EFT for War Veterans

Someone left a comment on one of the articles on this blog that contained a link to a very good article titled Exactly How Does EFT work? That article contained a link to a Google video that I wanted to embed here, it's really good.

It lasts about 20 minutes and is titled EFT for War Veterans. I have the full-length DVD Operation Emotional Freedom that I haven't yet reviewed on here (it's not formatted for a non-wide-screen t.v. so I have to watch it again on my pc), so this video gives a good snapshot.

A different perspective on the devil

I saw a link to an e-book called Calvinism: A Closer Look by Daniel Gracely on another blog, a few weeks back. I've been working my way through it a bit at a time, and today I'm reading chapter 9. It gives some interesting information about the book of Job, and he's discussing some things about the nature of the devil that are also very interesting. One thing it mentions is

The book of Job is believed by most scholars to be the oldest book of the Bible.

Apparently I don't read many scholarly books, because I don't think I'd seen that before. I've really enjoyed what I've read so far in the previous chapters and I've no doubt I'll feel the same through the rest of the book which appears to be a total of 21 chapters. Here's an important paragraph from the 9th chapter I'm reading:

The position we have been advancing in this book is that God is a free will Person, and that He has made other free will persons. We also want to press forward the idea that all free will persons whom God has made, both angelic and human, have retained their free will. In fact, humans have retained it despite the Satanic activity which has affected human history, and also despite the unlawful acquiring by Adam of the knowledge of good and evil (a knowledge we inherit in seed through the male, Adamic line). In short, we believe the book of Job will show that God does not choose the choices of other persons.

Following are a few more sentences from the article, which certainly give food for thought.

For his own part Job never mentions Satan in any of his conversations, and he seems unaware of the role the Devil played in bringing about his ruin.

The Devil does not appear to be double-minded, however. By being single-mindedly set against God, Satan is all the more effective because he never gives his opposition—God and the believer—the benefit of the doubt. He always assumes the worst about God and us, and this assumption informs his protest.

Perhaps this explains why the Enemy presumed to believe the worst about Jesus, and why the demonic world was astonished when they learned that Christ had risen from the dead. In fact, the Bible tells us that had the demonic world known about Jesus’ resurrection they would not have crucified Him.

Thus, according to the Bible, God took all of Job’s possessions, including Job’s children, and put them into Satan’s power. God did this without directing Satan toward any specific end. God is not the causal agent for any of the disasters brought against Job, even though God speaks in an idiomatic way as though He were responsible for Job’s ruin by having removed His divine protection.

But we must allow God to describe Himself, not some theological system that differs from the Bible. As a friend of mine has pointed out, when Christians allow the latter, they end up going to church and worshiping theology (i.e., so called) rather than the God of the Bible. The point here is that Job teaches us that God is not sovereign in everything, but rather sovereign over everything. To be sovereign in everything would mean God foreordains ‘whatsoever comes to pass.’ To be sovereign over everything means God will ultimately judge how others have been sovereign in their own sphere of decisions.

There's a lot more there, absolutely worth reading.

Search engines and advertising

In order to increase visitors to my site, I've done some advertising with Google Adwords and Yahoo. Up to this point, my site comes up with a pretty good rank for certain search terms but I figured every little bit helps with only a few hits a day.

However, since Yahoo and Microsoft have some sort of sharing arrangement I've been getting notices from Yahoo that I have to move my campaign over to Bing. I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft but I thought I'd look into the logistics of moving my campaign. (Nor am I a big fan of Google, for that matter, though they are hosting this blog my issues are mostly with Adwords). But, the first thing I saw when I clicked on the link for migration information was a message that it was strongly suggested that I install some software called 'Silverlight'. I figured I'd play the game for a moment or 2 to see what happened, since I'm running Linux and/or OpenSolaris (OpenIndiana) which is obviously not going to run a Microsoft application that will most likely want a registered version of Windows installed.

When I clicked on install, it took me to a page to download a Linux version called 'Moonlight'. Before I opted to install I decided to do some research. I found some very interesting information. Here are some links:

Reject moonlight now
Moonlight is a lead pony
Shining some light on Microsoft's Moonlight covenant

So in the end, I've decided to pass.

What Love Is This? book comments

I finished reading the book What Love Is This by Dave Hunt about 2-3 months ago. I thought it might be repetitive after reading George Bryson's The Dark Side of Calvinism, but that wasn't the case. I got a lot out of the book, and at 533 pages it takes a bit of time to get through it all. I haven't been in a hurry to write this blog post, because of the time it took to decide which quotes to use; since there were so many good ones to choose from. In addition I've had to wrestle with the question of whether a 'little leaven' in my beliefs about God and what I was being taught about God was acceptable or not. I'm still working on that, but this book helped me gain clarity on some of those issues.

The book starts off with some of the history of Calvinism, as well as it's basis under the teachings of Augustine and Augustine's ties to the Roman Catholic church. Apparently Calvin (and Luther) and other 'protestants' were against some of the R.C. church doctrine, but they held to other (unbliblical) doctrines, such as infant baptism. It also highlights some of the similarities and differences between Calvin and other Reformers, such as Luther. I'd already read a good deal about how Augustine's writings had greatly shaped Calvin's theology in Bryson's book; what was new and rather disturbing to learn about in this book were some of the details about Calvin's propensity to use violence and the power of the (civil / state) government to silence dissent.

Calvin followed his mentor Augustine in enforcing church attendance and participation in the sacraments by threats (and worse) against the citizens of Geneva. ... Sadly, Calvin put into effect in Geneva the very principles of punishment, coercion, and death that Augustine advocated and that the Roman Catholic Church followed consistently for centuries. (pg. 52-53)

One of the major doctrines of Calvinism is that of 'sovereign grace', which isn't actually part of the TULIP acronym per se, but it underpins much of the structure of Calvinism and ties in with the U (unconditional election) and moreso with the I (irresistable grace). I already wrote a bit about that topic in my article about whether the devil needs God's permission to attack a believer? and will probably write more about it, as I gain more clarity on the topic. Here are some quotes that I liked from the book that I want to share here:

And the solution is so simple: acknowledge that God sovereignly gave to man a genuine power of choice, and God is exonerated and honored. ... Irresistable grace is a human invention imposed upon the Bible. (pg. 396)

So God could cause anyone and everyone to believe the gospel and irresistibly draw them to heaven -- but He only does this for a select number? This is Calvinism -- whether one calls it moderate or extreme! It has been imposed upon the Bible in violation of the entire tenor of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It is a libel upon the character of God, a denial of the nature of love, and an offense to the conscience which God has placed in the heart of every man. (pg. 423)

Here is an interesting quote on the topic of infant baptism, and Calvin's belief that it was sufficient to effect forgiveness of sins and grant one entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven:

Had he not maintained this Roman Catholic false doctrine, Calvin would have had to resubmit to rebaptism, which was repugnant to him. He derided the Anabaptists for opposing infant baptism. Their valid, biblical reason -- that an infant has not believed in Christ -- was scorned by Calvin, and his wrath and that of the other Reformers came upon the Anabaptists. These true evangelicals were persecuted and martyred by both Catholics and Protestants for being baptized by immersion after they were saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. (pg. 429)

The section on the 'P'erseverance of the saints was rather short at only about 8 pages, I wish there had been more but perhaps there isn't as much written material about it available. However, from what I've gathered it leads to a sort of 'works' mentality. Salvation by works is of course in contradiction to the truth about grace and free gifts.

How does the Calvinist know he is one of the elect who have been predestined? His performance plays a large part in helping him to know whether or not he is among that select group. (pg 481)

On page 482 there is a quote by Piper and his staff having written "[W]e must also own up to the fact that our final salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience which comes from faith." The theme of 'obedience' (to God) seems to be prevalent in Evangelical circles. In some respects that's not a bad thing -- it can help steer you out of danger or into wonderful blessings -- but it can and has become a tool of tyranny and manipulation in some cases. I think the difference is whether one is being led by the Holy Spirit or the doctrines of men.

I know I'll want to read this book again, and will certainly use it for reference in the future. I think it's very much worth reading.

eft-sw site offline on Sunday June 27 for a short period of time.

I just wanted to advise that I plan to have the eft-sw website offline for between 30 and 60 minutes on Sunday June 27th, sometime between the hours of 3-7pm in the U.S. Pacific time zone, in order to do some software updates. I should have some more real blog articles in the next couple of weeks.

I posted this originally using Drivel blog editor, and discovered it doesn't allow one to add a headline to the message.

Changing Website theme

I finally finished reading the book by Dave Hunt What Love is This? It was very good, and I'll write more about that soon I hope. I am also almost done reading Darin Hufford's book The Misunderstood God. That is also a very good book. I got them both for Christmas.

However, I decided that it was time to update the theme for my Drupal website. I configured Apache webserver for my PC with a couple of test site virtual hosts so I could play with some things without breaking my current set-up. Figuring out how to set up the virtual hosts was a project itself! And last week I discovered that a 'bargain' computer isn't always a bargain a few months down the road. I had to replace the hard drive, and re-install software and all of that.

Now I'm finally ready to play with some new themes, and I think I've decided on one in particular. I'll have it on the website by the end of the weekend, hopefully. Or not more than another week... again hopefully. I thought I'd share some screenshots of the top 3 contenders:


The one just above is called Marinelli. It's nice but it would have too many things I'd have to figure out how to fix.


This one is called Sky. It's a close second, though it would need me to figure out some color options. Next is the one I think I'm going to go with, it's called Waffles; though I'm not completely thrilled with the orange headers in some of the boxes. I'll also replace the header with an image that doesn't have the girl in the picture. Since I still have to fix some things, such as placement of the privacy policy, etc. there's a possibility that I'll go with Sky. It depends on whether what I want to do actually works, or not. If you have an opinion, please share!

Video about Harry Potter

I recently heard about this ministry and while reading an article, it had a link to a video about Harry Potter. I posted an article or 2 about that topic a couple of years ago. It's a short video, mostly information that shows some of the stuff in Harry Potter is very much authentic when it comes to the spiritually dark topic of witchcraft, and not just mostly harmless fiction, as some would maintain.

More recently, I've been watching the 'Celebrity Apprentice' show on tv on Sunday evenings; except on Easter / Resurrection Sunday when they featured some new attraction based on Harry Potter. I was going to, but didn't, research to see if there were any blog posts about the timing of that show (promoting witchcraft on Easter...)

Testing a new blogging client

I'm testing a new blogging client that I just discovered using a package search for 'blog', it's called gscribble.

A few weeks ago someone in Texas called me asking about EFT and our Christian faith. We chatted for a few minutes, and she asked how I learned EFT. (I have to put some of that information on the website, too) Then since my new-ish computer also has a DVD writer, I told her that I'm allowed to make up to 100 copies of the EFT DVD's to give to others, though I'd never made DVD copies before making that offer. I had burned CD's on the computer with no problem.

After an initial bad start creating a couple unusable DVD's, I did some research online, and discovered cdrtools / cdrecord; which has to be compiled on one's system. Then you have to remove the 'old' cdrecord program and link a file called cdrecord to the newly installed program. That required learning how to create links and which files needed to be removed and linked, etc. which was another research project. So after all of that, I did manage to get about 4 or 5 of the 7 DVD's for The EFT Course (the 'basic course' as it were) to burn successfully and then semi-successfully for the remaining ones. It will be a while before I make that offer again, and then only after I've tested that things are working right, first!

After that my website had several modules and a Drupal security update to install, and I always do that on my home computer first before I do it on the 'live' web site. While I was at it, I decided to change the theme color to one called 'deep blue', in time for spring-time and Easter. After Easter I'll possibly switch to another theme, but that won't be for a little while, In the meantime I've just finished fixing some pictures / images to update some of the layout of the site. If anyone finds something that doesn't look right, feel free to send me a message.

Lastly, in addition to the above I've also been listening to a lot of the audio mp3's from Andrew Wommack Ministries, and since January I've been reading a large book by Dave Hunt called What Love is This? Calvinism's Misrepresentation of God (3rd Edition) I'll blog about that when I'm done reading it. It's very good.

Gary Craig is retiring

Apparently Gary sent out a message in the 'EFT Insights' e-newsletter and posted a message on his blog around the middle of December that he would be retiring. I don't always read those newsletters, I'd been receiving them since 2001 or so. Also during that time I was moving my web site to a new hosting company; so I saw the updated note about his retirement around the end of December.

The original retirement date was to be early January 2010; but it's been changed to March 1st 2010. I was really surprised, since a few months before that he'd been talking about a lot of plans he had in response to the updated 'open hands policy'. I'm quoting the message below but not linking to it, since it's likely the link won't be active after March 1st. As a result of this news, I'm going to be adding the 'EFT-ADV' credential back after my name both here on the blog and on my website. I'll also be removing the links to the 'World Center for EFT' -- though I'll add them back or add another link if things change again or if there's a site with article archives, etc.

I am looking forward to the film about (EFT and Veterans / PTSD), what I read about what happened in the book EFT for PTSD was very exciting. See Gary's blog post text below.

I will be retiring on January 15, 2010. It has been a magnificent ride and I am thrilled to have joined with you in bringing the EFT gift to the world. I will keep the EFT website, DVD store, Certification and related items active until my retirement date. This should give you plenty of time to make any adjustments you deem necessary.

Please know that our website cannot be maintained by or turned over to someone else. This is because it has my name all over it and thus turning it over, legally speaking, may create unwanted liability for me and my family. Although I am leaving the website open for awhile, it remains subject to copyright protection and is not to be copied and reproduced elsewhere.
Further developments will be announced as they occur. In the meantime, I'm hoping you will refrain from contacting me directly on this matter. Our email list has 475,000 subscribers and, as much as I would like to correspond with each of you individually, I can't personally visit with even 0.1% of you. However, feel free to comment at the end of this blog. Even though I may not respond to you directly, I will read everything you write. Your input, as always, is highly valued.

Although I have a strong emotional tug about this decision, it was an obvious thing to do. For many reasons it was inevitable and has been a long time coming.

Why?…The Challenges: EFT’s rapid growth has become an administrative nightmare and my ability to handle it was exceeded some time ago. This is so, despite the high quality help I have received from Tina Craig, Eric Huurre, Dawson Church, CJ Puotinen, Chris Wheeler, Carol Vrtis, Rob Lasch, David Mackay and more volunteers than I can count. My gratitude to you all.

While it is my nature to try to accommodate all the requests and demands from the EFT Community, the pile of pressures has grown from a manageable hill to an imposing mountain. Just the day to day questions, clarifications, requests and legal issues from the U.S. alone is enough to occupy a staff double our current size. This is multiplied by the many requests for “special exceptions” to our Open Hand Policy to deal with a dizzying array of laws, cultures and languages from different countries.

Also, as should be apparent to most of our seasoned readers, some EFT'ers have been hyping their products in ways that tend to erode the spiritual essence of the EFT movement. This has resulted in some behind-the-scenes disagreements, deceit and other negative experiences. At the core, I prefer peace to pugilism and wish to distance myself from these unnecessary "fame and fortune" energies. As you will see below, I'm leaving for higher ground.

Finally, my physicians tell me that I have had a heart attack. I am unaware of when this happened and have no symptoms. Nonetheless, the tests show clearly that part of my heart has died. Accordingly, it is sheer idiocy for me to continue with the pressures of running EFT. To do so, is to risk another heart attack, stroke, etc. No thanks.

The Solution: So, the solution is for me to get out of the way and turn the EFT name over to you. I have spent 30,000 hours and over $2,000,000 developing our educational stream and thus the message has been clearly displayed for the world to see. In addition, our EFT Manual has been freely downloaded well over 1 million times (not counting the 20+ translations).

With this in mind, I am contributing ONLY the trademarked names (EFT and Emotional Freedom Techniques) to the public domain so that you can decide for yourselves how best to use them. Different countries and cultures can establish their own organizations and rules without having to go through me. However, this does NOT include our DVDs, website, the EFT Manual, books and other materials. They remain my copyrighted property and are NOT being released to the public domain.

I am fully aware that some will carry the EFT name forward with integrity ... and some will not. That is part of human nature. It is up to you to choose your own ethics. I can no longer be a policeman in this regard.

If you are a serious student and want to learn EFT properly from the source, our DVDs are still available until our existing inventory is exhausted. I don't know if they will be available after my retirement. I'm working on it, but no guarantees.

Please know that my position here has always been voluntary. While there has been some modest profit over time, no one would have taken on this task for the money. My goal from the start has been to launch EFT into TherapyLand and thus bring its healing benefits to the world in a low cost, easy to understand manner. With your help, that mission has been accomplished. Millions of clients have been exposed to EFT and thousands of careers have been launched. Please accept my gratitude for your superb assistance. You can carry it forward from here.

Other issues: If you have an EFT affiliate account, any outstanding balance as of my retirement date will be paid shortly thereafter.

Those who have official EFT Certification through our Certification process will have the only official EFT Certifications ever offered. These may be quite valuable as you list yourselves on the various listing services out there. However, if you feel inconvenienced by my retirement and want your Certification fee refunded, please send your original Certificate (not a copy), postmarked on or before December 23, 2009, with a note stating you are abandoning your EFT Certification, to:

EFT
PO Box 269
Coulterville, CA 95311
If you wish to obtain official EFT Certification or continue on to EFTCert II, you must satisfactorily pass your exam prior to my retirement date.

A Parting Gift: Our full length movie featuring EFT as the answer to our war veterans’ PTSD is in its final stages. The total budget for this movie approximates $500,000 and it will be a stunning door opener for the whole EFT field. It will create a major awareness for the public regarding EFT and all EFT’ers will benefit by it. I have given it to my dedicated film director, Eric Huurre. He will introduce it to the public early next year.

The Future – Where to From Here? EFT has two important features: (1) What it does and (2) Where it points. The vast majority of EFT’ers are fascinated by what it does and are forever delivering ooohhs and aaahhs as EFT does its magic. This is fine. However, this is nowhere near as important as where it points.
EFT is but the doorstep to a far grander Palace of Possibilities. It is way outside our normal experience and its results cannot be properly explained by medicine or conventional science. As remarkable as it now seems, EFT is actually a toy that will someday be tossed away as a mere introduction to the exquisite beauty that is our birthright. It points to a future mental state where disease, war and resentments do not exist. This level cannot be reached, however, by...

* more tapping points or,
* the "latest and greatest" options for delivering EFT or,
* any of the other varied offerings that have found their way onto the EFT scene.

Instead, it will require a new approach, a new way of thinking that may or may not be directly related to EFT. I will be exploring the upper reaches of this Healing High Rise and have my sights on the Penthouse. Perhaps we will meet there someday.

Big Hugs, Gary

PS: I am contemplating a new website and newsletter along the lines of my last paragraph. Just stay on this list and I will keep you informed.