One more time . . . Is Jesus referred to A.A. General
Service Conference-approved literature and other authoritative sources about
A.A. history? Let's start with the beginning of A.A. cofounder Bill W.'s “turn-around”
during his third stay at Towns Hospital for alcoholism in September 1934: “During
his third visit to Towns Hospital, Bill [W.] had a discussion with Dr. Silkworth
on the subject of the ‘Great Physician.’”[1] Dr. Silkworth was “[a] devout Christian, . . .”[2] Did your sponsor tell you about those two facts? Here's a
statement A.A. cofounder Bill W. made—just after he accepted Jesus Christ as
his Lord and Savior at Calvary Mission about December 8, 1934, and just before
he entered Towns Hospital on December 11, 1934, for his fourth and final stay
at Towns Hospital for alcoholism—“So if there was a great Physician who could
cure the alcoholic sickness, I had better seek Him now. At once. I had better
find what my friend [Ebby T., his Burr and Burton Seminary schoolmate] had
found.”[3] And then, while Bill W. was in Towns Hospital during his
December 11-18, 1934, stay, he said: “But what of the Great Physician? For a
brief moment, I suppose, the last trace of my obstinacy was crushed out as the
abyss yawned. I remember saying to myself, ‘I'll do anything, anything at all.
If there be a Great Physician, I'll call on him.’ Then, with neither faith nor
hope I cried out, ‘If there be a God, let him show himself.’ The effect was
instant, electric. Suddenly my room blazed with an indescribably white light.”[4] Now we know why A.A. cofounder Bill W.'s message—the original,
“old-school” A.A. message, at least as of mid-July 1935—was: “. . . ‘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.’”[5] And we know why Bill W. said about A.A. cofounder Dr.
Bob in late June 1935: “Straightway, [Dr.] Bob called Akron's City Hospital and
asked for the nurse on the receiving ward. He explained that he and a man from
New York had a cure for alcoholism.”[6] Are you sharing these facts with your sponsees?
In GOD's
love, Ken B.
Gloria
Deo
[1] Dale
Mitchel, Silkworth: The Little Doctor Who
Loved Drunks (Center City, Minn.: Hazelden, 2002), 44.
[2]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 11.
[3] Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (New
York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1957), 61.
[4]
Bill W., My First 40 Years (Center
City, Minn.: Hazelden, 2000), 145.
[5] Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed.
(New York City: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2001) 4th ed., 191.
[6] Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 188.
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