Dr's Last/Lost Teaching was quite interesting when it was first shown to me five years ago. For me, this was a great personal discovery. A real eye opener! I didn't discover it, it came to me. This reminds me of how we were often taught to think "I didn't really find God, He found ME."
As the years went by I continued to see more, especially as I studied certain items in the record Dr left us: tapes, magazine articles, and books. The implications of Dr's last teaching are voluminous, and to just give you a taste of what I'm talking about, I'm including below an essay that evolved from e-mailings with friends about this teaching. Several more letter/essays have developed in these recent years after I "discovered" the teaching, and I'd be happy to share them with you also, if you so desire.
So many people wonder what the heck happened to our wonderful ministry, me included. This is my feeble attempt to describe what I've found out so far. If you have better information, then I'm all ears. I've attempted to find out about our family of believers:
(1) what went right originally,
(2) what went wrong years ago, and
(3) what we can do about it right now.
This particular letter/essay below is about "The Joy of Serving" and some of its implications. I don't claim to have the entire story, nor can I say all the details are perfect. I had to guess in places. It's the implications that are more solid for me, and are much more positive. I'm open to any feedback or correction on these historical details.
This letter is on the second topic: (2)"what went wrong," so it's touches on a few negatives, but I try to do it in a constructive way, and it also leads into the other topics that are quite positive.
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Dear Oscar,
It's very exciting to discuss with you the relatively recent discovery of Dr. Wierwille's Last/Lost Teaching. The reason I call it "lost" is because 90 to 95 percent of all PFAL grads never saw it, and the remainder never REALLY carried it out, including me. I've conducted a poll around the country for several years now, and most grads think Dr's last teaching was "The Hope." This was, indeed, his last teaching at Way Headquarters in New Knoxville, however, about two weeks later he gave his VERY last public teaching in Scotland, titled "The Joy of Serving."
Now here's where the story gets murky, and I'm still trying to find out exactly what happened next. I've asked many of our former leaders around the country for details, but few have been cooperative. So far what I know is that the tape of Dr's last teaching was somewhat ignored, possibly for a year or more. A short clip of it appeared on the Corps tape sent out two days after Dr's death. The whole tape was eventually played for the clergy by Chris Geer, but I think it was a year later, during the turmoil of 1986.
Somewhere around 1986, some circles of Corps people lightly distributed the tape around, and it was listened to by some, even repeatedly, for a short time. However, in my efforts to investigate all this 12 years later, I found not one report of any organized efforts to execute Dr's mastery instructions by anyone at all. I found several people who thought they themselves had already mastered PFAL, and so they argued the teaching didn't apply to them. Few leaders paid it proper regard, and even fewer relayed to the body of believers it's contents, and STILL EVEN FEWER actually carried it out...really none at all.
It's plain to see that TWICE we are instructed to master certain things: the foundational and intermediate classes and the class collateral books. Interestingly enough he did NOT say to master any translation or version of the Bible, nor the Advanced Class, nor any Corps training.
Now what does "master" mean? That's a big subject. In another letter I'll tell you how we have searched the books and magazines to see how Dr used that word in other settings. That gets pretty exciting. But for now let's focus on a different aspect of this question. Did Dr tell us in his final instructions to master the words he SPOKE the tapes of the class?
This is easy to answer. At the time Dr did his last teaching, the two classes Dr mentioned we must master were not generally available in tape form. The tapes were highly secured, they all had serial numbers on them, and HQ kept track of where all of them were. I worked in Tape Duplicating for two years, so I know this first hand. Those tapes were highly restricted to only trusted leadership, and few ever dared to make a bootleg copy for themselves. If they ever did, they kept it a tight secret.
No, Dr was not telling us to master the tapes. Mastering the Foundational and Intermediate Classes means working the syllabus materials that were available. Dr explicitly stated this in the prior year on the Sound Out'84 tapes. Thus the focus of our mastery was to be on the written materials in our possession. The books and magazines we received as grads then are the main component of Dr's instructions, and should be the focus of our mastery efforts.
These are Dr. Wierwille's dying last words TO ALL OF US, especially to leaders who mistakenly THOUGHT they had already mastered these materials by 1985. In addition to their significance of being his LAST words, he also said these things TWICE. Evidently a PARTIAL mastery (as many top leaders seemed to have accomplished) was not enough. It was also very important that we graduate in our mastery to a spiritual understanding of these written materials from the class. Spiritual, versus a 5-senses, natural understanding was often mentioned by Dr as our destiny. Look at page 14 of Vol.IV "God's Magnified Word."
This kind of mastered knowledge is crucial to us, and Dr knew it so he saved this message to be his last. The adversary knew it too, and in the years since Dr's death the adversary was very successful in downplaying the importance of Dr's final instructions in most leaders' minds, so today it remains almost totally lost.
In the Living Victoriously class, in the first teaching, seventeen minutes into it Dr. teaches very clearly that if he knew that he had one last chance to teach us, he would want to be SURE to teach the MOST IMPORTANT thing he could: master PFAL.
Anyway, the story continues....
In the Sept/Oct 1986 issue of the Way Magazine this precious set of final instructions from our father in the Word to all of us was finally released to non-leadership. But get this: it was a full sixteen months late, AND it was printed right after Chris Geer dropped the bomb at Corps Week and the disastrous Rock '86, so everyone's head was spinning. The big question then was "Who's the boss? Craig or Chris?" and, sadly, the RECORDED, PUBLIC last will and testament of Dr. Wierwille's was overlooked in favor of the supposed, secret last words of Dr to Chris. The fact that these reported private instructions contradicted Dr's public instructions went unnoticed.
I now fully believe that the accusations leveled at Craig, Howard, and Don by Chris regarding their not taking Dr's teachings seriously are equally pertinent to us all, including Mr Geer! I'm sure that if we all had spiritually heard Dr's final instructions immediately after his death, and had REALLY obeyed them, then the ministry wouldn't have died. But we didn't, and it did.
Mastery of Dr's writings is the same as mastering the KJV Bible, with the end goal being the application in love. And the many of the techniques are the same, for instance: knowing where chapters are, frequent and repeated reading, being able to find things quickly in the books, memorizing passages, and even word studies. God taught Dr to precisely handle words just like He taught the Biblical writers. God's teaching to Dr, and then Dr's teaching to us was the best since the first century. Do you know anyone else who heard an audible promise from God to get taught directly by God? (maybe you do, but what do they have to show for it compared to Dr&pfal) These PFAL materials are the final end product of that 1942 promise, and these materials are WORTH mastering.
The above techniques are five senses methods God expects us to utilize. For the spiritual understanding we were taught that revelation begins where the five senses leave off. From the "16 Keys To Walking In The Spirit" in the Advanced Class we were taught that "What you can know by the fives senses, God expects you to know." After we know what we can naturally, then God can teach us the spiritual point of view, and the arena for accomplishing all this is in that set of materials Dr identified in his most important final words addressed to us all. It is with the collaterals books that we need to spend a lot of time.
We all have been either living in ignorance of, or in disobedience to Dr's final instructions for many years now, and the consequences are very apparent. What we have now is not even close to the quality and quantity of love and cooperation we once enjoyed. How many people have we been unable to help these last fourteen years? How many people have we lost? How much of what Dr. taught us has slipped out of our own heads? Is there anyone who is still serious about raising the dead? I'm tired of winging it, spiritually, and I've made my decision. I've returned to a state of ultimate meekness toward Dr, the class, and the collaterals. It worked once before, because this is what God set up.
For years I erroneously thought I had "mastered" those books when I had finished transferring the corrections to the KJV text in my wide margin Bible, and when I could comfortably teach a chapter (or ten) in a fellowship. In this letter above I mentioned several techniques of mastery I had never before dreamed of applying.
When I returned to a serious study of Dr's books I found out very quickly that I had never come even close to REALLY mastering them. This has been very humbling, but also very delightful. We are sitting on a diamond mine, just ready to be tapped.
I pray that you sound out this good news, and return with us to the best God-taught, God-inspired teaching of God's Word since the first century. I do crave to see us unified again on PFAL. It was a great blessing from God, and there's no justifiable reason to do anything else but go back and master what God gave us.
Agape,
Mike
P.S. We found two places where Dr. "hinted" that doing
word studies in his books are valid, and even recommended:
Way Magazine, May/June '79 page 22, middle column,
second paragraph: "when you read anything"
"Receiving the Holy Spirit Today" page 223, the
terms "paragraph and section" are rarely applied
to the Bible, but do pertain to Dr's books.
