Category Archives: R.B. Thieme Jr

Little Books

One thing I’ve always liked doing is making little books. I cut  sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper in half width-wise, to make pieces of 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches, fold them in half and either staple them down the side or down the middle and then glue a same sized or slightly larger piece of heavier cardstock around the outside. You can also hand sew the pages down the middle, including cover for a more “book like” effect. (You need an awl for that, though.)

This gives me little books into which I can transcribe notes from Bible class,  favorite verses, quotes I find in books that I like, things that inspire or remind me of where I need to keep my head. They are small, so they fit in my purse and I can take them everywhere.

Here’s a picture of some of them.

And here’s what the inside looks like (I like to use different colored inks to differentiate between entries):

You can see the above book has been well-used.  A couple of the entries on these pages are:

“If you were using the ten problem solving devices (“10 PSD”)* you’d never be in panic palace, you’d never fall apart, feel ‘stressed,’ uptight, never spend one second worrying about anything. You’d have the most fantastic tranquility in the world.

“God has provided perfect happiness through a place of rest, a place which does not depend upon any human factor in life. This is a complete dependence upon the One who is the source of joy and strength.”

and

If something is not important to you, you forget it. It flies right out of your mind. Another person’s sins belong in this category. Their failures, negative volition, sins, obtuseness, etc, are not your concern. If you are remembering them, you are making an issue of them and you’re out of line. No criticizing! Sins and failures are to be forgotten. Apply Bible Doctrine (“BD”) to yourself, not Charlie Brown!”

If you want to read the entries better, you can click on the picture for a slightly larger version.

*Those of you who were under Col Thieme’s ministry for any length of time no doubt recognized the voice there right away!  🙂 Yes, all three of these are notes I took from his messages. For those of you who were not Thieme’s students…

The “ten problem solving devices” are: rebound (1 Jn 1:9), the filling of the Holy Spirit, faith rest, grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, personal sense of destiny, impersonal, unconditional love for people, personal love for God, sharing the Happiness of God, and occupation with Jesus Christ.

“Bible Doctrine” simply refers to the teachings of the Word of God. I suppose he could have said “Apply the Word of God to yourself…” but I believe he was trying to differentiate between what you get from merely sitting down and reading the Word, as opposed to really studying it. So many (especially at the time he was teaching) seem to think that studying the Word means just reading it every day, when actual studying is much more rigorous than that. But that, too, is a post for another day!

Freedom Through Military Victory

November 11, 2009  Veteran’s Day

TO THE NATION — WHAT IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM?
Written by ROBERT B. THIEME, JR., pastor of Berachah Church from 1950-2003

Belligerent nations wield military force not to defend their sovereignty but to vanquish and enslave other nations. Is resistance to such aggression worth the price of young men marching to war? Each generation must decide. If a nation wishes to perpetuate and inviolate the priceless privileges and blessings of independence, warfare is inevitable.

Every generation must face the refinement of war. Freedom is bought and paid for by the blood of individuals who set a higher value on their liberty than on life itself. If one generation is not prepared mentally and Spiritually to defend such values, if enough individuals in a national entity reject the principle of freedom through military victory, liberty languishes.

Despite man’s zealous efforts to achieve freedom through peaceful means, wars will continue until the end of human history when Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, reigns on earth for one thousand years. (Isa 9:6; cf., Ecc 3:8; Mic 4:1-3; Mar 13:7; Rev 20:4) For man to presume that he can accomplish what only Jesus Christ can accomplish in the Millennium is a total disregard for the Scriptures and the height of arrogance. Jesus Himself declared the certainty of war.

“And you will be hearing of wars [Armed conflict] and rumors of wars; [Cold war’s] see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, [A part of history] but that is not yet the end. [Of the Tribulation] For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. (Mat_24:6-7)

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build up. . . . A time for war, and a time for peace. (Ecc_3:3-8)

—————-

Karen, here: Thanks to all who have served and sacrificed for the freedoms I enjoy daily — to come and go, to live my life, pursue it as I choose, and most of all, to enjoy the freedom of gathering with other Believers to study God’s word without having to hide or lie or worry that we might be beaten or cast in prison for it, or our houses burned because of it.

My Debt to the Colonel

One of the things I’ve most appreciated about Colonel Thieme’s teachings was that he defined words that often were left to assumption. In fact, I think one very big part of his ministry was either to specifically define  or abandon altogether much of the standard “vocabulary” of Christianity. The baggage that many Christian words carry with them is immense and many times obfuscates their original meanings. It was one reason I chose to write in the genre of fantasy so I could get away from those words.

Love, for example is one such word. In the Greek (unlike in the English) there are two words for love and each has different meaning: agape and phileo. Agape is a system of thinking more than an emotion and is based on showing grace and kindness and maybe just not sinning against another person. It is based on something in the subject doing the loving. Phileo on the other hand, is a personal emotional response toward some element of attractiveness in the object.

Heart is another example. Heart has all kinds of conotations in English. Love the Lord with all your heart, for example.  I think a common conotation there is that it’s an emotion. A feeling. But the Greek word kardia much more than that. Thayer defines it as the centre and seat of spiritual life; the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours; of the understanding, the faculty and seat of the intelligence; of the will and character.  Many times the word is translated mind as well as heart.

This in contrast to nous  which is also sometimes translated mind, but more in the sense of understanding. Col Thieme taught that nous is where you perceive and understand things. But it’s the things you really believe and that are important to you that are in the kardia and the kardia is where you do your living from. (My paraphrase). 

This corresponds to another pair of Greek words that each are translated with the single English word knowledge: gnosis and epignosis. Gnosis is just knowledge; epignosis is full knowledge or wisdom. Gnosis is the kind of knowledge one has in the nous, whereas epignosis is what drives the kardia.  (I think it’s usually employed in connection with knowing God)

Instead of just popping over things, or teaching what he’d always heard, Col Thieme stopped and thought things through. If he had questions he tried to answer them. He dug deeply into the word, the history, the original languages. He thought about things like what comprises the soul, and how do we acquire knowledge? What’s the difference between the acquisition of natural knowledge and spiritual knowledge? What about the sin nature?

He asked questions like, if God told Adam and the woman that they’d die if they ate of the fruit, why didn’t they just drop dead as soon as they did? What was the change that occurred there? Why does the Hebrew say, “Dying you shall die?” Is the word for death doubled for emphasis? Or were there actually two deaths? One at the moment of the transgression (spiritual death) and another later in old age (physical death).

He really dug into the Angelic conflict, a doctrine Lewis Sperry Chafer had introduced him to, and which he built upon.  And as part of his teaching, part of his effort to get people to break out of their tradition-bound way of thinking about the spiritual life, he came up with innovative terms for complex concepts…  Rebound, Cosmic System, Angelic Conflict, GAP, Human Viewpoint, Divine Viewpoint. Nor did he shy away from teaching advanced doctrines to his congregation — doctrines like the depravity of man,  justification, the Hypostatic Union, election, pre-destination, eternal security, expiation, propitiation, divine decrees, the essence of God…

Many people might think those doctrines are fit only for those attending seminaries. Pastors need to know such things, they think, but not the common people. I disagree. If God put that stuff in His Word, He intends for us to seek to know it. And I can say that after years of studying it, when all the pieces finally begin to come together, I see how the doctrines of election and predestination, grace, eternal security have very real and very relevant appliaction to my every day life. More than I ever imagined they could.

So I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the man who poured out his life digging through the Word of God and teaching to his congregation the things that he found. It changed my life profoundly. I cannot imagine anything else, frankly. Nor would I want it.

Opposition

I mentioned yesterday that once I began to study under the Colonel’s ministry, opposition came in. When I shared my excitement with my old church friends of what I was learning, how real it had become, how it was all making so much sense I was told to stay away from Thieme. He splits churches, I was told. I said, “He just teaches truth. If people leave a church to follow that, he’s not doing it, the people are.”

I was also told that Thieme would steal my soul. But when I asked how that might be accomplished, the person couldn’t tell me.

Col. Thieme taught that the “blood of Christ” did not refer to the literal blood of Christ (He didn’t bleed to death after all, since He said himself that His work was “finished” before He died physically) but to the expiatory work of Christ’s spiritual death on the cross, during which he was separated from God the Father for the first time ever as all the sins of the world were poured out on Him and judged. This was major anathema to my critics.

To me it was the first time the whole blood thing ever made sense.  I’d always wondered why would God be interested in some plasma with red corpuscles, platelets and white blood cells. How could that do anything about sin? It made no sense. The moment I heard this teaching I knew it was truth. So many things fell into place. But when I tried to share it people got very upset, so I soon learned not to.

Other friends wrote a lengthy letter detailing a metaphor for Christian living that involved a wheel with spokes — there’s Bible study, witnessing, prayer, giving, singing, fellowshipping, etc. Get too much of any one category, that spoke grows and the wheel won’t work. Clever metaphor, but it didn’t sway me. The word of God is not a spoke equal with those other things my friends listed, it’s the axle around which they all turn! The word of God is the mind of Christ and when it becomes our mind, it informs all those other things, so that we do them in accordance with His standards and in the power of His Spirit.

My mother, an unbeliever, thought I was in some kind of cult like that of Jim Jones, whose Guyana fiasco happened around the time I was just gaining momentum.

The weirdest thing though was the strange assault to get me to buy into tongues. Orville had told me right off that they weren’t for this age, but as soon as we got into the small churches in northern Arizona, we were bombarded with people telling us this was the right way to go. Col Thieme agreed with Orville, and backed it up with extensive scriptural evidence. 

Still, the people kept coming. Our landlady was into tongues and tried to convince me it was good. Then when we moved to an apple orchard, a woman showed up at the door to buy apples, and as we got into conversation, she told me that I needed to have the baptism of the Spirit so I could speak in tongues. A teacher friend invited for dinner, one of the few non-Mormons, confessed that she spoke in tongues whenver she didn’t know what to pray and began doing so right there in my kitchen.

We went to a Bible study where a woman sat looking spacier and spacier as the study concluded and when the pastor started to say the closing prayer she raised her hand and said she had a message from the Holy Spirit. He waved her on and she began to speak in tongues, looking as if she were in a trance. I was absolutely creeped out. All I could think was that it sounded like something from the devil.

When she was done, she offered to give the interpretation (in violation of protocol set up in the NT — it was supposed to be someone else who did that; in fact, mostly tongues was a sign for the Jews to witness to those who had gathered from afar and spoke other languages) wqhich was that God wants us to worship Him “in this way.” I stared at the floor praying God would get us out of there right away.

Thankfully, she finished, the Pastor said his prayer and to my horror, my husband was suddenly in conversation with the person beside him. A pair of shoes appeared on the floor before mine and I looked up into the eyes of the woman who had spoken (there were about 30 people present — and she was some distance away, separated from me by several people when she spoke). She invited me to come to her Bible class. I thanked her, and refrained from telling her I wouldn’t attend if it were the last bible study on earth.

My husband finally stopped talking and we left. Outside I told him of my intense negative reaction and he told me that as soon as she’d begun speaking he’d prayed that if that was really something from God He would make it clear, and if it wasn’t, that He would make it stop. And immediately it had stopped.

We never went to that bible study again, nor the church that sponsored it.

And then, in the most bizarre event of all, our Landcruiser broke down in the middle of nowhere between Globe and Winkleman one very hot summer dayas we were on our way down to Tucson. Stu got up on the Toyota’s roof and spied a trailer hidden behind some trees not far off, so we took our dog out of the car and walked down to see if we could use the phone. I don’t know what was done about the Landcruiser, too excited to discover that the woman of the house was a Christian. We talked and talked and I told her how I’d gotten saved and she took me down to Winkleman for some reason where I told some other people how I’d gotten saved… and then she started in on the second blessing and tongues and how she’d awakened one night to find Satan standing at the foot of her bed. She prayed him away to a radius of one mile from her home.

I probably listened like a deer caught in headlights and was quite relieved when we left. But somehow she had gotten my address and sent me several letters urging me in this direction.  I know I asked her several questions regarding what speaking in tongues did for her but the only one I recall is her saying that it made her certain she was saved. I was already certain of that, so didn’t tongues to do it.

Anyway, this all went on over a period or a year or so, and only when I was  solid in my understanding of the relevant scriptures  and absolutely convinced that tongues are not for today, did all that stop. Since that period of time I have never had another person show up out of nowhere telling me about tongues.

How I Found Col Thieme

I was saved in the fall of 1974, by the words of a man who taught the college class Sunday school at a Conservative Baptist Church in Tucson, AZ. Orville Smyth was a letter carrier, back in the days when they didn’t drive trucks but walked from door to door. During his route, Orville memorized scripture. He also taught himself Greek (although not, I think, while he was walking…). And he taught in the Sunday school — adults and young adults.

In addition to the college class, he taught a new believer’s class on Monday nights which I and my now-husband attended — salvation by grace, salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, eternal security, the inerrancy of the Scriptures, 1 John 1:9 and more.  In the college classes he worked from Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Major Bible Themes, and taught us… well, the basic doctrines of the church age — all the above plus the essence and character of God, the angelic conflict, the depravity of man, Dispensations…

I had about nine months with him before my husband and I were married and we moved to Northern Arizona. Orville gave me an excellent foundation for my spiritual life. But there were a lot of other things… I had so many questions. Especially over that summer as we sought to find a new church home and every place we went more or less struck out. They were either way off the doctrine we believed or weren’t interested in studying at all.

The tiny Baptist church we were attending in Heber was either searching for a pastor or having a revival — I can’t recall any more — but the speaker’s subject was “yielding to the Spirit.” I’d already heard about yielding, but no one could really tell me how that was accomplished or what it actually meant. I mostly thought of yellow yield signs when I thought of the word, and not driving into oncoming traffic. Which wasn’t terribly useful.

The temporary speaker suggested that to yield we write all our sins down on a piece of paper and then light a match to it. By doing that, we would be yielded.

So I did that. I didn’t feel any more yielded than I had previously. And worse, it wasn’t an hour before I was committing another sin again. So that whole paper burning thing didn’t seem to have done much good. Besides making me feel terribly silly.

Then my husband got a job teaching math and biology and coaching football at the high school in nearby Lakeside and started about two weeks later. About a week into his teaching experience, he didn’t come home for dinner, so I turned down the heat on my simmering meatballs and went to school to find him. Football practice had held him late, but he was about ready to go when I arrived.

Not to go home and eat the meatballs, however. No. We had been invited to a Bible study at one of his fellow teachers’ homes. So off we went. I was not in the best mood for new people, a new Bible Study (most til then had been extremely lame) and no dinner. Besides, what about my meatballs!?

Looking back it makes me laugh. Little did I know how great that meeting would impact my life. And there I was, like Martha, all worried about meatballs.

When we got there everyone else has arrived and instead of meeting in the spacious living room, we were ushered to a dimly lit back bedroom that had been converted to a sort of study. There were file cabinets, several Western saddles on stands, shelves and shelves of 8 track tapes and a reel-to-reel tape player, which was to be the source of our “Bible Study.” I thought it was all  terribly weird, including the people.

And then the Colonel began…His voice and his manner were both annoying and compelling. His doctrinal content was what I was looking for, but he was so in-your-face. He taught like a drill instructor! (given his preparations, no surprise!) And in that first lesson, he was criticising lots of things I held dear — environmentalism, being one of them. The rest is lost to time, but Stu and I went home laughing about his dogmatic, forthright manner, his critical words, and totally un-pastor like demeanor.

But there was truth there and we came back the next week. I don’t recall whose idea it was. I think it might have been my husband’s, but I’m not sure. In between the things I didn’t like were lots of things I did. For one thing there was this matter of yielding.

That, taught Colonel Thieme, was merely another way of saying we needed to be filled with the Spirit. He delineated between the Indwelling of the Spirit, which all church age believers have all the time, and the Filling of the Spirit which is transitory. The first time we sin after salvation, we lose the filling of the Spirit, which is where He controls the soul. 1 John 1:9, which tells us to confess our sins, brings back the Filling of the Spirit and temporal fellowship with God. A baby believer spends more time out of fellowship than in. But as we grow and as God’s word begins to transform our thoughts, we begin to avoid the more obvious sins and spend more time filled with the Spirit. It’s a long slow process.

But it made sense. And it works. I knew it was truth as soon as I heard it. Suddenly all the floundering around, all the vagueries of what “yieldedness” meant had been circumvented and I had a concept I could hold on to and actually apply.

Thus  began what was for a few months (or was it years?) of a love-hate relationship with the man. His personality was abrasive. He made an issue of his authority. He sometimes used “bad words”. And while none of that bothered me all that much, it sure did bother others.  And that did bother me.

But even so,  I couldn’t stop listening; it was the only place I was getting fed, and boy was I!  I ordered cassettes of the basics series through the mail and listened to three of the hour-long tapes a day — because I was so eager to hear the next one. I just couldn’t seem to get enough. Since I had no kids, no job and no car, I had time. Also no telephone, and no TV. And, it being Mormon country (almost all the teachers at the school were LDS), and us being new to the area, I had few friends as well. I listened, took notes, then copied them over into neat transcriptions with all the references. I also read most of the publications, and taught myself beginning Greek.  

 The Colonel’s teachings on Moses made him come alive. I saw him as a real person, with flaws and faults and foibles like the rest of us, even if he was the “humblest man in the earth.” It told me that sinless perfection was not the goal. That those people in the Bible were not “saints” in the sense of holier than thou individuals but people just like me, with very similar struggles.

I LOVED the story of Joseph, which is echoed in The Light of Eidon

Col Thieme’s teachings on the angelic conflict, which elaborated on what Chafer had uncovered, answered all sorts of questions and made so many things fit together into one understandable whole. The difference between the Indwelling and Filling of the Spirit, the concept of human viewpoint versus divine viewpoint,  the notion of mental attitude sins, the clarification of what a pastor’s job really was, why we need to get the word taught every day… everthing was so vital, so exciting and compelling and useable. The Christian life came alive as never before.

But of course, because we are in a battle with spiritual forces of darkness in the heavenlies, there had to be opposition, and there was…