Posted by: GSchaeff
Date: October 29, 2018 02:32AM
For any new visitors to this forum, one thought I'd like to dispel is that this type of abuse being uncovered is unique to R Holbrook, or that it has not been prevalent in TLW from the very beginning. If anything, R Holbrook had a textbook example of sexual exploitation in his stepfather, JRS. There are numerous alleged accounts on this forum of JRS pervasively abusing the trust and devotion his congregants placed in him by influencing young women to have sexual affairs with him.
John's extremely selfish and abusive behavior likely dates back as far as 1967, when romantic letters exchanged between him and a deacon's wife corroborated claims that they were intimately involved. This is widely believed to have contributed to "the split of 1967" as documented in Woodrow Nichol's book on TLW. It's presumed that those letters have been destroyed, as TLWF has been known to do (Example: [thelivingwordfellowshipthewholetruth.org])
There is also considerable evidence that John began an affair with Marilyn Cleland in the 1960s. This would have been approximately 10 years before he finally divorced Martha Stevens, with whom he had two daughters.
Around 1975, John allegedly fathered a child with another Blix girl. There are numerous instances on this forum of posters individually corroborating this claim.
There are at least three other women JRS is believed to have had affairs with in the 1960s and 70s. There are dozens of accounts of him silencing individuals who would speak up about leaders who preyed on congregants.
These accounts are likely a surprise to many, but in the wake of recently discovering how easily this type of behavior from R Holbrook was covered up by numerous leaders for over two decades, it begs the question as to how accurate these other accounts were. Certainly they deserve a better answer than, "Don't ask those questions," or "You should repent for not having a revelation of John."
We know for certain that John Robert Stevens arranged numerous marriages between his congregants, consolidated millions of dollars worth of church assets solely under his name, dined almost exclusively at fancy restaurants with multiple credit cards from Kingdom Businesses, was involved in a silver mine ponzi scheme, and, above all, JRS preached a toxic message of total submission and unquestioning loyalty to abusive deacons whom he placed over the lives of others. He demanded this of his congregants as they abandoned their jobs, joined communal homes, moved across the country, worked 80-hour weeks performing unskilled manual labor, and donated almost all of their earnings to the church. It's time that we stop deifying JRS and apply a little more scrutiny to what his true motivations often were: vanity and greed at the expense of those who trusted him.
Thanks for reposting the above, Changed.
So many gruesome details. And it still doesn't even scratch the surface. The deacon's wife from the second paragraph was actually an elder's wife. It was quite a mess. The elder and his wife were later sent to the Bay area of California and oversaw many TLWF churches there. The wife was also called a nephilim by JRS and many others.
To say that Rick Holbrook learned his evil behavior from his stepfather, John Robert Stevens, is undoubtedly true. And his mother, Marilyn Holbrook Stevens Hargrave, also imparted much evil, I'm sure. But that should not excuse RH at all. Some days I wish that I could wake up from the nightmare that is TLWF and never have known any of them. Since that is not possible, I will keep speaking the true facts that I know.