Faulty Computer Programming

Faith-healer W. V. Grant uses the system of dropped-in names and personalized data in his computerized letter campaigns. Each recipient believes his letter was specifically prepared for him. But occasionally the programmer gets careless. One such example occurred when Grant sent out a January 29, 1978, letter that read in part:The Lord spoke to me last night at 4 a.m. I tossed and turned all night under the Spirit. and suddenly just before daybreak, the Lord revealed to me exactly why.

At this point, Grant appealed for $21,000 to pay for “church remodeling and air conditioning.” He said receiving it would constitute “a miracle.” The “miracle day,” he wrote, would be February 23, 1978. An astute victim of this appeal thought there was something familiar about that wording. Looking back almost three years to April 10, 1975, she found another Grant letter with exactly the same wording, exactly the same appeal, and exactly the same amount of money asked Jor! The only difference was that this “miracle day” was designated as April 21, 1975. The U.S. mail is being used by faith-healers—and other evangelists—in a way that I believe is inconsistent with fair, proper, and legal procedure. I don’t like it one bit, and I wish something would be done about it.

6

A. A. Allen and Miracle Valley

See! Hear! Actual miracles happening before your eyes. Cancer, tumors, goiters disappear. Crutches, braces, wheelchairs, stretchers discarded. Crossed eyes straightened. Caught by the camera as they occurred in the healing line before thousands of witnesses.

So said the television ads of 1957, all over the United States, as a paunchy, hollering faith-healer dressed in iridescent lavender and white patent leather boots, named Asa Alonso Allen, “God’s Man of Faith and Power,” the best-known of his trade in the late 1960s, swept the country with his “Great International Miracle Revival Training Camp and Solemn Assembly.” When A. A. Allen’s traveling show was in session, balls of fire were said to hover over the tent. Flames were reported dancing in the air over the worshipers’ heads, a cross of blood would be seen materializing on Allen’s forehead, and “miraculous mystery oil” dripped from his fingers onto the faithful. In 1958, he founded his own community on 1,280 acres donated to him by rancher Urbane Lienen Decker. There was a single gas station/store, a coin laundry, and a cabinet shop. But the big business was religion. At the entrance to Miracle Valley was a huge sign that made it plain just what was going on in that neck of the desert. In red and gold, it proclaimed: A. A. ALLEN REVIVALS, INC., MIRACLE VALLEY, ARIZONA.

  The Blind to See. The Deaf to Hear. The Lame to Walk.   SIGNS. GIFTS. WONDERS.

Miracle Valley, Arizona, is at the base of the Huachuca Mountains in the southeast corner of the state. There, Allen had his own airfield, a Cessna 150 aircraft, a record company (with 47 albums going), a 3,000-seat church, and a telephone prayer center. He appeared on 58 radio stations daily, and on 43 TV stations weekly. His radio program, “The Allen Revival Hour,” was heard not only in the United States and Canada, but in several other countries, including the Philippines. A clandestine radio station beamed the show straight in to London, England, from an illegal offshore transmitter in the North Sea. Some 175 people were employed to handle the mail and publishing business, and real estate was sold to converts through the Miracle Valley Estates. The ministry had an annual gross of $3.8 million, but A. A. and the associate ministers took no chances. Their cuts came right off the top of that figure—before any bills were paid, and before expenses were covered.