Friday, August 04, 2006

Mission Accomplished

It has been one year since I started this website. I started out to simply fill a missing niche in the Amway/Quixtar debate, namely, that although there have been many testimonials and stories about the horrors of the motivational organizations I have never come across details as to what the system is actually teaching. Finding this missing niche, I sought to fulfill it. Although I have never run a blog before, never asked anyone to link it, never advertised it outside of my single post in the Qblog forum, this site has grown to over 25,000 hits. I have seen it linked to Answers.com, skeptics dictionary, Wikipedia (before all blogs were removed), and numerous other places. It has been my prayer that what I wrote has drawn glory to Jesus Christ foremost, and next, led people away from the dangerous teachings of the motivational organizations.

Now that I have accomplished this, I would like to announce my retirement from the great debate. In the event that people come here just to read my writings, let me please explain a few things and at the end, I will tell you where you can still find my writings.

When I first set out to do this work, I was not certain if it was something that I would be doing long term, or short term. Like all things, I took it to the Lord in prayer. It was actually something that I prayed about for over six months. I was pretty sure in March that I was going to stop, so I selected the one year anniversary the founding of this site as the appropriate closing day. Since that time, I have been planning the series of final posts that I have written. It was critically important that after spending such a time detailing the actual teachings of BWW that I leave everyone with a more concise outline of what Word-Faith is and what it teaches.

I wish to extend a special thanks to Eric Janssen, aka, Qblog for the privilege of writing for QuixtarBlog. I certainly never sought out to do such a thing, but I guess that God was with me in helping to get the message out through that site. I also wish to extend thanks to Drew Bahn for giving me spots on Quixtar Inside and Out Radio and for being a person that I could bounce some things off of. Thanks to Preston for providing some insight to WWDB and some of the leaders. Thanks to a reader who wishes to remain anonymous for providing tapes to other motivational organizations, and thanks to Imran for some help with the Standing Order Tape website early on.

There were several things that I liked about being involved in this debate over the last year. The first is meeting some of the people I met. I got a chance to meet two people personally, a few more over voice chats, and numerous over email. I enjoyed learning about Blogging and getting a very deep applicational study of Word-Faith based on the Bible.

A few things precipitated in me wishing to leave this debate. The first is that the time required to post these detailed analysis of tapes was astronomical. I have spent over 20 hours a week many weeks to get posts up for this site, Quixtarblog, research, etc. This time has prevented me from doing other things that I wanted to do. Running this site also cut into my time in the Bible. Prior to running this site, I have read the Bible at least one time a year, but I have finished about half of it since starting this work. Further, I have had to run a little less ministry while running this site, and it also cut into the time I was able to work at home for my job.

Now, I would like to point out that many pro-Quixtar people will say that if you leave this business, you are nothing but a loser, you are interested in no one but yourself, you will be broke your whole life. That is simply not true. Since I have left this all-consuming business, I have been mentor to over 40 kids in some way. They seek me out. I have been a requested teacher in a few small groups as well as other things professionally. I have a great job with good pay, and I am looking forward to moving on soon.

I would like to recap now with a brief accounting my life since I saw this thing. It was July 2000 when I first saw Quixtar. I first became a member, then an IBO. Since early on in my involvement, there were two major negative impacts on me. The first was my grades in college dropped drastically. To give you an idea, it was that single semester that caused me to drop from Summa sum lauda to Magna cum lauda. My interest in college work stopped almost instantly. This was a very bad thing. The next thing that happened is that I started to accumulate debt. I was totally against credit card use prior to Quixtar, but afterwards, it was easier and easier to use a credit card because of the fact that material things were seen as being so important. There were other negative consequences to me but those are the two that are the deepest seeded and they are the ones that still get in my way today. I have also noticed that with the sole exception of a small period at the end of 2004, ever since I have seen Quixtar in 2000, it has dominated a large chunk of my life, both as a participant and a critic. I wish to recoup that lost time in my days, weeks, and months.

I am pleased to report that my credit cards are paid off, but I still have over $25,000 of other debt due to my involvement in this business.

Should you wish to keep up with me, I will be devoting a little of the time spent on this site to my new ministry site, Religious Debates Forum, and Blog called Our Walk in Christ. I will also continue to check my email should you with to contact me: xanadustc@hotmail.com

With this, I say farewell, it has been fun. Good luck in your endeavors,

Over and Out,

Xanadustc

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Imagine For a Moment

I want you to use your imagination. You are a person that has lived a life that was very hard. Your father was an alcoholic and was never there. Your mother did the best, but you still have to take care of your younger brothers and sisters. When you were old enough, you went to the military and were placed in the command of a large operation. After this, you went to college and ended up working a job in another field. In this time, you lived a some-what party like life. You often spent more money than you could, going into debt to buy a plane. You participated in dog fights, and even lost $10,000 in a fraudulent business opportunity.

After a period of time, you were offered a different opportunity where you quickly made a lot of money, but one night while you were showing some other people how you made your living, someone stood up and said to you, a person who was not really a churchgoer, that the Bible says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. When he made this comment, you didn’t have an answer, so you threatened him with bodily harm to keep your posture. Since that question so bothered you, you bought a computer with Bible software and started to look through it. You also started to look for people talking about money and the Bible.

As you performed your research, you likely found people teaching three different things. The first is that people taught that money will inhibit your entrance into heaven. The next would be people teaching that the quantity of money is not consequential, but only the condition of the heart. The third type is people teaching that God wants you to be rich. Now, understand that you lost a lot of money, had a hard life, worked a job outside your college degree, and now you have quit your job because you make so much money doing your new opportunity. You have no training in the Bible at all, but you have degreed preachers teaching three different views.

Which one do you follow?

The story about is the story of Bill Britt, the founder of Britt World Wide. Based upon my years in BWW, my knowledge of Word-Faith, and my study of scripture and the context behind it, I understand why Bill made the choice that he did. You see, this meeting happened to Bill right in the middle of the days when the Word-Faith teachers were extremely popular and main-stream. It was easy to find material that agreed with what he was doing.

He found that first, the message would be motivational. Next, he could sell materials based on this, third, the system would drive up retention. Bill seems to be a fulfillment of

2 Timothy 4:3-4 -

3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,

4and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

When Bill had set up his system and became a self-proclaimed biblical guru, he ignored sound interpretation and followed preachers who mistreated the word of God. From that, a whole host of downline with the same problems sprung up and became those gurus themselves. This of course, led to the abuse of the Bible to teach people false doctrines, and has led to a widespread impact on people who are now confused about the true teachings of the Bible.