Bill Wilson checked himself into the Towns Hospital for the last time in December of 1934. Pass It On, the story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world, said he received the then-current Towns treatment: barbiturates for sedation and belladonna for reducing stomach acid. As the effects of alcohol lessened, he fell into a deep depression and rebellion. He wanted the sobriety his friend Ebby had told him he found but couldn’t believe in the God Ebby talked about. What happened next would become known in A.A. as Bill’s “hot flash” experience after he cried out—without faith or hope—”If there be a God, let Him show Himself!”
Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy — I was conscious of nothing else for a time.
Then, in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood on its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength, it blew right threw me. Then came the blazing thought ‘You are a free man.’ I know not how long I remained in this state, but finally the light and the ecstasy subsided. I again saw the wall of my room. . . I became acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’
Bill Wilson had just had his 39th birthday, and he still had half his life ahead of him. He always said after that experience, he never again doubted the existence of God. He never took another drink.
Was Bill Truly “Born Again”?
Bill never took another drink, but was he truly “born again” because of this experience? His behavior after this spiritual encounter raises doubts from an evangelical point of view. Pass It On related Bill’s interest in psychic phenomena and described his experience in 1947 with a group of ‘spirits’ in Nantucket. As early as 1941, Bill was holding regular “spook sessions” at his home in Bedford Hills New York. Sometimes they used a Ouija board, sometimes Bill would lie on a couch and receive messages; a neighbor and “spook” circle regular would write the material down on a note pad.
Bill would lie down on the couch. He would ‘get’ these things. He kept doing it every week or so. Each time, certain people would ‘come in.’ Sometimes it would be new ones, and they’d carry on some story. There would be long sentences; word by word would come through.
Then there were his repeated affairs … after he stopped drinking. They’re mentioned in at least two biographies on Bill Wilson: Bill W. by Francis Hartigan and Bill W. and Mr. Wilson, by Matthew Raphael. Hartigan said in 1946 two young women in A.A. who could not type or take dictation were recruited by Bill to work in the A.A. office. One night soon after they were hired, he took them both to an A.A. meeting. “He sat between them and, all during the meeting, he had a hand on one leg of each of the women.”
After his death, he even left 10 percent of his book royalties to another woman with whom he had a long-term affair. Hartigan said: “A number of people who were close to him told me that there were times when he was painfully aware of the threat his philandering posed to everything he had worked for. . . That he nevertheless was seemingly unable to control himself filled him with despair and self-loathing at times and left him feeling unworthy to lead AA.”
Biblically, adulterers and sorcerers will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:17-21). In Galatians 5, Paul warned his readers not to use their freedom as an opportunity for the flesh (5:13). He further said the desires of the flesh (including sexual immorality, sensuality and sorcery) are against the desires of the Spirit “to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (5:17). “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). It seems that despite his “hot flash” experience, his sense of freedom and recognition of the “God of the preachers,” Bill Wilson did not keep in step with the Spirit (5:25), so then he wasn’t truly “born again.”
Responding to an Altar Call
But at one time, he thought he was because he answered an altar call at Calvary Mission. In Amazon’s “About the author” for Dick B. (Amazon has many of Dick B.’s books) is a description of Dick as an “unofficial” historian of Alcoholics Anonymous who published 46 titles and many articles covering all aspects of A.A.’s spiritual history. It described a series of events that happened to Bill around the time of his “hot flash” experience that included Bill’s altar call at Calvary Mission (run by Sam Shoemaker’s church); writing to his brother-in-law that he had been reborn; and other experiences. Additionally, Sam Shoemaker’s wife, Helen said she was present when Bill responded to the altar call and made a decision for Christ. In Pass It On, Bill said:
“Then came the call. Penitents started marching forward to the rail. Unaccountably impelled, I started too … Maybe then and there, for the very first time, I was penitent, too. Something touched me. I guess it was more than that. I was hit. I felt a wild impulse to talk. Jumping to my feet, I began.
Afterward, I could never remember what I said. I only know that I was in earnest and people seemed to pay attention. Afterward, Ebby, who had been scared to death, told me with relief I had done alright and had given my life to God.”
In The Oxford Group & Alcoholics Anonymous Dick B. said that despite there being no affirmative reference in the text of the Big Book to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, there were some historical markers indicating there was Christian influence on it and the fellowship of A.A. He personally inspected draft manuscripts for the Big Book and said that: “While Bill Wilson was careful to eliminate Oxford Group language about Jesus Christ from the Big Book, Bill’s own language in early drafts of the Big Book shows how much Jesus Christ probably figured in pre-Big Book thinking.” In one manuscript he saw where Bill said of his religious experience that he had been “born again,” but that statement was not included in the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, when it was published in 1939.
James asked what good it was if someone said he had faith, but not works. “Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14) In his commentary on James, Douglas Moo observed James was questioning the reality of the person’s claim to have faith without works in this verse, and his answer to the rhetorical question was no they can’t. “James’s main point is that this ‘faith’ is, in biblical terms, no faith at all.” James continued his point by observing that merely saying to a person who was poorly clothed and without food to be “warmed and filled” was no good. “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17).
Bill Wasn’t Born from Above
Applied to Bill Wilson in Towns Hospital, true faith does not seem to have been the result of his spiritual experience because of the examples given of his serial adultery and practice of spiritualism in his life afterwards. Faith in God was not demonstrated by these behaviors. His hot flash was not followed by faithfulness to his wife and resistance to the allure of spiritualism. Bill’s faith in God apart from works demonstrated how that faith was useless (James 2:20).
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus said we’ll know a good person from the good his heart produces. Like with trees, no good tree produces bad fruit, nor does a bad tree produce good fruit (Luke 6:43-46). In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus rhetorically asked, “Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:16). Why would Bill eliminate language about Jesus Christ from the Big Book and avoid mentioning that he felt he had been born again if he truly had been?
John chapter 3 tells the story of Nicodemus and Jesus, where Jesus tells him he must be born again to see the kingdom of God. In his commentary on John, D. A. Carson said Nicodemus appears to not understand what Jesus was saying, and dismissively asked how a man can be “born” when he is old. Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Jesus was saying to Nicodemus that his spirit had to be born from above; he had to be “born again.” What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6).
Bill Wilson’s “hot flash” spiritual experience was not associated with him being born again in the sense discussed in John 3. The experience of God’s eternal power and divine nature can be clearly seen in the things that were made by those who are not born again (Romans 1:20). And this seems to explain Bill’s spiritual experience. Bill wasn’t born from above and didn’t see the kingdom of God, or the God of the preachers. In part 2 of this article, we’ll look at how he made sense of his spiritual awakening, and it wasn’t with the Bible.
