English (auto-generated)
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truth really can be Stranger Than Fiction sometimes and the more I put this story together the more I realize that that was true today I'm going to tell you about the kingdom of Yahweh or as some call it in St James Missouri Yahweh City Buckle in it's pretty weird growing up in St James I used to hear rumors about a cult that once existed my dad even said that he had a friend that was a part of this cult there wasn't much to do in St James Missouri so we had to make our own entertainment and one of the ways that
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we would do that is by backroading down spook Hollow Road I remember my friends telling me that there used to be a pyramid there we didn't know much about the cult then I decided to do some investigation for myself and I went to the library in St James and found a file that they had titled Yahweh City this file contained newspaper clippings with pictures of the Messiah Joseph Jeffers and also pictures of their pyramid that they built in his honor the more I learned about this story stranger it became there are a lot of segmented
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pieces on this this story if you look online but no one as far as I know has really told the greater story of the history of how this cult formed the Story begins with Joseph Jeffers we know that he was born somewhere around 1898 to 1899 somewhere in Alabama the story then takes us to Seminary Hill Texas in the 1920s when Jeffers was ordained as a minister in Jonesboro Jeffers started a Baptist Church after setting up this Baptist Church in Jonesboro Jeffers decided to go back to school for a while so he found another minister to take his
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place once Jeffers returned to his church about a year later he was ready to take over his Pastor again but the pastor that he had hired to take his place was not willing to let go of his position there and this created what is known as the Jonesboro religious [Music] wars Jeffers was leading a service with a choir behind him and the other Pastor was leading a service with a choir behind him in the same building they were shouting over each other seeing who could speak the loudest and give the best sermon while the choirs were out
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trying to outperform each other I'm sure it was quite the scene eventually the two pastors battled it out in court Jeffers lost his case and his followers Spilled Out onto the street and started commotion one of the members of the opposing faction was stabbed and there were shootings as well the National Guard were even called in during this time after losing the court casee and his church Jeffers decided to continue with his Tent Revival he traveled all over at this time he was doing some Faith healing and some
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prophesying he prophesied that Los Angeles would be flattened by a nuclear bomb sometime in the 1950s after some time of traveling with his Tent Revival found himself in Los Angeles claiming that he is the coming leader of the world following the apocalypse he was packing out large halls around the Los Angeles area it is said that he set up his kingdom of Yahweh across from the Houdini mansion and even performed some rituals at Houdini's mansion it's during his time in Los Angeles that Jeffers claims to have found the real
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name of God which he claims as Yahweh now it's funny because a lot of people were already calling God Yahweh during this time and it wasn't like anything new or groundbreaking but they didn't have the internet back then and there wasn't a lot of factchecking going on Jeffers found himself on an FBI watch list in the 1940s for his anti-semitic remarks and also male fraud the FBI believed that he might have even been tied to the Nazis somehow sometime in the 1940s the FBI started to perform a sting operation on
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Jeffers the story goes something like this an FBI informant was hired to go undercover as a movie producer and convinced Jeffers that they were going to make a movie about his life story this culminated in a night where the FBI informant was with Jeffers during an orgy apparently it is said that Jeffers was uh fornicating with three younger women and the FBI busted in what's funny about this is that when the FBI busted in the FBI informant was also found nuded with the rest of the cult members during the court trials Jeffer
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second wife zela cried we were set up and framed because of the way that the sting operation was set up the case was closed and Zella and Jeffers were free to go Jeffers found himself in Phoenix are Arizona setting up the kingdom of Yahweh once again after claiming bankruptcy he married an his 18-year-old wife's ex-wife's secretary named Connie Jeffers again continued to rip off his congregation Jeffers and Connie were convicted for swindling $200,000 from their followers and bet betting them and betting the money at a dog and pony race
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they were only F 13,000 each and set free now you can learn more about what Jeffers believed in some of his pamphlets that he wrote about Atlantis and the power of pyramids so his followers bought into it he was also claiming to be the second coming of Jesus it was also around this time that Jeffers started a new scheme he started to visit hospitals especially hospices and he would make friends with The Heirs of Fortunes one of those heirs was Esther Price Esther Price from Virginia had an estimated net worth of $5 million when
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she was on her deathbed Jeffers eventually convinced Esther to write him into her will in the early 1970s Jeffers moved his followers to St James Missouri and bought over 300 acres of land and the reason that he heads to Missouri is because of a quote from Harry S Truman who claimed that Missouri was the middle of everywhere Jeffers began taking a model pyramid around town and finding Builders who would be interested in helping him construct his idea imagine this time in the early 19 7s when the hippie culture was still in
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full swing a lot of his followers I believe were lost souls and the hippie types who were attracted to the idea of living off of the land Jeffers talked a lot about UFOs and spaceship Jeffers was able to convince his followers that a spaceship was going to come and abduct them into it and take them away he also preached a lot about the the power of the pyramids now after he had this Pyramid built he said that there were supernatural abilities within this pyramid he dug out a basement where he kept a wine cellar and grapes and
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fruits and he would show them that the grapes were lasting for months and that because of the pyramid the food would be preserved longer and there was a light up in the top or at least there was a glass window at the top of the pyramid where light could come in and fill up the room with light and Jeffers claimed that at certain times of day when the light was hitting just right he could perform a ritual in this pyramid It is believed that this ritual contained acts of a sexual nature another really odd thing that I
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found was a purity ritual that the cult performed now you have to imagine Jeffers always has girls following him around like groupies he's like a rock star right he's dressing in these flamboyant suits his wives are always in their early 20s and he's usually with two or three wives at a time this Purity ritual that he would perform and apparently it was weekly was an enema that he would administer to his followers for Purity purpose purposes of course cult members found out that Jeffers was full of it and his
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prophecies were not coming to pass after Esther Price's death they never notified Esther's family and had her body sent back to Virginia and buried without letting Esther's family know anything about it police showed up to yahweh's City to investigate Esther's death they began questioning the caretakers and asking them what kind of medication were you giving Esther Jeffers claimed that they didn't give her any medication but he would sometimes give her a sip of a Tom Collins a cocktail whenever she was in
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pain when Esther's family found out they decided to sue Jeffers this takes me to another story that I heard whenever I was working at a local Bank in St James my boss had been working at that bank for a long time since the 19 1970s when the cult was there that Jeffers made his way into the bank and was looking for some gold bars in his deposit box but his wife Connie had beat him to it so after Connie makes out like a bandit with much of Jeffers money there was a conspiracy that Jeffers tried to take Connie's
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life okay so at at some point his followers have had enough um there's there's a family that's trying to sue him um his wife leaves him again there's conspiracies that he's trying to kill his wife and he's just really stained His Image in Missouri so Jeffers decides he's going to search for the Golden Needle and moves to Florida he claims that the Golden Needle is located in a pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle now we don't know what actually happened during this time but after he
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searches for the Golden Needle he's found in Brownsville Texas for some time with his followers and from Brownsville Texas he moves to Arizona which Arizona is the final resting place of uh Jeffers this is where the story ends now after Jeffers left Missouri his land was auctioned off to a family who bought the over 300 acre property and the pyramid it is said that the pyramid was turned into a Hay Loft at this time and in 1979 the pyramid was burnt down we don't know how that happened and the concrete pad that was
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the foundation for the pyramid existed for quite some time um and I I don't know when but I eventually that pad was also destroyed and removed um there's still a lot of mystery that surrounds this story and I'd like to learn even more about it if you know anyone who was involved in the Yahweh City cult um I'd love to interview them if they'd be willing to talk about it and find out a little bit more about what happened during the time that this was going on um feel free to comment uh message me if you have any
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information and thank you for listening
