8. Cutting the Covenant
© 2019 Daniel YordyNovember 1978 - July 1979
Reassessing Everything
After completing the account of my time at the Citra community in Florida, I felt troubled, as if something was yet incomplete inside. I have never considered my time at Citra in this close way. Only as I wrote the last chapter did I realize that not feeling at home was indeed the primary reason why I did not stay.
My other question then was – have I presented an “idolized” view of Sam Fife?
In this chapter, I want to give a more complete picture including the great issues of God set before the move of God fellowship after Sam Fife’s death. The truth is, In the present time I teach as much against things Sam Fife taught as I teach the same as what he taught.
The real issue for me was this trajectory from Madame Guyon to Rees Howells to Sam Fife – that I could know God and walk with Him in intimacy and in power. Nonetheless, I will tell you honestly that the desire to possess the same anointing God had placed upon Brother Sam is a meaningful temptation to me now, a temptation I am free to ignore because I know how God has dealt with me over many years, starting with this season of covenant.
God anoints me as He made me and for His expression through me, and not as or by the anointing or person of any other.
And I include a continual analysis because reading my story cannot benefit anyone unless, in some way, the Jesus who fills you with His glory can, by my stumbling steps and inadequate explanations, cause you to know Him inside of you and all through your own life story.
My life has no meaning except that, by it, I know the Father and Jesus Sent into me.
Through these years I was a mess inside. For you to know Christ also living as you, I must show you the difficulty of my own limitations through which Jesus carried me. Asperger’s was not my primary problem, although it made my problem worse by blocking any understanding of these “people” all around me and by preventing meaningful communication.
My problem was that I was utterly ashamed of myself, that is, I lived for many years in the self-exaltation of extreme self-pity. Yet I can also honestly say that, underneath of that, my heart was true and that, in the core of my person, I remain the same from then until now.
If someone says, “Daniel, you are so different now than what you were back then,” they are completely wrong. I am the same person inside I have always been. Yet they are also completely correct, for I am no longer ashamed of Christ Jesus living as me.
My conclusion is that through the many years from then until now, God masterfully used all the ongoing circumstances of my life, month after month, year after year, to bring me out of my ignorance into the wondrous knowledge of all Salvation in which I live now. Not one circumstance was ever out of place or unnecessary. The course of my life was perfect.
All of His ways concerning me are perfect. God has never led me wrong; God has never not led me. My testimony is honest and true.
I must also say that, regardless of whether anyone else reads this account of my life or obtains any benefit from it, my going through every specific time, person, and circumstance and seeing it filled with Jesus in truth, is accomplishing such incredible wonders for me in the filling up of every tiny hole or crack with the outpoured goodness of God.
Heading North Again
Returning to Oregon meant returning to my parent’s home outside of Lacomb. This time I did not connect with Jimmy to work with him; I do not remember why. Rather, I found a job with a sub-contractor in Salem, Oregon, doing small construction jobs including sidewalks on city streets. I do not remember his name, but he was decent to work for. He was a Vietnam vet filled with the horror of the atrocities he had seen being committed by fellow soldiers against innocent people, and he was filled with a profound hatred of the American government. I worked with him almost a month.
In the first part of December, 1978, I headed north again to Graham River Farm, this time driving my large Buick. I had filled the trunk with oak boards when I left Citra. It was winter.
These years, 1977-80, were hotter summers and colder winters than normal, and I spent two of these winters in the far north and two of the summers in the deep South. I was just 22, so my brain was not completely in place yet; one does not drive into a brutal Canadian winter in an old car by one’s self, unless you’re young, adventurous, and foolhardy.
It was probably somewhere close to minus 30 degrees F as I approached Fort St. John. (Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same number at minus 40.) I was having trouble with overheating. The light would come on and I would stop. The temperature would cool rapidly and I could continue. Passing Fort St. John, I thought to myself that it had become cold enough that I didn’t need a radiator. I stopped at the truck stop in Charlie Lake, however, and discovered that, indeed, I had no water at all. The cold outside was enough to cool the engine as I had stopped every little while. They had radiator hoses that fit, so I put new ones on. The problem was solved.
It was afternoon, Graham was only two hours away down long and winding, narrow and snow-banked roads of which I was mostly unfamiliar and for which I had no map. What could go wrong? This was December, when the days are barely eight hours long and the nights a full sixteen hours. I’ve always had a canny sense of navigation, either that, or the Lord has always helped me, because I reached the banks of the Graham River just before dark. The ice bridge was in place, so I could drive across.
As I arrived, however, I passed a trailer going back across the river filled with Steve Herman, most of his family, and all their belongings. This was my first taste of ones whom I knew and loved “leaving the farm,” and “leaving the move.” The Herman’s two older boys had remained, primarily because they were interested in the two young women at the farm whom they would eventually marry. At least I had a chance to say goodbye.
A Trying Winter
No one at Graham River knew I was coming. The only communication that could reach them was public service radio, which someone always listened to in order to hear any messages for Graham. I had not made use of that service, of course. Dan and Joann Kurtz and their family, with whom I had stayed the winter before, were gone from the farm on a trip down to the states visiting family. Since I had hoped to stay with them again, I went to their cabin, fired up the stove, and stayed there in my bed on the porch for a few nights.
I loved Graham River; I loved the people; I loved most every aspect of wilderness Christian community, but these next four months I spent at Graham River Farm were not as “romantic” as my memory of my earlier time there.
I fitted into the work schedule as before, but this was winter, and the work was mostly firewood. The Graham River community burned inordinate amounts of firewood. The two big stoves in the school sucked up over a cord of wood a day, and the perimeter of the rooms inside was still covered with frost. Poorly insulated buildings took far more wood and work to keep them heated than it would have taken to build a double wall and double roof, even with moss and dirt between. It was not until I designed the buildings years later that we built double-walled buildings. The Tabernacle I designed for the later Graham River community had only one small wood stove in the basement that heated a larger area than the earlier school building. A cord of wood would have lasted a month, not one day.
Not long after I arrived, some men elders met with me, including John Troyer, who had recently moved to Graham River with his family. John had the responsibility for a newly created “men’s dorm.” They asked me to move into that dorm instead of heating an empty cabin full time. The two Herman boys, Mike and Danny, were staying in the men’s dorm cabin, along with another young man my age, Dan Dickout. Dan was pursing a relationship with Anne Kensley, who had lived with John and Bambi Hinson at Sapa before coming to Graham River. There were five of us in the dorm; I believe the fifth was Paul van Dyke. Since I was last in, I got the top bunk in the center, right on the other side of a thin wall from the wood stove.
I was outnumbered four to one. I went back to milking, so I went to bed early and got up early. They all went to bed late. Dan and Danny liked to sit up talking for hours after I needed to sleep. I liked to sleep in cooler temperatures; they liked to sleep in warmer temperatures. Their interests and conversational topics were not mine, and mine were not theirs. Night after night I lay in sweltering heat, unable to sleep, listening to the dull sounds of conversations that held no interest for me. More than that, Mike was the one who had “stolen” the admiration of the girl I had been imagining was the one the Lord had for me.
Now, I am speaking out from the point of view of a 22-year-old living with other young men my age. None of us knew how to get along, and there was no one older to temper our youthful inadequacies. Maureen and I spent many wonderful times with Dan and Ann Dickout in later years and count them as dear friends. Mike and Pamela are still married, with grandchildren, and I know they were meant for each other. But at that time, I did not care much for these fellows, and I know the feeling was mutual.
But this was all a good thing, you see. In my earlier months at Graham River I had spent most of my spare time in my bedroom, studying the Bible. After leaving there, I had regretted the fact that I had not known closely many of the people. Now, avoiding my “bedroom” was the thing I wanted to do, and the only way to do that was to invite myself over to visit with many other families in the community. It was a difficult reason, but an important result.
I visited with Al and Janet Rotundi, and their children, Rick and Monica. I visited with Bill Williams and his family. Bill had also been in Vietnam. He had volunteered as an act of committing suicide. After surviving untouched, he gave his heart to the Lord. I visited with Warren and Pamela Bowles, who were around my age. I made the rounds of a number of other families, including John and Betsy Troyer, trying not to visit any one place “too often.” But often I would talk too much, and often I would return to my bed in deep self-pity that I had exposed my shame for others to see.
I still talk too much at times, but now I put it all into Father, and He carries me.
Sometime during this winter, the elders came up with the idea that, rather than assigning any specific work schedule for the men, everyone should simply be led by the Spirit. I was “led by the Spirit” to work in the warm carpenter shop making things for people. A lot of the men, however, were “led by the Spirit” to stay out of the bitter cold and in their warm cabins day after day.
I took on the project of building more comfortable benches for the services, which were now held in the school building. Before that, the only benches were flat, narrow, hard, and backless. I designed a simple frame that could be duplicated and that gave a curved seat and a curved back that fitted most people well. My benches were well appreciated and soon copied by others. But I was working by myself, so one day I gave an impassioned plea for some to be “led by the Spirit” to come help me. I remember that Warren Bowles showed up, cheerful and willing, and maybe one or two others.
It was not long before the elders reassessed this approach and returned to a form of planning and scheduling. [It actually takes years of trial and error to learn what works and what does not work in community. The suggestions in my book, Symmorphy V: Life, come out of years of such travail inside of basic and practical experience.]
Meanwhile, I was anxiously awaiting the return of Dan and Joanne Kurtz. I heard rumors that they were on their way, so I fired up their wood stove so that they would have a warm cabin upon arrival. Days went by and I eventually got into trouble for wasting firewood, so I stopped. They did return, probably in early February, just in time for the Headwaters convention, but, alas, I was not able to return to living with them. Unbeknownst to me, they were preparing to leave the community.
Except for the Headwaters convention, that is most of what I remember from my final time at the early Graham River community.
A Unique Convention
Later conventions were so common and similar; I will give specifics of only the few that were turning points for me. This Headwaters convention in February of 1979 was so unique and memorable that I will give a more detailed account. We went, as usual, in the back of the large wood truck, but I have only a vague memory of the cabin in which I stayed during the convention.
There were five hundred people from all the communities in the area packed into a space that would legally have held no more than two hundred. We sat on the narrow backless benches with our knees almost touching the backs of the people in front of us. It was a memorable and deeply anointed convention with long services and wonderful praise.
Sam Fife preached one sermon lasting five hours, a condensed version of what he would teach in April to the Hollywood, Florida, group, which became known as “The Hollywood Teachings.” You have to understand the power of the word we were hearing because at no point did anyone “tire” of sitting there; we drew into ourselves with great eagerness every word God would have for us. Others wanted to preach, however, and so Brother Sam made room for them. That one service lasted nine hours.
Then, while Brother Joe McCord was preaching, I was wondering to the Lord about what I was hearing. I asked, “Lord, is this really Your move, is this really Your word?” I felt a deep assurance sweep over me, “You can trust this ministry; I have sent them.”
One unique experience was when Edie Dwyer stood up to minister the word. I was watching 500 European Protestants, including major ministries, listening with full honor and respect to an African American woman preaching the word for an hour and a half. Such a thing was not known in Christian circles at that time; it was perfectly normal in the move fellowship.
The intensity, however, was upon Brother Sam. He ministered a second time, again a condensed form of what he had taught the month before in the Alaska communities, called “The Sapa Teaching.” (One of the Alaska communities had called itself after Sapa, Mississippi, since many had come up from there.) One of the words Sam Fife preached was “God is a Farmer.” You will find my version of that truth towards the end of Symmorphy III: Kingdom.
There was a heavy shadow resting upon Brother Sam throughout the whole convention, however. At one point during his teaching, he turned towards the ministries seated behind him and said, “One of you is resisting in the Spirit what I am teaching.” No one responded, but Dan Kurtz would tell me later that it was him. I will share why in the next section. Brother Sam spoke of everyone trying to make him “king,” trying to get him to make their decisions for them, something he always refused to do. He spoke of abandoning these people because of their lack of dedication and of his desire to draw out from them a few who would dedicate themselves utterly to the revelation of Jesus Christ, whatever it might cost.
At one time, in the sobriety of that Spirit, he looked my way and spent a long moment gazing into my eyes. He, of course, remembered me from September at Citra, six months earlier. I possessed, at that time, a nice suit. Unfortunately, I happened to be wearing it that day. I was ashamed that my “fleshiness” did not measure up to the standard he had raised.
After the convention, back at Graham River, I realized that I needed to work a few weeks in order to pay my taxes by April 15. So in March, I returned to Oregon. My Buick had driven its last mile, so I left it in the boneyard at Graham. This time I flew commercially from Fort St. John to Prince George. At Prince George I spent a couple of days with Bill Williams and his family who had also recently left the farm. I returned home, then, on the Greyhound bus.
A Covenant with God
One of the most important events in my life happened during these three months back home in Oregon. Before sharing that occasion, however, I want to give a fuller account of this time.
I went straight back to work with Jimmy. At this point it was just the two of us. Jimmy and I were very comfortable working together framing houses. Jimmy was the lead, of course, but we both knew what to do each step, and we simply did it together without saying anything. This kind of harmony in work together is a rare and priceless treasure. We framed one house for a private owner in the Hamilton Creek area just east of Lebanon. This house was custom-designed by an architect; from these untried blueprints I learned why architects need to frame houses before they begin to design them.
I continued fellowshipping often with Don and Colette Manes as well as driving up to Portland for Sunday services each weekend. In Portland, I continued fellowshipping with David and Kim Johnson after the services. In one such service I heard the shocking news that Dan and Joanne Kurtz had “left the move.” In fact, they were coming down to Oregon to stay for a time with relatives who lived not far from Oregon City. This bit of news was overwhelming to me.
Let me explain. God created us to be filled with Himself, another Person, and to reveal the tender kindness of Father Himself through us to all creation. For that reason, we humans are designed to draw our identity out from our union with Christ Jesus and out from Father sharing all things with us. Because we do not know what we are, we desperately seek for an identity in every other direction. Animals and angels have no need to find an identity outside of themselves; humans do, for that is how we are created.
Identifying myself with “the move” was NO small thing, and it was an identity that had grown slowly over two years and through many wondrous and many difficult experiences. It was an identity that had come through a series of deeply personal decisions. When someone you knew and loved then chose to “leave the move,” one’s carefully (and wrongfully) cultivated identity is challenged. There was a deep sense of “betrayal.”
This was one area where the people and ministry in the move of God fellowship failed badly. The attitude towards those who “left” was atrocious. Some of the things said to them were downright brutal. This propensity, however, is common to all and found in every type of Christian experience. Because we have not known that we are coming out of Father every moment through the good speaking of Jesus, we have been very religious in our bad treatment of others who “fail” our “lofty standards.” And I put all this in quotation marks because this attitude and practice is abhorrent to me and became one of the primary reasons why I also left that fellowship. Nonetheless, I will wait to share more about this problem for after our move to Fort St. John in 1998.
In April and May of 1979, I had no idea of any of these things. Rather, God was challenging my false identity to its core. Then, on Sunday, April 29, I drove up to Portland again for the morning service. Right away, David Johnson said to me, “Brother Sam has been killed.”
Brother Sam had been ministering in the move community in the mountains of Guatemala. As he flew his small plane to leave the valley that Friday, it was not climbing as it should. It was not able to clear the ridge and crashed. All on board were killed, including Sam Fife, Gary Shamblin, and another couple in the fellowship.
You see, Brother Sam had been preaching victory over death for years. A year or so earlier, he shared in a convention that he had been preaching for so long that we do not have to die that he was beginning to believe it. For that reason he said, “I am not going to die.” He spoke this proclamation of faith a number of times in move conventions, a declaration of faith which we received as part of the mighty things God was doing in our midst.
Now he was dead.
My first thought, of course, was, “Wow, he had it wrong.” That thought vanished, however, as the deeper assertion arose in me that it is better to die in faith, not having received the promises, than to live in any measure of unbelief. My third immediate thought, was that we would not turn back, regardless. We would go on to know the Lord.
Brother Joe McCord was coming to Portland in early May to minister to the group there. I had been in contact with Dan Kurtz on the phone. He asked me to pick him up on my way to Portland. He wanted to visit privately with Joe McCord, one of the primary ministries in that fellowship. It was dark as we drove back home.
As we drove that evening, Dan Kurtz shared with me some of the reasons why they had left the move. Now, I’m not good at remembering specific things said; more than that, I want to address the larger issue here. For that reason I will step aside from that particular conversation and share out from other things Dan has shared with me over the years as well as my present assessment of some of the problems in that fellowship. Part of my purpose is to “de-idolize” Brother Sam, a man of great devotion who was wrong on many important things.
Devotion that is true is a shining example to many, but devotion that is wrong hurts more people in more awful ways than one might realize.
Dan had a very good reason to sit there behind Brother Sam at the Headwaters convention resisting in his spirit what was being preached.
Brother Sam was reckless with his own safety and with the safety of others. And he was even more reckless in leading thousands of people into wilderness communities utterly unprepared. Then, in the midst of the great struggles they must face, he had nothing to help them know what to do. All he had was ever further “revelation,” that, while containing truth from God, held nothing practical that was desperately needed by all of those five hundred people sitting there listening to him.
Sam Fife had one answer only – “Die to your flesh.” If you have read what I write, then you know that I count this statement as contrary to God, and its outcome as only fruitless horror and mindless confusion.
The first couple of years Dan and Joanne had been at Graham River had been a wonderful time. It was new and exciting. Everyone was committed and worked hard to get along. God was among them and with Him came great blessing. They enjoyed wondrous times together in the Spirit. But time went on, and difficulties arose. The eldership at Graham River, about an equal number of men and women, including many married couples, were more than twenty very strong individuals. And each one had their own strong ideas about how any particular problem should be solved.
When your life and your family’s well-being rests entirely on the decisions of the eldership, you can be sure that the stakes are high and that submitting to decisions with which you strongly disagree is next to impossible for most.
When strong Christians get a revelation of being “manifest sons of God” and of “ruling and reigning with Christ,” religious arrogance is common. Some felt themselves “above” the laws of Canada, a conceit that the Canadian officials were well able to bring to a quick end. At the same time, in the conflict between “Christ is in you” versus, “Die to your flesh, brother,” the flesh ALWAYS wins, and so disdain for people’s “fleshy” concerns was often behind the decisions. There were even decisions made, at times, with resulting circumstances that, if you were outside looking in, and not in the press of the moment, you would call as bordering on immoral, at least from Dan Kurtz’s view and memory.
Dan and Joanne, however, were the most kind to me of any I knew in that entire fellowship. That same kindness from them was normal towards all others. And so, as the years went by, deeply troubled individuals would come to them, pouring their hearts out, in all the confusion and despair that “preaching against the flesh” must ALWAYS bring. Dan and Joanne had no answers.
Dan is one who always carries others in his heart. And so he went to that Headwaters convention needing Brother Sam to guide these, nearly a thousand people in total, in real answers for real problems. Instead, all that he heard was extravagant and fairly useless “new revelation,” along with this claim that all these people, who had sacrificed everything to follow the vision Sam Fife had set before them, were not “measuring up.”
Yea. – I now understand Dan and Joanne’s difficult decision completely.
Let’s now return, however, to that twenty-two-year old boy back in Oregon, having just dropped Dan Kurtz off and who was now faced with an hour’s drive home in the dark over a very familiar road.
I was shattered.
Every word I had received, every revelation from God, everything I then believed, every commitment I had made was ripped right out of me.
I wept most of the way home, bereft of any idea of what was true or right or of God. Every experience I had known through the prior two years I now weighed against the things Dan had shared and found them all wanting and empty. All of my carefully re-crafted identity was stripped away.
~~~
So God said to Abram, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him…
And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram… (Genesis 15:9-18 – reduced).
~~~
No, these words did not come to my mind on that drive home, but all the way home I CONTENDED with the Almighty. And in my cut-open soul, in my darkness, I made a covenant with God.
“God,” I shouted at the top of my lungs, “I don’t know what You are or what Your truth is, but I WILL know You in my life in this age, and I WILL walk with a people who know You.”
God is a Keeper of Covenant.
Heading South Again
Dan Kurtz’s experience had not been mine, nor was God’s path for me the same as His path for Dan or any other. I went with my parents to a Full Gospel Business Men’s meeting and the word preached was so shallow and so un-Biblical. Whatever faults might have been in the move fellowship, the things God actually says in the New Testament were more to be found in that fellowship than any other I knew. More than that, I loved community, and I did not know of any other people walking closely with God in the way I desired.
I talked Jimmy Barkley into going with me down to the California Convention in late May. Understand that when I am the driver, the route from one place to another must angle all over the place. I have no idea of our route then, just that I have been through every little part of California. Conventions were always a great contrasting press for me. Sitting under the word as it was being preached was glorious. Intermingling with crowds of people was always the loneliest thing I have known. I remember distinctly the agony of those times between services, particularly at this convention.
Two things of note happened here, however. First, a lady in a wheelchair whom I had not noticed before had someone push her forward on the stage to preach the word. I would remember her name only later, Charity Titus. I was struck by the anointing, power, and practicality of her word. Sister Charity would become one of the most important people in my life.
Brother Dural and Sister Ethelwyn were there as well. Brother Sam had not been at the California convention the year before and, of course, he was not there now. California was a small convention, however, and since the ministry had not yet gathered together after his death, little was said here. But again it was Brother D who shared with me about a little community starting in the high plains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, and about a small group of sisters who were struggling to build a little adobe house for the community. As I heard this story, a witness arose inside my heart that here was the next place God had for me.
After returning to Oregon, I again succeeded in convincing Jimmy to go with me to the convention that July in Bowens Mill, Georgia. We headed south at the end of June.
Jimmy and I visited the north rim of the Grand Canyon and drove into Canyon de Chelly National Monument on our way to the Albuquerque farm. I will share more of that community in the next chapter, but at that time, I shared with the elders there my leading to come and be a part of their community. We continued on towards Bowens Mill. We stopped at the move community in the Ozarks of Arkansas, only to discover that my calculations of when the convention was starting were wrong. We had to hurry on the next day.
Now, I was young and inconsiderate, immature and religious. Driving these long distances with Jimmy meant many arguments and my saying of wrongful and foolish things. Jimmy was always able to bear with my nonsense, but this long trip was wearing on him, I’m sure.
We arrived at Bowens Mill just as the first convention meeting was starting. We rushed in and found seats near the back. At the time, I would have defined myself in that moment as being “out of the Spirit.” For the first couple of services, I sensed no connection to any anointing even though Sister Ethelwyn led the praise, and I could not connect with the word being preached.
Meanwhile Jimmy happened to overhear some things said in the men’s bathroom that did not sit right with him. I don’t know what he heard, or whether he simply misunderstood. The next morning he said goodbye to me and headed back to Oregon. I have not seen him since, though I miss his good friendship.
Issues Set by God before All
Slowly I came back “into the Spirit,” that is, I could, again, hear the Lord speaking to me through the worship and the preaching of the word. There had been a memorial service for Brother Sam at Bowens Mill the first part of June, I believe, but this July was the first full convention after his death. Everyone had many questions, I’m sure.
Buddy Cobb had been right alongside of Brother Sam in anointing, in the preaching of the word, in faithfulness in ministry, and in wise counsel. For that reason everyone was positioned to yield to his leadership inside of a solidly corporate ministry.
At the beginning of a service midway through this convention, Don Stockbridge was leading the worship. By this time I was fully in tune, once again, with the Spirit of God. Brother Don was leading us in a fairly new worship song written by Brother Sam, one with which we were all well-familiar. We were singing it with great joy and confidence. Dancing in the Spirit had already begun in these conventions; we were enthusiastic in worship.
Here are the only words of the song that I can remember now: “Tell to creation – We’re not going to die.”
Halfway through the singing of this song, Brother Buddy Cobb stepped forward to pause the singing. He said to all (my paraphrase), “You cannot consider not dying until you have first stopped sinning.”
Then he suggested that we sing the song in this way: “We’re not going to die cause we’re not going to sin.” We sang it that way, but somehow a spark had vanished from our joy.
What was that? What had just happened?
I cannot give you an account of my life without also giving you an account of the move of God, for the two are intrinsically tied together as my life from age 20 to age 41. My wife grew up in the move fellowship from age 3 on. We were married in community, and our children were born in community.
My purpose in this account is to see the Lord Jesus in every moment of my life, to fill up any remaining holes with the goodness of God, and to draw from this account the determined purpose of God in setting before His Church a testimony regarding what He actually says in the New Testament.
This action of Buddy Cobb became a weight that slowly crushed me over the next nineteen years until that moment in the early months of 1998 when I KNEW that I would never be pleasing God or doing His will. Such a performance was entirely outside of my sphere. When I came to that utter knowing, I thought it was a time of great darkness. I did not know then that the light of Christ was now shining so brightly I could hardly see.
Lester Higgins had preached a word of “Christ our life,” a word that was witnessed to by almost all including Sam Fife. There was much agreement between that word and many things Sam Fife taught. Buddy Cobb preached a word of “Stop sinning first.” It certainly sounded “right” to everyone. There was much agreement between that word and many things Sam Fife taught. But there was no agreement between Lester Higgin’s word of “Christ our life” and Buddy Cobb’s word of “Stop sinning first.” The two words were as if from two different planets. In fact, they were the two trees standing before every person and every church, a tree of life, that is, Jesus living inside of us, versus a tree of “know what is right and do it and know what is wrong and stop doing it.”
In this several-month period God set before the move fellowship the same choice He set before Adam in the garden and all through the Bible and before every Christian, the same choice He sets before you every moment, dear reader.
And then, in the semi-crisis created by Brother Sam’s passing, the move fellowship chose the one and turned away from the other. The move fellowship, without even realizing it, turned away from the revelation of Jesus Christ through us, His body, and back to Calvinism, to full Nicene, that is Roman Catholic Christianity, back to the same belief system held by all Christians in this world. – Look upon your sin; do not look upon Christ Jesus as your present Salvation in whom alone you live, but only as a “superior” One just beyond your reach.
I want to give you a simple layout that will help you to understand this choice between two as it happened in the move fellowship.
I have not known any other fellowship that even comes close to the praise and worship we knew in the move. Yet, as I look at the lines we sang, I am astonished at the opposition found in the very words coming out of our mouth. We sang words of great faith; we sang words of longing to draw near without ever doing so, but mostly we sang words of outright unbelief.
Here is a song Brother Sam led us in, with deep connection to a glory just at the door. Consider the deep longing to know God along with the complete refusal that is found in it.
What more can I say, Lord,
What more can I say?
To unveil Your face, Lord,
Bring forth the new day?
That last final word, Lord,
That comes forth from You
Shall open the veil, Lord,
And we shall go through.
We sang the truth, yet we did not believe a word that we sang. Why? Because we did not care for God-Is, but we always wanted God to be something He is not. God says, “I am what I am.” We answer, “God, I wish You were something else, something better.”
Finally, in closing out this two-year time period that included direct involvement with Sam Fife, I want to show you how I now place the things that he taught. Again, this is vital to any account of my life because you will find things I learned through Sam Fife all through everything I teach now. Yet you will find many things Sam Fife taught that are repudiated with strength all the way through as well.
I understood the difference several years ago when I pulled out one of my favorite Sam Fife messages, “I Will Not Let You Go,” and listened to it again. Every “what” Sam Fife presented was the same as what I teach now, and every “how” Sam Fife gave, as to how the “what” of God would be fulfilled in our lives, was the opposite of what I now know is Paul’s gospel.
More than that, every wrenching difficulty that persuaded Dan and Joanne Kurtz that it was time to leave can be found inside of Sam Fife’s “how.” Yet the word that originally drew most into that fellowship was Sam Fife’s “what.”
As I realize now, the essential “why,” out from which everything else must flow, was absent from Sam Fife’s teaching. Buddy Cobb supplied a “why” for that fellowship, however, the horrific “why” of John Calvin. Since Buddy Cobb did not restore the typical Christian “what” of “go to heaven or go to hell,” there was no “what” at all in his teaching. Nonetheless, the vision of the “what,” that is, what God is doing, what the goal of the Christian life is really all about, that we had received from Sam Fife, remained for years in the hearts of many.
| The “How” of Sam Fife and Buddy Cobb | The “Why” of Buddy Cobb, that is, of John Calvin. | The “What” of Sam Fife, all of which I also teach. |
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When I heard Lester Higgins preach Christ our life, I knew it was a true word. I cannot say, however, that it was a word God was planting in me then. Certainly Jesus lived in my heart, but the wondrous vision of present union with Christ was entirely beyond my reach.
I can tell you exactly what God’s purpose for me through the next nineteen years would be. As I sought to know just what God says in His word to me, hiding His word in my heart with all fervency over years, so, under the crushing weight of the serpent’s gospel, I would come to the depths of despair expressed by Paul in Romans 7.
Only the lost know salvation. Only those who KNOW they cannot, turn with joy to another Self, the Lord Jesus, now the only Life they are.
This path God set for me was perfect, for me and for you.
Nonetheless, the covenant I made with my God, that He would do what I require, stands. I WILL KNOW my Father in this present age, and I WILL walk with a people who KNOW the Father just as much.
An Important Bit of History
If you were to search out information about Sam Fife, you would find more dark accusation against him than just about anyone.
One thing some like to discover happened in 1965-66, soon after the deliverance of Jane Miller. Sam Fife was deceived by a spirit of self-exaltation. Because he was very bold and because the whole pursuit of his soul was to know God, Sam Fife went fiercely in a wrong direction.
Except that did not last long. God very quickly dropped Sam Fife on his face before Him where he spent an entire year seeking God for His perspective, without preaching anything. After a year, God gave Brother Sam the same understanding of life and the knowledge of God that I also received from God through his preaching.
But God did not release Sam Fife to preach that word without a devastating warning, the same voice I have heard, speaking to him a similar warning that I also have heard. (I paraphrase, though I remember fairly clearly what Brother Sam shared.)
"If you ever turn away from Me again, I will take your life, rather than lose you to darkness. Do not turn away from Me again, My son."
As a result, Sam Fife always gathered a corporate ministry around himself, always kept himself covered, always kept his life as an open book for all to see. He shared these things openly, and I saw first hand the fear of God in which he kept himself.
Those who like to accuse will accuse even without knowing the truth.
Sadly, as I will share later, the hierarchy of ministry that Sam Fife presented to us as our covering became itself twisted because of the missing ingredient, our precious union with Jesus.
I never received anything from Sam Fife as an individual, but rather, all things I embraced came to me out from Scripture and out from the Spirit of God speaking personally to me. These are the things I have kept and now also teach. But God speaks through humans who are in-part. Thus, everything else never was part of me and is not part of what I teach.
You will find me sifting between what was of God and what was not all through my life story.