2009-6-7 06:26:00
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 me was not mentioned in a book of this context. None of the accounts of his history mentions me or Curtis. I think he wants to forget that he ever knew me.
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:
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 does 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.
"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."
-- Leo J. Burke
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