “More
about Alcoholism.”) No, in the highly-successful, original Akron A.A, program,
the word was “God.”—just as was the case in Bill W.’s “original draft” of the
Twelve Steps, before “the final concessions [were made] to those of little or
no faith.” The Being referred to by Bill W. and Dr. Bob in A.A.’s earliest
days—before “the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics”—was the “Creator,”
a word used 12 times on pages 1-164 of the current (4th) edition of
the Big Book.
Ever
wondered about the “novel idea” Bill W. seemed to put in the mouth of his old
Burr and Burton Seminary schoolmate and “sponsor” Ebby T.: “Why don’t you choose your own conception of
God?” [Big Book, 1st ed., 21-22; 4th ed., 12]. The
“Dick B. A.A. History and Christian Reference Set” will give you a perspective
for understanding:
1.
The
four paragraphs in which that question occurs—beginning with the words “Despite
the living example of my friend . . .” and ending with the words “Of course I
would!” (Big Book, 1st ed., 21-22; 4th ed., 12)—did not
appear in what primary author Bill W. called “a prepublication copy of the text
and some of the stories” (better known as “the Multilith Edition” and “the
Original Manuscript.”). This fact may be verified easily by a quick visit to www.Silkworth.net where a transcript of the “Original
Manuscript” is available for viewing. (See: http://mcaf.ee/znw4y; accessed 1/13/2015.)
2.
That
odious question, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” was part of
four paragraphs written in by hand and included at the last moment in the
document Bill W. called “the printer’s copy of the book.” (Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 169). The first words of the
four-paragraph insertion (i.e., “Despite the living example of my friend . .
.”) begin on the back of the Title Page and end with an abbreviated version of
the words “Of course I would!” on the front side of a piece of paper inserted between
the typed Title Page and the typed Foreword. In this case, another “committee
of four” was at work. This time, the “committee” was composed of Bill W., Hank
P., Ruth Hock, and Dorothy S. (then-wife of Dr. Bob’s sponsee Clarence S.).
[See: The Book That Started It All: The
Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, Minn.:
Hazelden, 2010), 23-27, 38. (Dick B. and Ken B. contributed some of the
historical material included in this book.)]
So,
would you like to learn more about “A First Century Christian Fellowship” (as
the group was named when it was founded by Lutheran minister Dr. Frank N. D.
Buchman in the autumn of 1922, and as it was still also known during the time
in which Bill W. and Dr. Bob were members of it)? Would you like to know why
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and several associates likened early
A.A.—particularly in Akron—to First Century Christianity? Would you like to
learn the story of Bill W.’s inviting Episcopal minister Rev. Sam Shoemaker to
write the 12 Steps?
The
retail list prices for the 31 volumes in the “Dick B. A.A. History and
Christian Recovery Reference Set,” taken together, come to about $750.00. For the remainder of the month of January
2015 ONLY, we are lowering the already-heavily-discounted price of our
ongoing special ($249.00 + FREE Shipping to U.S. destinations) to only
$224.95 (plus
FREE Shipping
to U.S. destinations*)
And,
if you decide to acquire the “Dick B. A.A. History and Christian Recovery
Reference Set” during the month of January 2015, please send us an email
message to kcb00799@gmail.com and ask about
the following materials by Dick B. and Ken B. that will complement the
reference set:
·
A
video walk-through of Dick B.’s reference library in which he picks out
numerous materials in the library, and speaks about and/or reads from those
materials.
·
The
forthcoming video class and optional guidebook titled “Bill W., Dr. Bob, and
the Cure of Alcoholism: The Rest of the Story” by Dick B. and Ken B.
·
More
than 600 photographs of the Vermont background of Bill’s and Dr. Bob’s lives.
·
Free
interviews and discussions on the “Christian Recovery Radio with Dick B.” show.
Gloria Deo
