by Pete Earley
“Jim, I want you to know what happened,” Jeffrey said. “The reason that I was so nervous before we went into the temple was because God had spoken to me. He said that I had a choice. I could see the vision—the same one that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had seen—or I could choose to have you healed of your cancer.” Jeffrey paused. “The reason why I was so upset was because I actually had to think about it before I told God to heal you. I felt terrible. That’s when I realized that I had come to the temple for the wrong reasons. I had come because I was selfish. That’s why I prayed in the temple for God to cure you.”
Jim didn’t know what to say.
“You see,” Jeffrey continued, “that’s why you were sick after we left the temple. God was healing you. He was healing you of cancer because I had made the right choice. I’ve come over here today to tell you that you are completely healed. The cancer is gone.”
After a few moments, Jim spoke. He had chosen his words carefully. “Jeffrey, I appreciate what you are saying, but I don’t have that same testimony. All I know is that God promised to take care of me. I don’t know that I’m healed.”
“Well, I’m telling you that you are healed,” Jeffrey replied.
“You are healed because I chose that rather than to see the vision.” On Sunday when the Robbinses went to church, a woman hurried up to them. “Isn’t it wonderful!” she exclaimed. Jim looked confused. “I’m talking about how Jeffrey Lundgren prayed for God to heal you and He did! Jeffrey told us all about it this morning. It’s a miracle.”
Jim Robbins wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 11
THE friendship between the Robbinses and Lundgrens became strained after their trip to Kirtland for reasons besides Jeffrey’s claims that his prayers had healed Jim. Jeffrey and Alice had found a piece of land in Independence that they felt would be ideal for a “communal” duplex. They could live on one side and the Robbinses could live on the other. Jeffrey estimated that it would cost about $60,000 to buy the land and build a duplex. That sounded reasonable to Jeff and Alice, but Jim and Laura balked. Jeffrey was still unemployed and, Jim suspected, wasn’t really looking for a job. If the Robbinses sold their home, they still would have to borrow at least $10,000 to cover all the construction costs. “I’m wondering if the hand of God isn’t protecting us,” Jim told Laura one afternoon. “Maybe He doesn’t want us to move in with Jeffrey and Alice.” Later that day, Jim reminded Jeffrey of the caveat in their deal. “I’m not going to do this if we have to go into debt,” he said. Jeffrey scrapped the duplex plans.
It was income-tax time, and when Laura began going over her records, she discovered that she and Jim had given the Lundgrens more than $2,000. She also realized that they weren’t going to be able to continue supporting the Lundgrens and keep up their financial pledge to the church.
“We can’t keep doing both,” she told Jim. “One of us has to tell Jeff and Alice, and soon.”
That night when the Lundgrens came over to visit, Laura kept waiting for Jim to tell them, but the closest he came was asking Jeffrey if he’d had any luck finding work. He hadn’t. The next Sunday, Laura cornered Alice at church.
“Is Jeff really looking for a job?” she asked.
“Why?” Alice replied, coldly.
“Because we just don’t have the money to keep supporting you,” Laura blurted out.
Badly embarrassed, Alice hurried to find Jeffrey. Laura thought she had better warn Jim, who had stayed home that morning. She got there too late. Jeffrey had beat her home. He had pounded on the Robbinses’ door and had come right to the point when Jim answered.
“Your wife told my wife that you don’t want to continue your relationship with us,” Jeffrey huffed.
“What are you talking about, Jeffrey?” Jim asked.
“Your wife informed my wife that you can’t help us any longer financially. ‘’
“That’s right, Jeff,” Jim said solemnly. “We just can’t afford it. It’s too much of a burden right now.”
“What kind of an excuse is that?” Jeffrey demanded. “I expect you to keep your commitments to me.”
Jim got mad. “Jeff, you are the most ungrateful person I’ve ever known. How can you stand there and carry on like this because now I’m telling you we can’t afford it anymore? You act like we owe you this money.”
Jeffrey spun around and walked away.
The next Sunday at church, the Lundgrens and Robbinses avoided each other.
In early October 1983, Jeffrey was ordained at Slover Park into the RLDS priesthood. He had been out of work for more than one year, but the elders in the church didn’t hold that against him. Jeffrey asked his father to perform the ordination ceremony. Dennis Patrick, whom he had befriended again, assisted. Now that Jeffrey was in the priesthood, he could preach on Sundays. Years later, regular members would still recall his first sermon. He didn’t speak from a prepared text. Instead, he read a series of scriptures. Every one of the verses was about God’s wrath and how he would destroy the wicked.
Jim and Laura were in the congregation. Neither had ever heard such a scathing denunciation, but Jim wasn’t surprised. “During our scriptural studies, Jeffrey always focused on scriptures that would enable him to mentally put people he didn’t like into the lake of fire and brimstone. He would say, ‘See this scripture? Why, God could be talking about so-and-so. He could be calling that person a Son of Perdition [evil].’ And I’d say, ‘Why, Jeff, you don’t know what you are talking about. That person is not a Son of Perdition. It’s like you are finding pleasure in condemning people. The Lord wants to save lives, not destroy them by casting them into the pit.’ But he always argued with me. ‘So-and-so fits all the criteria of that scripture,’ he’d say. ‘They should be destroyed.”’
So many members complained about Jeffrey’s discourse that the church sent an elder to talk to Jeffrey. “Our God is a God of love, not damnation,” he told Jeffrey.
“I reminded the pastor that all I had done was read scriptures,” Jeffrey later recalled, “and I asked him if he was telling me that a member of the priesthood shouldn’t be allowed to read scripture in church.”
The pastor didn’t argue. Jeffrey was not asked to preach again.
A few days later, on Halloween night, Damon Lundgren tripped while running across a parking lot after a youth group meeting at the church. By the time an adult reached the thirteen-year-old, he was holding his rib cage in obvious pain. They hurried him home.
“I think you should get Damon to the hospital,” the church’s youth group sponsor told Jeffrey.
“We don’t have any insurance,” Jeffrey replied. “He’ll be okay.” He yelled at Damon to get out of the car, but the sponsor interrupted.
“The church will pay for it. This kid is in pain.”
“Well, I can’t take him because I’m here alone with the other kids,” Jeffrey replied. The sponsor offered to stay with them so that Jeffrey could take Damon across the street to the emergency room at the Independence Medical Center.
“I don’t like leaving my children with strangers,” Jeffrey replied.
Exasperated, the sponsor decided to admit Damon into the emergency room by himself. Jeffrey went along to sign the necessary hospital paperwork and then hurried back home and telephoned Alice, who was visiting Tonya. Alice asked Dennis if he would come to the hospital and pray for Damon. He anointed Damon’s head with oil and asked God to comfort him. A short while later, doctors told Alice that Damon had broken a rib, which, in turn, had punctured his liver. They were going to operate to stop the internal bleeding. Dennis went across the street to fetch Jeffrey. Jeff had telephoned Don and Lois and once they arrived, he and Don went to the hospital, leaving Lois with the children. As soon as Damon saw his grandpa, he smiled. Damon had always been Don’s favorite. When Damon was little, Don used to squeeze his leg and count. Damon would see how long he could take the pain before he yelled. They called it the “pain game.”
“I think I made a te
n on the pain scale, Grandpa,” Damon said.
“I think you did too, honey,” Don replied. Jeffrey noticed that there were tears in his father’s eyes. He was surprised and jealous.
The surgery went well, and after it was completed, Jeffrey went home and Don and Lois left. Alice slept on a cot next to her son in the hospital. She had Jeffrey bring her clean clothes in the morning. She showered and ate there too. “I don’t want to leave him,” Alice told Jeffrey. “I know what it’s like to be alone in a hospital after surgery.” Alice’s comment was a reference to when her spleen was removed following her confrontation with Jeffrey. He hadn’t been there when she woke up after the operation.
Five days after Damon’s surgery, Jeffrey told Alice that he wanted her to come home, if not to see him, then to spend some time with the other three children. She agreed, but when she walked across the street, she found that Jeffrey had already put the children to bed. He had grilled two steaks over charcoal and set the table for a romantic candlelight dinner. When they finished their vanilla ice cream dessert, Alice stood up to leave.
“I think I’ll dash over to check on Damon,” she said.
Jeffrey exploded. He grabbed her arm and pushed her against the dining-room wall.
“By God, woman, you belong in this house and this is where you are going to stay!” he yelled. “Now get in the bedroom.”
Now it was Alice’s turn to get angry.
“What’s wrong, Jeff?” she asked mockingly. “Are you feeling neglected because you had to go five whole days without any sex?” He threw her onto the floor. “He tore open my blouse and he raped me. He raped me on the floor and when he got done, he got up and took my bathrobe and threw it at me. I went into the bathroom and I sat on the floor and cried and cried and then I got into the tub and after about a half hour, he came in with a red rose that he had put into a vase and he put it next to me and he sat down next to the tub and he stroked my face and he told me that he loved me and he was glad that we were married. It was like we were two normal persons, like nothing had happened.”
(When asked later about Alice’s account, Jeffrey said that it was impossible for a husband to rape his wife since her purpose in life was to please him sexually.)
The next day, Alice telephoned Louise Stone. “Jeffrey raped me,” she said. Alice decided to tell Louise everything, including how Jeffrey liked to smear his feces on her. “What am I going to do?” she asked.
Louise suggested a divorce and offered to help her find a lawyer. “I’ll stand by you no matter what you want to do,” she offered. Alice promised to think about it.
When Jeffrey got home later that day, he told Alice that he had to tell her something important. He began by reminding her of the summer in 1969 when the patriarch made his prophecy about Alice and her husband.
“Alice, on the night that Damon was taken to the hospital, I had a vision,” he announced. Years later, he would repeat during an interview what he told Alice that night in October 1983. As he spoke, he became emotional and began to cry. It was, he explained, the most heartrending experience in his life.
“I had gone out onto the front porch of our house because I could see the emergency room from there and I was trying to see what was happening with Damon across the street. I began to pray but I didn’t know what words to use. Suddenly words started coming into my mind and I began to pray for the son, but it wasn’t Damon that these words were about, it was the son of God, Jesus Christ, and just as I started to say them, the hospital dissolved away and I was no longer in Independence. I was at Calvary and I was facing the cross. I was standing to the right of it. This was not like a movie. I was actually there. I was physically, totally, completely there, and I looked up at Christ and He was in total agony and I realized that there were plenty of people who could pray for my son, but no one had prayed for the son—Jesus Christ. All of the disciples had been upset about losing Him, but no one had prayed for Him. And I heard Him call out with a loud voice. He was calling for Elias and it was horrible. I could hear Him struggle and see His breath. He would struggle to raise Himself up to get a gasp of air and then His entire body would sag, and I wanted to take Him down and He looked at me and I could tell that He wanted me to take Him down, but I couldn’t take Him down because I needed Him to die just as every other creature needed Him to die. We all helped crucify Him because we needed Him to die for our sins so I didn’t help Him. I rejected Him. I had to say ‘Crucify Him’ just like everyone else because I needed that atonement. It was like I had put a nail in His hand. I looked at Him and I knew and He knew that I was rejecting Him. You see, I understand rejection. I understand what it is like to be rejected and He knew too. So I just walked up to the base of the cross and I began to weep and, I don’t know how to explain this, but all of a sudden, all I can say is, I was looking out of Christ’s eyes. I saw everything and I was aware that I was in His head and in His consciousness and I could see all things, all eternity, from the beginning of time to the present into the future. It was like a giant panorama, and then I felt His pure and total love and I understood that there was no anger in Him at all. Then I saw my own life and I realized that love was a foreign object to me, that I didn’t understand love, especially love like Christ’s. And then it was over. The scene dissolved back and I found myself staring at the hospital. I began to weep and the next thing that I knew, Dennis Patrick was walking up the steps to see if I was okay. He thought I was crying about Damon, but I was crying because I had been with Christ and felt His love and then been brought back to reality.”
Alice told Jeffrey that she thought his vision was the most beautiful religious experience that she had ever heard anyone describe. “But what does it mean?’’ she asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” he replied, “but God is preparing me for something. He is directing both of our lives.”
Later that day, Louise telephoned Alice to learn whether or not she was going to divorce Jeffrey.
“I can’t leave Jeffrey,” Alice told her. “He told me about a vision that he had. He told me that he has work to do for God. He told me that if I left him, he wouldn’t be able to do what God wanted.”
“What are you talking about, Alice?” Louise asked.
“Louise, haven’t you been listening to me? God told Jeff that He is preparing him for an important mission in the church. I can’t leave him now. It’s impossible.”
Chapter 12
THE pastor at Slover Park asked Dennis Patrick to teach an adult Sunday school class in the fall of 1983. Dennis asked Jeffrey to help. They were supposed to teach a course about Zion. Twenty adults attended the first session and Dennis was pleased. But the next Sunday he told Jeffrey that there was a problem. Dennis had been asked to coordinate a new training program for young church leaders. “I’m not going to have time to teach the class anymore,” he told Jeffrey. “Would you mind taking over?”
Jeffrey was delighted. He saw God’s hand at work. The next Sunday, he strolled into the classroom. “We are going to change this class into a study of the Book of Mormon,” he announced. “I am going to be the teacher, you will be the students. I will teach, you will learn. If there is time for questions at the end, I will answer them. Otherwise, don’t interrupt. I’m not here to debate.” With that, Jeffrey opened his books and began his lecture.
His classes were immediately controversial. Nearly everything Jeffrey taught was based on fundamentalist RLDS doctrine, but those conservative beliefs were no longer in vogue. The fight between the liberals and the fundamentalists, which Jeffrey had first gotten involved in back in 1975 at the student union at CMSU was still going on, but the liberals were clearly winning. The reforms started in the late 1950s by RLDS president-prophet W. Wallace Smith had made it possible for his son and successor, Wallace B. Smith, to steer the RLDS even closer toward mainstream Protestantism. The idea that the RLDS was God’s “only true church” was being deemphasized. Some liberals had even suggested that the Book of Mormon was a fictional “
morality play,” not holy scripture. Such talk infuriated fundamentalists, and in 1978, when Wallace B. Smith took charge, a group of conservative church members in Vancouver, Washington, voted to secede. They announced that their congregation was going to become a “restoration” RLDS church, which meant that its members were going to “restore” their church to the RLDS’s original traditions. The new president-prophet responded by “silencing” the elders at Vancouver and by going to court to seize their church, a recreational building, and the congregation’s $3,000 bank account. By the time Jeffrey began teaching the adult class at Slover Park, Wallace B. Smith had gone to court five times in Texas and Missouri to prevent fundamentalists from breaking away. Despite such efforts, the RLDS Church was clearly headed toward a split and most members expected the final break to occur when the church held its worldwide conference in April 1984 in Independence. That was when Wallace B. Smith was going to recommend that the church permit women to become priests.
Jeffrey’s class soon became a refuge for fundamentalists, particularly those opposed to ordaining women. As far as Jeffrey was concerned, Wallace B. Smith was misguided and history was repeating itself. God had picked Joseph Smith, Jr., to restore the “only true church” on earth because the other denominations had been corrupted over time by men. Now Smith’s church was heading down that same path. Such talk did not endear Jeffrey to the elders at Slover Park. But even though his views were in the minority, his class still drew about twenty loyal members so he was allowed to continue teaching. Georgia Milliren was an avid Jeffrey supporter. Like Jeffrey, Milliren had been raised in the Slover Park congregation, but she was six years older than he and didn’t really know Jeffrey until she began attending his class. “Jeffrey was a dynamic teacher, a real challenger,” she recalled. “He and Alice used to tell us that they wanted to stretch our thinking, and he really did.”
