12. A Season of Loneliness

© 2019 Daniel Yordy

October 1982 - December 1983

Working with Derek 
After Abel and Adele Ramirez left for Juarez, my circumstances changed accordingly. But those changes came gradually. In fact, it was only much later, as I pondered over and over what went wrong, that I began to see the wonderful distinction that had been my life while I walked together with a man who treated me as an equal in the Lord versus all the other times. 

And so, this “Season of Loneliness,” began slowly, right after Brother Abel left. But before delving into the “loneliness” part of things, I want to give a layout of my work and experiences through the next several months.

Once the general construction work on the new kitchen had been completed and the cabinet bodies installed, the focus now turned towards the visible woodwork, the cabinet faces, doors, and countertops. Through the winter months, Derek and I worked together on these things in his shop. Derek taught me cabinet making in a well-tooled shop, one of the loves of my life. Derek had his ways, but I learned to adapt to them. To be honest with you, I look back now and treasure his gift to me, not only what he taught me, but also himself.  

I remember that Peter Honsalek had been helping Derek up until this point. So – this must have been the time of his wedding with Patti. Maureen was one of the bridesmaids. It was one of the more gallant weddings of many at Bowens Mill while I was living there. Peter then became involved in the school and was no longer working with Derek.

Derek and I had purchased a huge pile of oak 2 x 8’s for the cabinets. We cut all this down to make door panels and face frames. We used cypress for the countertops. This was a mistake, but we did not know that at the time, and they were beautiful. The wood was too soft, however, and soaked up dirt and grease. A couple of times after, on nightwatch, I scrubbed them down with steel wool, re-sanded, and then re-oiled them. Their beauty was worth it, but they could not last.

Derek and I together made a beautiful kitchen, still in use to this day.

By March we had completed that part of the task and the kitchen was back in full use. Now, Sunday morning dinner prep was a breeze. Everything went smoothly.

My attention turned, then, to the walk-in cooler and freezer off the back of the kitchen. This was quite a project, one on which I worked mostly by myself. I built thickly-insulated walls, floor, and ceiling, installed full metal sheeting inside, and built a thick oak-framed door with commercial-grade clasp and hinges. Claude helped me install the compressor system. I built removable cypress shelving that could be taken out and cleaned. You had to pass though the cooler to the door for the freezer. It was similar to the door into the kitchen, but cypress instead of oak. 

One day, while I was working on the shelving deep inside the muffled freezer room, I overheard strange sounds from the women in the kitchen. I also heard a distant, thump, thump, but it was too muffled for me to give it any heed. I stuck my nose out, however, to see what on earth all the excitement was about. As I came out of the thick-walled cooler, I heard the noise as of many freight train engines going right over the top of us. I saw with my own eyes rain water coming in the open window on one side and going straight across the room to go out the open window on the other side.

The mighty roaring ended as quickly as it had started. In complete astonishment, I went outside to see what terrible damage had just occurred. Brother Claude met me in front of the Tabernacle, and we walked around the trailer park together, seeing the destruction, and hoping we would not find mangled bodies.

The tornado had removed a huge gum tree, on the other side of the washhouse, taken out the clothes lines, and then lifted up to remove the roof from the wash house. It’s massive tip was right above the tabernacle where I was working, but not on the ground. It removed the upper part of the tall pines alongside the tabernacle, went right over the teaching trailer where Brother Jim was teaching his morning class and came back down to the ground just beyond the Hinson trailer where it turned the small cowshed into toothpicks. It then proceeded on the ground, in full view of the astonished students and teachers at the school, removing huge pine trues, throwing them high into the air and slamming them to the ground.

As Claude and I walked through the trailer park, we saw a miracle. Every tree and branch that would have crushed a trailer still stood. Every one of the many trees that came down were in-between the trailers. Only one trailer was slightly dinged and another one damaged a little bit. That one was the only trailer that had insurance and the insurance company paid for rebuilding their entire trailer, something the owners were asking God to accomplish for them.

No one was touched. The brother working in the cow shed had forgotten a tool and was busy getting it when the cow shed turned to tooth picks. Dozens of people were in those flimsy trailers or working on the grounds, and no one was touched. This is a grace upon brethren walking together in community that is not found in most other contexts.

Sometime through these next few months, Derek became discouraged with the constraints of life at the Ridge. He and Nancy moved back to San Antonio, Texas, taking all of his wonderful tools with them, though the shop building remained. The Ridge had only a few inadequate tools to replace them and working in that shop now became to me an empty shell.

Reassessing Everything 
Claude Mack is my father-in-law, the grandfather of our children. They have always called him “Papa.” He and Lois will be here in our home again this Thanksgiving.

When I married his daughter, absolutely the best thing I have ever done in my life, I was, in one sense, binding myself to “Bowens Mill.” 

I have always known that the Lord did something special for me during the deliverance times at Blueberry through 1987-88; that is, He removed from me most of the difficulty inside towards my time at Bowens Mill. But only now am I seeing the full impact of what that means.

In essence, God’s wedding gift to me, through the months before my friendship with Maureen began, was the miraculous removal of bitterness from the inside of me regarding my years at Bowens Mill. As I am writing of this time period now, I see the contrast. Writing about my childhood through my time at Albuquerque has brought great travail accompanied by gentle healing. I suspect that writing about my time from Blueberry on will be the same. 

But for Bowens Mill, I do not find those same wounds inside. Neither was my time there as much of an issue during my years of healing with John Eldredge. What would my marriage and the raising of our children have been like if God had not given me such a wondrous gift? I have no need ever to know.

I am so deeply grateful to a Father who is good all the time.

As I look at the account thus far, it seems little more than an outline of what I did. That’s partly because I had no close relationships during this time. Nonetheless, I loved community, and the Ridge was a godly Christian community with love and regard for one another paramount. Yet it was during these years that I began to say to myself, “I love community; it’s just people that I can’t stand.”

My relationship with Claude Mack has been the most difficult relationship over time in my life, a relationship of close proximity beginning in December of 1980 until now. My dear wife has insisted absolutely that, regardless of anything, her father is to be treated in all honor and with the highest respect. I have always agreed with her, being always strengthened by her resolve.

Having written about the Ridge thus far, I find myself reassessing everything. God’s removal of all hurt from me was, in a sense, a negative, that is, the negation of something that would have been harmful. I find the opposite happening inside of me now, that is, the addition to me of a realization of the value and goodness so many experiences, and primarily, people from this time really are to me. I am a wealthy man, and my treasures are increasing daily. You see, that is the “power” of an endless life, that all things that belong to me will return again, each in its season. I can lose nothing, but only gain forever.

Up until my time of deliverance at Blueberry, I knew only bitterness and grief regarding the time at Bowens Mill after the Ramirez’s left. From that time of deliverance until now, I have known mostly an empty slate regarding the things I will share in this letter and the next. But now, completely separate from any design of mine, I am discovering the arising of neither bitterness nor blankness, but instead, abundant treasure and life everlasting.

And so, dear reader, I contend with you that, as I share of these difficult things, as I must, you will not cast any aspersion upon anyone, regardless. More than that, I do believe absolutely in “the dealings of God,” in their season and time. 

God was after something on the inside of me that He had to remove for me to know Father and to share Father with you now. God proved the full completion of that removal in a Bowens Mill Convention in late March of 1997. Let me give that thing a Bible name – “Korah,” that is, “Christian” rebellion. I witnessed “Christian” rebellion in another again just recently. When I am pressed beyond all measure, it is there that I KNOW that the removal of that thing from me is the greatest work of God in my life, a value beyond all measure.

Writers of great literature, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Austen, Tolkien, are counted as timeless writers because of how they take an individual human and press that person by circumstances beyond all measure. It is there, as with Hamlet, at the point between play-acting and real life, between sanity and insanity, that the human soul can be opened up for all to see the depths inside. Few scenes in literary history are more piercing and impactive than that moment when Natasha Rostov of War and Peace sinks to her knees in the chapel in utter despair, and finds not only the Lord Jesus there, but also her true self.

And so I want to draw a straight line of the hammer of God upon the heart of a young man, from September of 1982 until March of 1997. I want to show you the blows, the pain, and the deliverance. Clearly, I am an epistle of Christ, written by the greatest Author in the universe, a God who wins our hearts for His dwelling place.

Yet in setting forth my soul for you, dear reader, I am expecting to win the same removal of “Korah” from your heart as well, and that for Father’s sake, that He might live inside of you without hindrance and in all overflowing JOY.

“Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.” - “Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.”

Claude Mack 
After Abel and Adele Ramirez left for Juarez, Brother Claude became my “covering” as the dorm example. This was somewhat convenient, since he lived next door. His front door and ours were maybe thirty feet apart.

Everything that Abel was, Claude was not.

Up until writing these accounts, I had always placed Claude in the category of the “bullies” in my life. I suddenly realize that is completely incorrect. A “bully” is one who gains a perverse pleasure, a stroking of conceit, through manipulating and abusing others. That was not Claude Mack at all. Claude was a military man, and he practiced only what he believed was his duty.

So far in this account I have resisted the inclusion of anyone else’s “story,” which would not be mine to give. Nonetheless, because Maureen and her family are entering my story through this time, it is right for me to place Claude’s history just a bit.

Brother Claude was born in Brownfield, Texas in 1932, but grew up in nearby Seminole. That would have placed him as an adolescent through WWII. By the end of high school, then, Claude signed up for the U.S. Navy. Claude is a very diligent man, greatly self-disciplined, and he gives his full attention to duty. These qualities meant that he rose in the ranks to become the Chief Petty Officer (the highest rank a service man can attain), serving on three different aircraft carriers that played a significant role in the Vietnam war. Claude’s primary skill, besides running a “tight ship,” was electrical maintenance. 

While Claude was stationed in Hawaii in the 50’s, he met a young woman who had come from San Francisco to work as a Sunday school teacher by the name of Roberta Miller. They married in 1956, and their first daughter, Lois, was born less than a year after my birth, followed by Jessica, and then Maureen in 1962. Only for Maureen’s birth, they were stationed at the naval base in Albuquerque, New Mexico – and yes, there is a naval base there in the high desert. They moved to Oakland, California, then, in 1964.

During Maureen’s childhood years, Claude was away on-ship much of the time. This was the height of the Vietnam war. When Maureen was just three, she went with her mother and grandmother, Susan Jacobsen, to hear Sam Fife preach for the first time. While Claude was at home, then, he would have participated in the move fellowship services.

Claude retired from the military in 1972, when I was fifteen and Maureen nine. He and his family soon moved to a small Christian community near Marlette, Michigan. They then moved to Sapa, Mississippi, a year later. At Sapa, first Roberta and then later Claude were set into the ministry by John Hinson. For five years, Claude and Roberta, along with their three daughters, were a significant part of the Sapa Deliverance Community as well as a couple of smaller communities sponsored by Sapa. When Sapa closed in 1978, they hitched up their trailer and drove it to Bowens Mill, finally parking it in its spot at the Ridge sometime in 1979.

At the time, I knew none of this, of course. All I knew was an iron man of firm discipline, of little display of emotion, and of no interactions I would have called friendship.

When I shared with Abel concerning the doings of the men in the dorm, it was our ministry together towards them. When I shared with Claude the same things, I was speaking to what appeared to me a blank face. Then, when I had done my duty, that was it. Everything was now in the hands of “the elders.”

I did not at first realize there was any difference. In fact, I was mostly oblivious to the human person inside. It would take years for me to comprehend the role Abel played in my life and the severe reduction that came to me when he left. All that I knew was that things started not working out, things started going all wrong. I had no idea why.

Nonetheless, the question before me now is this. Can I value Claude Mack as he is and as he was without requiring him to be different? If I have the right to place the Lord Jesus upon all that I am and upon every moment of my life, then so also does he. Indeed, my continuing relationship with my father-in-law has always been at the contending heart of God teaching me Christ as us.

“Father, I thank You that from the start You have contended directly with me that if Christ Jesus has entered into union with me, then He has also entered into union with Claude Mack, that if Christ lives as me, then He lives also, just  as much, as Brother Claude. Our differences of expression, though outwardly great, are nothing more than differing expressions of Your own Person, our dear and good Father.

“And so Father, I do again as I have done, yet now at a deeper level of personal understanding. I draw Claude into my heart, just as he is, embedded now inside of Your Love shed abroad in me. And there, Father, I release Claude into You, that he and You might arise together into all life and joy, utterly free of me.

“Yet, Oh Father, I am willing for You to do much more than that. While I am not able to do such a thing, I know that You are well able, and that You do all things well. Father, I am willing for You to return Claude Mack back to me as my close and dear friend forever. I am willing, my Father. Let it be to me according to Your word.”

A Conception of “Ministry” 
The move of God was NOT a “cult,” and I will resist any attempt to brand it as such. It was little different than any other close Christian experience, the same thing, just intensified. I found the exact same “cultic” elements in every other Christian setting since, though Christian “cultism” is nothing compared to the normal cultic practices of the world. The public school political structure was far more cultic than anything Christian, far more destructive, and with far fewer redeeming qualities. 

Everyone wants to blame this or that for problems. There is one problem only – humans. And there is one reason why humans are the problem, and that is the universal rejection of the knowledge of God, even including Nicene Christianity.

One element inside the move fellowship could be called “cultic,” however, and that is the ordering of “ministry.” Give people a false role to play based on human ability, tell them that moving in this role is “God’s order,” and you will place everyone into the spinning of false stories of self, a “this-is-me,” that is not Christ. 

Essentially, Brother Sam established an “order” in the move fellowship based on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, a passage that has no relationship with the Old Testament, but comes right out of Aristotle, one of those problematic pieces inside of Paul’s letters that we cannot know and that should be left entirely on the shelf. God’s kingdom arises from beneath; it does NOT create a top-down hierarchy of “authority over.” Tie that together with the Calvinist’s deceitful translation of Hebrews 13:17 into “obey those who have the rule over you,” and you have the recipe for the creation of a natural aristocracy, an ordering into which people must place their self-story. (The writer of Hebrews actually said “have confidence in those who are restoring word into you.” In other words, connecting you with the Lord Jesus, not with themselves.)

This issue is such a big deal in my own life story that I must begin to address it here. 

Out from his own personal need to stay protected, as I shared earlier, Brother Sam established an ordering of ministry. Apostles covered elders who covered all who were not “ministry.” Because we humans always take things in directions God does not intend, this ordering did more damage to those who were elders than to any other. Having such a place “above” the regular “body members” creates inside a twisted story of self that will take a great work of God to unravel.

You see, it’s only now that I understand these things. It was only confusion through my years in move community. I am writing this part now, after Thanksgiving during which Claude and Lois spent a few days in our home. I was astonished as I watched my father-in-law laughing and smiling over his great-grandson (Gabriel) on the video phone. I never saw him do that once with his grandchildren. And then I understood why. While our children were little, Claude was still functioning as an elder in move community. At the present time, he is not. The Claude that I saw this Thanksgiving was real; Claude’s outward expression that I knew for years was not. Instead, he operated inside what he thought was “expected” of him by God. This false expectation, then, creates a human persona that cannot be true.

Nonetheless, even though the structure of “ministry” would work the same separation into an elite “aristocracy,” as it always has among humans, the move fellowship was filled with Christian love and the Spirit of God. One thing Brother Sam insisted on was that ministry must always be corporate. That togetherness brought a measure of balance.

I observed at close hand the same authority structures in the public school system and realized that it is normal for humans to be utterly corrupted by such a false story of “I am in charge of you.” The world is far more cultic than anything inside Christianity. 
Yet it would be upon this anvil of ministry “above you” upon which God would strike His greatest blows upon my heart, the bulls-eye towards which the arrow of God passed through my life to hit that one thing inside the human soul that will keep us from ever knowing Father.

As a young man in my twenties, I was outwardly mature and capable. Inwardly, however, I was very needy. I did not understand people, though I always moved in maturity towards others. Inside, though, I spent so much of my time spinning great fantasy daydreams in my mind. My mind moves very rapidly, and its only outlet was to escape the frustration and loneliness by creating fantastical mental stories. Of course, I was always the “ruler” in my stories.

David Troshin and the Dorm
I can portray this time of aloneness for me only in context, that is, life in the men’s dorm. It was, for the most part, a miserable place to live. Since I was “in charge,” and since my role was to report daily to the elders all the “goings on” in the dorm, I could never be in a normal relationship with those who lived there. 

One time, after a contention with someone in which I did not act as well as I should have, I was called into an elders meeting. One of them told me, “Daniel, if you want friends, you have to be a friend.” This statement was so disconnected from my reality that I had no idea where to place it. And I did not understand. You cannot be friends with those whom you are reporting “for their good.” And none in that circle of elders had any idea of being a friend to me. I lived in this fog of disconnection for three years. 

Then there was David Troshin. David had to be accompanied always; if not, he would do something bizarre that would aggravate the most “spiritual.” David had a wonderful way of getting under one’s skin, of discovering every religious desire in others to “set him straight,” all of which was a complete waste of effort.

Since I was “in charge,” I took the larger part of being with David to services, etc. Others would take their turns, but preferred not to. We would have a wonderful service; I would be lifted up into the joy of the anointing, and before we got home, David Troshin always succeeded in dragging me down into “the flesh.” 

I noticed something strange, over the years, that I could not comprehend. When we sat down in a row for the main services, wherever they were held, the row in front of us and behind us and to each side of us would fill up, but the row in which David and I sat never did unless there was nowhere else for latecomers to sit. Then, when I was in the audio booth, running the sound system, I noticed that when David was with anyone else, the rows filled up normally. It wasn’t him; it was me. What do you do with something like that, something that happens consistently for years? I did not know that this was a typical reaction to Asperger’s. 

An Asperger’s is very different outwardly than what they are inwardly. Their problem is that they know only what they are inside. They have no idea how other people see them. And other people see Asperger’s as harsh and arrogant. But that “harshness” is coming from a totally different cause than with most. 

Of the fifty-some men who passed through that dorm while I lived there, almost all of them left further from the Lord than when they came. These men found themselves caught between David Troshin and Claude Mack. David made life miserable for everyone, and Claude, the “authority” over the dorm, could not express human compassion. He was a military man, demanding explanations for “bad conduct,” explanations that could never satisfy him.

Men would run to get away from this impossible combination.

More than that, the Ridge was the strictest community in the move fellowship. I saw close hand one of the reasons why God hated the old covenant based on human performance. The directive given towards people was not “know Christ your life,” but rather, “submit to the covering and follow the order.” It was believed fervently that what people needed was to “follow the order,” that this kind of performance would make them “right with God,” and thus they would be made whole.

I observed the opposite result. First, those who gave themselves to “submitting” created such a false story of self. They became religiously and humanly fake. I observed such human fakery closely for years. I cannot tolerate it nor any of the false expectations that create it. Then, as people “put on a show” for the elders, their true needs, deep inside, are covered over. All people are REAL deep inside, and that realness wants to know the Lord Jesus alive inside their hearts. But external expectations of performance will ALWAYS force people to turn to fakery in order to be “like Christ” in the eyes of those who are “above" them.”

Then, when they disappear from the community and you never hear from them again, you have no idea why. They had seemed to be doing “so well.” Law cannot ever impart life.

I am not subject to fakery; I never have been. That’s part of why I was sometimes charged with being “unsubmissive.” Yet I have always respected authority and always submitted in what was right and always given myself to the needs of others with all my heart in the only ways I knew how. Always, other humans look upon outward appearance to define one another, and always the Lord looks only upon the heart. 

You see, I am now able to take the delight on Claude Mack’s face toward his great-grandson, Gabriel – my daughter Johanna’s son, that is, the real Claude, and impute that same knowing of him through every moment of my interaction with him over the years. Doing that turns everything around and gives me great compassion for a man who was caught also in a false story he did not understand.

Through this time, however, I understood none of these things, but stumbled forward only, in a fog of hurt, confusion, and loneliness. [And please don’t join me in any “pity party.” I certainly felt sorry for myself more than most. I can only laugh at such folly now. Yet I must present to you as accurate of a picture of my life as I can.]

Charlie & Wassel
Two men in the dorm through these years were friends to me, and I count them as friends today, though both are with the Lord, Charlie Jones and Wassel Tschiniak. Both of these men were a bit older and, in their own ways, a bit stronger than I. 

Charlie was a builder and worked off the farm through these years, running a construction business doing work mostly in the town of Fitzgerald. Charlie was strong and filled with exuberant joy. I did one job for him, building a porch addition onto a house in Fitzgerald, one that needed a tricky roof design. Typically, however, we were not together that much since our daily lives took us in different directions.

Charlie was always sharing how the Lord led him here and led him there, how the Lord said to buy this tool or hire this man, and how the Lord always prospered him. And indeed the Lord did. My own story was the opposite. All I ever heard from the Lord was “No.” When I tried to buy a screwdriver, the Lord said, “No.” 

I learned a critical principle of God through this relationship. God does lead two people side by side in very different ways. What God is leading you to do is NOT what He is leading your brother or sister next to you to do. And imposing my definition of “God” on others must always be false – and must create only falseness in others.

When Charlie moved into the dorm, he took the bunk above David Troshin. Charlie had been a sergeant in the army and, although he was always easy going, he had a firm line drawn. One time David crossed that line and Charlie beat him up. That got Charlie in trouble with the elders, but such a thing bothered him not at all. In complete contrast, David treated Charlie with utmost respect from then on and was actually half decent for the next week or so.

Because I had to be always firm with David to prevent him from doing really bizarre things that served always to aggravate others, he often threatened me with his weird twisted notions of “getting back.” I paid no attention to his threats. I now know that was unwise.

Nonetheless, I must close out my account of David Troshin with his end. A few years after my family and I left the move communities, a man visiting the Ridge during a convention reacted typically to David by “setting him straight.” This time, David did more than say, “I’m going to poke you.” He followed the man and did “poke” him – with a kitchen knife. His threats were actually real. The brother died. I know nothing more of David Troshin’s story except my assumption that he would have been taken to a hospital for the criminally insane. 

In-between writing the two parts of this letter, I felt a reluctance for some time to come back to this topic. That reluctance is my disgust for the four-and-a-half years I spent with this man. My testimony has always been, “All of His ways concerning me are perfect. He has never led me wrong; He has never not led me.” This is the only chapter of my life for which I see no redeeming qualities. David Troshin was a dead weight that dragged so many men down. Few reached into him as closely as I did. All I found inside was self-centered gibberish; I could not find a heart.

“Lord Jesus, I do not understand David Troshin or the years of my life through which he was my burden. I can find no purpose. Can I draw David Troshin into love within my heart? I can do it, Lord Jesus, because I know that You are true.

“And Lord, I have to accept that my drawing of David Troshin into Your love in me will not affect him at all, in the foreseeable time. He is willfully and dumbly set against responding to any such thing. Yet David Troshin comes out from You every moment, Lord Jesus, and You have always carried him.

“Lord Jesus, I forgive David for the yuckiness he has always been to me, and I forgive those who allowed this man to continue to do so much damage to so many. And Lord Jesus, I forgive You for placing this man in my life for so many years. 

“David Troshin belongs to You, Lord Jesus, and You will triumph in his life. I know that the day will come when he, with sound mind and heart, will give You thanks for all things.”

Wassel Tschiniak was an entirely different matter. Wassel’s mother was from Latvia. He was born in a ditch in Poland as she fled before the Red army driving into Europe. He made his way to Chicago as a young man and did well as an enforcer for the mob. He and Charlie were about the same age, huskiness, and strength, not that big, but much stronger than they looked.

Wassel got saved and joined the move fellowship where he became an elder and a traveling ministry. For a few years he was the leading elder of the Ware Farm, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Wassel could preach up a storm, though he repeated himself over and over to do so. Yet in the press of “ministry,” he would break, sneak out, and get stone-cold drunk.

Buddy Cobb removed Wassel’s “ministry” role from him. If he wanted to continue in the move fellowship, then he needed to go to the Ridge for help. Wassel showed up at the Ridge not long after I was the dorm example. Wassel was big-hearted and generous. He befriended me more than any other did. At times he could be trusted; he was willing to take David Troshin off my hands more than any other was. Yet at other times he could be a sneak. 

Wassel always had to be watched closely when he went to town. Once, he went with me into a drug store. I knew I had to watch him every second, but for about two seconds my back was turned. When I turned around again, he was gone. Immediately, I raced out of the store to find that he had already downed an entire bottle of cough syrup he had snatched off the shelf. One time in the dorm, I found him quite drunk. There, out from the bottom of his soul, he expressed his hatred for those who had stripped him of his “ministry.”

Yet Wassel’s immaturity had hurt so many people; he should never have been put into such a false position in the first place.

I liked Wassel, and I know that our friendship will be restored in goodness and truth.

My Time in the Word 
I did very little reading during my years at Bowens Mill. There was neither time nor place for it. I did read Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and Into His Image by Dr. Paul Brand through this time. Dr. Paul Brand had a large impact on me, in my knowledge of God, one that continues to this day. You cannot but gain from spending time in his books.

As an aside, while Derek Jessop was still living at the Ridge, I borrowed a set of books from him and read them all. The author was Immanuel Velikovsky, and the books were Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval, and Ages in Chaos. I was massively affected by these books and have adhered to their basic premise all the way through. Nonetheless, this was not a topic that could be raised in move conversation. Velikovsky’s premise was that early humans, in their record of events, were telling us the truth, including the Biblical accounts. Yet that testimony presents a history of the solar system that is VERY different from what most today suppose. 

Today, I am convinced by much scientific evidence that Velikovsky had it right. The universe is electrical, and the solar system known by humans before the flood was utterly different than what we see today. More than that, the scenario of Egyptian dating used by historians is false. In order to have an accurate understanding of Bible history, one must draw Egyptian history forward 600 years. Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt at the destruction of the old kingdom, and Solomon’s “Queen of Sheba,” was Queen Hatshepsut of the middle kingdom. When you do that, so many things in the Old Testament line up with known human history.

This is a critically important understanding God gave at that time, one which will be essential to know in the years ahead as the solar system once again goes “haywire” and most will totally freak out. But, I will include no more of that here.

I continued my habit of writing out verses and books of the Bible in endless word studies. The hours of nightwatch each week lent themselves to that task. I remember doing a complete write-out of the Song of Solomon using Watchman Nee’s book on the subject as my reference.  

This was my mid-twenties, when my mental capacities were slowly nearing their peak. I did hide God’s word in my heart as a matter of course, but I also toyed with figuring out Bible prophecy with my mind. I did not know then that Isaac Newton had already done that – and no one cared. 

Nonetheless, in my mental enthusiasm, I decided that it would also be a great plan to write a single gospel, pulling in the wording from all four. I was walking from the Tabernacle to the dorm, happily imagining how much fun that would be when I found myself confronted by a bony finger sticking itself in my forehead, so to speak, and the harsh words spoken into my spirit, “What are you doing to My word?” This was the same One who had come upon me in fear in the Prince George bus terminal.

Needless to say, I dropped my plans like a hot potato. From then on, I stopped any attempts at “figuring out” the Bible. I sought only to plant all that God speaks into my heart, to know what He speaks, but not to know what it has to mean.

During my years at Bowens Mill, I attended fifteen different conventions including one at Lubbock and one in Mexico City. Move conventions were always deep spiritual experiences that worked profoundly inside of me. I will share more on that in the next chapter.

I took on the task of transcribing the series of teachings Sam Fife preached in Hollywood, Florida  just before his death, titled “The Hollywood Series.” These were six messages of about two-hours’ length each. I listened to the tape recording during the night watch hours and wrote them out word for word. I connected with one of the traveling ministries who was staying at the Ridge at that time, Sister Janet Myers. Since I had no typewriter, she had a relative of hers type out the transcriptions, and they were turned into little booklets. 

I also developed a series of teaching booklets from these messages. I gave them to Brother Buddy at New Covenant to see if they could be useful for the fellowships. I had put many, many hours of work into this; it was for me a labor of love and joy. After a convention a number of weeks later, Brother Buddy was in the front seat of a car pulling away from in front of the Ridge Tabernacle. The car stopped, and Janet Myers in the back seat rolled down her window. She beckoned to me, and gave me all of the study booklets I had given to Buddy Cobb to peruse.

Janet Myers said to me, “These aren’t of any value. Brother Buddy says that Brother Sam was teaching deception.” Then, they drove away.

Long before I left the Ridge, I had lost all heart. This was the moment it was crushed. 

What on earth do you do with something like that? Life continues, but the fog only increases.

Seven Years of Word 
From the summer of 1977, when I heard Sam Fife preach on "The Mystery of a Man with a Maid," on tape at Graham River Farm, until the summer of 1984, a probable ending point for this seven-year season, I listened to quite a number of words preached by Brother Sam. The majority of those words were on tape, but a fair number were in person before his death.

The words on tape were as vivid to me as the words in person, and through all of them my heart was wide open to God in the heavens and I received from my Father His Word deep into my heart.

One word that lives inside me even now is Brother's Sam's teaching called "Christ is a Corporate Man." He said, "Christ life is corporate life. it has never been anything but corporate life and it never will be anything but corporate life." Union with Christ has taught me the balance, that Christ life is also completely personal to each one of us. Yet I hold to Christ also as Community even until now.

Two other words that implacted me deeply were Sam Fife's word on Abraham and Mt. Moriah and his word on jacob, "I Will Not Let You Go." Wrestling with God until He causes me to know Him is the story of my life. But in his word on Abraham offering Isaac, Brother Sam spoke of a test God would bring into your life, a choice between everything you ever wanted and knowing God. I know now that God does not "test" us, rather, He proves Christ to us. Yet this is the pattern of my life.

Further Experiences 
My parents were planning to fly to Michigan that August of 1983 to visit with their brothers and sisters living there. It worked out for me to borrow a car from a sister in the community and drive up. Three other fellows went with me, two of whom I dropped off along the way. The third, Teddy Hsueh, went with me all the way to Detroit. I was glad for that, Teddy lived on the outskirts of the move; his wife lived at the Ridge. Teddy was streetwise and tough and Detroit was not safe.

We stayed in the Christian community in Detroit, however, all of whom were African Americans and very much part of the move. My parents flew in, and we spent the night in the community house coming and going. They were received as at home.

I learned something important while visiting with my Uncle Charles in Michigan. His daughter, a cousin much older than I, had Down Syndrome. She was short and fat and of very little mind. Yet she was also all heart. When we arrived, she raced out of the house with wide-open arms to greet mom and dad, whom she remembered. Once inside, she soon had her head on my mom’s lap, weeping, “I miss my mommy,” who had passed on not long before. 

At the Ridge prior to that time, I had walked for a short time with a young man who had completely “flipped out.” He needed constant watch, 24/7. We were not able to help him. All those who were “mentally ill” at the Ridge had the same overwhelming quality of pure selfishness. At no point could anyone else’s needs or concerns enter into their picture. 

My cousin was the opposite, mentally retarded, but big of heart and filled with love for others. The two “mental conditions” are opposite. My cousin had a brain problem; the mentally ill at the Ridge had a heart problem – absolute self-centeredness. I am convinced that in the resurrection many of those who were Down Syndrome now, when they are restored to full minds, will have hearts larger than most. They will be seen as the real humans. 

After spending time with our relatives, I returned my parents to the Detroit airport and then proceeded back to Bowens Mill by myself. If you will look at the map, you will see that a straight line from Detroit to Bowens Mill passes within 500 miles of Gettysburg. To be within 500 miles of Gettysburg and not go there was entirely impossible, so I headed east.

As I passed through the Canton, Ohio, area, I determined to find Dan and Joanne Kurtz. You understand that, as a young man, I did not ask for directions or warn people I was coming. I remembered “Uniontown,” and in Uniontown, I found a Mennonite Church. Sure enough, someone there knew of the Kurtz’s, and so I spent the afternoon with them. It was over four years since I had last seen them. We had a wonderful visit together. Then, I spent an entire half day at the Gettysburg battlefield site before driving on back to Georgia.

Through the next few months I continued working, mostly by myself, on more jobs associated with the kitchen, including a second full kitchen on the back porch for milk processing, etc. Working by one’s self in construction in community becomes a very lonely experience. 

I want to add two more experiences before this chapter is completed. Both of them likely happened in 1983, though I did not record them when I cast the outline of my autobiography twenty years ago. The first was the first dream job of my construction career, and the second was a wondrously fun community “fishing trip.”

I had dreamed for years of building a house of my own design. That chance came when Brother Woody Crossin, moving up from south Florida to serve as a caretaker at the convention site, asked me to design and build their home, the one standing right at the corner where you turn in towards the Tabernacle. My designs until then, except for the Ridge kitchen, had been partly fantasy; this one had to be real. I turned to a brother who lived at the New Covenant farm, Nick Shipsky, to help me get the bathrooms right. I designed a story-and-a-half home, with an upstairs in the roof, but with dormers. 

I could not be released from the Ridge for the normal time it would take to build that house, however. Neither were any of the other builders on the different farms able to take the time. Thus it was decided that we would all gather and build the thing in one weekend. I would be in charge.

Twenty-six men gathered on a Saturday morning to construct the house, most of them professionals. We had framers, sheetrockers, painters, plumbers, and electricians. In order for this to work, however, everything needed to flow. The brothers at the convention site had already built the foundation and floor when we arrived, so we started with the walls. The stairs were in place before all the walls were up and all upper deck work could go up and down the stairs. 

We would have finished in two days if everyone had been there both days. As it was we came close. I did little of the work; most of my time was spent coordinating everything. I absolutely loved it; it was so much fun. Sheetrockers and painters, plumbers and roofers, all doing their stuff at the same time. It was heavenly.

I would get to do that twice more, the next time being  bigger and far more glorious, but that comes in a future chapter. I was certainly held in much higher respect by those men from then on.

Sometime in here a neighbor in-between us and New Covenant had a large fish pond he wanted drained in order to rid it of frogs and turtles. He offered to the move communities to catch the fish in the pond as the water drained. Many people from the three communities were gathered that Saturday around the banks, eager to process the fish. Someone brought two long, two-man fish nets. 

I got the end of one of the nets with Darryl Cobb at the other end. I think it was Richard and Wassel on the other net. We started at one end and worked our way forward in conjunction with each other. When we got to the end of our first run, we each had a few turtles in the nets, but no fish. We knew the fish were there, but they jumped right over the nets. We tried again, doing it differently each time. After awhile we were coming up with hundreds of small fish in our nets through each pass. The people on the shore put the fish into large barrels to be carried to the different communities. Everyone was having such a lark. It was one of those great experiences one stumbles across through life, just like the disciples on the Sea of Galilee.

Then, sometime near the end of 1983, I was busy with a chain saw, clearing some brush along the drive into the farm when Jim Fant came walking up to me. He asked me a question that would change my life and set me on an entirely new course. But that must await the next chapter.