17-Grants Pass and Beyond

I loved  Grants Pass. The town, the climate, the people, the river, Blind George's Popcorn, and especially the peace and quiet of a small town. I've been back a few times, just passing through mostly, and the small town has now grown into a small city. Not the same as the 1970s when it was a wonderful peaceful small town and quite friendly.

When we first arrived in Grants Pass from San Diego we had an apartment waiting for us. The guy with the figs in San Diego, had left the Navy, moved to Grants Pass and, being friends with the manager of the complex where he lived, had had an apartment ready and waiting  when we arrived. We just showed up, moved our stuff in that night and the next morning signed the paperwork. It was the easiest move I had ever made.

We settled in quickly and I enrolled in school for my remaining two terms. Before long, had earned all the credits I needed to graduate and received my diploma from Southwestern College in Chula Vista. This was now May 1979 and I contacted a few four-year schools to continue my education and found that without that transfer certificate most of my credits would not transfer, not even in California. It was very disappointing. To continue school would mean making yet another move and I had two kids now so decided we were not ready for that. For now, I planned to just pursue full-time work and pay the bills.

It was not a large group in Grants Pass. Altogether there was only about a dozen people, not counting children, and they held Thursday foundation meetings at Rod's house and Saturday communion meeting was at Lowell's. Gilbert Larson still lived in town for part of this time then soon after moved to Denver.  He and Craig and I worked together one summer on a small surveying project in Northern California, slope staking a new logging road. It was hard work pushing through fields of manzanita scrub but I loved being out in the brush. On our very last day in the field we dug out an enormous boulder perched on a hillside to watch it roll down a steep hill. It was a great experience watching that boulder tumble and only later did we wonder if there was perhaps a scout camp or a ranger station at the base of that hill. I saw no news reports of flattened cabins or children so I think we're probably OK.

A few families lived outside Grants Pass; in Cave junction and Merlin; and meetings were occasionally held at their houses. I taught a small foundation meeting in an unnamed community west of Grants Pass once per week on Tuesdays and every other week traveled north up I-5 to teach at Mel's house in Merlin. On alternate weeks, on Saturdays, he and his wife would drive down to Grants Pass and attend the Saturday meeting at Lowell's. I kept very busy.

My father was spending most of his time now in San Diego and had moved the bus from its place outside Lowell's house in Grants Pass to permanently park it at the San Ysidro RV park near the Mexican Border. This was the beginning of his forays into Tijuana where he befriended several shopkeepers and would pray for their businesses each time he would visit. This was the seed that would later become "The Mexican Ministry" and from that would be spun off a separate corporation.

My father still made occasional trips up and down I-5 to teach at Apex Airpark, Vancouver and Grants Pass, but always by car now. The bus remained permanently planted in San Ysidro. Most times he would stop in Grants Pass for a day or two but would stay with Craig, Gilbert Larson's brother-in-law and only once did he ever visit my house.  I saw him only at meetings.

At one Saturday meeting in Grants Pass my father made a comment  he was having a difficult time keeping up with the request for his teaching tapes. He was using four cassette players with patch cords between them, copying tapes in real time. I told him, after the meeting, there were machines that copied tapes at high speed and, with one of these machines, he could duplicate a tape in about five minutes instead of the current hour.  He elected me to locate one of these machines and, after a couple trips to the library--the Internet did not yet exist--I found a mail order supply house called "Wholesale Tape and Supply" in Chattanooga Tennessee (a company I highly recommend if you have a need for such things). They could supply him with the machine, seemed reputable and catered mostly to churches back then. My father purchased the machine, along with a case of blank tapes then had them delivered to my house and put me in charge of the tape duplication.

Tapes of my father's teachings had been available for quite some time, but this was now the official beginning of what would be called "the tape ministry". The next edition of "The Communion" (the Assembly of the Body of Christ" newsletter); listed me as the direct contact for tapes and the going rate was just a buck to cover expenses. "The tape ministry" would remain in my control for about the next five years and was then given to someone else to manage when I was ex-communicated.  This individual though did not understand the necessity of using "slave tapes" for high speed duplication and instead used the "master tape" on every single run. The last I heard most of the masters had been destroyed from overuse and the tape library is allegedly now gone, although I have heard conflicting reports on this.

The group in Grants Pass was a cohesive group. Most were related in some way, by blood or by marriage, and a kinship existed naturally between them. Nearly all who were not kin had known each other through school and had been good friends most of their life. This kinship and friendship carried over into the meetings. A few were related directly to Gilbert Larson ; the Apostle; or were related by marriage to Gilbert. I was not related to anyone directly, but had known most for years and felt accepted as part of the "family" as soon as I moved there.

After I moved from San Diego my father made regular telephone calls to me in Grants Pass.  These calls were fraught with manipulation and no love. The purpose of his call was always to ask me to make suggestions to the elders, or group that he needed more money. He would want me to make sure everyone understood how great the financial needs were for his new ministry in San Diego and would suggest ways for me to drop hints in the meetings. As time passed, the phone calls became even more frequent, more desperate, more urgent requests for more money. It seemed my father was becoming frustrated with the people in Grants Pass and felt they were not contributing their share. (I knew nothing then about the contentions many in Grants Pass had with the abuses they saw happening in San Diego and with the tithe money in general. I would only see this for myself when I moved back again.)  My father suggested to me there was "rebellion" brewing among the leaders in Grants Pass, although I had personally sensed nothing. He was insistent of this in his phone calls and asked me to let him know about anything I might see or hear that would show any sign of "rebellion". I felt as if I was becoming a spy stuck in the middle of something I didn't really want to get stuck in the middle of. It was a very uncomfortable situation but I had learned not to question and thought perhaps he just saw things I didn't see. I kept my eyes and ears open and, after a while, it did seem as though perhaps a storm was brewing in the distance, just like it had years earlier in Snohomish county. I wasn't sure of the cause, but I was concerned perhaps the waters were about to get rough again and I was not pleased I was directly in the thick of it. When the storm finally erupted, and the waves rose and crested, I was back in San Diego again. This was on my father’s orders. More on that in a moment.

There was one specific event during my Grants Pass days worth a mention since it hits at the heart of the ABC's attitude toward natural family. It may seem straight out of "Sound of Music", and somewhat comical now, but it was not one of my brighter moments.

The story is this. My natural mother; who my father had instructed I was never to see again at age fourteen; discovered I moved from San Diego and now lived much closer...in Grants Pass Oregon. She lived in Bellingham Washington, near the Canadian Border and how she discovered I  moved to Grants Pass is a story too long and convoluted to tell here but involved an ex-communicated member of the ABC who moved to Bellingham and began attending her church. The grapevine apparently worked both directions as my father heard about my mother’s  plan to stop in Grants Pass to see me. He somehow knew of her intent to visit me before I ever did.  

(Note: My brother and I made just one trip up to Bellingham when I was seventeen, and he twenty, to see my mom. Other than this trip, I had had no other contact with my mother. Not by mail, in-person or by phone. This trip, when I was seventeen, came off tense since none of us knew how to approach our long estrangement from each other. My mother was never informed I was to marry and she would have been forbidden to come to my "wedding" anyhow even if she had somehow found out. There were many years she would completely lose contact with where I lived and did not know I had even moved to San Diego until she found out I was moving back. This was mostly my doing, but I had been led to believe, over the years, that I would be sinning if I contacted her. I was told that, at the very least, I would become "oppressed" and would need to be prayed for. At worst, she might  cause me to fall away and encourage me to "leave the body” which would cause me to lose my salvation. I was gullible and bought into it.)

Back to the story. I received an urgent call from my father a few days ahead of my mom's impending visit. My father, on this call, commanded me as my "father in the Lord" not to see her when she arrived. He told me she was coming to "entice me away from the body with her lies." Looking back now I don't think it was true; but he also told me would have elders in the area watch my house to prevent her from seeing me. It was, I am certain a lie.

My mother got my phone number from information and waited until the day she arrived in Grants Pass before calling me. She telephoned me on a Sunday afternoon but, following my instructions, I turned her away rudely, told her not to come to my house. After the call, my wife was quite upset about the way I treated her and we had a rather heated discussion. I admitted she was right, I was wrong, and had a change of heart so I called my mom at the motel and said we would come over.

In order to avoid detection we waited until dark, left out the back door, pushed the car down the alley without the lights or engine on and, once we figured no one could see or hear us, started the car, got in and  drove to her motel. Since it was late when we arrived, we didn't have much time to spend together but she didn't try to "entice me away from the body" on her visit. And, although she did have some rather unkind words about not being able to find me all those years I do not recall becoming "oppressed" in any way from the visit. Looking back, I have been much more oppressed by the authoritarian abusive ways of the ABC than I could possibly have become from her one night visit. Perhaps if she had enticed me away it might have actually been a blessing.

That whole incident of pushing the car down the alley in the dark seems laughable now, but at the time I was just twenty-four and sincerely afraid of getting caught. That would mean suffering through yet another ABC "discipline". I had been put through many "disciplines" for more than a decade at this point. Some very humiliating.  I still wonder if anyone was watching my house that day, or if it was just a ruse my father used to prevent me from seeing her but I'll never really know. It would not have been the first, or last time, my father lied to me to maintain control. My inclination is the elders in Grants Pass would have not gotten involved in such a scheme. Most did not even know I had a natural mother. Most assumed Yvonne was my natural mother. It was some very weird times.

My job at J.C. Penney was going well. I was in line for the next slot at managers training to be held in Portland and was to be trained as a buyer for the shoe department. As it turned out, I would not be afforded that opportunity. In March of 1980, I received a very distressing phone call from my father. He called me at work, quite agitated, and began telling me one of the elders in Grants Pass was directly involved in some rather serious "evil". He referenced the churches at the beginning of Revelation and said God was  going to remove his candlestick from its place in Grants Pass. He warned me I should get as quickly as possible and I should "wipe the dust from the bottoms of my feet" as a sign against them when I left. His words sounded ominous and were a loose reference to the scripture in Luke 10:10-12 which reads:

But into whatsoever city you enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaves on us, we do wipe off against you: nevertheless be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near unto you. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.

My father recommended I return to San Diego instead of going north, no specific reason given. Even though I didn't see this "rebellion" and "sin" he warned against I thought perhaps he saw something I did not so I began making plans to leave and head back to San Diego. I was still young, very impressionable, extremely immature and, despite the many times my father had led me astray, and outright lied to me, I just always did what he said.  Over the years I have tried to figure out why I was so obedient to his commands. Having read books on the subject, I found it is quite common actually and to be honest, as I write this post, I realize how stupid I may seem to have been so gullible. I'll grant that as a fair assessment of the situation. I was young and was raised in a system of guilt since I was a youth. This system required I do exactly what I was told, or be disciplined and humiliated before all and there was also the belief I would not be obeying God's instructions.  In my life I did whatever I could to avoid conflict as much as possible so I obeyed, even though I hated it and felt very trapped.

I was not thrilled with leaving my job at J.C. Penney's, since I would soon have that prospect of becoming a manager. But, I still readied myself and my family to leave behind a nice group of people and return to San Diego. Upon my return to San Diego I would find the atmosphere quite the opposite of the love and peace I knew from living there before. In its place was a state of constant, and extreme, agitation, mostly caused by my father and Yvonne. I still regret that move from Grants Pass and know had I not returned to San Diego my life would have gone much better. The move to San Diego would leave what remained of our family in utter ruins. My somewhat fragile marriage, which was going along mostly fine in Grants Pass, would end and I would also end up being disowned forever by my father as he labeled me as being "in rebellion" for my refusing to take part in things that were actually fraudulent, unethical  or illegal. More on that subject later.

After my father disowned me, I would never see him again. He died very soon afterward and, when he died, no one from the ABC even had the decency to call me. I heard, days later, from my oldest sibling, who heard from David North. David North told me on the day of the funeral my dad left instructions I was to be forbidden to attend. But, I've jumped ahead of the story a bit and I will elaborate on that topic in a future post. I mention it here simply as a focal point on where San Diego was headed during this period.

After moving to San Diego I discovered the "evil" thing the elder and his wife in Grants Pass had done was he and his wife had traveled to Portland Oregon to attend a Neil Diamond concert. Worse yet, they had returned home with Neil Diamond audio tapes. By doing so, they had "invited demons to the body in Grants Pass". They had been commanded to get rid of the tapes by my father but passed it off as a silly request and since they had not "repented of their actions", they were considered to have "rebelled against my father's authority". God would therefore "remove the candlestick" from Grants Pass and the group would "die" as God’s presence would leave. They would no longer have a "sanctioned" meeting if they continued in this "sin". This is how it was related to me.

Yvonne apparently had received "good information", and was of the belief, that Neil Diamond was a warlock and thus his music was meant to "call demons".  I heard this part of the story about their "spiritual crime", and "giving place to the devil", when I was lectured by my father  about my own music "rebellion". He insinuated I was "advocating drug use" by the music I listened to. At issue was a song on a tape I owned, sung by John Denver, called "Rocky Mountain High". 

Much of this ultra-restrictive outlook about music was influenced by a teaching from Bob Larson called "Rock Music Uncovered" and this Larson tape could be found in the ABC tape library. One need only view Bob Larson Ministries website to discover he is obsessed with demonology, exorcisms, oppression and the like. In the early days of the ABC my father also conducted "exorcisms". My father's newer message  completely flavored the environment in San Diego and the only way I can describe things is they got very very weird.

Near the end of the  lecture about John Denver music, and my supposed "impending drug addiction" if I continued to listen, my father loudly exclaimed I was no better than that elder and his wife in Grants Pass who worshiped the warlock Neil Diamond. They, he said, were fully caught up in their rebellion and were destroying the entire area. I, he said, must have learned this rebellion when I lived in Grants Pass and commanded me as my “father in the Lord” not to listen to John Denver any longer. My defending of John Denver's music as fairly docile; when compared to say Inna Gada da Vida by Iron Butterfly; he considered an act of rebellion.  I still listened to John Denver, I just did so in secret. Many years later I would return to San Diego and discover one of the elder's who had supported my father in his condemning of John Denver music had two children who started a rock band. This elder did not get lectured.

This incident was the thing that opened my eyes something was really not right. I was an adult, married with children, and I began to realize these commands to go here, go there, do this, do that, were really an abuse of authority. I should have been allowed to lead my own life, make my own decisions. Most go through this "rebellion" as a teen. I missed that period locked in my room or being subject to some other degrading discipline. My natural teenage rebellion was pushed into my twenties and, to this point anyhow, I had never once rebelled against my father before but I began to rebel now and stopped just doing everything he told me. He did not like that attitude.

Teenage rebellion, I have learned, is a natural stage of growing up. I was slowly realizing I need not obey his every command, even if he stated he was my "father in the Lord". Unfortunately, this would end up causing me major problems later.

Yvonne and my father adopted some strange viewpoints in San Diego. One of them came from a book they discovered about symbols. After reading this book, they came to believe star symbols (and many other symbols) were witchcraft symbols and, if one was displayed anywhere on a persons belongings, it would then invite demons and cause oppression. An elder up north was found to be "in rebellion" and told he must sell his Chrysler vehicle because there were stars on the upholstery. He refused. Even Miss Piggy of the Muppets was not off the hook. Yvonne taught Miss Piggy represented a witch since she carried a wand and she had improper symbols on her clothes. The instruction was children should be forbidden to watch the Muppet Show or Sesame Street since there were symbols displayed that could bring about demon oppression. Having left peaceful Grants Pass, San Diego was a shock to my system. Things had changed drastically from when I lived there prior and it was was not the peaceful place I remembered. I did not realize this until it was much too late.

About a year after returning to San Diego my father dropped hints there was something major brewing with the money again. This time his focus was on several individuals in Grants Pass who were pushing for the formation of a corporation. They, it seemed, from what he was telling me, were threatening to to start a corporation of their own then run all the tithe through it before sending part of it along to him.  I do not know exactly who led the charge to form the first corporation in Grants Pass, I can only speculate based on hearsay.  The dispute, or an issue spawned from this dispute, would eventually cause an end to the relationship between the ABC and Grants Pass years later and that first corporation would then be dissolved.

It would be a few years after I left Grants Pass before the ABC connection to Grants Pass would be completely broken. I never saw "God's destruction" rain down on the area as my father had told me would happen. He had also prophesied Northern California would be totally destroyed in a massive earthquake, but this too did not happen. I am sad to say I followed his instructions and brushed the dirt off my feet, as a sign against Grants Pass, when I drove out of town. I did it because he told me, even though I really did not understand why. I probably owe them an apology. They did not deserve my, or anyone else's, scorn.

I have covered just a slight bit of the San Diego period since there are a few links between San Diego and the Grants Pass stories. In the next post I will cover more family history then follow up with an introduction to the newly forming "Mexican Ministry".  

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