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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker >> and I'm an alcoholic >> and God's doing for me today what I couldn't do for myself cuz it's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and I've yet to have a cocktail and that is bizarre. Um, I have the fortune to be in a room today that has at least five people that if they weren't at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous 21 years ago, they were in the first 10 meetings that I was at.

And I just am absolutely thrilled that that would be my life. Um, I have had the great fortune to love books and love history since I was a little kid. And when I got sober, one of the things that I was interested in was what the heck is this thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous and where does it come from and all of that.

So, what I've done with the help of my spectacular bride, Adele, my daughter Jessica, and uh the patience and and forbearance of a lot of friends and and family is to put together a series of talks to share with you the things that I love the most, absolutely the most um when it comes to talking about this thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. And uh just to jerk everybody's chains and to try and get a little attendance, what we did for the first talk was we called it the big book divine inspiration or guided plagiarism. One of the interesting things about the source material that we're going to discuss today or that I'm going to discuss later on there'll be time for questions is to talk about what it was that the men and women who were in the Oxford group that Bill and Bob came through were reading and talking about.

And what it is that I'd like to share with you today is specific instances of the information that was bestellers that were on the New York Times bestseller list. It was stuff that was being read in the meetings. It was stuff that was being read at home in their quiet time in their guidance.

And to really show you that this language that we have in the big book is all part of a spiritual continuum. you know, we're going to be fortunate enough they finally got around to putting the fourth the fourth edition of the big book's going to come out again, you know, and it's this time it's taken them 26 years instead of every 15 years to get a to get a book going to show the um to reflect the members of the fellowship, but they're going to keep the original 164 pages, the uh the doctor's nightmare and the uh the appendixes. and some of the other stories, but I really think that it's good to show what kind of a continuum that we're in.

So, the divine inspiration or guided plagiarism was just a little hook to get you all in here. Um, let's start with this first. Um, alcoholism, a moral weakness.

That's basically what people thought it was up until about the mid 1800s. And the only thing that uh that folks had to combat it basically was either you got locked up at home or you went to an asylum or if you were lucky, you got religion. And one of the fun things that happened was I was up at uh the mission Santa Barbara and I bought a Bible from a buddy of mine who's a book binder that was from 1905.

And in it, tucked in it was this temperance pledge that says, "We hereby solemnly promise God helping us to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquors, including wine and beer, to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and the traffic in the same." What an order. I can't go through with it. Um, the Oxford group was a group of men and women who were trying to grow along spiritual lines by doing certain spiritual exercises.

and the spiritual exercises that they laid out in a book called uh what is the Oxford group gives their four steps to changing any man or woman. The first step is the sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to God and to use sharing as witness to other to help others still unchanged to recognize and acknowledge their sins. So what we're talking about here is first doing an inventory, first doing a fourth step and the sharing that they're talking about is laying out all of it.

All of it. And what the Oxford group did is is that they had groups of men and women. They had stag groups, women only.

They had men only groups. They had businessmen's groups. They had cleric groups where people could get together and talk about the things that they wished were not true about themselves the most and they could share it in confidence.

One person talking with another. And by doing this, what they did is is they would purge theirel to the point that they could actually with confidence surrender the second step, surrender our life, past, present, and future into God's keeping and direction. So, first they're doing what we'd call steps four and five.

Then they're able to do three. That way you can't be stuck on three. Okay.

Their third step was restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly. Once you have made yourself clear with your maker, what do you do? You take that power and you go out and you look the people in the eyes whose trust you've violated, those people that you've harmed and you make amends in whatever way is necessary.

And then having done these things, this is what they had to share was that after having done these things, listening to step four, their step four is listening to, accepting, relying on guy, God's guidance, and carrying it out in everything we do or say, great or small. They believed and they experienced. And if you read our book, my opinion is is that if you do the 11th step, the answer will come on how to go about your day.

Now, one of my favorite stories in Alcoholics Anonymous is the story of how the steps got written built on the guys. It's 19 uh uh 37. Bill and the guys are sitting around on uh Clinton Street.

They're drinking coffee. They're talking about science. Science is what's hot.

Science is what's selling. Science is what's going to make this book a bestseller. Cuz we need a bestseller.

We need money. We need money and we need members. And so we're going to we're going to do a book that's scientific.

And what we'll do is is we'll approach alcoholism as a disease, a scientifically treatable disease. And then once we're in, then we'll kind of lay the God stuff on. And they're talking like this.

And all of a sudden from the kitchen there's a big crash. Lois goes running out into the into the living room and she just tosses every everybody out of the out of the living room. And she gets up in front of Bill and their size difference was quite great.

And she looked up at him and she said, "Mister, you're going to get drunk." "What?" And she said, "You've forgotten the God that got you sober." And he uh she and she went upstairs crying. And he'd never seen her that upset. And there at Clinton Street underneath the stairs was a little room where he had a cot.

And there was that's where he kept uh his tablet where what he would do is write his daily guidance. And he got the tablet down and he laid down and he wrote out these steps that he had gotten from the Oxford group. One that they admitted hopelessness.

Two that they got honest with self. Three, that they got honest with another. Four, that they made amends.

Five, they helped others without demand. And six, they prayed to God as you understand it. God, as you understand it.

What happened in that next 40 minutes is that this was broken out into our 12 steps. And one of my favorite lines in Alcoholics Anonymous is is he said he stopped at 12 because 12 was good enough from the guy from G for the guy from Galilee. So 12 was good enough for me.

And it took about 40 minutes and the steps as we know them pretty much were written and the guys came back and one of the guys that was there was Jim Burwell and uh and when Bill said, "Look guys, I'm not this is not for discussion. we're gonna this is what we're going to put in is how this program works. And Burwell said, well, they all said, "Well, it looks good to us, Bill." But Brwell said, "Why don't you put God as you understand him in the second step or when you refer to God?" And what uh what it is that uh happened is that Bill said that Pearlis's direction in the second step he referred to God and in the third he called him by name and he referred to him through the rest of the steps.

When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I uh was sweating three days sober at a noon meeting and a and a little old woman with I was stuck to a nagahhide couch and a little old woman with a bun in her hair. She said, "Uh, oh, you're new young man, aren't you?" And how can you tell? And uh and she said, "I can tell you the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in four words.

Find God or die." And you know when they pull the cross out in the old Hammer vampire movies, you know, it was one of those. Not that, but this is what our book says. So, what it is that I've done is is I've put together some of the vignettes from our book uh and compared it to the books that the guys were reading in those days.

And one of the wonderful things that we have is we have a friend by the name of uh Dick Burns. And there are a lot of other people. There's Mel B.

A lot of folks that are really serious archavists. I mean, these are real life historians who go and spend like hundreds of hours leafing through Sam Shoemaker's daily journal from 1933 on to try and find every listing of where Bill Wilson was. And they know the books from Bill's library and from Dr.

Bob's library and from his some of the other early members. And one of the books that was most popular with the Oxford group was I was a pagan by VC Kitchen. And I was a pagan is the story of Kitchen getting sober.

And he was sober in the Oxford group. He was not drinking in the Oxford group. And his spiritual confessor, his spiritual adviser, his teacher that took him through those four steps was Sam Shoemaker at the Calvary Chapel in New York.

So, see if this rings a bell. The Oxford group had a power I did not have. They said, however, that I could have it just as they did if I would pay the same price, comply with the same conditions, and go through the same series of exceedingly simple steps.

And the corresponding line that I found in the book that I enjoyed written 5 years later was lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves.

BC Kitchen was part of the businessman's team of of uh the Oxford group. Um now here's his mentor uh Sam Shoemaker. in his book.

This is from 1927 now, Children of the Second Birth. One of the things that I thought because I was never taught and I never looked was that this concept of God as you understand him was something unique to something Brwell piped up with in that meeting on Clinton Street. I had no idea that in the Oxford group what it was that they were trying to transmit was is that the spiritual experience is exactly that it is an experience.

It is an experiment. It is something that can happen if you only try it. So here he says to God as you understand him.

So they prayed together, opening their minds to as much of God as he understood, removing first the hindrance of self-will, surrendering as much as he could of himself as he could to as much of Christ as he understood. In the beginning, we know only a little about ourselves, about who we are, about what our stories are. But as we go along, what it is that we find is is that we we know more and more about who we are.

And it is my fervent prayer that what happens each day is is that I'm able to actually see the hand of God moving in my life. Something that I could never do before I got sober. So in the big book on page 47 5 years later they say when therefore we speak to you of God we speak of your own conception of God.

We used our own conception no matter how limited it was because it was their experience. This wasn't their opinion that no matter how little you believed that if you continued to do these things that indeed your experience and understanding of God would grow. One of the fun things about reading the source material is is that the the third step prayers, the surrender prayers are a lot more fun because they're not as formal.

And this is Kitchen's prayer from uh from the Oxford group. Again, uh I was a pagan 1934. He said, "I surrender thee my entire life, oh God.

I've made a mess of it trying to run it by myself. You take it. the whole thing and run it for me according to your will and plan.

I can understand that. Huh? You know, but but you know, the way that Bill wrote about it 5 years later was, "God, I offer myself to thee to build with and to do with as thou wilt.

Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will." What's happened is is that a lot of this Oxford group material has been lost. The copyrights have expired and it's gone into the public domain. And Bill Pitman, who's one of our uh AA historians and archavists, has put out through Hazelden this what is the Oxford group?

And I really recommend it to anybody who's interested in where it is that we come from. And I'll refer to it a lot on page 41 talking about I don't know about you guys, but when it comes to sponsoring people or sitting in another meeting hearing somebody talk about being stuck on the third step, this is what the Oxford group believed about step three. It's a simple decision put into a simple language spoken aloud to God in front of a witness at any time in any place that we have decided to forget the past in God and to give our future into his keeping.

Nothing more need be added. Nothing can be taken away. The Oxford groupers believe that it was really important that you do this in front of another person who was a changed person because as they said sometimes when you sign a contract the signature of the witness is more important than the signature of the guy who's signing the the contract.

And so in AA we uh in the big book we talk about we found it desirable to take this spiritual step with an understanding person. The wording of course it's quite optional so long as we voiced it without reservation. The Oxford group guys had great titles to their books.

I mean, if you wanted to sell a book in 1927, AJ Russell had a great one, right? For sinners only. And it sold like hotcakes.

It sold like hotcakes. All kinds of people grabbed it. Now, in here, he's referring to Frank Buckman.

And Frank Buckman was the uh founder of the Oxford group. And tomorrow when I talk about the Oxford group, I'll go into him in more detail. But he was an American.

He was a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania who in 1907 in Kzwick, England was sitting after a year of going around Europe preaching and not having any success at all. Was sitting listening to a woman who was a Salvation Army preacher. And what came loud and clear was is that he was the problem.

That he was the problem. That it was his ego that was getting in the way of him being of maximum usefulness to God and to his fellows. And so the answer that he would give to people because you know when you're running across somebody who's really doing something and this man did a lot.

Um, in fact, I have to recommend this book, On the Tale of the Comet by Garleene. It's really thick and it's a really fast read. It's the biography of Frank Buckman and it describes what it is that this man did, where it was that he went, who it is that he talked to, and it's absolutely spectacular.

Um, it's one of the most inspiring things I've ever read. But anyway, so uh, a AJ Russell got together. AJ Russell was the uh was the editor of the London Daily Mail's religion pages.

And uh one time uh he asked Frank, he said, "What book should I read to prepare for special work?" In other words, going out and changing people, helping folks to surrender their character defects and find God. He told me to prepare myself as I was the great problem. I must make sure that everything was right and clean between myself, my neighbors, and God.

And of course that same sentiments uh described so well in a vision for you in that the answers will come if your own house is in order. But obviously you can't transmit something you have in God. See to it that your relationship with him is right and great events will come to pass for you and countless others.

And again I'm not saying that Bill took a look and and and you know he had six books out and he was synthesizing it all. No, not at all. This man was a marvelous, marvelous, dynamic thinker.

But these are the things that fed him. See, it's what's the roots? Where are where is it that that that this soil brought forth this magnificent thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous?

Now, the Oxford group when they referred to changing lives, the way that they spoke about it was they were committing soul surgery. that every one of our souls had little parts that were dark and diseased and if you could go in and cut those out then everything had worked and that's how they referred to working these steps. So, HA Walter, who was uh one of uh Buckman's earliest companions, actually traveled around the missionary world in the in the late teens and early 20s going to China, India, um South Africa, um South America, and what they would do is they would get together with people who were missionaries and they would try and get them to work these four steps so that they could have the vital spiritual experience.

So they were able to transmit a living acting message in these places that they were being missionaries. So Walter writes, "Following conversion, the new convert must be sent to work with others. He should understand from the first that his prayer and Bible study will ultimately become burdensome if he regards them only as fundamentally and inevitably the means to his own spiritual development.

and not the means to his successfully serving others. In our book, we we express it this way that our very lives as ex-prom drinkers depend upon our constant thoughts of others and how we may help meet these needs. In other words, when we're asking the Oxford group people believed that when they were asking when God to help them that they were only asking for help so that they could be more useful to God, not so that they could become more wonderful people in more about alcoholism.

In we agnostics, the words get kind of flowery sometimes, but there are a few points where it gets very direct. And I and I love this point that comes from uh I believe it comes from this this line of thinking that Sam Shoemaker uh espoused in in his book Confident Faith. This was written in 1932, 7 years before Bill wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

He says religion is a risk. Faith is not sight. It is a high gamble.

There are only two alternatives. God is or he isn't. You leap one way or the other.

How can you be stuck on the third step? In the big book, I like where it says we had to fearlessly face the proposition that God is everything or God is nothing. And who's going to do these spiritual exercises?

Not somebody who's kind of agreeing with it. You know, it's that they believe that each person should be brought to some kind of a crisis of faith in their lives. And we'll talk about that more with the five C's tomorrow.

Having done the spiritual steps, having having made the confession or having shared with another Christian as they called it, having gone out and made amends, what happens is is that this new power starts to flow. And in I was a pagan. VC Kitchen describes it as I came not only into consciousness of God, but into usefulness for God.

I was able to do through God's help what no man has ever been able or ever will be able to do for himself. And of course, Ebie's great line to Bill in uh in the big book was that my friend sat before me and made the point blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. that particular line time and time and time again in just about everybody's testament uh testimony is what comes out that God was doing for them what they could not do for themselves.

They were very big about proving spiritual principles. And uh one of the ways that that Kitchen talked about it and I was a pagan was I was able to supplement the all-important why of life with the still more important how of living. I was able to begin really solving my own problems for the first time in my experience.

was given the power to begin helping others. And the way that that it's described in our book is that this is the how and the why of it. First of all, we had to stop playing God.

It didn't work. Next, we decided hereafter in this drama of life that God was going to be our director. Now the whole concept of sin is is really really interesting.

Buckman always mentioned that he believed that sin was what separated someone from God. Any activity that separated someone from God or from his fellows. And as my friend Bill C always says, he says that he believes that God lives in the space between you and me.

Ha Walter and soul surgery he says that sins are the symptoms of spiritual sickness. No one will ever realize to what extent the Holy Spirit can work through the spiritual to alleviate the troubles of the mental and the physical. This is what these guys believed.

This is what Bill and Bob and Bob Dobson and all the people who were sober that first 78 people that first year, that's what their experience was. That the way they described it was they have not only been mentally and physically ill, they've been spiritually sick. And when the spiritual maladies overcome, they straightened out mentally and physically.

The Oxford group believed that there was no problem a human being could have that these steps could not address. And all that we've done is we've taken the Christianity part of it, toned it down, and exactly that has happened. We have hundreds and hundreds of different fellowships all over the planet who use these steps to address every kind of problem that people can have.

Now, one of the other fun things is is that you, you know, you read the big book and and and then you start reading the source material and what happens is is that you find that everything like the formatting of the the uh inventories are right there and that all that people were doing when they were laying the big book out was taking the messages that they'd received and making it in such a way that they could transmit it to others. And one of the fun things, you know, you sit around, you go, "How can a bunch of drunks hang out with, at least from the literature, looks like a bunch of radical Jesus freaks?" But what were these people talking about in their meetings? One of the things that they used to do at their their Oxford group house parties is they'd get somebody who was kind of a well-known figure, maybe a sports person or a race car driver or a politician or uh or a a noted uh society housewife, and they'd get up and first they'd talk about what it was that their life used to be like and what their life was like now.

And now this is the kind of person this is VC kitchen again. Um uh he says in my own life I most liked myself liquor, tobacco and almost every other stimulant, narcotic and other form of self-indulgence. my man.

Anything which gave me pleasure, possessions, power, position, and applause or pumped up my self-esteem to be left largely to myself and my wife because of the comforting and complimentary way that she treated me. And then he says, and and then so what they do is they they talk about what they liked most and then they talk in their former life about what they hated most. And and he puts, "I hated most poverty for myself, prohibition, right on, brother.

Work, yes. People who disapproved or tried to interfere with me. And any betrayal of my inner thoughts or emotions, huh, I like these guys, you know." Now, so he has the spiritual experience.

He works the steps. He starts changing others and what is it that he finds that he most like? So then they talk about what it's like now.

What does he like most now? God time alone with God, the fellowship of the loving Jesus Christ, the stimulation of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of God's guidance. My wife because of the things God now enables us to do for each other.

Communion with others who are trying to lead the same kind of Christ-c centered life and the witnessing to all of what Christ has come to meet for me mean for me. Now when I go to meetings, what do I hear? I hear about God.

I hear about some time spent with God. I hear about the fellowship, our fellowship. I hear about what it is that fires people up about AA, about what happens when you go out and you actually start working the steps, working the 12th step and really helping others to see the light come on in people's eyes.

And uh you know I happen to like my wife because she goes to meetings with me and because she prays and she meditates with me in the morning and because we've got an AA household where the phone rings early in the morning and late at night. And there is nothing that I enjoy more than communion with others who are trying to lead the same kind of sobriety centered life. Active rabbid charged up dynamic enthusiastic alcoholics.

And now he says that he hates most again this is kitchen. Uh he hates sin because the uh and self because I is the middle letter of sin. Sins that separate me from God.

Sins that separate me from people. Anything that falls short of God's plan for me. And of course here's our format.

It's exactly the you know when we're talking about the resentments you know Mr. Brown his attention to my wife. He told my wife about my mistress, you know, my innermost thoughts and feelings.

Brown may get my job at the office. And again, the the the fear, the fear, the fear, the self-esteem, pride, personal sex relations. This was the thing that fired me up the most when I saw the old Oxford group game and our inventory and could see just exactly what it was that the guys actually did.

VC Kitchen says, "And I was a pagan," I also know that these ambitions, hypocrisies, and vices were not drained out when I transferred my belief in one plan or philosophy or another. They were drained out by stopping the self effort to get rid of them, by letting God take hold to do the job and putting God first in our lives, in my life. I love the fact that these guy people had shortcomings.

These guys had problems that kept going on and going on and going on and going on. And one of the wonderful dynamic things that happens when you take a read of uh like the life of Sam Shoemaker there there are two really good books. One is uh I stand by the door which is his life by his wife Helen Shoemaker.

And another one that's really a kick is a new light on alcoholism by my friend Dick B that goes through all of his writings and does a lot of this type of comparison work. But Shoemaker always talked about the fact that he kept having these problems that his problems just didn't go away. And so in our big book, the way that we talk about it, are are we ready to now let God remove from us all the things that we admitted are objectionable?

And can he take them all, everyone? If we still cling to something we will not let go of, we ask God to help us to be willing. So even though when you read some of this stuff it seems very you know hard ball Christian it's also extremely practical that it's the willingness and it's the continuing to grow along the spiritual lines that gives us the help.

Walter mentions in soul surgery that the the ultimate definition of sin is that it's selfishness. That the sinful mind is the unsocial the un antisocial mind. And in describing our problem in describing alcoholism, how does Bill describe our problem?

Selfishness, self-centerness, that we think is the root of our problem driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-d delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity. It's all right there. These are the steps that we took.

Samuel Moore Shoemaker was the uh recctor at Calvary Chapel and uh he was there from 1925 to 1951 and he worked closely with uh Frank Buckman from 1918 to 1925. They went all over the globe carrying this message of working these steps and having a personal spiritual experience by removing the things that blocked you from your youthfulness from God and his fellows. Um he was the guy who when Bill had his spiritual exper well well a couple weeks before he went into towns or a couple days before he went into town's hospital the last time he was down at Sam's church the Calvary mission uh and Bill got seized and he went running down and went to the aisle and he gave his life to Christ and he said he did it in a blackout.

He didn't remember anything about it. Um, >> he was jumping for >> Yes, he was jumping for Jesus is one of the ways that he put it. Singing old camp songs and he was just mortified.

He was absolutely sure that somebody was going to say, you know, the next time he was trying to get a job on Wall Street, oh yeah, I remember you. You were down at the mission. Anyway, uh Shoemaker when Bill had his spiritual experience, what he did with that was he was given by his friend Ebie Thatcher the book um the variety of of uh religious experience by William James and uh and in that there's a wonderful piece that is uh SH Hadley's conversion and liberation from from his drink obsession and there at the cavalry mission.

And in the Oxford group meetings that were happening at the Calvary Chapel at the time, there were about 15 guys, all whose drink obsession had been lifted by working these steps. So when Bill comes out of the hospital, he's got a bunch of fellow travelers. Not only his buddy Ebie and his buddy Roland, but he's got VC Kitchen, he's got Chef Cornell, he's got all working with drunks trying to get them to find Jesus so that they can have the spiritual experience.

Bill gets into the Oxford group. And the Oxford group at the time into the late 30s is starting to morph from not only a personal religious uh transformation, but into a group called moral rearmorament. And moral rearmorament was going out to change drunken nations, not drunken people.

And Frank Buckman had been sobering up drunks since before Bill Wilson had his first drink. And he wasn't that interested in him. And Bill had this driving desire to save drunks, to work with alcoholics.

And all the pressures from the Oxford group, all the people that he was going to meet with, kept saying, "Bill, that's all very good, but you were a millionaire. We need you to go out and be part of the business team and tackle American business to save this nation's financial uh outlook by sharing Christian spiritual principles. And Bill was just all he wanted to do is grab guys off bar stools, take them home, you know, try and get them sober, talk to him about the light.

Sam Shoemaker believed in Bill's calling and once to twice a week from the time he got out of town's hospital whenever he was in New York that first couple years he was spending time with Sam Shoemaker and Sam was teaching him going through the steps and this is the guy that Sam was the single most prolific author of Oxford group material and he's teaching him these concepts s as they're starting to write the book, Bill goes to Sam, and we have this on on on two authorities. Uh that he goes to Sam and he says, "Sam, we need to take these four steps." He's not talking about the six that they were using, but your four steps, and we need to break them down so that they're more palatable to alcoholics. Will you do that for us?

And Sam said, "No." He said, "This has to be written by an alcoholic, and you're the man to do it." There are some wonderful literature. You know, this all this stuff that I've I've read and that I'm sharing with you, it's all around. You know, it's just a matter of of of seeking it out.

But one of the pieces that that we have in our grapevine is uh an article that Sam Shoemaker wrote for the grapevine in 1963 and it was supposed to be published and it actually was published in January 64 but Shoemaker died before it was it was uh the thing was actually published. So it was it was published uh postumously but uh what it says in the long form is the name of the article was those 12 steps as I understand them. He says the 12 steps are a pile of wisdom and exper and experiences packed into the 12 steps.

I have even compared the inspired 40 minutes during which those steps were given to the founder to the 10 tables of law that were given to Moses on Mount Si. This is from the man who Billy Graham said was the single most dynamic preacher of his day. Many skeptical folks are inclined to say, "Oh, there there's a this is a gathering of previous experience.

It didn't come all at once." I have no doubt about the previous experience entering in. But I know that there are inspired hours when people have been able to gather and put down a compendia of truth in a fashion that can only be called inspiration. It is an hour when men's powers are at high pitch intension when the spirit of God hovers near making suggestions.

I doubt that the 12 steps that have changed the course of existence in so many thousands of lives could have been the product of a mere hum and insight and observation. They can and will bless anyone, alcoholic or not, who will follow through and be obedient to them. They are morally and spiritually and psychologically and practically as sound as they can be.

They will offer a way out for many a person who knows nothing personally about alcoholism. They will point the way to those who have known it and lost it. Thank God for the 12 steps and for a man wise enough and open enough to God and to the observation of human experience to receive these truths and to transmit them to the world.

That's what I got. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. GOOD JOB.

>> THANK YOU. QUESTIONS? >> Repeat the question.

>> Yeah, I'll repeat the question. >> The Oxford group talked about Bill Wilson not being maximum because of his single focus on alcoholics. They wanted him to be more.

So he he somehow fell short in what he could have achieved in their mindset. Do you suppose that that that attitude that internal attitude towards him was one of the things that caused them to slowly move off on their own? >> Uh the question the question is did Bill Wilson's unwillingness to become what they called it was being maximum?

You either maximum for the Oxford group or you won't. Did Bill Wilson's single-mindednessly about working with drunks, was that what moved them away gradually from the Oxford group? And the fun answer about that is is that they basically got booted out in New York.

It wasn't a matter of like in in in Cleveland where they left. they were just they weren't playing the game and they weren't invited back and they realized it and so they they went home. And there's a marvelous quote where uh guys talking about Frank Buckman, the founder of the Oxford Group and and VC Kitchen and Garrett Sterling sitting around at a at a Oxford Group house party with Bill trying to convince him to get in shape and get with the program.

And yet he wouldn't. >> Was Shoemaker part of this? >> No.

Shoemaker was his supporter through all this shape and get with the program >> and yet he wouldn't. >> Was Shoemaker part of this? >> No.

Shoemaker was his supporter through all this. >> Shoemaker had a falling out with Buck also. >> Well, yeah, but that's another that's Shoe Shoemaker having another a falling out with Buckman.

That's an entirely different story and and another thing. But the fact was is that Shoemaker believed in the vision and believed in the validity of Bill's spiritual experience. >> Yes.

>> What happened to the Oxford group? The Oxford group is now normal rearmorament and it has offices in Washington DC and uh and London and >> moral rearmorament and uh you remember up with people >> up with people was a uh was a program that came out of the Oxford group. What Buckman tried to do, and I'll talk about this more tomorrow, is he tried to get in the mid30s and late 30s when he saw what was happening and that the war was coming, he tried to get the heads of government all over the world to work the Oxford group steps.

And what happened is the reason they called it moral rearmament was that they believed that these steps were the revolutionary response to communism and to fascism >> and it is true. Yeah. >> Well, do they still call themselves the Oxford group?

>> No, they they they in 1938 they changed their name to moral moral rearmor. >> I have one more question. Yeah.

>> What time are you speaking tomorrow? Tomorrow we are speaking and I'm speaking at >> 3:30 >> 3:30 to 5 and we're going to be over in the uh >> Newport room and uh there's another meeting that's going on before that and then after that uh I'm going to start talking after the uh the service meeting is done. >> Yes.

>> Yes. >> Was there any form of getting before the group that we know of? Was there was there any form of getting sober before the Oxford group?

There have been some other movements. Uh there was the Washingtonians that was a politically driven temperance movement uh during the uh around the time of the civil war just before the civil war. They lasted for about 15 years at one time because they let everybody in because they had an agenda of sobering up the world.

uh over 20% of the population of the United States actually was an Washingtonian member. Yeah. Yes, sir.

>> So, so because out of the 12 steps when they left the Oxford group >> and they wrote the 12 steps as we know today because they focus on an individual as opposed to the Oxford focus on the world. Is they having problems from the try to control or you know you know >> the let me let me see if I have this right because I have to I have to repeat the questions. Yeah >> the um the the question is is did the personal work with alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous bring a a schism or a split with the Oxford group as their agenda went worldwide?

And I would say that no, no, not during this particular moment when the steps were written. When the steps were written, when the book was written, the gang was still pretty much part of uh the Oxford group. They were members of the business.

Bill was a member of the businessman's team. He actually was going out and doing some stuff with them that they wanted. But what happened is is that as time went and uh there was a there was a real split because of the as the war effort started in the United States um was was the Oxford group pacifist?

Was it was it pro-war? Was it you know so again it's it's it's a fascinating thing. This was a true spiritual movement that was led by people that were busy changing folks on a on a tremendous level all over the world.

All over the world. And they did it one soul at a time. But as the war started coming and as fascism and communism became more and more prevalent, they started to say, "Look, this is why we're doing this.

We need to we need to be aware that this is this is what the enemy is. It's godlessness." >> Yes. is the term politically driven movement for Washingtonians.

What do you mean by that? >> I really don't feel qualified to speak about the Washingtonians a lot because for the purposes of my discussion I want to I want to limit it just to the to the Oxford group and I haven't done the the the study about that. But from the beginning, as I understand, the Washingtonians literally from after about their sixth or seventh meeting, what they were doing was is they were working for alcohol reform, which I consider consider to be a a political movement.

And they uh in fact, if you want, it's really fun. Um, I don't know how many of you enjoy reading the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, but one of his his speeches is to the Washingtonian group and he talks about alcohol affects you guys different than it affects me. Why is it so important to you?

>> Huh? >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

Casey, >> thank you. I'm Casey. Uh, my question is, how many actual people were involved in Bill wrote the book?

Was he sole writer or were there other people who put in that >> the the the question is about the actual writing of the big book and and and how it went. The format was basically along the lines of three books. Um for sinners only uh I was a pagan and uh the varieties of religious experience.

Those were the three things that they were that Bill was looking at as as they wanted something that that spoke to what people were buying contemporarily. Now, as I have been told and as our literature says, what happened is is that Bill would write the book, what we know is the 164 pages. He would send it to Bob.

Those guys would check it out and then it would go back to Bill and they'd and they they'd go through it in New York. The editing of the big book's really interesting. Um, Shoemaker was uh, Bill would go and actually share this stuff with Shoemaker before he sent it off to Bob because he wanted to make sure that he was not impinging on Christian principles and he'd sit there and he and he'd read it and and and the uh, the quote is Sam would nod his head and say, "Sounds like good oldfashioned Christianity me to me, Bill." and Bill say, "It's almost too good to be true, isn't it?" So he was he was kind of he was the he was Bill's sponsor uh as far as you know his his spiritual growth and and one of the wonderful things we're we're not really sure about this but but we found again with all the historians and everything we know that the Oxford group was well now I'm taking the talk from from later but the Oxford group was in Akran in 1933 but we also know now that they were also the businessman's team was also there in 34 four in 34 at the meetings that Ann and Bob were at and all the folks were were at.

So I mean the the way that the information flows back and forth I mean it's a very small society. The country is not that large. They're all reading the same things.

The same folks are going through and doing things and Akran was one of the major spiritual centers out west >> for the Oxford group. >> Yes. Did Bill's connection with the Oxford group and the people he knew within that as a businessman group >> put together the Rockefeller lunch Rockefeller?

>> The question is is is did uh Bill's cronies in the Rockefeller uh from the businessman's team put the Rockefeller uh uh dinner together? No. >> Firestone and all that?

>> No. Although Firestone may have been talking with Rockefeller about what had happened to his son Bud, but the way that that whole thing was set up basically was through Bill's brother-in-law's friendship with um John D's personal physician and then it it went through that way. So, it was not it was not from his Oxford group.

Uh in fact, um that was one of the reasons why the press was so interested in it. Was John D doing something with the Oxford group? And it really was after the split had had had happened.

Anyway, >> thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. >> About um the big book and um how it >> Oh, uh the question is uh the book Alcoholics Anonymous in our movement.

How did it get its name? Uh, another one of those great stories in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I don't know if you've you've heard it, but what happened was is that they were Bill Bill always was very self-deprecating, and so they got the book. What are we going to call it?

And he says, well, okay, let's call it the Bill Wilson movement. Everybody goes, "Ah, shut up. Shut up." You know, and so they thought, "Well, it's all a bunch of guys sober." And they were saying, "There's a hundred of us that are sober.

Let's call it a hundred men." And so they got they were going to do that. And then a gown showed up. So they couldn't call it 100 men and a woman.

So So let's let's let's can that. So then they thought, well, let's call it The Way Out. And one of the guys was going down to New York.

So they looked up in the copyright office and The Way Out, there were 12 books called The Way Out, and they didn't want to be the 13th. So they're still wondering, what are we going to call it? Well, one of the things that they used to do to increase membership in these days was they'd go to Belleview Hospital and they'd get alcoholics and they'd bring them out and they'd sit them in the meeting and sometimes they'd get sober and sometimes they wouldn't and they'd bring wet brains and there's this guy who was an editor of the New Yorker and he's gone and all he does is babble.

Anonymous alcoholics. Anonymous alcoholics. Anonymous alcoholics.

Anonymous alcoholics like all the time. But after about three days of bringing him to the meetings, the gang kind of liked the cadence of it. And then a wag said, "Hey, you know what?

If we're going to use that, why don't we put the drunk first?" And everybody, of course, liked that. And so they called them the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's where our movement got its name.

>> From a wet branch. >> Yeah. From a wet branch.

Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah. >> How' you get the big book?

>> Oh, did they have sponsorship in >> Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes.

Um, the question is, was there sponsorship in the Oxford group? Yes, there was. And one of the uh one of the interesting things about the sponsorship in the Oxford group is is that okay so you've gone through this this process where what you've done is is you've experienced uh you know you've you've listed all your uh all your sins and you've shared them with another guy.

You've surrendered to God. You've gone out and you've made restitution. And now what you do every day is that you sit in the quiet for a period of time in the morning and you read the Bible and then you wait with a piece of paper and a pencil and you wait for God to speak.

And what happens is is you write down that stuff. I mean that's why Bill had his little pad there. So what they people were doing they were writing down their guidance.

And what you do is is that you talk to your sponsor, the person that you've done your sharing with about what it was that your guidance was as to whether this actually was spiritual direction from the Holy Spirit or maybe it was just a little bit of self-will. Now, one of the fun things about this, of course, is is that you've got this group of men and women in Akran, sober guys and their wives, and their wives are getting guidance about what their husband should be doing. So again, you needed to do they called it checking.

They called it checking. But yeah, sponsorship was very very uh very important. Again, I thank you so very much.

Thing that was available was religion. And one of the fun things I I'm I'm afflicted with a number of problems. And one of them is is that I love to read.

It was the first escape that I ever had. And I love history. And uh I have a friend up in Santa Barbara who's a bookbinder and he's a Franciscan monk.

And uh I needed a Bible and he bound this Bible that was from 1905 and it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous piece. And uh in it was this temperance pledge. And so before Alcoholics Anonymous, uh, guys like me, what what we were offered was something like this.

We hereby solemnly promise God helping us to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquor, including wine and beer. Bummer. To employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same.

What an order. I can't go through with it. Um, this this afternoon, what I'd like to talk about is the Oxford group, who the people were and what it is that they believed in because I believe I believe that in knowing where we come from, we get a better understanding of who we are.

And so, this is kind of a story about who it is that we are. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you a lot of different things that I've been fortunate enough to uh to read over the years. And one of the things that I need to share with you is about my friend Dick Burns.

>> And uh and Dick Burns has done a lot of marvelous books on uh on AA history. And the most important thing is is that he's uh a person who has done a great service to the fellowship in his archival and almost megalomaniacal pursuit of what exactly happened. I mean, this is a man who's willing to sit for days and days at a time and go through every page of Sam Shoemaker's journal to find out where it was that Sam said that Bill Wilson came in the office.

Remarkable. And anyway, so one of the things I'd like to recommend to you is a couple of his titles. And uh the one that that today were uh that I found very very helpful over the years was a new light on alcoholism.

uh Sam Shoemaker and Alcoholics Anonymous. Um the Oxford Group was a semi-religious but informal movement founded by Frank Buckman in 1921 while he was an undergraduate doing some undergraduate work at Oxford University. The name was first applied to the group in South Africa.

There were a group of them from England, from Oxford that were down doing some missionary work, some conversion work with people, and a guy from a newspaper looked at the train car that they were on, and there was a little sticker that was put on there to identify their car, and it said the Oxford group. So, he took that and it was short and it was easy, and it described who this group of people were. So, kind of stuck, but they actually never had any affiliation with Oxford University of any kind whatsoever.

Can you hear me? Okay. In the back, Daddy.

Okay. Um, the professed purpose of the Oxford group was to solve personal, national, and international problems by bringing men and women everywhere back to the basic principles of Christian faith. while enhancing all of their primary loyalties.

This definition comes from a an old encyclopedia called the uh Lincoln Library. And in the Lincoln Library published in 1955, it's very interesting. There's three paragraphs on the Oxford group and there's one paragraph on Alcoholics Anonymous.

It goes on to say that without organization, membership, subscription, or definite creed, the movement rapidly obtained adherence in nearly all countries of the world. This isn't just a, you know, a strange little band of folks in in England and and in uh and in New York and and Ohio, particularly in the middle and upper classes, and was accorded recognition by leading figures in many governments. Adopting the name moral rearmament in 1938, the leaders of the movement sought by the spread of its principles to stem the tide of hostilities.

These men and women felt that it was their mission to try and stop the evolution that became the Second World War. Now, I'd like to read you the Oxford group preamble. This is from a a book called What is the Oxford Group?

And it's available from Hazelden Press. You cannot belong to the Oxford group. It has no membership list, subscription, badge rules, or definite location.

It is a name for a group of people who from every rank, profession, and trade in many countries have surrendered their lives to God and are endeavoring to lead a spiritual quality of life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Oxford group is not a religion. It has no hierarchy, no temples, no endowments.

It workers have no salaries, no plans but God's plan. Every country is their country, every man their brother. Sound a little familiar?

Every historian has their conceit. And what I want to share with you is is that I'm not here to tell you that something is right or that something is wrong. All that I want to do today is try and expose you to the language and thoughts that our founders synthesized and used in order to found Alcoholics Anonymous.

Um the leader of the Oxford group was a gentleman by the name of Frank Buckman. This guy was nominated twice. once before the Second World War for trying to stop it and once after the Second World War for uh the work in trying to get nations not individuals to uh to reconcile with each other.

He was decorated by the governments of France, Germany, Greece, Japan and the Philippines for his work. after he founded the Oxford group in 38 they changed the name officially into moral rearmament and it's really interesting that this group and I'll touch on this later was equal he was equally vilified by hawks and doves labor and management liberals and conservatives fascist and communists all over the world everybody disliked this guy that had any agenda Okay. Um Frank uh for for the purpose of this story in 1907, Frank has been an ordained Lutheran minister for about 5 years.

He's been involved in in church work in Pennsylvania. He ran a boy's home and he went uh he got involved with this boy's home and he grew it so much. There were so many folks that were coming to it, so many young men.

They they were given a place to eat, a place to take a shower. They were given Bible instructions. They had fellowship meetings.

And they were given a place to stay and they were fed. And the thing got so the the response to it was so great there in the in the slums of Philadelphia that um the board that he was working for got upset because there was all this money going out and they decided that what they were going to do was that the best thing they could do to save money was to cut the rations that the boys were eating. And Frank got upset with that and he quit and he decided well he's going to go off and he's going to spend a year in Europe preaching and and studying and and meeting with other people and uh while he was in and he kept trying to do personal work trying to convert individuals and uh what happened is is he wasn't having any success and one day he's in he's in Kzwick England and he's listening to the Salvation Army woman talk about the cross of Jesus and he has this image of a big I, the letter I.

And he came to believe that he saw in that moment what his problem was. It was himself, his ego. And that what he had to do was he had to get right with God and himself if he was ever going to be any use.

If he was ever going to be able to preach effectively. So what he did was is he went home that night and to the six members of this board, he wrote them letters of amends and he said, "I've harbored ill will for you. Please forgive me." And the most amazing thing happened the next day.

He was walking and talking with a kid and the kid asked him about this inner light that he had and he had his first experience of sharing with someone in over a year. And this this kid made a decision for Christ. And so what happened is is that Buckman believed to the very core of his being that what was most important was that uh that a person had to get clean first in order to have any kind of a spiritual life.

From 1907 on he started to go out to different countries preaching this message. And the message generally he was preaching was to people who were involved in missionary work. And the last slide that we showed was of of him in 1915 meeting with the Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi said that Buckman's work as uh in the Oxford group and later in moral armorament was the most important movement to come out of the west. This is a man who between 1912 and 1961 when he died had contact with just about every major political figure in the west uh some in a few in Eastern Europe, in Africa and in uh in South America trying to talk about working a set of spiritual principles. Um later on what happened is is that uh he went back to Frank went back to Pennsylvania and he became the uh the head of the Young Men's Christian Association at Penn State University and there he was in charged with with uh uh helping with the moral life of the of the students there.

And uh in 1922 in uh in Penn State University, there was a lot of drinking going on. A lot of drinking going on. And at the time, only 15% of the youngeligible men were members of the Young Men's Christian Association.

And uh so he was trying to figure out what he could do. And uh Frank came to believe that the way to confront any group was you find the most outrageous sinners and those are the people that you approach. And at Penn State University there was a gentleman and his name was Bill Pickle.

And Bill Pickle was the son of a bootleger and was a bootleger. and he was a tough, mean, nasty, irate guy. And he said when Buckman started doing personal work at the university that he'd just as soon stick a knife in him as to breathe the same air that he breathed.

And one day, Frank's walking along with a guy that he's trying to pass the message on to, and they see Pickle, and he knows that if he doesn't approach Pickle that he's going to lose this guy. and he's scared to death. And he walks up and he approaches his and he and he and he says, "Bill Pickle turned around to him and he said, "We've been praying for you." And the story is that all the fight went out of the man's face.

And over the next three weeks, he went around to some other meetings that that Frank was going to. And uh Bill made a decision for Christ and he quit drinking. and he quit bootlegging and nobody could believe it there at Penn State University.

The connection went to the other side. It was horrible. And Bill Pickle never took another drink in his life.

And I believe that this is where the uh where the uh the slang term being pickled comes from is actually from him because over the next 40 years here and there he would actually go out with Oxford group teams and testify to what happened in his life. And what happened with Bill is is that Bill couldn't read or write and he sat down and uh and with Frank and he shared the things that that troubled him the most. And for Bill, it was the way that he treated his wife and his family.

And he wrote, Frank wrote these letters to the children and to his wife. And uh the guy's life just changed. Um when we talk about Buckman, we're talking about a Lutheran minister.

So we're going to talk a lot of Christian stuff. That's all this is, you know. And what we are is is we're the outgrowth of this group that believed that there was absolutely no problem, no human problem that had not be addressed by spiritual means.

And what we've been able to do is take their vision and expand it a little bit. And we have a movement now that encompasses what maybe 500 different uh anonymous fellowships all over the world. the same solution of applying spiritual principles to personal problems.

But what uh what Buckman saw was that the big thing that got in between people and God was sin. And what Buckman defined sin as was uh was anything that got between you and God or that got between you and your fellow man. And in this wonderful book, the the Oxford group authors had great titles.

And uh this is for sinners only. I'm qualified to read it. And in it, this is, you know, we we sit around, we think, how can these drunks have put up with all this Jesus stuff.

Well, you know, we have to remember what the country was like in those days and who these people were and how they were raised, but also that this was a dynamic message that people hadn't heard before. Buckman described uh sin was anything contrary to the will of God and that he said that there was no complete catalog of sins for everybody since what was sin to one might not always be sin to another. Sin might be drunkenness or pride, murder or dishonesty, selfishness or refusal to love God or one's neighbor, coveting another man's wife >> or loving the husband of another woman.

It might be overeating or vain boasting or over calling your partner at bridge. >> It might be graft or greed, pugnacity or fear, waste or meanness, aversion or perversion. Such sins and all others were included in the one major sin of independence towards God who should be first, last and at all times sought as taught in the ten commandments in the New Testament.

Now Frank actually people would say to him, you know, well is this a sin or or what do you think about this? And what what Frank would say is he said you should do anything that God lets you do. remarkable to me.

Um now what Frank would do is is that he would work with people and they called them personal interviews and these people would um go through a set of spiritual exercises. >> Oh uh okay um you know and what I'd like to do is share with you the steps of the Oxford group. The Oxford group had four steps that they believed that anyone who applied them to their lives would have the ability to have a spiritual regeneration.

The first one was the sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to God and to use sharing as witness to help others still unchanged to recognize and acknowledge their sins. So, they're doing steps four and five first. to clear you up so you can do what we call step three.

They said surrender of our lives past, present, and future into God's keeping and direction. Their third step, that thing which would finally clear us up so we were able to have a spiritual experience was restitution to all that we have harmed directly or indirectly. And finally, the fruit of that work is their fourth step.

Listening to, accepting, and relying on God's guidance and carrying it out in everything that we say, great or small. Men and women started to do these things and they started to change. One of the things they used to call the life the Oxford group was the life changers or the soul surgeons.

and they'd actually say stuff like that. The life changers are coming to town. And what would happen is is that Buckman would get together a a group of people, normally people that wouldn't mix.

There'd be a a society housewife and maybe a star athlete. There'd be a uh a German count and maybe a uh a British noble woman, uh a guy like Bill Pickle, a normal housewife, and they would send a team. And they called it a the reason that that uh Buckman said that he liked to work in in teams was is because that's what Jesus used was he had a team.

And what these teams would do is they would go into a town and they would carry the message. They would get up and they would tell their stories what they used to be like, what happened as a result of working their steps and then what their lives were like now. And one of the great things for us is is that in 1931, a guy by the name of uh Bud Firestone met a man by the name of Samuel Shoemaker at an Episcopal bishop's conference in Denver.

And on a train ride out of that, Bud worked those steps. And Bud, who was a horrible alcoholic's obsession to drink, was removed at that moment. that he did his sharing his his fourth and fifth step, his his first step with shoemaker.

And from that, I mean, his family was was amazed and the family doctor even called it a medical miracle. The family was so grateful that what they did is is that they contacted after watching the guy for a while and seeing that he actually had changed, they actually invited the group to come. And so a team came to the town of Akran where the Firestone uh uh family was and Frank Buckman and a group brought their message of working these steps to that western town.

>> And what happened is is the message was heard by some men and women and the people that were sitting in the audience were T. Henry and ClariS Williams. uh Henrietta Cyberling, uh Bob and Anne Smith, uh the Reverend Walter Tons, uh James Newton, Roland Hazard, all these folks, uh well, not all of them that are here, but this is a list of the major players and and after the talk today, if you want, we've got some uh we've got a list of these people with little bios and uh some notes about what it is that we're talking about today.

So if you enjoy them, we'd be happy to make them available to you. Um, so what would happen is is the team would come in and one of my favorite stories about the Oxford group is is that in 1933 an Oxford group team uh went through Canada. Okay, this is the height of the depression.

There are 60 people. They never had more than more than a week's expenses. Frank never collected money.

He never asked for it. It was people like Firestone saying, you know, I'd like you to come. Here's some money.

We'll rent the hotel. It was the voluntary contributions of people who were at the meeting. They never passed the hat.

And for eight months, this group of people went back and forth across Canada carrying this message. It started out when it started, there were like 3,000 people at their first meeting in Ottawa. By the time they got to Vancouver, 30,000 people are showing up to listen to these people.

You know, in Akran, in Akran, when Buckman and the gang came, there were 1,600 people that showed up for those meetings, which is just stunning. Anyway, um the other thing I'd like to tell you about Buckman is the kind of guy that he was. He believed that the people that were closest to the flame, the people who had been converted the earliest were the ones that had the best message.

You know, give me a man that's 30 days sober. Does anybody give a better pitch than the guy who's got or gal who's got their first year birthday? You know, we really ought to record it so we can give it back to him later on down the line.

But anyway, um here's a description of Frank. Um Sir Arnold Blonde, the author and inventor of the Salum and downhill races and skiing, used often uh to uh criticize Buckman in his books. Later on, he went to the moral rearmorament uh center in Switzerland to study Buckman and his work at firsthand.

Thereafter, he went there most years over a 10-year period, partly because he enjoyed the company, yet still Buckman puzzled him. Now, he's talking about Frank, right? He has no charisma.

I can see he isn't good-looking. He's no aator. He has never written a book.

and he seldom even leads a meeting. Yet statesmen and great intellects come from all over the world to consult him. And a lot of intelligent people have stuck with him full-time without salaries for years when they could have been making careers for themselves.

Why? life-changing soul surgery, a a mission, a pleasure beyond description. Um, when we talk about Buckman, one of the things that's really important to do is is to understand that this guy at one time he's on a bicycle.

He's he's he's he's in England and he's and he's riding his bike at night and he gets struck with a very very loud voice and it says you will be made you will you will help to remake the world. Guy was 45 years old at the time. And when we look at what it is that he did with his life, you have to understand that that's what he was doing.

Every decision he made, everything that he tried to do was in pursuit of that vision of remaking the world. What it was that the Oxford group taught and studied isn't anything brand new. They had the five C's, which I'll talk about in a minute.

the four absolutes. They recommended reading 1 Corinthians uh chapter 13 and they absolutely insisted on quiet time. Absolutely.

And in fact, when you take a look at the our literature uh and and what it is that the people that t what was important to early AA members, it wasn't the meetings. It was getting direction and guide from God on how to how to approach your day. It was the quiet time and the sharing of their stories with other people.

the uh the four absolutes were uh first come came up by an evangelist by the name of Robert Spear and he believed that if you took the New Testament and all the teachings of Jesus but most specifically the sermon on the mount that there were four absolutes and the Oxford group really refers to it mo most of their literature as as as standards after they first talk about the that that if you have any question in your life any conduct, any any dilemma at all. All you have to do is is it loving or not? Is it honest or not?

Is it pure or not? Is it selfish or is it unselfish? And those were the four absolutes.

And uh one of the things about Corinthians that uh which is the uh the great thing that we hear at weddings when we go to weddings and sometimes at funerals and the descriptions Paul has above. The Oxford group believed that if you really wanted to change that what you would do is is that you take that passage from the Bible and that if you read it every day for 30 days that you would never be the same again. And uh one of the great uh 12step stories is they run into Dr.

Bob and there's this woman and she's in the DTS. What should we do with her? And he says, "Get Henry Drummond's book, which is The Greatest Thing in the World," which is still available in in in any Christian bookstore.

Get The Greatest Thing in the World, give it to her, and have her read it every day for 30 days, and she'll never be the same again. Now, during the late teens, Buckman's going back and forth from the United States to England, and he's on he's on a uh he's on a uh uh a cruiser, cruise liner, and he's and he's talking with people at the table, and one of the things that happens is he's talking with this woman, and the woman says to him, you know, she's interested in this this thing about about being a life changer, about about having something in her life that's based something on something aside from herself. And she said, "You got to if if you're going to teach me this, you got to break it down.

You got to make it really simple for somebody like me." And so Bugman said, "Okay." And the next morning in his quiet time, what he came up with was what we called what he called the five C's. And the first uh and I don't know how many of you uh have read or do read the 24-hour a day book. I don't know if you've seen the last the last five days.

Remarkably, it's been about the five C's. The uh the 24-hour a day book is actually a uh a reworking by an Oxford group member, Richard Walker, of a classic uh Oxford group book called God Calling. And like almost like much of the Oxford group uh material, it was written anonymously.

Uh AJ Russell is the person who edited it. Wonderful story about this book is is that uh these two women sponsors found that they didn't like each other, these two English women. So they recommended that they spend their quiet time together sponsors.

It's a long lineage. Um and and and so they started to and what happened is is that when you would spend your quiet time, one of the things they recommended was that because the old Chinese proverb that one thing that's written is is uh is more powerful than the strongest memory. They would always recommend so that you'd remember what God told you while you're sitting there is that you'd write down what it is that you heard or what you felt.

And uh so these gals started writing and what came out was not something that either of them were familiar with at all. And it was it was almost like an automatic writing and and they didn't know what to do with it. And AJ Russell was an Oxford group member who was the editor of the uh the London Daily Mails religion section.

And so they sent him off to him and he he took a look at it and he couldn't believe what it was. And so what they did is is that they published it and they say that it's by two listeners. >> So if you take your 24-hour a day book and you go down to a library and you pick up God calling by AJ Russell, what you'll find is is the meditation, the prayer for each day, the meditation for each day actually comes from this.

It's rewarded a little bit for people that have a drinking problem. And when I go through the five C's, I'm also going to going to uh refer a little bit to it in that fashion. The first C was confidence that there must be a connection and identification at depth for for a person to be changed.

In other words, that I've got to believe who you are. I've got to believe that what it is that you're you're telling me is authentic. I have to be able to have confidence that you've actually had the change that you've had.

And that's what I got when I went to my first AA meeting. I heard people speak about their drinking stories. And what these Oxford group members would is they'd tell their stories.

The second thing was confession. Second seized confession. And uh Buckman's uh lines on confession were when you when you hear when somebody shared their story, the first thing was and I think you may have heard this from a few sponsors along the line.

Never betray an appearance of shocked surprise. If you're really trying to help somebody through a fifth step, be ready to convince your own shortcomings honestly and bluntly. And finally, keep every confidence absolutely sacred.

The third C is conviction. And what the uh uh what the Oxford group people would say is that a person the person that you're working with has to be convicted of the power of sin about sin's binding power, sin's blinding power, and sin's deadly power. And I don't know about you, but when I came into my first few meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, what I learned was alcohol's binding power and alcohol's blinding power and its deadly power.

The fourth is conversion. And what Buckman described conversion as was it's a transaction between a person, soul, and God. That that's what conversion is.

When that transaction happens, they used to always say that God outside of us is a theory. God inside of us is a fact. And they believed that no one could go through these set of steps, work through these five C's and not have an experience of God.

They viewed this stuff as absolutely practical. There wasn't anything, you know, stareyed or or that this was cold hard fact. One of the great conversion experiences uh um was uh uh in William James's varieties of religious experience and uh the great conversion story that's in there is about a guy by the name of SH Hadley who was a horrible alcoholic and had a really really bad time and and this is uh and you wonder well what was it in that book that got got Bill's uh uh Bill's attention and uh the way that it's described is when the invitation came, I knelt down with a crowd of drunkers.

I halted but a moment and then with a breaking heart I said, "Dear Jesus, can you help me?" Never with a mortal tongue can I describe that moment. I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sun shine into my heart. I felt a free man.

From that moment till now, I have never wanted a drink of whiskey. I've never seen enough money to make me want to take one. I promised God that night if he would take away the appetite for strong drink, I would work for him all my life.

He did his part and I'm trying to do mine. And then the fifth uh of the C's was what they called conservation or I'm sorry continuence, excuse me. And uh and what that meant is is that you wanted as soon as possible to have the experience be vital to get somebody out working with others.

Following conversion, the new convert must be set to work to win others. He should understand from the first that his prayer and Bible study will ultimately become burdensome if he regards them only as fundamentally and ev inevitably the means of his own spiritual development and not the means of successfully serving others. What would I do without my fabulous wife Adele who did all this ma magnificent work for us and God bless her.

Um the next personality that I'd like to share with you is uh Sam Shoemaker. Could you give me some water? Water.

Um, oh, thank you so much. Uh, Sam Shoemaker was the uh was the uh recctor at Calvary Chapel. Frank was in China as a missionary in 1918 when Buckman and Ha Walter came to China to work with missionaries about this vital personal work.

And what happened is he hated Buckman from the beginning. Who is this guy? Who is this guy running around telling people how they ought to do stuff?

So Buckman comes into town and Shoemaker was uh a marvelous marvelous uh guy. He had a he had an amazing personality. In fact uh let me uh this is again from sinners only.

This is A.G. Russell's description of Sam Shoemaker, the antithesis of Buckman. Whenever I looked at him squarely, my gaze was irresistibly drawn straight to those magnetic eyes of his, those eyes that were always bright and twinkling merrily, one or the other, ever closing and a non in that impish wink one comes to love and respect.

Get near to Sam and you at once feel his magnetic personality. His happy faith and contentedness so permeate the atmosphere that you feel it unnecessary for Hoover to declare the depression officially at end. This is a southern boy who was used to getting his way and uh and he's in China and can't go his way.

And this guy, the life changer, is coming into town and he knows that Sam knows that if he gets this one guy that that guy, if he can change him, that everybody else will line up that he can really have some success. So this big gun comes in. He says, "Well, why don't you go work on on this guy?" And Bugman looked at him and said, "What's preventing you from doing it?" >> And Sam got a little upset.

And he went home that night and he was just furious, but he saw the truth in it. He saw that he had never completely given himself to God. And so that night uh in 1918 he gave himself the next morning he got together with uh with Buckman and he shared with him all of his sins and all the things that that he had done that he felt was was keeping him from being of maximum service to God and his fellows.

And the most interesting thing happened. Sam took a walk with the man and the man decided that he'd like to become a Christian. And from that time on what happened is is that Sam believed that working with Buckman would be uh doing that kind of work would be more rewarding than anything that he could do.

So they went out and for the next seven years they went all over the world together to South Africa. They came to the United States. They went to South America.

Always doing this what they called personal work. In 1925, Sam was uh an Episcopalian minister, an ordained Episcopalian minister, and he was called to Calvary Church in New York. And so he left and went and established himself as director there.

And his church became the center, the clearing house for Oxford group information throughout the United States. And uh one of the uh things that uh Sam did is is that he wrote about 15 or 20 books on uh this personal work. And one of the fun things that's happened of late is that uh uh because most of these books are out of print is Bill Pitman and uh Dick uh Dick B Dick Burns got together and uh we've got another courage to change book.

But uh this particular one is a compendia of quotes from a lot of shoemakers uh sermons and books and it's a it's a great fun. Sam was looking for a vehicle to bring a vibrancy to this church he just came to. And there was a property that was down uh in the Bowery and uh he decided that uh that this might be a place that they might be able to start a mission for uh drunkards and and uh and indigent men.

And God sent a man by the name of Harry Hadley who was SH Hadley's uh son who three days after his father's death had had a conversion experience and Harry Hadley became the director of the Calvary mission. Um the other thing about Shoemaker is is that he was known by everybody as as somebody because of his personality that had the ability to make people comfortable. He was able to express his own spiritual problems well enough that other people would respond in kind and want to share.

And so he was known as someone who was very good at bringing people to Christ. And the people that he worked with were Roland Hazard, Chef Cornell, Sebra Grave, Ebie Thatcher, and Bill Wilson. He was the man who taught spiritual principles to these people.

principles that we have received, you know, in our in our book, Alcoholics Anonymous. the picture of Sam. Uh he uh Sam also was uh he assembled a group called the businessman's team and what he wanted to do was get guys from Wall Street and major industrialists because you know as you all know from any contract contact with New Yorkers they believe that they are the center of the universe and he figured that what what would be test is is to is to get a group of these people and they would actually go out a team of people would go out and talk about spiritual principles in business and these are the members of the businessman's team.

The people that are here, Roland Hazard, Russell Firestone, Chef Cornell, DC Kitchen, and uh were actually sober, not drinking through the Oxford group and active members at Calvary Chapel when Bill Wilson was released from town hospital. And then Charles Crap Jr. got sober just about the same time.

He got sober uh just a few months after Bill and he wrote a book called The Big Bender. That's really a lot of fun. What it is that Sam had was this this this talent for getting people to share.

And again, what we're trying what he was trying to do is get them to clear away the wreckage of their past. And this is the way he described it. We can hardly resent uh painting our sins in bright colors and making ourselves heroes and heroins of the great spiritual conflicts we have fought.

Although we may have succumbed to sin in the fight, pride is subtle as a serpent and it can enter even our accusations against ourselves, giving us, although we may not acknowledge it, a perverse enjoyment of our confession. In the book, what is the Oxford group? They describe sharing.

They said sharing does not mean divulging indiscretions that involve another person by name. It means confessing our part in sinning. Placing the blame on others and making excuses for our weakness is not sharing.

It is merely negative selfish talk. >> That be a nice sign in the Milano Club membership with drop. >> Again, these are the things that this why is it that these guys are attracted to this guy?

This is the what shoemaker uh said what he learned from quiet time when he was looking at himself. He said, "I discovered four things which needed putting right in my life. One, there was a person who'd wronged me who I would not forgive.

Two, there was restitution that I would not make. Three, there was a doubtful pleasure which I would not give up. That's before the internet.

Four, there was a sin in the long past that I would not confess. When these were straightened out, I not only came into new power and release, but for the first time, I began to get daily guidance which I knew could be relied and acted upon. that I knew could be relied and acted upon.

>> Oh yeah, this is this is from uh his book Twice Born Ministers. But this is a professional God person talking about his problems. That's why these guys could listen to him.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

These are on the these are on the hand. Now again when it comes to quiet time this is what Buckman said about his own life I'm sorry Shoemaker said about his own life he said that there's need for rededication day by day hour by hour by which progressively in every quiet time the contaminations of sin and self will are sloughed off for they have a way of collecting and we are kept in fresh touch with the living spirit of God. This is a guy who's got problems like me.

And I believe that it was these expressions that allowed our forefathers to listen to him. And by reading his sessions, what happens is is that you see that the language and the steps and the things that we practice were developed by these spiritual pioneers. Okay.

Okay. This is a list of the the major players. Again, uh Bill Wilson said in a wonderful talk that he gave that um if you were looking for the start of Alcoholics Anonymous, we could start 2,000 years ago with the birth of Christ.

Or he said there are many of our friends who would even push it back further than that. Um but for our for my discussion which is is from the Oxford group that that Frank Buckman is the person who carried a message of depth and weight and a practical application of spiritual principles to mental and physical and psychological problems to Sam Shoemaker who shared these with Roland Hazard and James uh Newton. Uh Roland Hazard was a childhood friend of Wilson.

James Newton was an Oxford group member that uh that carried the message to uh Russell Firestone about turning turning his life to Christ. Uh Chef Cornell uh was one of the men who was sober who helped uh uh Hazard rescue Ebie and we'll talk about that later about the uh when we do the long form of the Akran miracle. Uh we'll talk about chef's relationship with Ebie.

DC Kitchen was was sober and in the Oxford group at Calvary Chapel when uh when Bill came in as as well as Ebie and Roland, the Reverend Walter Tons, who we'll see in a couple other places. He was the Firestone family uh uh recctor. They belong to the Episcopal Church there in uh in Akran.

And he was the biggest Oxford group supporter. He was the guy that welcomed Buckman and the Oxford Group team on behalf of the city uh when they when they made their visit in 1933. Uh T.

Henry Williams and his wife Cla T. Henry was the developer of a uh a tire mold that all the different tire companies in in uh Akran used and he was uh a person who made his home available for the West Hills Oxford group meeting. Uh and those members were uh Henrietta Cyberling, Robert Hullbrook Smith, Anne Smith, and then uh of course uh I've got up there our friend William D.

Silkworth who was uh the physician at Towns Hospital and uh and of course Bill Wilson. >> That's it. Um, now the last thing that I'd like to do is I'd like to read you a piece from uh of uh of Sam Shoemakers.

Uh, he uh he wrote a uh he wrote poetry. It was one of the things that he liked to do. And uh this is an apologia for his life and it's called I stand by the door.

I stand by the door. I neither go too far in nor stay too far out. The door is the most important thing in the world.

It is the door through which men walk when they find God. There's no use my going way inside and staying there when so many are still outside. And they so much as I crave to know where the door is.

And all that so many ever find is only the wall where a door ought to be. They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched groping hands, feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door, yet they never find it. So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, the door to God. The most important thing any man can do is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands and put it on the latch. the latch that only clicks and opens to that man's own touch.

Men die outside that door as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter. Die for the want of what is within their grasp. They live on the other side of it.

Live because they have not found it. Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him. So I stand by the door.

This is the man that when a member of the Oxford group team, Bill Wilson, who was being accused of not being maximum, of not being involved enough in going out to change American business because he had an obsession with helping drunks sober up. against the group conscience of all of his friends and his mentor said, "Bill, you're right. Follow him." Because he believes that Bill would be able to put people's hands on the door.

>> Thank you. I will be happy to entertain questions, but please make them simple enough that I can repeat them into the microphone because we're being recorded. >> Yes.

>> I don't, but our web our uh our email address is here and we'll be happy to send it to you. the u the book list all the slides for all three workshops are in here format and the the uh sources are at the bottom of each slide with the author and the >> date most of a lot of this stuff's out of print um the stuff that that is in print which I would really recommend to you is uh first and foremost uh the thing that's fired me up well the thing that originally fired me the most was I was a pagan by VC Kitchen. Um, but that's not available.

But a really fun read is this uh I'm sorry is this uh this what is the Oxford group. It's got this is brand new uh from Hazelden. There's a a reworking of it in kind of new age AA parlance in the front called practicing the principles but go to the back and see how much of it you really recognize.

It's it's tremendous. The other uh the other thing that's uh I've I found you and I could talk for another quite a bit on Buckman is this book called uh On the Tale of the Comet. It's by Garling and uh the best place to get it actually is Amazon.

It's not available much in bookstores. It's put out by moral rearmorament. And uh uh just another little aside about Buckman.

Uh, in 1957, moral rearmament teams went to Littleblock and they showed a film that they'd put together in Africa to help with African tribal problems to the National Guard, to Governor Favis, to the ND NAACP people and all these different groups uh kind of one at a time. And what it did is it changed the dynamic of the city. In fact, one uh one person described it as the single most important uh thing that had happened on the 100th anniversary of the Civil War.

So, uh anyway, but all kinds of just amazing amazing things here about this man and then the work that he did. >> Yes. Um, what happened to the Oxford group?

>> The the Oh, what happened to the Oxford group? The Oxford group in 1938. Now, this is this is really a fun thing.

The Oxford group described themselves, their mission is to solve personal, national, and international problems by bringing men and women everywhere back to Christian principles. In 1938, as the Second World War is starting to mount, they as a group started really to focus on politicians and countries and organizations and churches. What they were trying to do was work through the hierarchical system to try and affect change.

And uh they became moral rearmorament. in uh 19 uh 38 sorry 39 excuse me uh there was a split between uh Shoemaker and uh Buckman over this because he felt that they were no longer working in personal religious work and they were too focused on on international and that wasn't something that as as a recctor or as a churchman that that that he felt was was part of his mission. >> Yes.

Uh I've uh what it was that Buckman said about the Nazis that infuriated so many >> Oh >> yeah. Oh, what are the uh uh the question is what is it that Buckman said about the Nazis that infuriated so many people? Frank is on a liner as that's where you traveled and he's coming back from England or he's going to England and this guy says to him uh he's having a conversation with the guy it's not on the record he's a press guy and he says that he does not believe that any person could not be changed.

What he was trying to do was uh he was trying to get Himmler and Hitler and all of the superructure of the German government to work the steps boy. >> And what happened is what happened is he said in an off-handed comment he said I thank God for Adolf Hitler because his change would affect so many others. And what happened was is the soundbite comes out.

Buckman says, "Uh, thank God for Hitler." And thank you for that question because it allows me to read another little fun thing about about uh uh moral rearmament. Uh now this is a guy who was vilified by everybody and and one of the things was is that his workers they tried to keep them out of being drafted in the Second World War because they're busy working in factories. They're working with management and labor teams.

They're trying to help with the war movement as far as production and things go. Um there were a real raw raw thing about you know people working together and there was a uh a investigation by the selective service administration and it noted that moral rearmament the next the evolutionary name of the Oxford group right drew the fire equally of Nazis and communists of the extreme right and extreme left in politics of aggressive atheists and narrow ecclesiastics It had been charged by radicals with being mil militaristics and by wararm mongers with being pacifistic. Certain elements in labor denounced it as anti-UN, certain elements in management as pro- union.

In Britain, the report went on, NRA was accused of being a brilliantly clever front for fascism in Germany and Japan of being a super intelligent arm of the British and American secret service. One day, one day a press report would announce that MRA was defunct and the next day that it numbered nearly the entire membership of the British cabinet at the time of Munich and was responsible for engineering Hitler's attack upon Russia. Nothing concludes the analysis that a potentially vast moral and spiritual reformation of global proportions could possibly be honored by antagonisms so venomous and contradictory in character and so worldwide in scope.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh what happened to Abby?

like you got something. >> Well, um the question is what happened to Ebie? Um that's really not what the purpose of of of this this talk's about.

But as I understand it, um we have to remember that these people that got sober in the Oxford group did not have sobriety dates like we know them. and people drank and uh when people drink bad stuff happens and he had a hard time in in staying sober and whether he was pushed out of AA or whatever uh anything that I've ever read or seen and especially when you read the stuff about uh there's a wonderful book uh by Nell Wing called Privileged to Have Been there and she talks about how heartbreaking it was for Bill when Ebie'd show up and he always had given money. always trying to do whatever he could cuz he believed that Ebie saved his life.

>> That's what I know about about it. You know, he later got sober and and I believe he died in Texas. Um >> he died sober.

>> He's written about by Lois. >> Okay. And he's written about by Lois Lois remembers.

And there's also a new biography that's come out and I haven't read it yet about uh uh it's called EBT and I think Melb in fact I'm sure Melb wrote it. So it's available probably through Hazeloon. Yes.

Frank want to know will you be mentioning in the next segment about Dr. Young? >> Yeah.

>> Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The next the next talk tomorrow will be on the we tell the long sto form the of what I call the Akran miracle and we'll start at 1907 and we'll go all the way through and Dr. Jung will be but he wasn't an Oxford group member >> so that's that's why he we didn't talk about him today.

>> Yes sir. >> I read that uh the primary reason for changing the name to moral rearmament was because Oxford University objected to the use of >> the question is is is that was Oxford University's uh not wanting them to use the name uh Oxford group. Um, the reason that they changed the name that that was a uh problem, an ongoing problem always, um, it was more something that they were called than something that they professed to be themselves.

And and then later it was just that people knew them as that. Um, but really when they when it when they changed to moral rearmorament, it was it was actually in response to Buckman's working with a uh uh a socialist leader who the way that he described it is is that as as all these nations are arming that the only thing that's going to save the world from Armageddon is moral rearmament. And these four steps will allow us to do that.

>> Y >> did Bill maintain his association or relationship with moral rearmament as the years went by after >> the question is did Bill uh maintain his relationship with moral rearmment as the years went by? No. Um, in fact, uh, you know, one of the things that's that's real interesting, like we we all know about what happened in Akran where Clarence said, "We're going to have a meeting in in, uh, in Cleveland and it's for alcoholics only, no Oxford group members." And, uh, and there was some fist fights that broke out among those kind, intolerant Christians.

And this is serious stuff. Um, and yeah, the OG members actually drove up and tried to crash the meeting in Cleveland. It was really fun.

Um, but so we know about that. But really what happened in New York was is that is that Bill was pushed out of the group because he wouldn't follow the guidance of the group regarding what it should be. There's there's stuff that we've got about uh about Garrett Steelely and and uh and Buckman uh sitting down and working personally with Bill and Lois about you got to get off this alcoholic stuff.

We've got drunken nations to take care of. We don't have to worry about drunken people. One of the things that that said about uh why it was that Buckman wasn't that interested was is that uh uh he'd been he'd been working with drunks all of his all of his ministry and he found them rather easy to convert compared to normal people and he thought that it was much more he kept saying to Bill you're you're you were a millionaire you know you were somebody you you're somebody you know your testimony your conversion experience could help us with American business.

Why are you worried about these drones? >> Yeah. >> Um I've uh I'm going to try to get over this book and and get it to you.

I came across a book that I talked about and u I think I ch I kind of got the impression from there that that one of the tenants of the hospital was that uh that to take avail themselves of the program to try to get sober that uh the alcoholic needed to accept Jesus Christ as savior and that that was kind of a that one of the things that Bill Wilson kind of learned from that and U and and where they kind of didn't insist on the conversion to Christianity necessarily as towards more relatively helping kind of a loving forgiven god like >> um what what uh what what Byron was was was commenting on was is that uh you know that drunks had problems with accepting Jesus and and the Oxford group was a Christian movement and and and one of the the interesting things, at least from the way that I was exposed to it, is is that they really were all that interested in drunk. I mean, they were, but but it really didn't matter when their focus was was was the world and lots of different people and and uh we just weren't that large of a group for them to be concerned or or try to work their work their thing from. Yeah.

Um, Bill when he wrote the steps made sure that everybody could come in and and uh uh one of the great uh things that Sam Shoemaker talked about in his uh in his piece on the 12 steps as I understand them was how it was that Bill wrote the steps so that everyone could come in and everybody could help. >> Yes. You can become a member today if you wish.

>> They the uh the the question is is moral rearmament still in existence today? It is. They have a uh they have an office in Washington and they have one in uh in London and I and I they may have one in Canada also, but yes, they they still are are are out and about and they still are working.

Um when you read on the tale of a comment or any of the other commentaries about the group, you know, they still are functioning basically trying to do the same thing, which is to get people to use spiritual principles not only in their personal life but in their political life. >> Yeah. >> China.

The question is, did Sam Shoemaker go back to China and was he fluent in Chinese? I don't know if he was fluent in Chinese or not. Um, he probably had some rudimentary uh knowledge of it just because in order to go and work as a missionary, you need to you need to do that.

Um, after 1918, I'm not sure. I can't tell you for sure, but during that 7-year period, they went around the world a few times. And I'm sure that they probably uh they probably I know Buckman went back a couple of times after that.

Anything else? Thank you so very much. We've got uh we've got >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.