Suspicious Signs and Wonders

Jenkins’s operation at Holy Hill Cathedral was hit on April 8, 1978, by a suspicious event—a dynamite blast—that did minor damage. Strangely enough, Jenkins had taken out a $1.2 million insurance policy on the building one week before the explosion. In addition, only a few days before the blast, most of the contents of the cathedral had been removed. Tongues wagged. Three weeks after the dynamite blast, a fire destroyed Jenkins’s home. It was insured. It was disclosed that just six days before the Reverend Jenkins went on television to appeal to his viewers for $300,000 to save his ministry, he had closed a deal on a new $230,000 home in an exclusive neighborhood in Greenwood, South Carolina. Tongues resumed wagging. The ministry’s official journal, Revival in America, claimed endorsements from all sorts of famous persons. Among those named were Liberace and President Jimmy Carter. Asked by reporters from the Anderson, S.C., Independent about the matter, both celebrities denied any connection with, or endorsement of, Jenkins. It seemed that Reverend Jenkins had been using his imagination liberally. More tongues went into motion.

A Man with a Lot of Enemies

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms began looking into these strange events. From what he believed was the inviolable safety of his pulpit, Leroy Jenkins attacked that agency, and threw in the FBI, local police, and the IRS as fellow villains:Most of them are as crooked as they can be. They’re a bunch of liars and thieves.... There’s not a law or a government or the FBI or anybody else that could take away from me what God gave me 21 years ago. When Jesus Christ hanged down from the cross at 33 years of age, people didn’t lose their faith and respect for him. The government is what killed him, the same thing they’re trying to do to me, the same thing they would try to do to you. You give them hillbillies a badge, honey, and a gun and it’s dangerous; I’m scared to go out on the street. They don’t have as much education as I do. Those little hillbillies will shoot you. ... [The IRS] is very jealous of what I have.

Jenkins was fearless but unwise in his choice of targets when he attacked sin and the devil. As with all those who claim to speak with God’s voice, he had no notion that he could be prosecuted or persecuted for his activities. As in the example given above, he managed to alienate every local and state official within reach, castigating them from his electronic pulpit for real and/or imaginary transgressions. It was a situation that could not long go unanswered by those he attacked. It seems not unlikely that his claims of resulting harassment may have been quite true; his church was subjected to endless building inspections and repeated permit checking, and he suffered other aggravations. In 1977, probably to escape the immediate wrath of the authorities, he began moving the whole operation from Delaware, Ohio, to his childhood home of Greenwood, South Carolina, changing its name to the Spirit of Truth Church. The dynamite blast in the old church in Delaware occurred shortly after that. At this point, the Jenkins ministry had become a multimilliondollar operation, and it was growing daily. Jenkins was at the height of his power, and it seemed that nothing could stop him.