Preface: As a pastor at a Lutheran church, I somehow end up on the mailing list for every doomsday cult. I regularly get flyers of propaganda in the mail from various groups. Yesterday I got a mailing from "The Word of the Lord". I searched Google for information about this group and found nothing except a forum post from a few months ago, in which somebody inquired about this group but got no responses. From this I assume they are obscure enough to have no internet buzz but established enough to mail out propaganda to churches in rural Nebraska, a thousand miles away.

Findings: I spent several hours analyzing the "prophecies" included in the mailing and identified some as being by Harry Edgar Baker, a fundamentalist polygamist Mormon who published a book entitled "The Word of the Lord to His Church in the Wilderness; and to All the Nations of the Gentiles..." in 1917. Little is known about this man, but he is a favorite cult hero among extremist fundamentalist Mormons, such as many in the FLDS. His followers are very likely to strongly support "taboo" LDS teachings such as polygamy, forced child marriage, blood atonement, the racial curse of black people and so forth.

The return address was PO Box 355 Coolidge, AZ 85228, registered to Deedee Merril, business owner of "Dee's Do Dadz" at 1211 W Ocotillo ST in Coolidge. Using Google Street View, I found this address to be a private residence. It is a large house with all of the windows painted over. This is a common characteristic of polygamist households. This is done to conceal potentially illegal polygamy and child sexual abuse. I called the business phone number of "Dee's Do Dadz" and a young girl answered the phone. I calmly asked for "The Word of the Lord please," and the girl sounded a bit shocked and nervous, then she gave me another private phone number.

I did a reverse phone search and found this number to belong to Roy Reed of 1220 W Lincoln in Coolidge Arizona. I assume that if I did further research, he would be a cult leader and probably the registered owner of the Mesa PO box. I may call him today.

Does anybody have any more helpful information about this group?

I forgot to mention that the pamphlet itself listed a contact address saying "other prophecies and revelations may be obtained by writing to the Word of the Lord PO Box 1483 Mesa AZ 85211-1483."

By circumstantial evidence and similarities, the propaganda may be related to cryfromthedust.net and americahistory.net (At the latter site you can learn about the "divinely inspired constitution" and being protected by the "well-armed yankee")

Pastor Harris:

Thank you for doing the footwork of research on this. I pastor in West Central Iowa. I returned from vacation to find a letter from this cult on my desk. Same format as you described in your post. I too Googled this group and your post was first on the list of search hits. Kudos on getting the truth out there.

I'm a Lutheran pastor in Minnesota, and I also received the letter to which you refer. So much of it is incoherent rambling that it surprises me that anyone would send this stuff en masse to people. There is no clear message as far as I can tell. However, since I didn't bother to read much of it, maybe I'm missing something.

I find your information interesting. Any idea about how you are going to respond to this?

It makes me wonder if all churches were targeted in this kind of mailing. Just Lutheran churches? Only in certain states? Some other rhyme or reason? So many unanswered questions. I received two copies of the same thing, actually, one for the church, and the other for the parsonage.

Thanks for passing the word along about your findings.

Pastor Harris,

Another thing, I talked to another one of my colleagues, and he mentioned that the same letter arrived on his desk. I was interested to hear his insight. Without any prompting from me, he mentioned that the "prophecies" sound Mormon in nature due to the fact that they don't quote scripture.

I was also wondering what led you to think that this is a white supremacist cult. Was there something about that in the text of the "prophecies?" Thanks!

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Donnie
Pastor Harris,

Another thing, I talked to another one of my colleagues, and he mentioned that the same letter arrived on his desk. I was interested to hear his insight. Without any prompting from me, he mentioned that the "prophecies" sound Mormon in nature due to the fact that they don't quote scripture.

I was also wondering what led you to think that this is a white supremacist cult. Was there something about that in the text of the "prophecies?" Thanks!

I too immediately recognized a "Mormon flavor" to the whole deal before doing any research. I then found that most of the documents were simply a direct reprint of "essays" by Harry Edgar Baker, a known polygamist Mormon. Some of my thoughts are correlative and inferential based on the other writings by and about Mr. Baker. At others times, not included in the mailing, he wrote strongly in favor of the "curse of Ham" or "mark of Cain" teachings. While this "white supremacy" has always had some place among the Mormon community, it has often been controversial (Smith himself was said to be an abolitionist) and has now fallen out of favor, except by extreme fundamentalists. Baker was clearly on this end of the spectrum.

Thanks for clarifying. It does stand to reason that if people are sending these "essays" out to people, which are word for word reprints, that this group would hold to some of the extreme teachings which you describe.

I should clarify that I might have been mistaken when I said that the document does not quote scripture. At points there clearly are nearly direct quotations from scripture, although the reference to the passage isn't there.

I was wondering if you had any success in calling the individual to which you refer. If so, what did he say? It might be interesting to write to the address listed on the letter for obtaining further "prophecies" and "revelations."

I tried sending you a private email to discuss this further, (found the address on the LCMS website) but it shot right back to me. Just for your information in case you'd like to get the email address changed.

Thanks!