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.

Merry Christmas and website has a new home

I'll start out wishing you all a wonderful Christmas.

ESV: Luke Chapter 722. And he answered them, Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.
23. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

ESV: John 20:29. Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

And it appears that the EFT for SW website domain transfer to it's new home was accomplished this afternoon, and thankfully I think I got everything updated and configured just in time. When I was configuring things I discovered that pictures weren't showing up and I literally spent hours last night trying to figure it out. It turns out it was a simple setting in the cpanel web admin page.

I also updated the Drupal software to the latest version (6.15) that was just released last week, and changed the color of the theme from forest green to teal. I thought the forest green was just a bit too dark. If you discover anything that doesn't look right or doesn't work, feel free to leave a comment here or send an email, or leave a comment on the website forum.

Apartment for rent?

I had my website set up to email me when there was a new comment to an article. I received an email a couple of days ago and put off looking at it until today; and when I got to my website I see it has a page for 'Apartment for rent at eft-sw.com'. Obviously that's not my website. I tried to pull up the page for my hosting provider (witnesstoday.org) and it just said 'connecting to...' but it never pulled up the page.

The last communication I had from the person that ran (or runs?) witnesstoday was back in May, he was moving the servers to a new location. I haven't heard anything that he was shutting down the service or anything, but possibly that's what happened. I also believe the Lord told me a few weeks ago to get a new hosting provider, but I haven't done that.

So the EFT for Spiritual Warfare website is currently unavailable, and I'll be finding a new host and I'll post updates here. I think I need to start tapping and praying!

Update Dec. 15, 2009

It appears that my website is back up, there was a hard drive failure after a software update, apparently. I'm still a little baffled why my site came up apartment for rent, but it's back up now. I'm still in the process of changing to a new hosting company; which I found out about on a mail list for Christians using linux. There's a good possibility the site will have a new domain -- I'll keep you posted here.

Update Dec. 19, 2009

I could start a new post, and just title it 'arggh!' because that's my mood sometimes when trying to update stuff for the website. I get one thing figured out on my local machine (like Apache and modsecurity that complained about running update.php on Drupal when I used it to update to the newest versions of various things, including Drupal itself). So it feels like two steps forward and 1 step back sometimes. The newest thing is that somehow, in getting footnotes in the right place using the footnote module, the rest of the article seems to have lost it's formatting. My blockquotes and paragraphs look like they should be there but the articles all just run together in one big block of text when I look at them. 

All of that to lead up to -- my website is going to a new hosting company but it's going to have the same domain. The site should look mostly o.k.; but there may be a few things I still need to get figured out -- like not having sentences all run together in one big block with no formatting applied. And I thought I was going to work on sending out some Christmas cards today. 

The Misunderstood God

I've been spending a good amount of time the last few months learning linux (see previous blog posts), and most recently installed Fedora 12 from the beta, and except for a few things that don't work quite right, I like it a lot. I even managed to get it installed on my old laptop that I thought was going to run Fedora 7 until it dies a natural death. In addition to that, I've been trying out different software to see what works and I'm using 'Bilbo Blogger' to write this. For the linux fans out there, apparently Bilbo is a KDE application but I'm using it on the Gnome desktop just fine so far. And in going to the link, I discover it's now called Blogilo. I'd tried it on Fedora 7 and it didn't work very well. But this is a newer version that has a much better look & feel already -- I really don't like using the blogspot editor much. Hopefully this means I'll be back to blogging more regularly. I do have at least 2 other articles I want to write and get posted soon.

I stopped by Facebook earlier today and saw info. about a page for a new book by Darin Hufford (I've blogged a couple of his articles on here before) called The Misunderstood God. I haven't read it yet, but I read a couple of reviews and wanted to link them here, and add a couple of comments.

This is one review by a former pastor, it's worth reading the whole thing. Here's one portion that matches some of what many of us, including me, were brought up to believe about God:

...A God with a hair-trigger temper; someone who may be nice, but only so that He can get what He wants; someone who craves attention for Himself, who loves to impress you with his power; someone who loves to remind people how wonderful He is; someone who is disrespectful toward His inferiors; someone who gets upset if He's not given enough attention; someone you need to walk on eggshells around; someone who always reminds you of your mistakes, and uses fear and threats to keep you in line; someone that focuses on your faults and weaknesses; someone who doesn't really care if you heart gets stepped on; someone who doesn't trust you to anything right; someone who is constantly disappointed in you; and someone who, if things get bad enough, will leave you...

When I read that part, my thought was (now that I know a little better) that sounds like a pretty good description of the devil, and not of the God I've come to know. Then on the other much shorter review, the author said just that.

Darin shows how religion has disfigured the God of the Bible, giving him a personality that has more in common with the devil, than it does the Father of all love. He holds God to his own definition of love in I Corinthians 13 to show us that he is the very definition of love itself and as we come to appreciate that, we’ll find greater grace and freedom to live in [t]his life.

Another view of God that some like to present is one who is in control of all things at all times; so if something bad happens it's because he 'allowed' it. I think that can lead one to feeling apathetic or somewhat condemned. I addressed that somewhat in my article (on my website) about whether the devil needs to get God's permission to harm a believer, as in the story of Job. While I'm not an expert (and none of us can be, I don't think?), I think that view is a bit too simplistic. And that's probably worth exploring in another article. In the meantime, I look forward to reading Darin Hufford's book, along with 2 or 3 others I have on my list to get soon.

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That's my King

I haven't blogged in a while, though I do have a couple of links to articles I'm going to share shortly. My laptop computer was acting flaky over the summer, so I decided to break down and get a new computer. I got a new desktop (AMD phenom triple-core with 2 gb of ram, it's fast!!); installed linux CentOS 5.3 as well as Fedora 11; about a month ago. I got it with no operating system installed, so that made it easier and a bit less expensive. Last weekend I spent updating the eft-sw website to the newest version of Drupal (6.14) as well as updating a few modules.

I just signed onto the International Association of Theophostic Prayer Ministry website, and they had the video below as a featured inspirational video -- I really liked it so I thought I'd share it here. More later. Enjoy!