12 Keys of Discipleship
Key Nine: Ask Questions, Part 4
The Great Mystery
After we arrived back in Boise, Idaho, we concluded that traveling without purse or script was a fairly unreliable way to go in today’s world despite what the early apostles did. We could understand why the LDS church had abandoned the practice and now insists that the missionaries receive financial support from home. I think it would be a good idea though for missionaries to be able to receive assistance from those who want to help in the field of work, but this is not allowed.
For the next few months, we kept busy building our base in Boise and answering requests through the mail for literature. One thing that kind of annoyed Curtis and I was that many Mormons we came across (as well as family members) kept referring to Onias as our prophet. They seemed to figure that since we did not accept the LDS prophet that we had a need to have a similar authoritative figure in our lives as a substitute.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. We had both seen the mistake of relying too much on the beast of authority and we were determined to never again accept the word of any person blindly without first checking with the spirit within. This included Onias. We felt that he was moved upon by the Spirit to chastise the authorities in the church and felt impressed to send out his two parables, but looked upon him as an associate more than a prophet.
When Curtis and I started the organization, “The Restorers,” we did so with us as the leaders. It was something we would have done with or without Onias. His name was not mentioned on the legal papers.
As it was, Onias was a member of our organization, not the other way around. I clarify this because to this day the false idea is sometimes circulated that we joined with some organization that Onias had rather than Onias joining with us.
We made it clear to him that we were not going to blindly accept him but would seek confirmation through the spirit on any revelation that he received. He agreed that this was fine with him.
As an interesting development Curtis’ brother Bill joined our group and Onias sent his daughter, Opal, down from Canada to help us. Opal was a big help as she was a great typist and bookkeeper. I’ve never seen anyone so happy as Opal was when she was just typing away.
Bill and Opal soon started dating, fell in love and got married. Everyone thought they were a great addition to the group and a good team. Bill had a good presence, but was not into speaking. He made the perfect MC to warm up the audience with some humor and then introduce us as speakers.
A short time later when the group was having a business meeting Bill and Opal suggested that they take possession of the mailing list and keep it up. After all, Opal was doing most of the typing and paperwork so things would be easier if they completely took charge of the list.
Something inside me told me this was a bad idea and I resisted but everyone there including Curtis thought it was a good idea. It came to the point that if I insisted on maintaining control that I would look like I was using unjust authority. I finally yielded to the group, which was one of the few times in my life I acted contrary to inner guidance. I later learned (as we shall see) that the inner guidance was correct.
It wasn’t long before Onias received a revelation concerning me. He told me of it when he made as visit to Boise. He explained that God wanted me to write a treatise on marriage. I told him that I would pray about it and if I received confirmation that I would do it. I then sought and received confirmation and told him the next day that I believed his revelation was inspired and I would write the treatise. He seemed quite pleased with this answer.
After he went back to Canada I settled into contemplating the treatise. The interesting thing about the subject of marriage is that Both Onias and I expected the treatise would be supportive of plural marriage as taught by the early Mormons. He was a big believer in it as are most fundamentalists who break off from the church.
To this day the main body of the LDS church still teaches that Joseph and Brigham were correct in practicing it, and that it is entirely possible that the current or future prophet could receive a revelation to bring it back.
Most of those who have a strong Mormon background are open to the possibility of the return of polygamy. Most of the offshoots think the church was incorrect in stopping it and the practice should be continued.
At the time Curtis and I were open to the possibility of more than one wife but fortunately for us we woke up before that happened.
Anyway, I was contemplating the subject of marriage and nothing was coming to me to place on paper. I decided to read some scripture for inspiration. I browsed through the Bible reading here and there and finally this scripture caught my attention:
20 “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
21 “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
22 “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
23 “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
24 “Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
25 “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26 “That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27 “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28 “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29 “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
30 “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
31 “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” Ephesians 5:20-32
After I read this I mused over the part that read: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.” I realized that this was a very controversial scripture and many females, especially feminists, were repulsed by it. This scripture had probably caused more people to reject Christianity than any other. As I contemplated I considered the possibility that this scripture was not understood correctly by the masses, or even the teachers.
As I continued my contemplation my eyes rested on Verse 32. Even though I had read the scriptures several times I did not recall ever seeing this verse. Let me repeat it:
“This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
I immediately began to wonder what the “great mystery” was. Paul was giving us interesting and provocative doctrine, but I could not see how he could consider it a great mystery. I had always been interested in the mysteries and there were many things I desired to know, but there did not seem to be any great mystery in this scripture. I finally concluded that if Paul said there was a great mystery in what he was writing then there must be something I was not seeing. After all, Paul was no dummy.
I then read the chapter over several times looking for the mystery. My eyes then rested upon the controversial scripture, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.” Then I realized that there were four additional words in this verse that were overlooked which were, “as unto the Lord.”
Then I asked myself why we submit to Christ and the answer was because he has greater light and knowledge than do we. Next I asked why then would any woman submit to a man and the reason would be the same. She would only submit if he were like Christ in that he has a greater light he can give her. If the man does not have a greater light than the female he cannot represent Christ to her and no submission would be necessary.
As I contemplated I found this I found this thinking delicious to my soul and in the midst of this thought I was struck by spiritual lightening and within a second the whole principle of the Molecular Relationship was downloaded into my mind.
I rose and explained to myself, “Paul was right. He was speaking of a great mystery, perhaps the greatest mystery of all time that even explains creation itself. The mystery was not male and female as we know it, but energy, the positive and negative energy units that are the foundation of all creation.”
After pacing the floor for several moments I sat back down to write and this time had more to say than I had time to write. As I began the work I realized that this treatise was going to be much different than either Onias or I could have ever predicted.
I plunged into the treatise and finished the first draft within a few days. At first I called the concept “Molecular Marriage” rather than “The Molecular Relationship. When I was done I realized that I had written down a combination of principles that perhaps have never been put into words. I thought that since Onias seemed to have gotten a correct revelation for me to write a treatise expanding the principle of marriage that the light that was in him would see the inspiration through the same eyes that I had.
Curtis was the first one to read it and he thought it was inspired and was excited about the concept so that seemed to be a good omen. I also shared it with several members of the group who were very impressed with it. I mailed Onias a copy. He was coming down in a few days so this would give him time to digest it before we met again.
A week or so later he made another trip to Boise, Idaho, and I was very interested to see what he thought of the treatise. When he arrived we exchanged pleasantries as usual and when the time was right we sat down to discuss the manuscript. I laid a copy on the table and asked him what he thought of it. Suddenly, his countenance changed from amiable and friendly to very serious.
The dialog went something like this:
His head began shaking back and forth. “This is just not right,” he said looking at the manuscript.
“What’s not right?” I asked.
“This is nothing like I had envisioned.”
I explained that it was nothing like I had envisioned either, but if I had ever received a revelation in my life then this was it.
He then explained that I had not written the message that was needed which was to expand on the concept of plural marriage and what he called “the law of adoption.” He thought that I had gone off target toward what he called “dark doctrines,” and suggested I start over from scratch and rewrite the whole thing. He said that if I did not write it correctly, he would have to do it himself.
I told him that I would contemplate further to see if any more inspiration came but that I was very confident in what I had written so far.
He shook his head again and repeated that this just was not what he was looking for.
After that we kind of put the treatise on the shelf and didn’t speak of it between us but talked of other things. Then after he went back to Canada I continued to teach the principle. I thought to myself that if what I’ve written is correct that there would have to be an overshadowing to make a connecting link. It was not long after this that I received a witness to such a link. Such a witness was described in the overshadowing experience in my book The Lost Key of the Buddha,” but in different circumstances. That is all I will say at present and may write of the full experience at a later date.
After the experience I taught the molecular principles in earnest and sought to create a molecule of seekers. After teaching it to the local group I soon had six committed to the principle, including Bill and Onias’ daughter, and we seemed to be off to a workable start.
Around this time we received a call from Onias telling us that he wanted us to get together with a group of interested seekers in Texas. We had been in communication with several people there who really wanted to meet us and he told them that he would see if he could get Curtis and I and maybe several others from Boise to go down. A short time later a group of us were headed down to Texas.
We had a good meeting. It was empowering to have a merging of the Boise and Texas group. Everything went great until we approached end of our meetings and Onias shared with us a new revelation. Instead of being about doctrine this one consisted of personal instructions to each of us. Even that wouldn’t have bothered me if the instructions had a profound meaning, but these consisted of fairly trivial things. One thing that really got to us was that God supposedly issued instructions to Curtis’s wife, Kathy, that she was supposed to bake bread and sell it. We both knew that she would have no interest in pursuing this direction. To this day I cannot remember the rest of the instructions as they were all of similar trivial jobs.
The whole revelation just didn’t set well with us but we thought we owed it to Onias to give him a full consideration so we both knelt in prayer in our motel room and prayed about it.
We both received the same answer which was that this revelation came from his own personality, that revelation was not meant to direct people in trivial parts of our lives that are meant to be handled by our own decisions. We then approached Onias and told him the answer we had received, that we could not support the revelation. We reminded him that his own revelations told him his mission was to cry repentance to the church and that we did not sense that directing our lives was part of his calling.
He was very offended by this and insisted that this current revelation was as inspired as any he had received. Then we told him we were sorry but we couldn’t support a revelation just because he gave it but we had to receive a confirmation on anything that took us into new territory.
He seemed to understand, but a week or so after arriving home we learned that he received another revelation concerning us. The revelation stated that I had fallen from my station (whatever that was) “because of pride” and Curtis was astray also. The funny thing was that since Curtis and I were the heads of the group he could not throw us out or excommunicate us. He did the next best thing. He first gave his revelation to Bill and his daughter Opal who both accepted the revelation that I had fallen and, following his instructions, they took all copies of the mailing lists from the office and departed.
They then sent the revelation that I had fallen to everyone on the list along with a letter detailing a number of things about me that were either distorted or just flat out not true. They accused me of mishandling funds which I thought was odd since I had contributed significant funds to the work myself and had never taken anything for myself.
Whatever the case, even though Curtis and I were the head of the organization we found ourselves almost as bad as being expelled since we were without our list of seekers.
Around this point in time each prospect for “the Molecule” had a major event that turned their attention away from the goal. As I said Bill and Opal were the first to go. Since Opal was Onias’ daughter I could understand her allegiance, but Bill surprised me.
Then another guy went to church one Sunday and when he entered the building he heard a voice saying, “this is Zion.” He groveled to get back in the church and we never heard from him again. Another received a revelation that he was Hitler in a past life and went off to join the Aryan Nations. Everyone involved had something strange happen. Even Curtis was not immune for his wife had an affair that devastated him to the point that the work was the last thing on his mind. He wound up putting the work on hold and building up his business so he could survive in the real world.
Within a short time I had no group. No one was left but me. In this situation “the Presence” that communed with me let and I thought I has failed in doing my part. He came back some time later and, stayed with me for a while and on departing would return when I had gathered the quality and quantity of people necessary to create the Molecule.
This has been my goal since that time, one that I will continue to work toward until my last breath and beyond to the next life if necessary.
Aftermath
Onias used Bill and Opal as a base of operations for himself in Boise, Idaho. He forbid both Curtis and I from using any revelation he ever wrote. He wrote his own treatise on marriage which was in support of the standard Fundamentalist view of plural marriage and Bill started keeping an eye out for a plural wife. There was no reasoning with them as they had their minds made up that Onias was right and I was in the wrong.
They worked with great zeal for Onias for a couple years and then they had a falling out. They wouldn’t explain what it was exactly, but it affected them profoundly to the extent that Opal had no interest in seeing her father again.
Unfortunately, they did not move out of the Fundamentalist mode and moved on to a new prophet who claimed to have the keys of the kingdom. Bill took one of the prophet’s daughters as his second wife and I have lost track of the number of kids he now has.
Onias, whose real name is Robert C. Crossfield, moved to Salem, Utah, near the Dream Mine and started an organization called “The School of the Prophets.” I read a number of his revelations since our split and couldn’t see any significant light in any of them. From the time he rejected my treatise on the Molecular Relationship it seemed that his revelations lacked the light they had in the past. One of his first revelations told him to not seek for a position, and it seemed that the later revelations created a fairly strong governing position for him.
The most significant part of his life was a sad one. Two brothers named Ron and Dan Laferty joined his group and started getting their own revelations. To his credit, when they started getting weird, Onias distanced himself from them.
They received a revelation to kill several people who were obstructions and they killed a woman and her daughter before they were stopped and arrested. This crime became the basis of a best selling book called “Under the Banner of Heaven.”
The author Jon Krakauer, wrote quite a bit about Onias and his history. I was glad to see that his association with Curtis and I was not mentioned in a book of this context. None of the accounts of his history mentions us. I think Onias wants to forget that he ever knew us.
His group moved away from the Dream Mine area and no one seems to know where they are.
I wasn’t planning on writing so much of my history in connection with the Ninth Key which is:
Ask Questions — Or Seek & you Shall Find
The key is to not only ask questions, but also just to question things. If I had accepted Onias without question I would have wound up in a more controlled situation than I was in the Church. Not only that but as easy as it is for me to irritate people I could have wound up on the Lafferty brother’s hit list.
Questions and questioning do not come naturally. The seeker must jar his mind loose, formulate questions and ask them; and then continue to seek the answer until he is satisfied.
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” — Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
June 4, 2009
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