My wife and I are reading "20 and Counting" by the Duggars. In the back of the book they have a resource section with a list of books found on the IBLP website, I honestly do not know much about this site/group, can anyone fill me in on what they teach?

Thanks.

j

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Conscience may lash us, but it cannot replenish a languishing life. Conscience may be God's word and minister to you, telling you of your faults and your follies and your destitution. It may point out, but it will never supply you. Christ must give you new life. Hart has well expressed it: "He to the feeble and the faint, His mighty aid makes known; and when their languid life is spent, supplies it with His own." - J. K. Popham

Concerning the IBLP: Gothardism, Making doctrine out of the commandments of men, etc.

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Dad
Christ Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, RPCGA
Facebook - The Calvinist Vent
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It is God that multiplies our sorrows.... God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied. - Matthew Henry

Is that like Calvinism?

Can you explain more specifically what is wrong with this? I had some superficial acquaintance with it years ago and thought it was good but don't have much memory of it.

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

I remember being taught to follow "scripture formulas" to make things happen.

For example, praying the "hedge of thorns" on a son or daughter that has gone wayward and to find the prayer answered in that they end up coming home because no one wants anything to do with them anymore.

IMO it subtly makes God's actions dependent on what we do.

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~Jay~
Husband of ENS, father of J II. | Indian Trail, NC
disabled - cancer
Communicant Member, Precentor | Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte, NC | Presbyterian Reformed Church

zzzzzz ...

Gothard's "life doctrines" are like the Ezzo's parenting philosophy... BAD NEWS legalism. I wouldn't touch any of either of those things with a ten light-year pole.

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Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://inprincipiodeus.solideogloria.com
http://puritanwisdom.blogspot.com

"As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low."
John Flavel in Keeping the Heart



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Legalism 101. I recall Gothard didn't like men with beards. In his mind it indicated a lack of humility. Not sure what he thought about women with beards.

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Tom Albrecht
Elder, Covenant URCNA, New Holland, PA.

"When I find the time, I'm going to write the social history of bourbon."

I guess I'm out.

He thought them "hot", to put it in the vernacular.

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Andrew DeShazo
Husband of Kathryn
Father of Phillip-Giles B. DeShazo
Deacon
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN
"From out of the depth of unbroken Infinfity arose the Question, "Who am I?" And to that Question there is the answer, "I am God!" -Meher Baba, died 1969.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Christ, died 33 AD, ressurected three days later.

Flee far from it!

As mentioned above Gothard teaches a strrange sort of legalism. On of his most dangerous doctrines is that girls are always under the authority of some man. Father, future husband, if no husband back to dear ol dad. In this position the woman has no moral culpability for her actions. IOW she must do as told [I]even to the point of sinning[I]!!!!

this is contrary to the reformed doctrine of the individual priesthood of all believers, including women!

Very dangerous.

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Kevin Rogers
Sovereign Community Church, PCA
Moncton NB

*Looks around for Lady Flynt* She will have a few choice words about this. I remember going to his seminar and the HUGE notebook. Ditto to the negative comments. Even the stuff that is common sense, in his book if you don't do it you are not Christian. Very legalistic.

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Traci
Lynnwood OPC
"I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and cast them through each other in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both, and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace."--David Dickson

My father-in-law uses Gothard's Character Sketches with his children (my wife was raised on this stuff).

It seems the material employs a reductionistic view of the word of God, distilling all of special revelation into "basic life principles" that can be lived. It is a radically moralistic approach to the Scriptures.

Rather than viewing the Scriptures in the redemptive historical sense of making Christ known, it emphasizes that what people really need is twenty verses on why drinking is bad.

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"When a man discovers the sickness of sin, he is cast down and afflicted; nay, he despairs. The law does not help him; much less can he heal himself. Another light is needed to reveal a remedy. This is the voice of the gospel, which displays Christ as the Deliverer from all these evil things." -Martin Luther

Jeff Scott
Covenant Presbyterian Church- Chicago (PCA)

Bill Gothard was real big here in the Chicago area in the late seventies and early eighties. I went to a number of them even though the Church I was attending was Reformed. I remember one major section being about accpting ten things that God has control over, such as; when you were born, how smart you would be, what your race would be and if you would be rich, poor, ugly or handsome. We would laugh that Bill was more Calvinistic then he knew.

We quit going when we found out that he taught that if your stock piled food or bought extra insurance then you were not trusting God. I never even thought about taking my own children though.

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Alan Hughes
PCA
Lake Zurich, Illinois

If you think I'm a Hyper-Calvinist, God planned that thought before the foundation of the Earth. If you try to tell me that God only planned some things and not all things, then your problem is with God not me.

Ditto to all that has been said. I was an employee of Gothard's in the early 1980s and knew Gothard and his family and relatives personally. As has been said, what he teaches is an odd brand of legalism. Gothard has never married, but gives out all kinds of advice on how to raise familes. Gothard lives in his own little world. When I knew him, he would take the first 40 days of each year and go off and fast, pray and study for his seminars and books.

Gothard is fond of taking stories out of the scriptures and making life principles of them. I remember particularly one talk he had in our daily staff devotional time about Gideon and his fleece. He believed in putting out fleeces to find God's will.

When I resigned from my position on staff to go to a 2-year Bible Institute (I was 23 at the time), he tracked down my father who was living in Florida at the time and just days out of open heart surgery (still in the hospital) to tell him that I was out God's will, because I went to a Bible Institute without my father's consent. My father nearly had a second heart attack and wouldn't speak to me for quite some time, because he thought I had given Gothard his phone number at the hosptial. I had done no such thing.

My advice is to stay away from anything that has to do with Bill Gothard. It will lead you into bondage.

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J Baldwin
Keowee Presbyterian Church, PCA
Pickens, SC
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27

Check Out My Blog: http://reflectjoy.blogspot.com/

It is interesting to read of someone who has personally known Gothard.

I read some of his materials when i was young and searching and been in churches where there was poor pastoral care. I thought he had the answers to life and this principles would make strong, godly and caring families - something I was searching for. It took me a long time to find cracks in the system, then start a blessed journey to Reformed Theology.

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Stephen Smith
Reformed Baptist
New Zealand

We discussed IBLP in the link I posted below. I have seen good fruit along with bad fruit from this seminar.

IBLP and Bill Gothard

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Norseman Moderator

R. Martin Snyder
1689er
http://www.puritanboard.com/blogs/puritancovenanter/

"Our object should not be to have scripture on our side but to be on the side of scripture; and however dear any sentiment may have become by being long entertained, so soon as it is seen to be contrary to the Bible, we must be prepared to abandon it without hesitation."
William Symington

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Run far, Run fast, don't look back or you'll turn into a pillar of legalistic, fundamentalist salt.

-----Added 5/6/2009 at 12:03:01 EST-----

Thankfully someone posted a link, because I'm just too tired to go into a spew right now and really am trying (with success) to stay away from spewing topics

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JC - PCA - PA...homesick for SC
A we n' de Ya, ho; I mak sikker; Deus juvat

Indicabo tibi o homo quid sit bonum, et quid Dominus requirat a te: Utique facere iudicium, et diligere, misericordiam, et sollicitum ambulare cum Deo tuo. Michaeas 6:8

"Who says you can't go back, been all around the world and as a matter of fact. There's only one place left I want to go, who says you can't go home" Bon Jovi

I was brought to the basic seminar as a youth - I remember missing a friend's birthday party (hosted by James Gallaway!) by being guilted out of not missing one of the sessions. Later, my parent's required dh to attend before he could marry me. Mostly what I remember is that he believed true, Godly music sounded basically like Mozart. Maybe you could throw in Handel and early Beethoven.

My parents tried for a while to use the Character Sketches in family devotions, but I think we got tired of the shallow lessons and started acting like badgers during the story and arguing about the use of the terms goose/geese and moose/meese.

Also, because of the Advanced Seminar, several of my relatives will no longer eat cheeseburgers (dairy + meat). Oh, the tangled web...

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Moselle
PCA
TN

You're better off just reading the Puritans.

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Taylor W. Otwell, Husband to Abigail
Member, Fellowship Bible Church
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Family Blog

Who are they?

Having attended 3-4 Basic and two advanced seminars, I would say that there is much scripture that is taught. However, as others have noted the interpretation of it is extremely poor. After I was done, I seriously flirted with Arminianism. I would say that it wasn't until I began going to a PCA church that I was able to really begin to understand where my thinking had been wrong. It took three years of PCA to get "Gothardism" out of my system.

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Chuck
PCA

"Duty is ours, consequences are God's."
Thomas J "Stonewall" Jackson

An insightful book is

I'ver read this book and been in touch with the author. The book is very good.

Own it.

And I kept my Red Book and the Men's Book (I acquired at a used curric sale someone broke the rules!)...they're on the heresy shelf

I attended one of Bill Gothard's seminars when I was a kid and we were attending an Assembly of God church for a time. I kept the big red and black book for awhile, but it started crowding out too much of the good stuff so I tossed it, sent it to goodwill, etc. I wish I'd kept it. I like Lady Flynt's idea of a heresy shelf!

One of the things that I don't like about Bill Gothard is his doctrine that children are still under the authority of their parents, even when they're married. That contradicts scripture, big time.

We have some close friends who have his materials in their library. It would be interesting to look at them again, laugh at some of the stuff and look at the stuff that could be useful, if anything. It's been a long time since I've seen his stuff. I'm sure there are some practical things that I'd find useful about his stuff now. When I attended the seminar I was a rebellious child and probably a lot of the reasons I didn't like him were related to my own rebellion and not because the teaching was legalistic. Back then I didn't know anything about reformed theology either, so I couldn't really replace his teachings with anything else.

I liken him to Michael and Debi Perl - keep the stuff that's biblical and chuck the stuff that isn't. Test everything. Test, test, test.

I find it's really no different than listening to Great Courses Teaching Tapes. Most of those professors are anti-christs, but there are still good things to be gleaned from the lectures. Machiavelli's (?) - a keep your friends close and your enemies closer sort of thing!

The biggest struggle of my sanctification is being willing to be patient through the chaff to find some pearls of biblical wisdom that I can apply to my life as a Christian woman and to not let the errors drag me down. At the same time when someone does say something that's true or good to rejoice.

I think as Christians we also need to be able to recognize true legalism from a counterfeit legalism. Sometimes in the past, I've called a specific practice or belief legalistic as a mask for my own rebellion. There's a difference between a person believing that he has to do or not do something in order to be saved (justified) and that person studying the scriptures and coming to a point in his sanctification where he believes that doing or not doing something is helpful or important to his Christian witness and his sanctification. Legalism teaches justification by works. Legalism teaches that the law (God's or man's) saves. Fundamentalism in sei does teach legalism, but then again, so does anything that isn't Biblical. Humanism is very legalistic.

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Toni Cunningham, Wife of Bill (Theognome)
Parkwoods OPC, Overland Park KS

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." ~ Alexander Pope