Alcoholics Anonymous History
Bill Wilson’s Call on God for Help: Strengthening Faith of Christian
AAs in Recovery Today
Dick B.
© 2013 Anonymous. All
rights reserved.
Dr. William Silkworth, Bill W.’s Doctor, Tells Bill Jesus Christ Can
Cure Him
Dr. William D. Silkworth advised Bill Wilson that Jesus
Christ, the Great Physician, could cure Bill of his alcoholism. At the time of
Bill Wilson’s third hospitalization in Towns Hospital, Bill had a discussion
with his physician, Dr. William D. Silkworth, on the subject of the “Great
Physician.” And Silkworth’s biographer Dale Mitchel wrote in Silkworth: The Little Doctor Who Loved Drunks:
Silkworth has not been given the
appropriate credit for his position on a spiritual conversion, particularly as
it may relate to true Christian benefits. Several sources, including Norman Vincent Peale in his
book The Positive Power of Jesus Christ, agree that it was Dr. Silkworth who
used the term ‘The Great Physician’ to explain the need in recovery for a relationship
with Jesus Christ. . . . In the formation of AA, Wilson initially insisted on
references to God and Jesus, as well as the Great Physician. . . . Silkworth challenged the alcoholic with an
ultimatum. Once hopeless, the alcoholic would grasp hold of any chance of
sobriety. Silkworth, a medical doctor, challenged the alcoholic with a
spiritual conversion and a relationship
with God as part of a program of recovery. His approach with Bill Wilson was no
different. . . Wilson did often confirm Silkworth as ‘very much a founder of
AA.’ . . . . [Bill wrote:] “I was in black despair. And in the midst of this I
remembered about this God business. . . and I rose up in bed and said, “If
there be a God, let him show himself now! All of a sudden there was a light. .
.a blinding white light that filled the whole room. A tremendous wind seemed to
be blowing all around me and right through me. I felt as if I were standing on
a high mountain top. . . I felt that I stood in the presence of God.” [In
Norman Vincent Peale, The Art of Living]
The Silkworth copy of this book inscribed by Peale is available at the
Silkworth Collection Archives. . . . In
this book in particular he describes the need for surrender (p.105), he uses
the term ‘The Great Physician’ (later used by Bill Wilson) as a metaphor for
Jesus Christ (pp. 123 -26, and 151), and the details of an act of making
amends, the AA Ninth Step, (pp. 128-31), all of which are cornerstones of
spiritual living ripe within the Alcoholics Anonymous program and that of Dr.
Silkworth.”[1]
Bill’s Friend Ebby Thacher Tells Bill About Ebby’s Rebirth at Calvary
Mission
Ebby Thacher visited his old school friend and companion
Bill Wilson shortly after Bill’s third hospitalization at Towns Hospital. Ebby
told Bill: that he (Ebby) had been lodging at Calvary Mission, [2] that he had
“got religion” [3] that “God had done for him what he could not do for
himself.” And [4] that Ebby had there made a decision for Christ.[5]
In a manuscript I found at Stepping Stones, titled, “Bill
Wilson’s Original Story,” every line was numbered. The numbers ran from 1 to
1180; and here is how Bill there described Ebby’s approach and Bill’s
observation that Ebby had been born again at the Mission:
Nevertheless here I was sitting
opposite a man who talked about a personal God, who told me how he had found
Him, who described to me how I might do the same thing and who convinced me utterly that something had
come into his life which had accomplished a miracle. The man was transformed;
there was no denying he had been reborn.” (lines 935-42). [6]
Bill Himself Then Goes to the Mission Altar and Writes Later “I was
born again.”
Bill Wilson shortly set out for Calvary Mission to receive
what his friend Ebby had received.[7] Upon his arrival at Calvary Mission, Bill
went to the altar just as Ebby had done.[8] And just as Ebby had done, Bill
made a decision for Christ.[9] Rev. Sam Shoemaker’s wife was present. She told
me very explicitly, on the telephone from her home in Burnside, very that she
was present at the Mission when Bill had there “made a decision for
Christ.”[10]
Lois Wilson Later Tells Audience in Texas that Bill had Handed His Life
Over to Christ
In a recorded talk at Dallas, Texas, Bill Wilson’s wife Lois
Wilson described the events that took place at Bill’s conversion:
Well, people got up and went to the
altar and gave themselves to Christ. And the leader of the meeting asked if
there was anybody that wanted to come up. And Bill started up. . . . And he went up to the front and really, in
very great sincerity, did hand over his life to Christ. [11]
Reverend W. Irving Harris of Calvary Church Confirms Bill’s Second
Birth
The Rev. W. Irving Harris was Dr. Shoemaker’s Assistant
Minister. Harris and his wife Julia lived in Calvary House where Shoemaker
lived, and knew Bill Wilson quite well. Rev. Harris typed a memorandum which
his wife Julia gave to me, which said of the Mission Conversion:
. . . it was at a meeting at
Calvary Mission that Bill himself was moved to declare that he had decided to
launch out as a follower of Jesus Christ.[12]
Bill W. Then Wrote of His Surrender to Jesus Christ at the Mission
Altar
Then, it was Bill Wilson himself who began to describe his
own conversion to Christ at the Calvary Mission altar. First, while drunk, Bill
wrote a letter to his brother-in-law Dr. Leonard Strong, using the same
description that Ebby had used regarding his own conversion. Bill said, “I’ve
got religion.”[13]
Of far greater importance are the remarks that I found twice
in Bill’s manuscripts at Stepping Stones and which are now recorded in his own
autobiography published by Hazelden. Bill wrote:
For sure I’d been born again.[14]
Even Bill’s wife Lois, having seemingly become resentful of
Bill’s victory, wrote: “Although my joy and faith in his rebirth continued, I
missed our companionship. We were seldom alone now.” [15]
From Bill’s New Birth at the Mission to His Healing at Towns Hospital
But the decision at the altar did not, at first, produce
sobriety. Bill had not yet had quite enough to drink. After his conversion, he
wandered drunk in despair and dark depression to Towns Hospital one more time.
He was, he said, still pondering “that mission experience.”[16]
Concluding he could no longer defeat alcoholism on his own
and still remembering Dr. Silkworth’s assurance that Jesus Christ the Great
Physician could cure him, Bill thought:
Yes, if there was any great
physician that could cure the alcohol sickness, I’d better seek him now, at
once. I’d better find what my friend [Ebby] had found.[17]
Bill arrived at Towns Hospital for his last visit as a
patient. For Bill, “The terrifying darkness had become complete.” Then he
thought, “But what of the Great Physician? For a brief moment, I suppose, the
last trace of my obstinacy was crushed out as the abyss yawned. I remember
saying to myself,
I’ll do anything, anything at all.
If there be a Great Physician, I’ll call on him.[18]
And here are a few of Bill’s comments about what happened
when he “made the call” and had his ensuing “blazing indescribably white light
experience”—an experience that changed his life forever. An experience that
dominated the early A.A. thinking about the importance of Jesus Christ. And an
experience that may give strength to the faith of Christians in A.A. today:
Then, with neither faith, nor hope,
I cried out, ‘If there be a God, let him show himself.’ The effect was instant,
electric. Suddenly my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was
seized with an ecstasy beyond description. I have no words for this. Every joy
I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy, I was conscious of
nothing else. Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon
its summit where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In
great, clean strength it blew right through me.[19]
And then the great thought burst
upon me: ‘Bill, you are a free man! This is the God of the Scriptures.’ And
then I was filled with a consciousness of a presence. A great peace fell over
me, and I was with this I don’t know how long. But then the dark side put in an
appearance, and it said to me, ‘Perhaps, Bill, you are hallucinating.You better
call in the doctor.’ So the doctor came, and haltingly I told him of the
experience. Then came great words for Alcoholics Anonymous. The little man had
listened, looking at me so benignly with those blue eyes of his, and at length
he said to me, ‘Bill you are not crazy. I have read about this sort of thing in
books but I have never seen it first hand. . . .’ So I hung on, and then I knew
there was a God and I knew there was grace. And through it all I have continued
to feel, and if I may presume to say it, that I do know these things.’” [20]
A.A.’s official biography of Bill Wilson summarized the
results of Bill’s white light experience:
Bill Wilson had just had his 39th
birthday, and he still had half his life ahead of him. He always said that
after that experience, he never again doubted the existence of God. He never
took another drink. [21]
Reborn and Healed, Bill Feverishly Witnessed to Others About the Lord’s
Curing Him
Not only had he quit drinking for good, but he set about
feverishly witnessing to anyone who would listen. Dr. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.,
to whose church the Calvary Mission belonged, encouraged Bill to spread the
message of change and spiritual recovery to others like himself. Lois Wilson’s
biographer William G. Borchert reports the events as follows:
Bill took the preacher [Reverend
Shoemaker] at his word. With Lois’s full support, he was soon walking through
the gutters of the Bowery, into the nut ward at Bellevue Hospital, down the
slimy corridors of fleabag hotels, and into the detox unit at Towns with a
Bible under his arm. He was promising
sobriety to every drunk he could corner if they, like he, would only turn their
lives over to God. [22]
Yet, as Dr. Bob put it,
Time went by, and he [Bill Wilson]
had not created a single convert, not one. As we express it, no one had jelled.
He worked tirelessly with no thought of saving his own strength or time, but
nothing seemed to register. [23]
Then Came the Founding Visit in Akron Between Bill with His Message and
Bob with Listening to the Concept of Service to Others
The message was carried to Dr. Bob and was simmered to its
essence by three months of Bible study and discussion by Bill and Bob in the
summer of 1935. [24] The simple Original program, founded in Akron on June 10,
1935, developed by the Akron Christian Fellowship—the Akron Number One Group--and
incorporating the basic ideas taken from the study of the Good Book, achieved
astonishing success by November of 1937.
Bill Wilson’s important but little noticed message,
incorporating his view of the importance of Jesus Christ, is recorded in two
places in A.A.’s subsequent literature.
On page 191 of the latest edition of A.A.’s Big Book, Bill
is quoted as saying:
The Lord has been so wonderful to
me, curing me of this terrible disease that I just want to keep talking about
it and telling people. [25]
And, in earlier A.A. years Bill continued to express to
others the conviction that Jesus Christ provided the power needed to release
those still in need of help. One account begins with a visit by Dr. Bob’s
sponsee, Clarence H. Snyder, with a Cleveland man:
[Said this Cleveland man:] “One
evening I had gone out after dinner to take on a couple of double-headers and
stayed a little later than usual, and when I came home Clarence [Snyder] was
sitting on the davenport with Bill W. [Bill Wilson]. I do not recollect the
specific conversation that went on but I believe I did challenge Bill to tell
me something about A.A., and I do recall one another thing: I wanted to know
what it was that worked so many wonders, and hanging over the mantel was a
picture of Gethsemane and Bill pointed to it and said, “There it is,” which
didn’t make much sense to me.”[26]
And this specific reference to the picture of Jesus Christ was
“it.” For those in early A.A. who thoroughly followed the path that began with
belief in God and surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the path was a
path to success. Bill’s message for those who wanted to hear it was that the
Lord had cured him. Dr. Bob confirmed Bill’s message with the last line of
Bob’s own personal story when he said, “Your Heavenly Father will never let you
down!” [27]
For further details, see Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W., www.dickb.com/conversion.shtml
And/or contact Dick at 808 874 4876 or dickb@dickb.com
Gloria Deo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Dale Mitchel, Silkworth The Little Doctor Who Loved Drunks: The Biography of William Duncan
Silkworth, M.D. (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2002), 33-34, 44-52, 63, 65,
78, 96, 100=01, 106-09, 121-22, 151,
159-61, 193-99, 225.
[2] Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of A.A. (New York: Alcoholics
Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1957),
58-9; Bill Wilson: Bill W. My
First 40 Years: An Autobiography By the Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
(Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2000), 132.
[3] Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes of Age, 58.
[4] Alcoholics
Anonymous, 4th ed. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.,
2001), 11.
[5] T. Willard Hunter, “It
Started Right There”: Behind the Twelve Steps and the Self-help Movement,
Rev. ed. (Claremont, California: Ives Community Office, 2006), 6.
[6] Dick B., Turning
Point: A History of Early A.A.’s Spiritual Roots and Successes (San Rafael, CA: Paradise Research Publications, 1997).
Note: This and other such manuscripts will shortly be published in Dick B.’s
latest book with the working title, The
Early Manuscripts and Papers I Was Allowed to See and Copy at Stepping Stones
Archives in 1991.
[7] Bill W., My First
40 Years 135-37.,
[8] Bill W., My First
40 Years, 137.
[9] Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W.: More on the Creator’s Role in Early A.A. (Kihei, HI:
Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2006), 92-94.
[10] Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W., 94.
[11] This quote was discovered by A.A. historian Richard K.,
who listened to the Lois Wilson recording, wrote down the “Christ” remark, and
provided the information to me. See Dick B., When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise
Research Publications, Inc., 2006), 11.
[12] Dick B., New
Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A., Pittsburgh ed. (Kihei,
HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1999), 533.
[13] Dick B., When
Early AAs Were Cured and Why, 12.
[14] Bill W. My First
40 Years, 147; See Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W., 110, reporting the two places (pp. 130 and 103) of
the manuscript titled “Wilson, W. G.
Wilson Recollections,” dated September 1, 1954, that I personally inspected and
was permitted to copy of Stepping Stones Archives in 1991.
[15] Lois Remembers,
98.
[16] Bill W. My First
40 Years, 138.
[17] Bill W. My First
40 Years, 139.
[18] Bill W., My First
40 Years, 145.
[19] Bill W., My First
40 Years, 145-46.
[20] The Language of
the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings
(New York: The AA Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 284.
[21] “Pass It On,”
121.
[22] William G. Borchert, The Lois Wilson Story When Love is Not Enough: A Biography of the
Cofounder of Al-Anon (Center City,
MN: Hazelden, 2005), 170.
[23] The Co-Founders
of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their Last Major Talks [Pamphlet
P-53] (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1976), 10.
[24] The Co-Founders
of Alcoholics Anonymous, 13-14
[25] Alcoholics
Anonymous, 4th ed., 191
[26] This account was included in the third edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (New York:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1976), 216-17. It has now been removed
from the subsequent edition. The picture to which Bill W. pointed was a
well-known depiction of “a place called Gethsemane” where Jesus had gone to
prayer and “saith unto his disciples, sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
. . . And he went a little further, and
fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this
cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
[27] Alcoholics
Anonymous, 4th ed., 181.
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