Victor Paul Wierwille wrote his book on Holy Spirit in 1954, printing and binding each book by hand. This 87 page work was expanded to 122 pages and republished the next year (pictured here). Receiving the Holy Spirit Today has continued to evolve and is now in its altered seventh edition.
Wierwille and The Way praise it as the "most thorough and original coverage of the subject." "Doctor" felt that God raised him up to pioneer accurate Bible study in this field. To emphasize the originality of his work, Wierwille insists that he used only the Bible in writing Receiving the Holy Spirit Today:
However, in the very book in which he prayed to "put aside" what he "had heard" he draws thought after thought, word after word, and page after page from J.E. Stiles' book, The Gift of the Holy Spirit, written six years before.
In fact, Wierwille's took his dedication and chapters :"Common Fears...," "Who is Qualified...," "How to Receive the Holy Spirit" and "Some Questions Answered" from Stiles. Frequently, Wierwille copies Stiles' paragraphs virtually word for word. Yet, RTHST never even mentions Stiles or his book, and never once notes that Wierwille is copying from him.
Wierwille enlarged the book to 164 pages, publishing the third edition in 1957. His followers assumed that he had done more personal, original research.
However, the additional sections were copied from E.W. Bullinger's 1905 book, The Giver and His Gifts. The introduction and appendices (about 95 pages) were taken directly from Bullinger. Wierwille obviously copied many sections word for word. Again, Wierwille never once mentions Bullinger in RTHST, and never once cited him as a source.
Smaller sections of RTHST were also taken from courses by B.G. Leonard.
If Wierwille had never used Stiles and Bullinger, RTHST would be very short, and wouldn't contain any of its central teachings.
Wierwille later required his Corps classes to follow the Chicago Manual of Style for papers, which specifically describes how to cite sources, even though he never followed its rules of integrity in writing. Honest writers always credit their sources. Integrity and copyright laws demand that both direct and indirect quotations of others writers be noted, even when another's work does not bear a copyright date.
Wierwille's plagiarism doesn't meet secular standards for integrity, much less the integrity that God demands. Wierwille plainly claimed that his book was original, and was based on the Bible and no other book. However, evidence shows that his claim was not only false, but led his readers to believe a lie-- that he was a unique researcher.
The book Will the Real Author Please Stand Up? offers 50 pages of evidence that Wierwille plagiarized books from Stiles, Bullinger and E.W. Kenyon. (Wierwille seemed especially drawn to authors who used their first initials-- E.W., J.E., B.G.-- just as V.P. did.) See related articles in the "Founder" section of www.empirenet.com/-messiah7, which give examples of plagiarized sections.
Dr John Juedes, 1999
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