Creating a Sober World
In August, 1908, Frank Buchman sat down in a little church in Keswick* England and heard Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis preach a message that changed him and continues to change all of us.
Here is the message Frank Buchman heard on that Sunday afternoon in August of 1908.
That message and Frank's methods would forever change Bill Wilson.
… for one brief moment, my proud obstinacy left me, and I found myself crying out, more in anger than in pain, I think, ‘If there is a God, let him show himself to me; I will do anything, anything. Let him show himself to me.’ “The room lit up in an intense white light and I was caught up in an ecstasy that words cannot describe. “In my mind’s eye, it was if I were on a mountaintop and a wind, not of air, but of spirit flowed through my body, and it burst upon me that I was a free man. The obsession to drink left me. That obsession that absolutely pervaded my total being left me. “Eventually the ecstasy subsided and now I found myself back in that hospital bed, but this time, surrounded by a presence, a presence of pure joy. And I realized that I, this number one man, that I was a part, if even only a tiny part, of a universe ruled in justice by a loving compassionate personal God; and all I could say was, ‘So this is the God of the preachers. This is what they’ve been talking about all these years.’