Yes, Shiloh can be a place you're sent as a form of punishment...or to reeducate you into God's ways. I was directed there one summer to work on a project, which I did. The fact that before I went I suffered a rather serious injury (deep gash in my shin, which became infected), had not sought medical treatment (no health insurance), made no difference. Those behind my placement did not see a problem with it...and I worked for over a week in that condition. A few so-called doctors at Shiloh, aware of my situation, refused to provide any advice or treatment for me. Perhaps it had something to do with a Word Gary delivered at Shiloh just prior to my arrival about how God was intending to 'amputate' members of the body for their disobedience. Anyway, When I finished my work, the final day involving me operating a jackhammer (no joke), someone finally agreed to take me to a local doctor. The doctor, not affiliated with the church, immediately gave me antibiotics to stem the infection, which eventually did the trick. I was not charged for the care he provided. If I met the Lord during my stay at Shiloh, it was in the form of this doctor.

p.s. I did not come back from Shiloh with a souvenir...no t-shirt, not even a spare fan blade.

CHANGEDAGAIN:


How we loved to separate out and condemn. Obviously, the stench of your injury was symbolic of something in your spirit. They were just obliged to let nature take her course, which usually ends in death.

Happy to hear you did have a meeting with God in disguise, but sad to hear you went home empty-handed, although not empty-hearted.

Shiloh = Gulag

Changedagain, my wife was in a church before I met here where the pastor didn't believe in doctors at all. We went to a funeral of one of the people she knew when she was in that church, and I mentioned to her that I noticed that lots of the congregation had missing teeth. She told me that when they finally had to have teeth pulled because they could not stand the agony of absessed teeth etc., that the pastor himself would pull the teeth with a pair of plyers.

So you are lucky that they didn't follow that philosophy among the leadership of Shiloh, you would have been held down while Gary sawed your leg off right there in the sanctuary during a church service.,,,I hope I didn't give them any ideas, I know that members of the fellowship do read here quite a bit,, well, no, they wouldn't suggest it to Gary because they would have to admit to reading it here.

I didn't ever know Glen Oswalt, but I did meet Bill Maybe and talked with him a few times. I really liked him. Once he and were standing at the front door of Shiloh, and a pig (*the four legged variety) walked right up and looked at us and wondered off. We had a few off-colored remarks about ,,,well, i won't get into that, and some laughs over it. I figure Bill Maybe was being put in his place with his day shift at the sawmill. I don't know about the other guy. I always had a lot of respect for Bill, and I have heard good things about Glen Oswalt too. I did think about that when I wrote it, about how some of APCO might be there on a very temporary basis, for one reason or another. But of course, that was not their normal routine. And I would venture to say that if Gary Hargrave showed up there would be comparable to a Democratic Presidential candidate doing having his picture taken shooting skeet or a Republican Presidential candidate doing a photo shoot at an old age home passing out bonus social security checks.

I wasn't going to post for a while, as it seems like new people show up when i don't hog the forum so much, but I am fascinated in this hell hole slave operated sawmill. By the way, KBoy, when you took your shirt off and faced your natural aversion to blood and did what you did for your friend, bound his wounds, you showed your friend more love than a year's worth of apostolic impartation by the laying on of hands. You are much to be commended, you might have helped along that miracle, and it might well have been exactly that of him recovering so quickly.

I am fascinated because I learned from my short stint at the "kingdom business" and the stories of the shabby antics of the "shepherds" that ran that various other non prophet/for profit business enterprises around Living Word Fellowship. The treachery involved, including what happened to the brother with the electrical business, a case where a good man was run down and driven to suicide. See, I was a union man all of my life, ( I never resented organized crime association but the communists associations do bother me greatly more and more) but that is another story. I never liked it when anybody is paid fairly for a day's work. To think that the church that I believed in so much would have run such a ratty business, I would like to know exactly what John Robert himself thought about that racket and who made a profit on it. I have heard lately about people working on his properties without pay, from Changedagain and others I believe it was. I know that this sort of thing is the exact thing that I hate so much, have hated all my life and had I known about it at the time I would have come against this crap with all I had. I would certainly have left that church, and the more I think about it, that church should have split, at least had that split that JRS might have been onto as something that should have happened but didn't.

The more I learn the more I am convinced that JRS himself was not near, not ANYWHERE NEAR what I thought he was, and he may not have deserved any respect at all, and he may not even have been an innocent but ignorant bystander to all of this abuse that I was willing to think he was.

Typo, sorry, the above post I said: "I never liked it when anybody is paid fairly for a day's work."

That of course was meant to be "I never like it when anybody is NOT paid fairly.."

But then, being a union man all those years that might be a Faudian slip, because I dam sure was always paid two times fairly to do a half-@$$ed day's work.

A.D.

We regulars at the sawmill took our job in stride. Even though it was indirectly associated with Shiloh, as an ‘off-campus’ revenue source, we shared a camaraderie that had a cohesion that was not always as evident in other departments that had a revolving infusion of visitor labor. As part of the core crew, we all slept in the same room, often went out together, and kind of viewed ourselves as a frontline in the pursuit of the ‘kingdom’.

After acclimating to the initial shock of the whole operation, it just became a job like any other, except for the fact that we were the only work-crew at Shiloh that worked outdoors all year around. During the winter, we would keep the outhouse seat hanging over the woodstove in the upper mill and bring it out with us to take care of business. If we did it any other way we would risk having our butt freeze to the throne.

During the winter of ‘78-’79, a huge snowfall collapsed the roof of the lower mill. I remember bundling up with everything I owned and walked from Shiloh to check it out with the wind-chill temperature at 40-below 0. What fun.

Our favorite song in those days, with the Stones getting a second wind in broad popularity, was ‘Beast of Burden’, which we played loud and proud with the best boombox we had. We worked hard at making a challenging situation as much fun as possible.

Apart from all the ways in which one could be injured or maimed, the overall experience of being a part of the sawmill crew was as enjoyable to be around as any in Shiloh. I survived intact to live another life.

Well, Kboy, I still wish I would have known it, I would have unionized all you maniacs.

A.D.

I made an earlier reference to the raise that the sawmill workers received in early ‘79 (from $80/month to $80/week), along with the comment that the influx of new cash financed more trips to Iowa City for barhopping. This started a trend during the summer of ‘79, coinciding with the Victory Siege (not to be confused with the original Siege, which was primarily the winter of ‘77-’78).

That summer at Shiloh saw the largest population increase it was to ever know. News of the Victory Siege spread throughout the fellowship, and Shiloh's ranks swelled to capacity. The excitement of that time, plus an infusion of new folks, saw a lot of ‘coupling’ start to take place, yours truly included. Large groups started bailing on the evening service and headed for Iowa City to ‘work on their relationships’.

This went on far into the summer until word of it reached JRS, who had been absent much of the time because his divorce proceedings from Martha had forced him to steer clear of Iowa. When he eventually returned, there was a general ‘call to arms’ meeting where he railed against all the backsliding (having fun) and questioned everyone’s commitment to the cause. The ‘fun’ was basically squashed (but not the coupling), the Victory Siege picked up additional steam, and by the end of summer, there were four weddings on four consecutive weekends.

By that winter, the ranks of Shiloh shrunk to less than a 100 people, and it’s 'glory days' were to become a distant memory.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2015 09:46PM by kBOY.