Sadly, the Orange Papers website, which exposed everything that you need to know about AA but were afraid to ask, has been taken down. Apparently, the original owner of the domain stopped paying for its upkeep.
I have located the archived links, and I am providing them here.
We have to get past the knowledge of our parents and go to the wisdom of God the Father.
For the longest time, I vacillated between the opinions of my mother and my father. I have only recently learned how wrong they BOTH were, on so many issues.
Unlike many people, I have no problem looking past the two options which are usually placed before us on a number of issues.
I have gotten more accustomed to recognizing that whatever ideas are presented in an either/or fashion, there is often a great way to come up with other options in the midst of them, or outside of their scope entirely.
I don't feel the need to be bitter toward my parents. I realize what they did not know about the Gospel of Grace, and what I have learned today because I have learned so much from the preaching of Pastor Joseph Prince and Pastor Bob George, among many others. So grateful for their work in restoring the Gospel of Grace, that Jesus has finished the Work and given us Himself.
Amen!
We need to seek not the wisdom of our fathers, but the Father. We need the love of the Father, not just the love of our earthly fathers. This is not to disparage the work and the witness of the men and women who raised us.
But no matter what we are facing, not matter what we have learned, we need the love of THE Father!
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15)
The wisdom of our earthly fathers cannot compare with the Wisdom of the Father. In fact, let us never forget that "Christ is our wisdom" (1 Corinthians 1:30)
One final thought ...
I have listened to so many older men talk about their convictions and beliefs, and many of them acknowledge that their beliefs come from what their fathers told them. "I know that William F. Buckley was a racist, because my father said so, and my father would never tell a lie."
Perhaps your father did not lie to you, but what he said was not true.
Consider also what my father used to say about lying: "My father told me not to lie, because you are too stupid to keep track of your lies."
But what does the Bible say about lying?
"Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another." (Ephesians 4:25)
and
"Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;" (Colossians 3:9)
We don't tell lies because they are not commensurate with our new nature, our new identity, our new creation as Christ's own, adopted into the Family of God.
We need to stop listening to our fathers, and start listening to the Father!
Faith is the evidence of things hoped for. It's not something that we still hope for.
It's something that has arriced.
Faith is the substance of things unseen. It's the recognition and reality of things that we do not see.
How did Moses survive and then thrive?
"By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible." (Hebrews 11:27)
We see by faith! Faith is not a feeling, and it is not based on unstable facts.
Faith is about seeing what is invisible, for what is invisible to the human sense is eternal in the most important sense:
"While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:18)
For a long time, I kept confusing feelings and the flesh with faith. My parents taught me to walk by flesh and sight rather than faith and spirit. They were so focused on themselves they didn't see a living Savior caring for them.
They really believed that they were all alone in the world, or that praying to God was something that they did as an exercise, an activity to earn some favor or support. But for most matters in their life, they lived as though they were on their own.
It's a tough life, that kind of self-imposed hardship. It's remarkable how I was able to get through the earlier years of my journey. Both my parents did not have the full and working knowledge of God's grace and peace at work in their lives.
God is real! Christ is Alive! We are not stock on this rock called Earth trying to live our own lives in our own effort. We have Him who has been from the beginning (1 John 2:13) and we are not alone in this fight:
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:13)
Faith is about recognizing divine reality apart of our limited senses. Faith is about recognizing truth based on God's Word, not man's world.
Consider the first example of faith in the Hall of Faith (Hebrews 11):
"3Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." (Hebrews 11:3)
God's Word spoke the worlds into existence. Before the world, there was the Word.
John could not have said it more plainly:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
Let's hear God's Word and believe that God has all the power that we need to get thorugh and thrive in this world. It's not about ourselves. It's about Himself. Christ Jesus died for us, rose for us, and lives for us after the power of an endless life at the right hand of His Father--and our Father!
Self-effort, man's striving, man's attempts to keep the law are NOT of faith:
"And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them." (Galatians 3:12)
Right before this point, writes clearly how the righteous live:
"But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith." (Galatians 3:22)
This verse is the Gospel in a verse, one of the most oft-repeated verses in the entire New Testament, and for good reason.
Faith is all about seeing Jesus, and seeing that He has Finished the Work. Self-effort, self, works, tiring and toiling under law, is all about man looking at his thoughts, his feelings, his efforts, his world, his own words and works -- and always coming up short. We cannot save ourselves. Man seeking to make himself wise became a fool, convinced that God was holding out on him, and thus partaking of a tree which was not good for man to eat.
The knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of the law, does not make us live good and godly lives. The Tree of Life, the Gospel of Grace, seeing Him who is Invisible by faith based on His Word, that is how we live and reign in life.
Now more than ever, everyone in the Body of Christ needs to stop focusing on their feelings and the facts before their senses, and start seeking greater revelation, to see Jesus at work in their lives and around their environs, based on faith, not our feelings, not our fantasies, not our make-believe attitudes.
It's time for us to make these prayers our priority, that we would see more, not try to do more; that we would believe more, not achieve more. For the more that we believe in Him, the more that we can receive from Him, and the more that He can achieve through us! AMEN!
Every since I was a kid, I was taught so much about Alcoholics Anonymous.
My mother, Pam Schaper, was a "stepper Mom". Everything in her life was run through the AA program, the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions, etc.
It was only until shortly before her death, in late 2011, when I began learning fully about the Gospel of Grace, and the complete incompatibility of the grace of God with any of man's systems of self-improvement.
There are no steps to getting to God. He has done the work. Jesus died on the Cross, and when He rose again from the dead, God the Father seated us in heavenly places with His Son Jesus (Ephesians 2:4-6)
Alcoholics Anonymous teaches people to identify with their sins, with their flesh, with their own fallen nature.
Never do people learn that they are a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), nor do they ever learn that they have been made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
In fact, every day, they are taught that the spirit of Alcoholism lives alive and well in them, and they need to keep a watchful out to ensure that the disease does not overtake the person.
There is no rest for adherents of Alcoholics Anonymous.
What is also particularly damaging is that this cult teaches people to turn their will and life over to God "as they understand Him." This is a real problem, since I do not want to believe in a God that my puny mind can comprehend.
In fact, Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that we need strength to understand the love of God, which passes knowledge! (Ephesians 3:16-19).
There is too much self-centeredness in Alcoholics Anonymous. There is simply no way to break free of oneself as long as we are looking at ourselves: our thoughts, our feelings, our habits, our hurts, our sentiments.
For the longest time, I did not see, did not realize how alive, how vibrant, how independently true and active Jesus is in my life. Indeed, He is our life! (Colossians 3:4).
For the longest time, I treated God as though He lived in my head. I did not understand what it meant to walk by faith, or rather, I had spent so much of my time focused on my thoughts and feelings. Such bondage, such pain was so common, so overwhelming.
The last few months, I have been praying Paul's prayers to the Ephesians, in the first and third chapters of his epistles to that church. Indeed, I have begun to realize that God is real, and His real life is independent of my thoughts and feelings. All the worries, fears, cares, suspicious, and suppositions have been slowly but surely ignored. The noise, the nonsense, the nattering of bad thoughts, fears, worries, and concerns about the future have all melted away as I see Jesus, Him who has been from the beginning! (1 John 2: 13)
God is real. He is permanently at home in every person who believes on His Son, that Jesus died for our sins and gave us His righteousness (Ephesians 3:17).
He is active and alive! He is not a figment of our imaginations, nor is He a fantasy whom we have to wish or will into existence in our lives. He is our life, and He is at work around us, providing everything for us, living through us.
Our bad feelings are not us, our bad thoughts are not our identity. Our new life is hid in Christ with God.
This is really simple, and yet really profound. For so long, I lived in my head. I kept thinking that I had to alter my thoughts and feelings, hold onto certain sentiments to ensure that God was with me. Never once did I realize how active and independently gracious He is towards me.
Why did I struggle to realize all of this? Because I was taught about some arbitrary and capricious God as revealed by long-time white-knuckler and serial philanderer Bill Wilson, aka Bill W. My mother insisted on championing herself as a big time Stepper who always worked her program, and never failed to take her inventory (going over and over the Twelve Steps, etc.) Ugh, what a load of crap all of that has turned out to be.
What's worse, even when we are saved, we all still struggle with "the flesh", in that we need to learn that we are not our flesh, we do not need to identify with bad thoughts, bad feelings. Jesus does not disappear from us because of our feelings. He is our life, and He is providing everything for us.
Indeed, we are called to rest in Him, and we are resting in a real person. He also does not leave us or forsake us if we fail, sin, fall short. All of our sins have been put away forever.
We do not identify with sin, but with the Son.
All this time, I would wrestle constantly with my thoughts. Then I would try to "focus" on Jesus, as though He were far away. Yet He is ever-present, closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24)
Jesus, I am glad that I see you by faith. Not physical sight, for what is invisible is eternal. I understand now where I was mistaken, where I was believing wrong.
And I understand now why I was believing wrong, with all the nonsense from Alcoholics Anonymous and its cultic lies. You do not live in our heads, and we do not have to fight with our heads to see you! AMEN!