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Movie about Lonnie Frisbee


now I see
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I read somewhere when VP first got Doop, Heefner, Wise, Frisbee and Martin together that he performed some signs/wonders/miracles for them, and taught them about "the manifestations" and that's what got their attention.

I wonder if anyone can corraborate this information as being true or false? Anyone know?

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  • 7 months later...

I watched the documentary movie about Lonnie Frisbee this weekend, and I gotta say, I'm filled with mixed emotions.

I was thrilled to see credit given where credit's due to Jimmy Do*p, Steve He*fner, Ted W*se, and to Lonnie for their remarkable stands on God's Word and fearless execution of His anointing on their lives. David Di Sab*tino, the filmmaker, seemed to understand what they were all about, how unique they were and how significant that brief period of time was. There were many pictures of the House of Acts-the Big House where they all lived, great interviews with Ted Wise, the Heefner’s, Lonnie’s wife Connie, and with so many others who were witness to Lonnie’s ministry.

His story is very similar to Jimmy Do*p, and Steve H*efner. He was a man of God, who was anointed with a ministry from God, a very humble and loving man without guile, who drew thousands, and healed thousands. The real heartbreaker is he ended up being pillaged by two older floundering ministers with failing churches, who in turn used him up for their gain and then threw him away and ungratefully drove him out.

Lonnie single handedly grew both churches from nothing to thousands, the older and much wiser ministers took all the monies generated by the abundant sharing of the new parishioners, and handed him his hat and walking papers once they had a big enough congregation. Both of the churches are still around today, the Calvary Baptist and The Vineyard church, and have all but written him out of the church history books. Neither church would have been in existence today if it were not for Lonnie Frisbee and his relationship with God. Pretty much the same kind of coup VPW performed on Jimmy Do*p and Steve He*fner; when he set himself up as the grand poobah, took all the money, took all the people, and tried to write them both out of the history books too.

The saga doesn’t pinpoint how it happened, but at some point Frisbee fell back to a former sinful practice that he was previously delivered from, and that’s when the Church leaders turned their backs on him.

I’ve followed the posters here on GS from the early days of the Way West and East, the way they tell it, it seems they had no problem with the Word driving out things in people’s life that held them back from God, like the drugs and sex stuff. It was only after the tentacles of VPW and the Corps coming in which started entangling the fellowships and leaders with rules, programs and allegiances that the drug and sex stuff started creeping back in.

As soon as VP started to add some of man’s spin cycle reasoning and practices into the purity of the Word, it started corrupting the Word in people’s lives, people who had been previously delivered, as the Word was stronger than those things. There’s a great post from Tom H on this subject from the thread “Jim Do*p the Way West & VP” that illustrates this point:

Yes, I got your question. In the area I'm talking about - Long Island, the sex & drugs didn't come in - okay, let me back up here.

I was absolutely a heroin junkie when I got involved with TWI. My street senses were honed to the max, & I was in the middle of what was going on with TWI (in LI). If there were any drugs happening, I would have known. Not saying there weren't any anywhere, but it just wasn't happening - if you know what I mean. What was happening was that people like me, & lighter users, were going straight & turning on to the power of God. Perez on LI told me that anything that could ever happen that had anything genuine about it with Acid or any other drug, God could & would trump. Any drug user could relate to that sell. I could. And God backed it up.

I was like the ultimate questioner when I got involved. Maybe I was a real pain, I don't know. I remember the 1st time I saw Steve Heefner. He taught at a fellowship down someone's basement in LI. After his teaching, we touched base on the stairway there. I asked question after question for about 20 minutes, & all Steve did was answer them, answer them, answer them. He had to know how hungry I was. He filled me up for 20 minutes, & said he had to go, & he would see me in Rye on Sunday. Damn straight he would.

I thought I had done a fairly good job of kickin H after I got involved with fellowship - course people kick the physical habit time & time again, & the experience SUCKS, but they havent' taken care of what they need, so they go back. Yeah, & that's really stupid, & every time is worse than the last.

Anyway, at this point, I was pretty convinced that these people had real power (I had been involved in some fairly amazing ESP, & some basic, but real magic - I knew there was spiritual power around), but I was still pretty confused about the difference between the genuine & the counterfeit. I was really uptight about witnessing. I ran into someone at that time who had some good H, & I copped a nice fat hit from him from which I got a "righteous" high (excuse the slang). Next thing I know, I'm witnessing all over town without any fear, having an awesome day. Call it counterfeit if you will, I don't care; it's not my point.

That night, I'm finally at home; it's been a great day, & I'm reading the Word before I go to sleep - still nodding out from the H as I do so. Right then, I'm visited by a spirit, complete with classic banshee laugh/scream, chains rattling, vocal deal from the devil - if you do this, I'll do that - the whole freakin bit. Well, I've never had anything like this happen, I'm freaked out. I rebuke him in the name of Jesus Christ (which is always supposed to work). He laughs at me - LAUGHS at me. Now I'm really freaked out. I ask God to show me a way out. That's when the spirit offered "if you do this, I'll do that ." Well, I'm a junkie - I know that if there was ever a set up, that was it, & I tell the spirit that he is a liar. Blam, he leaves.

Next day is Sunday fellowship in Rye, NY. BE THERE ON TIME (You Rye people have to be able to relate to Steve's efforts to get us there on time.) I'm still messed up from the day before, & I show up late. As I come up to the double doors there, & open them as quietly as I can ( I know how to open doors quietly), I hear Steve finishing up his opening prayer. His next words are "...and I thank you God for rebuking the effects of the drug heroin," and, immediately I feel like as if I never had gotten high. As Steve said that, & as I moved quietly up the isle, Steve Perez, the guy who was moving it oni LI, turned around & looked at me. Perez knew, Heefner knew, the Holy Spirit knew, & I knew. Watching Steve work with God was the way a lot of us learned how to walk. He was just so open about it, & if you had your eyes open, you learned how to do stuff.

So, I'm all healed from the heroin, the teaching is amazing, but I'm still worried about the spirit and the banshee laugh. I'm POSSESSED!!! Yeah, funny, right.

After the fellowship, I make my way to the back where Steve is. Wow, we're alone. I start telling him about the night before, & when I get to the laugh, he cuts me off. He doesn't want to hear it; he's heard it before himself. Its a spirit of witchcraft, & he doesn't want to hear my version of the scream. And he starts to walk away. Holy cow, how can he leave me like this? I start to stutter, & finally I get it out, "Don't you think maybe that I still need deliverance from this spirit?" As soon as I get the courage to say that, I feel totally delivered. I dont say anything to that effect to Steve, but right after I got the deliverance, Steve says to me that he thinks that I just got it - which, of course, I just did. Well, there I am, jumping & leaping & praising God on my way out.

But the point is that you don't fool Holy Spirit. The move of the Word at that point wasn't happening because people were turned on by drugs & sex. Drugs & sex were being moved out by Holy Spirit.

It was after the back to back classes stopped that drugs and sex came into the LI fellowship.

Really - I remember the back to back classes, I remember the drugs coming back in, & I remember the sex coming into the fellowship. And it was after the back to back classes, and as the rift between HQ & Heefner & Perez started to happen.

That was a good question & a damn good answer.

This post has been edited by Tom: Jun 22 2006, 08:54 AM

This also parallels Lonnie Frisbee’s life in that at some point his ministry took a turn while he was entrenched with these churches, where he let his weaknesses back into his life, which resulted in the church leaders callously discarding him.

It is eerie the parallels between what happened to Lonnie and to Jimmy and Steve who all started from that house of Acts.

I will always wonder what would have happened if they had taken back their people and branched off on their own….

www.jesuspeoplemovement.com

www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/daviddisabatino.html

Edited by but now I see
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Pawtucket interviewed David Di Sabatino on the Talk Shoe program and you can download any of the Talk Shoe Broadcasts and

listen to them at your convenience for your PC. I suggest you download the Talk Shoe program and make an account; even if

you don't have unlimited long distance or a cell plan you can listen to it live or download it after the show.

Paw is open to suggestions for topics and speakers. The Tutorial for Talkshoe is on GRSC"s home page. Paw recently did a

thread on Lonnie Frisbee as well; it is under His Topics on his profile. There is also a lot of information on You Tube and under

Google as well.

On but now I see's link you can order the Cd and DVD!

Edited by RainbowsGirl
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Thank you for posting the links But Now I See. He sure did know his Bible! Some of the things he said really touched me. Especially when he spoke about obedience. I am glad to get to know about Lonnie. I had never heard of him until what has been brought to light here at GSC.

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Excellent program. I can't possibly do justice in expressing all my thoughts on it in one post at the moment.

But in joking to myself: with folks back then even getting "born again" tripping on acid, how many of the reported signs, miracles,

and wonders (I wonder) might have actually been "hallucinations"?

How could some of these "slain in the spirit" experiences be attributed to a form of hypnosis? (somewhere it was mentioned that

this was also something Frisbee had experimented?)

And could Dead Sea scholar John Allegro have been so far off course in his proposal that Jesus was a magic mushroom, or that

Christianity started out as a mushroom cult?

In that respect, the 60s would have provided fertile soil for a resurgence of a more "grassroots" form of Christianity.

Lonnie was quite a unique charismatic. Fascinating stuff.

Danny

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It\'s funny, I believe it was Ted W*se (or was it Jimmy Do*p??) who said that early on, Lonnie was investigating a theory about Jesus and flying saucers!! He was so hungry for knowledge that he just checked out everything.

I think they were all searching for the God connection, but they had no teachers. Other than organized religion, which basically rejected the hippies and wanted them to take a bath and cut their hair, there were few outlets and no accessible exchange of information.

That also made them susceptible to men Like VWP and Calvary Chapel’s Chuck Sm*th and to some of the stuff from the charismatic movement. You know, He*fner and Do*p received a formula from VPW on how to manifest holy spirit, Lonnie did not and kept searching.

We from TWI had such a wealth, maybe overkill, of bible teaching from the get go basically just handed to us, whereas the hippy Jesus movement people in that time period were forced to develop their own resources such as the Living Room in the Haight and the House of Acts without much guidance or help from the outside except from God and what they understood from the bible.

What they didn’t know they made up for with heart and love, and they were willing to go wherever God would send them, which from the efforts of Ted, Lonnie, Steve and Jimmy, they ended up bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Lord.

It is very interesting that Lonnie said he was high on LSD when God showed him the visions that came to pass and broke the news to him concerning his ministry with the Lord, the ocean filled with people he would bring to God and the huge baptism he performed in the ocean at Costa Mesa.

Makes you think about who God calls, and how far out of the box God deals with people, also makes you think about some of the social barriers or judgments we adopted in the TWI culture.

Edited by but now I see
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Lonnie's notion that Jesus came "from another world" would have found abundant confirmation in the beliefs of some of

the earliest Christian movements. It's too bad the "Jesus freaks" didn't hook up with others better acquainted with

early Christian history, or that Harnack's "Marcion" (still not translated into English until the 1980s) wasn't more readily accessible to that generation at the time.

They would have encountered a wonderous playground where to explore and expand their minds, their ideas.

Even for all the supposed "wealth" which came to any of us here via the Way, appears to me now by and large devoid of a wider

comprehension and appreciation of Christian history, because at some point the youthful spirit of open inquiry and expression became choked in these franchises

lorded over by desperate opportunist, middle-aged martini-sipping, sideburn-sporting, wide-lapel-checkered-pant squares pretending to be hipsters.

In any event, this documentary does well in illustrating the wider context of our own personal experiences, showing

that we were not alone or unique in our "special" group, or in how nasty it could become, even the more supposedly

successful ones to which Lonnie contributed.

This is underscored for me when browsing the articles and forums of an ex-pentecostal & ex-charismatic website.

Anyone going there will encounter many startling resemblances to our own background and experiences - it's almost like looking into a mirror.

Danny

Edited by TheInvisibleDan
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Even for all the supposed "wealth" which came to any of us here via the Way, appears to me now by and large devoid of a wider comprehension and appreciation of Christian history, because at some point the youthful spirit of open inquiry and expression became choked in these franchises lorded over by desperate opportunist, middle-aged martini-sipping, sideburn-sporting, wide-lapel-checkered-pant squares pretending to be hipsters.

fabulous description of the mogs of their day and time !!!!!!!!!! :eusa_clap:

it's a shame we never learned any church history all those horribly boring torturous times sitting upstairs in "wierwille" library (no books in there) at emporia

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lorded over by desperate opportunist, middle-aged martini-sipping, sideburn-sporting, wide-lapel-checkered-pant squares pretending to be hipsters.
Love it!    Right on.   :biglaugh:
ex-pentecostal & ex-charismatic website.

Anyone going there will encounter many startling resemblances to our own background and experiences - it's almost like looking into a mirror.

Scary, very scary.

I guess there's no new thing under the sun, there are consequences for following false prophets, wherever they are.

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I received the DVD and CD I ordered from the link of David Di Sabatino on Lonnie Frisbee that but now I see initially provided here. They were both very enlightening for me...I was a Midwestern "Flower Child"who merely enjoyed the sweetness and purity of heart of that age in time for all it's great contributions to humanity and many of my shaped values.

Thinking about it all afterwards...the DVD and the CD and reading all the posts here and the links concerning this period; I am truly glad not to have fallen under the scrutiny and judgment of Lonnie Frisbee's associates or peers (surely most of them could have never stood up under it themselves....I rather doubt if any of us ever could well survive this kind and kind-less scrutiny). Their scrutiny was very harsh and unforgiving and void of both depth and insight. David Di Sabatino provided the impartial depth and insight through his work and interviews. He did a marvelous job revealing all sides of Lonnie's well exposed life and times; as well as his contributions. David Di Sabatino researched it well and presented it even better; especially considering he lived about three generations after the facts.

Lonnie was a deeply troubled, hurt and long abused man with the genuine pure heart of a child; and that is why I believe God graced him and gave him his place in that time and culture to bring many to God and salvation. Throughout his life many people missed seeing Lonnie's heart or truly helping him. More often they just used him and condemned him when they were done using him.

It is a very good thing that God decides and that God's judgment is the only true judgment; and the only one that will truly count in the end! Mankind's inhumanity to mankind is sadly apparent once again and just what the pure hearted and genuine can... and do accomplish with God no matter the circumstances or obstacles present.

Why aren't we as humanity, in general, looking to help one another as strongly and relentlessly as we scrutinize and so often cruelly imposed judgements upon one another? Without God's intercession here Sodom and Gomorrah might just have looked like a picnic now in retrospect. Mankind can be so good at biting and devouring at times. This is the most annoying and concerning question I continually ponder; It is also the most deviant question that my idealist viewpoint has long entertained...Now I must either renew my mind in some acceptable way(which to me means alteration and change to whatever is right and fair and just and true...I sure will be busy looking for all that).

Excie,

Did you get permission from the family to share the manuscript concerning some of this yet? It would certainly show TWI's roots relating to the Jesus movement in the Hippie culture. It would make a great string of "Talk Shoe" broadcasts and/or GRSP Forum discussions

Edited by RainbowsGirl
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  • 1 year later...

I've seen this documentary and know people who knew Lonnie personally. It is a great movie. Some of my friends in CA and Malawi were old Jesus people. Pretty radical. There's going to be some cool documentaries coming out about contemporary moves of God.

Blessings,

Soulsurfer

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The movie and the music soundtrack are both great!!!

The Hippie part of TWI was to me where the true word of GOD and heart was mostly genuine. I was seeking GOD and His Word; not TWI! GOD's standards stand and never change!

People blow like the wind...Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light and in varying direction...and on and on every changing direction!!! We live in a pluralistic society and have asked GOD to adapt to our

individualized standards! It isn't new or the first time this has every happened in the History of the world. :(

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I look at Lonnie back then when he was holding meetings on the beach in Costa Mesa, and doing mass baptizings in the ocean there, and from what I know of Ted W*se, Steve He*fner and jimmy Do*p back then too for that matter, and think, that's what we should have been like.  Before twi, before the knowledge that puffeth up, when it was all about God and helping people, and when Jesus was still the Savior.  

Vpw sure effed it up and turned us from the straight and narrow path.

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  • 5 months later...

David Di Sabatino has announced a possible chance for the Frisbee documentary to get a theater run in 2009 and also a reworking of the material, here's the email about it and his other documentary projects:

 

Greetings,

I am pleased to announce that FALLEN ANGEL: The OUTLAW LARRY NORMAN will have its premiere at the CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL in San Jose, CA some time between February 25th and March 8th. The Cinequest festival is one of the major film festivals and we are pleased to be involved. The documentary received early acceptance earlier this week and was granted entry along with 15 other documentaries to the competition section where it will be up for various jury and audience awards.  

We will have a web site up very soon with more information on the documentary and some of the products associated with it. In the process of putting this film together, I approached Randy Stonehill to re-record some of the best songs from his early albums, such as Born Twice (1971), Welcome to Paradise (1976) and The Sky is Falling (1980). That CD project will come out on December 26th on Infinity Music. Much of the impetus to do this documentary was my love for the music created by Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill, so if you haven't heard this stuff, do yourself a favor. If you already have heard it, you know of what I speak, and should hear it again now that it has been updated. For more information about the PARADISE SKY CD go to www.infinitymusicdistribution.com/artists_randy_stonehill.htm .  

Frisbee continues to be played throughout the PBS network on various channels with late night time slots. But we received some great news recently that there is a chance for Frisbee to get a theater run in 2009, at which time we would go back into the editing room and put together a feature-length 90 minute version. There is also talk of a narrative biopic in the works. More news to follow.  

Thanks for your continued interest and support as these stories continue to gain acceptance.  

 

Sincerely,

 

David Di Sabatino  

www.lonniefrisbee.com

www.jesuspeoplemovement.com

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  • 1 month later...
there's four copies of The House of Acts on Amazon HERE... a book by John Allan MacDonald about their times... (that's the right one isn't it Sunesis?)
Is this the right book? House of Acts?

The House Of Acts was written by John MacDonald (who was a Baptist pastor), and working with a group called Evangelical Concerns Inc.

The House of Acts is an account of his experiences at the time with the folks involved. I believe the book is still available at Amazon.

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The House Of Acts was written by John MacDonald (who was a Baptist pastor), and working with a group called Evangelical Concerns Inc.

The House of Acts is an account of his experiences at the time with the folks involved. I believe the book is still available at Amazon.

Thanks!

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