Adam Stokes is a convert to the Elijah Message Movement and has met with Bickertonites and Community of Christ prior to joining the Church of Jesus Christ – The Assured Way of the Lord. We’ll learn more about the founders of the movement, Otto Fetting and William Draves, and more about this group that has roots in the Temple Lot Church. Check out our conversation…
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Intro to Adam Stokes
Interview
GT 00:31 Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to have an apostle from, hopefully I get your name right. I’m just going to call it the Elijah Message Church, and then you can tell me the official name. So, go ahead and tell me who you are and what church you belong to.
Adam 00:48 I’m Adam Stokes. I’m an apostle, elder, and core member for the Church of Jesus Christ – the Assured Way of the Lord. That’s a really super huge title. There’s a whole history behind that, which we’ll probably talk about at some point, over the course of our time together.
GT 01:03 Okay, because I thought it was called the Elijah Message. Did it used to be called the Elijah Message? Because it sounded like there was a merger there or something.
Adam 01:11 Yes, there was. There’s a Church of Jesus Christ with the Elijah Message. There are actually three different churches and there’s three different, what we call Feting-ite or Dravite churches. The Church of Jesus Christ with the Elijah Message, those are the people who actually kept the trademark’s name. Then there’s another group, Church of Jesus Christ with the Elijah Message. We call them the 608 group, because their headquarters are on a street, which is numbered 608. They have a church there. And then there’s us, the Assured Way of the Lord, which was formed, technically in 2003. And so, there’s a history of some divisions within my tradition, beginning in 1994, with the death of our founder basically, W.A. Draves. Right before he died, there was some stuff going on in the church, about leadership issues, who was to head the church, and then that all came to a head after he died. And so, you get these different branches. The Church of Jesus Christ with the Elijah Message, Incorporated. Then you have my group The Assured Way of the Lord, which consist of most (not all, but most) of the apostles who were apostles in the quorum at the time of brother Drave’s death. Now, some of those apostles have passed on, but most of them are part of the Assured Way, though several others are part of some of the other Elijah message churches.
GT 02:50 Okay, so I don’t know if you saw my interview…
Adam 02:55 I didn’t mean to confuse you too much.
GT 02:57 Oh, no, that’s good. I was just going to say, I don’t know if you saw my interview with John Hamer. By chance, did you see that one?
Adam 03:05 Yes.
GT 03:06 Did John get it right? Did we get it right, the Fetting-ite part of it?
Adam 03:10 Oh, yes. Yeah. So, we accept the Fetting-ite messages, which were the first 30 messages in our Scripture, the word of the Lord. And then there’s 50 to 120 other messages that were given to W.A. Draves, from around 1937, up until 1994. And one of the other Elijah Message churches, the other one I was talking about, they have claimed, which we reject, but they have claimed to receive new messages from John the Baptist. So, they have about 138 messages, I believe.
GT 03:46 Okay, because I want to dive deep into that history. I found it fascinating. But before we do that, let’s dive into Adam Stokes’ history. Because you didn’t grow up in the restoration. Right?
Adam 04:02 No, I did not. I grew up American Baptist.
GT 04:05 That’s what I thought.
Adam 04:05 Black/African American Baptist, from childhood, and all the way up until my college and grad school years. In fact, I went to seminary, wanting to become a Baptist minister. I was a licensed Baptist minister at the time, at my home church. Shout out to Zion Baptist of Baltimore, Maryland. I was a licensed Baptist minister, and I was on the way to be ordained. And I had a faith crisis, to put it lightly. And I wasn’t part of any faith tradition. I hung out with the Quakers a bit, but I wasn’t really part of any faith tradition, for quite some time.
GT 04:47 Now was your dad a Baptist preacher, as well, if I remember right?
Adam 04:51 I got the Baptist part from my mom’s side. My dad really didn’t have any religious affiliation. He was nominally Catholic, and he was very culturally Catholic. But he had served in Vietnam. He had been in law enforcement in Baltimore. And I think, Rick, that all of those experiences kind of, how can I put it? He wasn’t much of a faith man or spiritual man. He was very practical and grounded. I don’t think he believed that human beings were good enough to have any type of divine spark in them, or to have any interaction with any type of God. So, he had seen the worst of the worst.
GT 05:30 Okay, okay. All right. So, you grew up Baptist. I know you have at least two divinity degrees. Tell [us] where those came from, and how those are involved in your spiritual journey.
Adam 05:44 Absolutely. So, I have a degree in religion, a B.A. in religion with a focus on Judaic Studies, looking mainly at the Hebrew Bible, and then within that, to make it more complicated, I have a minor in Islamic civilization. And yeah, so go figure. I don’t know Arabic, but I did minor in Islamic civilization in college, which was quite a time. That was right after 9/11, so early 2000s. So, quite a time to do that.
GT 06:16 Was that at St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia, there? Is that right?
Adam 06:20 This is at Duke University.
GT 06:22 Oh, so you went to Duke?
Adam 06:23 Yes, I went to Duke for…
GT 06:24 Go Blue Devils.
Adam 06:26 Yes. I love the Blue Devils.
GT 06:28 Are they a Baptist University? I can’t remember what…
Adam 06:31 No, actually, their affiliation is Methodist. So, there was a famous Methodist theologian, Will Willimon, who was head of the Duke Chapel when I was there. But their divinity school is really heavily Methodist. And when I went on to do my Ph.D., which didn’t actually quite work out, so I never got the Ph.D., I went to Princeton seminary for that. But I knew a lot of Duke–Duke people went there as well, and they were all Methodist. So, Duke is heavily Methodist. I did, more successfully get my M. Div./my master of divinity from Yale Divinity School, and that was where I met Mormons for the first time.
GT 07:08 Okay, so you got your Bachelor’s at Duke and then your Master’s at Yale?
Adam 07:13 Yep. And I have another master’s in library science, completely unrelated to anything religious, from Clarion University. I just got that one.
GT 07:21 Where’s Clarion?
Adam 07:23 Clarion, I think is, you know, I’ve actually never been on the campus. [It was a] totally online program. I think it’s Western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
GT 07:31 Okay. That’s Sidney Rigdon country.
Adam 07:34 Someone said, “Are you coming to commencement?” I was like, “Well, you know, it’s five hours away, I don’t really think so.”
GT 07:41 (Chuckling) You know, it’s funny, when I got my master’s degree, I was like, “I don’t know if I’ll go to commencement.” And my dad was like, “No, you’re going, because I’m coming.” (Chuckling)
Adam 07:53 That was kind of how my mom was. I was like, “Mom, you’re almost 80 years old, and you can’t walk very well. So, don’t worry about it. It’s an online program. They’ll mail me the degree.”
GT 08:02 Well, I had another library science major [on the Gospel Tangents,] Trevan Hatch. I don’t know if you got to see that.
Adam 08:09 Yes, yes.
GT 08:10 We might be doing some back and forth, because it sounds like you and he kind of have some different opinions on the Bible. So, that’ll be interesting.
Adam 08:17 Oh yes, yes. I’m friends with him on Facebook.
GT 08:20 Okay. Very good. All right. So, you’ve only got two master’s degrees.
Adam 08:27 Only two master’s degrees. Yes.
GT 08:30 You started a Ph.D. at Princeton, but you just gave it up?
Adam 08:33 It didn’t work out, yeah.
GT 08:36 Okay. All right. Well, very good. And so you were at Yale, and how were you introduced to the Book of Mormon?
Adam’s Intro to JST & Book of Mormon
Adam 08:44 So my introduction to the Book of Mormon came years after Yale. I knew a little bit about it from my friends at the Divinity School, shout out to Carl Cranney. I believe he’s at American University. But I didn’t know anything about the Book of Mormon. My interest in the Book of Mormon came years later. I was still doing my Ph.D. and there is a conference that, basically, all biblical scholars go to, all biblical students go to, all religious students go to in the U.S. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The Society of Biblical Literature, American Academy of Religion. So, they have a conference every November. And at one of these conferences, BYU had a kiosk. They had a copy of the Joseph Smith Translation on CD. I think I still have it over here somewhere.
GT 09:37 Of the Bible?
Adam 09:38 Of the Bible, yes. And I was really interested in that, at the time, because I was really interested in the history of interpretation of the King James Bible. [I was interested in] how it’s basically influenced Western civilization and what people have done to it over the centuries. The Joseph Smith Translation [is] a really cool example of that. Now, I had no religious affiliation at the time. Like I said, I was kind of hanging out the Quakers, but I wasn’t officially with any group. So, this seemed curious to me. So, I bought the CD and put it into my laptop. And I was just blown away, Rick, because I was coming to it at first, just as an example of American interpretation. And something about it just really grabbed at me. And I think that–and other people have asked me this. I know you’ve had Ben Shaffer on the show. He’s asked me this, as well.
Adam 09:39 I think that the way that, especially the first 10 chapters, that Joseph Smith tTanslation, provide an alternate story of Adam and Eve, where it’s not so much–I’m coming from the Baptist tradition. So, we’re like the Calvinists, in regard to total depravity. So, Adam ate from the apple, and we’re done. We’re completely done as human beings. And the Joseph Smith Translation, for me challenged, that and said, “No, Adam wasn’t done when he ate the apple. In fact, God continued to have a relationship with Adam.” God in Genesis Chapter 6 of the Joseph Smith Translation forgives Adam, and he exalts Adam to the priesthood. And so, it was a completely different understanding of that story than what I’d ever been exposed to. And that got me interested in reading more Latter-day Saint and restorationist literature. And so, I remember this day very well. This was exactly to the day, Rick, of the one-year anniversary of my wife and I being married. The 10-year anniversary was last year, but this was the one-year anniversary of my wife and I being married, 2013. Yep. And we were at a Marriott Hotel in Princeton. And she went out to get Chinese food. And I stayed and I opened up [a drawer,] because usually have a Gideon Bible and stuff. I just like to see what things are in there.
GT 12:03 Not at the Marriott!
Adam 12:04 Not at the Marriott. I learned later that you Mormons own that. So, I saw this, there was this Book of Mormon there. And so, I picked it up. And I just started reading, and I had this mystical experience with the book. And I’ve told other people this and I’ll gladly say to you, Rick. I was basically drawn into the world with the Book of Mormon for a few seconds. You can believe that. You cannot believe that. I was in the jungle and there were Lamanites there–not in the jungle, the forest. And some Lamanites were running by. I will go on an oath is saying that. You can take me to court. You can psychologically evaluate me. And I will say exactly what I’m saying to you right now. The point of all this is that I knew that the Book of Mormon right then and there was true. I didn’t know anything about the Book of Mormon; besides that it had been translated by Joseph Smith, and it was Mormonism’s sacred text. I didn’t know anything else about it. But I knew right then that it was true. And that made me want to seek out groups that believed in the Book of Mormon.
Journey Through Bickertonites/ Community of Christ
Adam 13:19 And so there was, right down the street [a church.] This goes into really complex history with my relationship with the Restoration. There was a Bickertonite Church down the street.
GT 13:33 I didn’t expect that! Wow.
Adam 13:37 So, then I was going to [the Bickertonite Church] for a while.
GT 13:39 Is this in New Jersey or where is it?
Adam 13:41 This is in Jersey, yes. Oh, no, this is Pennsylvania. At the time, my wife and I were living in PA [Pennsylvania,] at the time. This was near Oxford Valley, Pennsylvania. I’m trying to think of the town. It’s right on the tip of my tongue. There are two Bickertonite churches in the area. There is one in New Jersey, in Mount Holly. That’s not too far from where my wife and I live now. And then there’s another one. Oh my gosh, I’m blanking on where it is.
GT 14:12 It’s probably near Philadelphia, though, roughly?
Adam 14:14 Philadelphia, yes, the suburbs of Philadelphia. Yeah. So I started going there. But honestly, one of the things that stopped me from going, it was a really long drive. I lived in Bensalem. And this was all the way in Oxford Valley. I don’t know how familiar you are with the Philadelphia area.
GT 14:34 So, Adam, believe it or not, my dad grew up in Pedricktown, New Jersey.
Adam 14:41 Okay.
GT 14:42 My aunt lived right outside Philadelphia, in Penns Grove, I think it was.
Adam 14:47 I taught high school in Penns Grove for several years.
GT 14:51 That’s what I thought, yeah. So, I have family history there. But I haven’t spent a lot of time in that area. But yeah, I knew you said you teach Penns Grove. Right?
Adam 15:06 I used to teach at Penns Grove, but not anymore.
GT 15:08 Okay. I knew that and I was like “Oh, that’s my dad’s neck of the woods.” So that’s interesting.
Adam 15:14 Yep, I know the area very well.
GT 15:16 So, wait a minute. So, you pick up the Book of Mormon in a Marriott Hotel and you don’t find an LDS Church. You find a Bickertonite Church, right off the bat?
Adam 15:27 Yeah, it was really weird at the time. People have asked me about that. I was really looking for convenience and there wasn’t an LDS Church, really in the Bensalem area, to my knowledge. Also, my wife is Catholic. Our two boys, they’re raised in Catholic education. And my wife was like, I’m not sure about these Mormons. Now, she’s very supportive. But at the time, she was like, “Is this just a fad? Is this just a phase? I don’t want you to get baptized into the Mormon church and just have it be like a fad. I don’t know if you’re sincere about this or not.” So it’s interesting. The Bickertonites do a lot of proselytizing in the area. So, people know them pretty well. They’re very prevalent in the Italian American communities in the Philadelphia area. So, I think that’s how I got to know where they were. I think there was some pamphlet or something, or some advertisement, and I started going there. But, in my laziness, 45 minutes was just too far away. And then I learned of the Community of Christ Church, which was literally, down the street from me, so about 10 or 15 minutes away. And I started going to that. And it’s funny, Rick, I was the youngest member of that congregation. Most of the people were in their 50s or 60s. But it was a lovely congregation. [There were] really, really amazing people, really wonderful people. I had a baby boy, at the time, my first son, Grayson. They would say, “Bring him.” So, I would bring him and they would play with him and give him treats and stuff like that. So, I got really close with this church. They shut down, actually, a couple of years back because of COVID. And a lot of their congregation has died out. It wasn’t very big, anyway. It was maybe like, 15 people, 15-20 people.
GT 17:34 Oh, it’s really tiny.
Adam 17:35 Yes. So, really, really small. Interestingly enough, [it was] a much more conservative, RLDS Church, versus the mainline Community of Christ Church, in its doctrine and in its beliefs. So, they all believed in the Inspired Version of Joseph Smith Translation, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. So, the pastor would preach out of the Inspired Version of the Bible. They were a wonderful church. So, you’re probably wondering how I got from there to the Elijah Message Church.
GT 18:11 Well, I’m still trying to figure out how the LDS Church just missed the boat in all this: BYU, Marriott Hotel. That’s as LDS as you get. Right?
Adam 18:21 Yes, yes. Yes. And I was definitely interested in LDS. Yes. Like I said, I was trying to figure out and find places that were close to me. I know for a fact there’s an LDS meeting house, really like five minutes away from where we live now. But at the time, I wasn’t sure where the places were. And like I said, my wife had some reluctance with me going to any of these churches.
GT 18:44 Well, and I want to understand a little bit more, because you grew up Baptist. But at this time, you were kind of Quaker-ish, I guess. So you weren’t…
Adam 18:55 Kind of Quaker-ish, yes.
GT 18:57 And you went on to become a licensed Baptist minister. Right?
Adam 19:03 In college and at the beginning of Divinity School, yes.
GT 19:07 Oh, so you had already been licensed in college?
Adam 19:11 Yes, yes.
GT 19:13 And so, because, and maybe this is just a Mormon stereotype, because we just think– mean, I went on my mission to the south, and it’s very Evangelical, and Mormons are evil and we’re devil worshipers and everything.
Adam 19:28 Yes.
GT 19:29 And so I just figured…
Adam 19:31 My mom, to this day, sends me literature, because she knows I’m apostle in a Restoration branch and she will send me books.
GT 19:39 Like Godmaker stuff?
Adam 19:40 Yes, yes. And how the Book of Mormon is a fraud and everything. I’ll get that for Christmas, that’s my Christmas present, like the past 10 years.
GT 19:48 (Chuckling) So weren’t you, I don’t know if indoctrinated is the right word, but that first time you met the BYU guys, weren’t you like hey, you know, stay away from me.
Adam 20:01 You know what I was pretty [open.] Like I said, I had Mormon friends in divinity school. I didn’t go to the BYU kiosk until I was doing my Ph.D. at Princeton. So, I already had really good friends, Carl Craney, who I mentioned before. So, I knew a little bit. I had good relations with the LDS Church. Looking back on it, like I said, I think it was just convenience. I was looking for–I saw this ad for the Bickertonites with the Book of Mormon. And so, I started going to that church and then the Community of Christ Church was even closer, right down the street.
GT 20:37 Oh, wow. So there wasn’t a lot of indoctrination in the Baptists, when you were licensed as a Baptist minister in college. They weren’t like, “Oh, here’s Mormonism 101 and why they’re all messed up.”
Adam 20:48 Oh, no, they absolutely did. I mean, it was, “Mormons and Catholics were bad,” and stuff like that. There was that, but I don’t pay too much– I mean, I tried to–when I entered into college, I was kind of a fanatically religious person, which I think contributed later on to my faith crisis. I was right, and everybody else was completely wrong. But I learned a lot from that. And I think by the time, the end of college, and definitely divinity school, I wasn’t so intolerant as the traditions I grew up in, had taught me to be. So, I was much more open to other traditions and other religions and other branches of Christianity than I was growing up, when I was a teenager growing up growing up in the Baptist Church.
GT 21:37 Well, let me just add one more thing. Occasionally, we have audio-only listeners, so they might not know that you’re African-American or black. By the way, you’re my first black apostle, I need to mention that.
Adam 21:51 Wow, okay.
GT 21:52 But, was that an issue, as well that the LDS Church, especially, discriminated against blacks until [the] 1978 revelation? Was that something that you learned growing up?
Adam 22:02 Yes. So, I learned that there were no blacks in the LDS Church until 1978. I have an old school story for you. I grew up in Baltimore, like I mentioned. And where I lived in Baltimore, near Northern Parkway, if you go down towards the old Memorial Stadium, the old stadium where the Orioles used to play, there is an LDS meeting house there. And the word around, just in the black community, at the time, was don’t go to that meeting place, because they hate black people there. So, that was what I was told as a kid. So, maybe, subliminally, that was one of the reasons I didn’t reach out more to an LDS Church. But, I think, for the most part, it was just convenience. But for me, I read the Book of Mormon. And when I had my experience, I was like, “This transcends race, this transcends color. And this is God speaking to me.” And I think one of the things that moved me so much about the Book of Mormon was that for years, I felt like God had been completely silent in my life. I wasn’t hearing anything. I always I tell people this. I had an experience. I used to go to a Christian camp for InterVarsity. They’re a really cool Christian group that’s on college campuses. And people used to, there were students that would come to this camp for the summer. It was in Rockbridge County, Westmoreland, Virginia, the same place as Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee. But it was this camp, this Christian camp and students from UNC will come, students basically all over North Carolina, would come to this camp. I don’t know why you’d have North Carolina camp in Virginia for North Carolina students, but it is what it is. But I remember the students were saying they could feel the Spirit. They could feel all this. They were having these mystical experiences. And, at the time, I didn’t feel anything. And it was one of the things that facilitated me kind of having the faith crisis later on. And when I read the Book of Mormon, it was validation, not only of Joseph Smith, but I felt like– Joseph Smith talks about God speaking again in his time, when all the churches said that Jesus, that God wasn’t speaking anymore. And I felt, on a very personal level, it was the same with me. I felt like God was speaking to me again, after so many years of things being really silent.
Conversion to Elijah Message/Assured Way
GT 24:43 You know, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. All right, so Bickertonite, then Community of Christ and then…
Adam 24:53 Elijah Message.
GT 24:54 Did that die out while you were there? COVID hit. Is that when that hit, or was it before that?
Adam 25:00 No, no. I started conversing with elders and apostles in the Elijah Message Church, the Assured Way, around 2017. So, I was still within the Community of Christ. And one of the reasons that I did that was because, outside of my home church, and I mentioned that it was very traditional RLDS, so the three standard works” the Inspired Version, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, all inspired, revealed to Joseph Smith, the prophet by God. But I found very little support for that view, which was my own view, within the larger Community of Christ. And I entered the Community of Christ, knowing that this was the case. I knew all about what happened in the 1980s with the drift towards a more liberal view. And, in many ways, I was okay with that. The Community of Christ, I mentioned this before, they really emphasize peace and pacifism. And that was one of the things that drew me to the Quakers. So, I was like, this is really cool. This is something that I really agree strongly with.
Adam 26:10 But then, the more I read the literature of Community of Christ, the more it seemed, at least in my opinion, in my humble opinion, that the Book of Mormon and to some extent, the Doctrine & Covenants, but not quite, but the Book of Mormon and the Inspired Version, really didn’t matter to them anymore. The Inspired Version was being replaced by the NRSV, the Revised Standard Version, which is a great translation, by the way. I love it. But, for me, the Inspired Version was something very special. And it seemed like the Book of Mormon, a lot of the critical views of the Book of Mormon, as just being an invention of Joseph Smith, as being a racist text, which was something that was said to me, when I was a kid, when in the mentions of Mormonism, within the black Baptist tradition, all those things I found myself not being able to agree with. And that drew me to look at another tradition. And by chance, I started a conversation with one of the apostles in the Elijah Message Church, Mike Greenwell. He’s passed now. He passed a little bit after I was ordained an elder in the church. And I started talking to him for about two years, him and another apostle, one of my dear friends, Richard Johnson. [They] came to our house. They flew all the way from Kansas City, Missouri, and Iowa, to see us. And we just had wonderful conversations talking to him about theology and doctrine. I learned about their Scripture, the Word of the Lord, which are the messages said to have come from John the Baptist. And in the fall of 2020, I was baptized into the church and ordained an apostle.
GT 28:05 You were baptized and ordained an apostle at the same time?
Adam 28:09 Yes.
GT 28:10 Holy cow. Really?
Adam 28:12 Yes.
GT 28:14 This was like 1830 or something. (Chuckling)
Adam 28:18 Yes, It does. It’s funny, because the Elijah Message tradition comes from the Temple Lot tradition. Right? The Temple Law tradition, basically, and I would say we’re very similar to this, basically, stops the Restoration at 1833, before that evil, evil man, Sidney Rigdon, whom David Whitmer bashes, came on the scene and ruined everything and got into Joseph Smith’s favor, and ruined everything. So, we’re very…
GT 28:50 See. that’s funny, I think Sidney came in about 1831. But 1833, I think it was, he tried to change the name to The Church of the Latter-day Saints, I think, is what it was.
Adam 29:01 Yeah, yeah. I mean, David Whitmer says that it starts to go downhill with Sidney Rigdon. But Sidney Rigdon comes in two years before he says things start to go downhill. So, go figure. But, anyway, I mean, we’re very similar to the Temple Lot Church in that regard, in many ways. We accept the Book of Commandments over the Doctrine & Covenants, officially. I still read the Doctrine and Covenants, because I came from the Community of Christ.
GT 29:26 Well, I was going to ask you, so you never officially joined the Community of Christ then?
Adam 29:30 I did. I did, I was a member for five years, yes.
GT 29:34 Okay, so you did join the Community of Christ.
Adam 29:36 Yes. I joined the Community of Christ. Yeah.
GT 29:37 You never joined the Bickertonites though.
Adam 29:39 I did not join the Bickertonites. Yes.
GT 29:41 I know Steve Pynakker has told me that, especially in Florida, there’s a congregation down there that is heavily African American. Is it the same in Philadelphia?
Adam 29:53 For the Bickertonites? Yes. So, one of their early apostles in the early 20th Century, when segregation was really bad, one of their apostles was a black apostle, who was a doctor, who went to Italian American neighborhoods, and preached the Book of Mormon to people while he was doing his doctor thing and practicing medicine in these neighborhoods. So, there is, yes in Florida, a lot of the Bickertonite churches are African American. In Philadelphia, the church I went to in the Oxford Valley, half of the congregation was African American. And there were some really old ladies who have been with the Bickertonite Church for many, many years. And I’ll never forget, one of them prophesied over me and said that I was going to be an apostle and an elder. And it’s funny, because her prophecy came true, but just not with the Bickertonite Church.
GT 30:57 That’s funny. So was it just a few months you met with the Bickertonites and then you [switched to] The Community of Christ?
Adam 31:04 Yes, exactly.
GT 31:05 So, you were with the Community of Christ about five years, and then you met the Elijah Message. Oh, wow. And so, you joined in 2017? Do I have that right?
Adam 31:15 I started talking to them in 2017. I joined, officially, in 2020.
GT 31:20 Okay, yeah. Now, the first Elijah Message apostle I met was a guy named Paul Savage. Do you know Paul?
Adam 31:29 I do know Paul, yes. Paul came to our General Assembly in 2021. And we had a great conversation about, completely unrelated to the restoration, about Elvis, because Paul used to do some press stuff for Elvis. I’m a big fan of Elvis Presley. And he told me about the concerts he went to, and how the worst Elvis concert he ever went to was not an impersonator, but Elvis, himself, in 1977 when he forgot all his lines and basically ripped his pants. It was really a mess. I got to talk to him quite a bit about that.
GT 32:10 Because I think I talked to Paul. It was my first MHA meeting, I think, in Independence, like 2012, somewhere around there. And he was an apostle at the time, but he’s no longer an apostle?
Adam 32:24 No, he’s still –he’s not, I think, do not quote me on this at all. I think he’s with the 608 Church, but he still does stuff with our church from time to time, and he’ll come to General Assembly and stuff. In fact, I met him in Independence, when I was there for the General Assembly.
GT 32:38 Oh, so he is an apostle still?
Adam 32:41 No, no, not with our church, not with the…
GT 32:44 Not with your church, but with his church he is?
Adam 32:46 Yes, I believe so.
GT 32:47 They’re kind of like sister churches or something like that, I guess, kind of.
Adam 32:52 That’s a very nice way of putting it. I mean, we, in The Assured Way Church, believe that we are the official, correct continuation of the church that existed in ’94, and that the splinter groups are in error.
{End of Part 1}
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