I've heard that vp together with several of his honkies took a class from him in Canada. Could VP have swiped this as well as other things we know he took? Do you have any info re his Ministries (Leonard's).
COULD he?
We KNOW he did!
We've discussed it a number of times, including "the way:living in wonderland"
because vpw himself mentioned Leonard's class,
and one of our posters has taken BOTH classes and met Leonard.
And... you can even Dial-A-Sunday-Night Morning service and hear the charming Mrs. B. G. Leonard teach what I'm sure will be oddly familiar lessons to you:
This episode we'll see BG Leonard, what vpw admits to learning from him, what vpw says about
him, and the 3 things that vpw finds quoteworthy from BG Leonard.
pg-205.<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">"But how did you get the class started?" I asked him. "It was happening while
you were here in Van Wert." </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">"After that trip to Tulsa lots of things fell into place. God just keeps giving it
to you as you can take it. Someone in Tulsa gave me the name of B.G. Leonard, or sent my
name to him, I can't remember which. Anyway, after Tulsa I began to get his monthly
newsletter from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
I never read that thing. It was so badly printed, you could hardly make out a word. I never
read it for two years. And then a couple of years after Tulsa, I had been working the Word
about laying on of hands. I'd worked every scripture and seen how they worked together
perfectly.
That particular day, just after I'd worked it through, I'd gotten B.G. Leonard's newssheet.
Well, I just crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket as usual. I did some other
things, and later that day I took the wastebasket out to burn the rubbish. As I shook it
out, this thing, which was on the bottom, fell out on top of the heap in the incinerator--
opened.
There staring me in the face was an article about laying on of hands. I read the first two
lines fast, and they are perfectly accurate. So I pulled the whole thing out of the fire
before it burned and read it through. The whole article was exactly what I had come up with
in my months of research. So I went in and called B.G. Leonard on the telephone.
He told me he loved me, but I couldn't come up to see him because he was in the middle of a
class. So I took the next plane to Calgary. His place was called the Christian Training
Centre." </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Now here are ALL the direct quotes from Leonard.
Please note that, like everyone else, he can ID vpw on sight.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">"And then he started preaching. Boy, oh, boy, was he with it! He taught his heart
out for another hour and a half. Then everyone left, and I just sat there. He said, 'Hi, ya,
there, Wierwille, I thought I told you, you couldn't come.' And I said, "Yeh, but I didn't
hear you.' 'Well, where are you staying?' he asked me, and I told him. And he said
"Why, you're in the middle of the red light district. That's all whores!' " </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
That was ALL the direct quotes from Leonard.
pg-207. <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">"He loved me, and I learned some stuff from him. He had tremendous believing.
That's why I love the guy." </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">"The summer of 1953, our whole ministry went up-Dotsie and Donnie and some of the
others from Van Wert. We took his whole trip- really learned a lot about the other
manifestations of the holy spirit. But he worked from personal experiences. I worked what
he taught from the accuracy of the Scriptures. When I came home, I made up my mind that I
was going to tie the whole thing together from Genesis to Revelation. So I did, and in
October, I had the very first 'Power for Abundant Living' Class.
At that time, the Foundational Class and the Advanced Class were together-then whole thing
in two weeks. But the syllabus today is basically the same. The basic principles from the
Word are the same. The class has filled out. But I knew the greatness of our age-the age of
holy spirit and that every truth must fit in the framework of the manifestations. I just had
to teach it to somebody." </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
pg-208. <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> "I taught without a syllabus, but the class was the same. You could throw
the syllabus away now and I could still teach it. It's a burning reality in my soul." </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Sorry I didnt find this in time to include this on the same page,
but TheEvan posted this once.
(1/17/05, 12:04pm)
"...surely you are familiar with the photos of Wierwille's first two 'PFAL' classes?
Well, most everybody was, as they were published often enough. Did you ever
see the rest of them? Like the ones picturing the water baptisms? I did.
But I didn't see them in Da Way.
I saw them in some old newsletters displayed at BG Leonard's 90th
birthday party, which we hosted for him. I was just casually leafing through some old
ones and you can imagine the jolt I got when my eyes landed on a familiar picture.
It was the old "1st Piffle Class" photo I'd seen so many times.
As you know, Wierwille had recently taken Leonard's class.
He returned to O-hiya to teach Leonard's class with Leonard's blessing.
The accompanying article was about this Rev. Wierwille teaching CTC's
Gifts of the Spirit course to members of his congregation in O-hiya.
Turns out wierwille lied to the man, co-opted the man's work as his own.
FAMILIAR PATTERN!
All of which disqualifies him in any way from having been in public ministry
of any kind. Period. However you burnish it and photograph it with a warm
hazy glow, the conclusion is clear in the harsh light of day."
Another quote from "Born Again to Serve",
by Mrs W.
Skyrider continues...
"According to Mrs. Wierwille's book, there is a long list of men and women who significantly taught and influenced her husband.....one of the most profound being Rev. B.G. Leonard.
Rev. B. G. Leonard
p. 90
"Ever since the Divine Healing Convention in Tulsa in December 1951, and since Rev. B.G. Leonard prayed with us for Mary's healing over the phone in December 1952, Dr. Wierwille's hunger for more knowledge about God's healing power was piqued. In late winter, February 1953, Dr. Wierwille felt the need to spend time with B.G. Leonard.....
"B.G. Leonard called his work in Calgary 'The Christian Training Centre.' Dr. Wierwille described his first impressions there: "I walked in and B.G. was in the middle of announcements. They must have lasted an hour and a half. Then he took his violin and played hymns for a while. When he finally started preaching, he taught his heart out for another hour and a half. Then everyone left and I sat there. He said, 'I thought I told you that you couldn't come.' And I said, 'Yeah, but I didn't hear you.' "
In June of 1953, four months after Dr. Wierwille's initial trip, our family traveled with two other carloads of our friends to Calgary to take B.G. Leonard's class which he called "The Gifts of the Spirit." At his Christian Training Centre, a large upstairs room over a pawnshop, our son Don and I were students in this class from June 28 to July 15. Dr. Wierwille was with us, but of course, he was not a new student, though he wanted to sit through the class again because what B.G. Leonard was teaching was so thrilling and powerful about the "gifts" of holy spirit and about spiritual healing."
p. 99...."In October 1953, Dr. Wierwille taught the first Power for Abundant Living class, which was held in the basement of St. Peter's Church. The first two classes were called "Receiving the Holy Spirit Today." The name was then changed to the broader title......"
*****
Much thanks for Skyrider for posting that in the "Outreach Beyond vp's congregation" thread.
I think, WW, that Krys is really interested in BG Leonard's work. Do you have info on that? (We've re-hashed VPW's plagiarism far too much here.)
Oh, as a relative new comer and given information on GSC is searchable but not necessarily jumping out at readers, it never hurts to bring up topics again. IMO anyways.
You read my mind Twinky! I do agree that from time to time old news should be new again because we never know who's hovering and reading and we should be telling the whole story!
I think that BG may have had a true ministry. Nobody's perfect, of course.....but vp only stole from those worth stealing from!! :) I'm not interested in a precursor to PFAL - but I am interested in what stirred the spirit of BG Leonard.
I have a copy of Stiles' The Gift of the Holy Spirit. I think, over the summer when I'm not taking any classes, I'll take advantage of the resources at The School of Theology where I'm studying to see if I can trace any lines from the Azuza Street Revival to Stiles.
I think that BG may have had a true ministry. Nobody's perfect, of course.....but vp only stole from those worth stealing from!! :) I'm not interested in a precursor to PFAL - but I am interested in what stirred the spirit of BG Leonard.
I am just curious why you believe VP only stole material from those worth stealing from? I believe just the opposite....he took from the fringe and esoteric. VP had itching ears and I think he rejected sound theology in favor of a cobbled together Word of Faith based theology. I don't think he did us any favors with what he taught us about the Holy Spirit.
I am just curious why you believe VP only stole material from those worth stealing from? I believe just the opposite....he took from the fringe and esoteric. VP had itching ears and I think he rejected sound theology in favor of a cobbled together Word of Faith based theology. I don't think he did us any favors with what he taught us about the Holy Spirit.
Exactly!......geisha, you and I were thinking along the same lines.
VPW definitely mixed in occult teaching via Word of Faith trappings with his law of believing, focus until it happens, the power is within you mumbo jumbo. The end result is faith in oneself as the focal point of "power" instead of faith in God and his power.
VPW definitely mixed in occult teaching via Word of Faith trappings with his law of believing, focus until it happens, the power is within you mumbo jumbo. The end result is faith in oneself as the focal point of "power" instead of faith in God and his power.
Mix in an unhealthy dose of paranoia-induced conspiracy theory tendencies (Myth of 6 Million, Takeover based "Red Dawn" type exercises, etc.) and that pretty much sums it up.
Mix in an unhealthy dose of paranoia-induced conspiracy theory tendencies (Myth of 6 Million, Takeover based "Red Dawn" type exercises, etc.) and that pretty much sums it up.
Stir in some Dale Carnegie sales tips and networking friends.....and knead military-type discipline into corps class instructors..... and the bread is baked to perfection.
"Though Let Go and Let God focuses on ten steps in victorious living, it also reveals Cliffe's beliefs on the important topics of God, man and Christ. Although he claimed Episcopalian beliefs early in life, he later the New Thought classic "In Tune with the Infinite" by Ralph Waldo Trine and took courses on spiritual healing from Metaphysical Schools which brought him to a new conception of God:
"I found the Kingdom-of Heaven within me and, oh, how my ideas of God changed.(3) God to me is all life, all power, all love."(4) God is the name given to that unchangeable principle which is the source of all life, of all existence. As God He is impersonal, but as we come to know Him day by day as expressed in each one of us, He really becomes personal to us...(5)"
Man, Cliffe newly concluded, must contain the divine energy for "My mind is part of His divine-mind"(6) and "we are inseparable from God"(7), Cliffe wrote. Man's goal, then, is to grow, developing his latent "God power" since "...if there is an unpardonable sin it is the damming up of God's powers within us." (8)
According to Cliffe, attainment of this goal is aided by the impersonal Christ force indwelling every human being. Since "there is no death"(9) a person simply goes to "that plane of thought which you have prepared for yourself" which can loosely be termed "heaven" or "hell."(10) Cliffe's pantheistic viewpoint combats Scripture, promoting man from sinful creature to a microcosm of the "Creator." These a-Christian beliefs have been marketed for centuries by mystics and occultists, often under the thin disguise of Christian terminology which Cliffe favors.
If Wierwille did realize Cliffe's alarming beliefs about God, man and Christ, he was knowingly exposing his Ohio congregation to possible great spiritual harm. If Wierwille did not realize Cliffe's non-Christian beliefs, he did not probe Cliffe on doctrinal matters or was theologically naive. In either case, Wierwille did adopt at least one key Cliffe teaching- that positive faith (which Wierwille termed "believing faith" in 1957 and "believing" beginning sometime after 1962) will yield health, happiness, prosperity and success while negative faith (fear) must result in failure, sadness and sickness because this is a law under which every human on earth lives. Wierwille's teaching and terminology closely mimic Cliffe's, as a comparison of their works indicates.(11)
While Cliffe heads each chapter of Let Go and Let God with a brief Bible verse he does not attempt to prove his teachings with Scripture. Wierwille, on the other hand, attempts to illustrate from Scripture his theory of "believing" thereby "Christianizing" this spiritist's ideas.(12) One thing is sure. Wierwille's source far his teaching on believing was neither the Holy Spirit nor the Word of God, but Albert Cliffe, who spiritually stood far outside the bounds of biblical Christianity. "
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waysider
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Twinky
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Galen
Classes are still offered, books are still available.
Many sections of the book are word-for-word copied in PFAL, Though over-all PFAL is much shorter and briefer.
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WordWolf
COULD he?
We KNOW he did!
We've discussed it a number of times, including "the way:living in wonderland"
because vpw himself mentioned Leonard's class,
and one of our posters has taken BOTH classes and met Leonard.
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OperaBuff
And... you can even Dial-A-Sunday-Night Morning service and hear the charming Mrs. B. G. Leonard teach what I'm sure will be oddly familiar lessons to you:
http://ctcoftexas.com/Conference.html
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krys
Thanks! I guess I was hoping for something with a bit more substance and truth in it! sigh - -
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WordWolf
We posted quite a bit of it.
If you're willing to look at the posts, you'll see that.
I posted one link because I was in a hurry.
===============
Leonard's printing house is "Canadian Christian Press."
vpw, by his own admission, rushed over to interrupt Leonard's class in progress
as soon as he heard of it, and demanded to be allowed to take it.
Leonard indulged him. A few months later, vpw returned with others to take it,
and vpw retook it. A few months after THAT was the first vpw class called
"Receiving the Holy Spirit Today." vpw taught it and mentioned no one.
What he told Leonard before this...he asked Leonard for permission to reteach Leonard's
class locally one time. Leonard agreed, and added a photo of vpw's class to his
scrapbook when vpw sent it to him. vpw continued to teach Leonard's classes.
Leonard didn't sue, but he added elaborate copyright notices to his books and
became more reluctant to put everything out there, which means vpw slowed down
Leonard's ministry.
Students of Leonard's class have said that Leonard's mannerisms and speech patterns
showed up in pfal, as did his use of "Johnny Jumpup, Maggie Muggins and Henry Bollocco."
============================
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WordWolf
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Twinky
I think, WW, that Krys is really interested in BG Leonard's work. Do you have info on that? (We've re-hashed VPW's plagiarism far too much here.)
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OldSkool
Oh, as a relative new comer and given information on GSC is searchable but not necessarily jumping out at readers, it never hurts to bring up topics again. IMO anyways.
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krys
You read my mind Twinky! I do agree that from time to time old news should be new again because we never know who's hovering and reading and we should be telling the whole story!
I think that BG may have had a true ministry. Nobody's perfect, of course.....but vp only stole from those worth stealing from!! :) I'm not interested in a precursor to PFAL - but I am interested in what stirred the spirit of BG Leonard.
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Twinky
It's a good question, Krys. What do we know about BG Leonard, apart from him being one of VPW's earliest victims?
Or JE Stiles, for that matter? Another early victim.
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Steve Lortz
I have a copy of Stiles' The Gift of the Holy Spirit. I think, over the summer when I'm not taking any classes, I'll take advantage of the resources at The School of Theology where I'm studying to see if I can trace any lines from the Azuza Street Revival to Stiles.
Love,
Steve
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waysider
Indirectly related:
http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-fox-parham
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WordWolf
Some has been posted here. I can look for it when I have time.
Of course, someone else can look for it when THEY have time.
Me, I'm just a touch less eager when I find some time, spend 1/2 an hour digging up
what appears to answer a question and posting it, and I don't even get
"THANK YOU but I was looking for something else..."
I should get back around to it at some point, but there were actual threads
with Leonard's name in the title in AboutTheWay.
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geisha779
I am just curious why you believe VP only stole material from those worth stealing from? I believe just the opposite....he took from the fringe and esoteric. VP had itching ears and I think he rejected sound theology in favor of a cobbled together Word of Faith based theology. I don't think he did us any favors with what he taught us about the Holy Spirit.
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skyrider
Exactly!......geisha, you and I were thinking along the same lines.
I started a thread to say the same thing. :)
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OldSkool
VPW definitely mixed in occult teaching via Word of Faith trappings with his law of believing, focus until it happens, the power is within you mumbo jumbo. The end result is faith in oneself as the focal point of "power" instead of faith in God and his power.
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chockfull
Mix in an unhealthy dose of paranoia-induced conspiracy theory tendencies (Myth of 6 Million, Takeover based "Red Dawn" type exercises, etc.) and that pretty much sums it up.
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skyrider
Stir in some Dale Carnegie sales tips and networking friends.....and knead military-type discipline into corps class instructors..... and the bread is baked to perfection.
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WordWolf
Don't forget ALBERT CLIFFE.
http://www.precastconcrete.org/~messiah7/rsr_lawbelieve.htm
"Though Let Go and Let God focuses on ten steps in victorious living, it also reveals Cliffe's beliefs on the important topics of God, man and Christ. Although he claimed Episcopalian beliefs early in life, he later the New Thought classic "In Tune with the Infinite" by Ralph Waldo Trine and took courses on spiritual healing from Metaphysical Schools which brought him to a new conception of God:
"I found the Kingdom-of Heaven within me and, oh, how my ideas of God changed.(3) God to me is all life, all power, all love."(4) God is the name given to that unchangeable principle which is the source of all life, of all existence. As God He is impersonal, but as we come to know Him day by day as expressed in each one of us, He really becomes personal to us...(5)"
Man, Cliffe newly concluded, must contain the divine energy for "My mind is part of His divine-mind"(6) and "we are inseparable from God"(7), Cliffe wrote. Man's goal, then, is to grow, developing his latent "God power" since "...if there is an unpardonable sin it is the damming up of God's powers within us." (8)
According to Cliffe, attainment of this goal is aided by the impersonal Christ force indwelling every human being. Since "there is no death"(9) a person simply goes to "that plane of thought which you have prepared for yourself" which can loosely be termed "heaven" or "hell."(10) Cliffe's pantheistic viewpoint combats Scripture, promoting man from sinful creature to a microcosm of the "Creator." These a-Christian beliefs have been marketed for centuries by mystics and occultists, often under the thin disguise of Christian terminology which Cliffe favors.
If Wierwille did realize Cliffe's alarming beliefs about God, man and Christ, he was knowingly exposing his Ohio congregation to possible great spiritual harm. If Wierwille did not realize Cliffe's non-Christian beliefs, he did not probe Cliffe on doctrinal matters or was theologically naive. In either case, Wierwille did adopt at least one key Cliffe teaching- that positive faith (which Wierwille termed "believing faith" in 1957 and "believing" beginning sometime after 1962) will yield health, happiness, prosperity and success while negative faith (fear) must result in failure, sadness and sickness because this is a law under which every human on earth lives. Wierwille's teaching and terminology closely mimic Cliffe's, as a comparison of their works indicates.(11)
While Cliffe heads each chapter of Let Go and Let God with a brief Bible verse he does not attempt to prove his teachings with Scripture. Wierwille, on the other hand, attempts to illustrate from Scripture his theory of "believing" thereby "Christianizing" this spiritist's ideas.(12) One thing is sure. Wierwille's source far his teaching on believing was neither the Holy Spirit nor the Word of God, but Albert Cliffe, who spiritually stood far outside the bounds of biblical Christianity. "
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krys
There is so much wisdom here. I've been corrected and continue to look but differently now.
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excathedra
where is the evan and alfa cat ?
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Rocky
I don't know about Evan, but alfakat is a regular on facebook under his real name.
btw, along with the conspiracy theory, paranoia stuff, don't forget DWA -- Dealing w/adversary... that definitely fostered paranoia...
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